“Saul, wait!” Lily laughed breathlessly as her bare feet slung sand behind her. “I lost my sandals and the sand is on fire!”
“Not as hot as the boardwalk,” her brother yelped, dancing on his toes from sand to board and back again. “Hurry up, it’s too hot to be out of the water!”
“Well, you’re the one who just had to come all the way down here,” Lily grumbled. “We could have just swum in the pool, you know.”
“Yeah, but who wants to do that when the whole big ocean is waiting?” Saul reached the shade of the dock and jumped to swing from the beams. “Just look at it! Have you ever seen color like that?”
“Yeah, yesterday, when we came for swim.” Lily sniffed and attempted to imitate a flamingo while examining the soles of her feet. “Now that we’re here at the ‘whole big ocean’, are you getting in or not?”
“Come on, Lily, I thought girls were supposed to be romantic.” He dropped to the weathered boards and perched on the railing beside the steps she was about to descend. “It glows on its own, don’t you think? There’s magic in it! Maybe it’ll turn us into denizens of the deep, doomed to ride the waves for all eternity.” He struck a dramatic pose.
Lily rolled her eyes. “Waves aren’t in the deep, idiot.” She shoved him so that his balance on the railing failed and darted down the steps into the brilliant water. “Catch me if you can, you big sea monster!”
The Word Worker 