[Neil]

[plntfood]

On the beach, sitting on a towel near the water, watching Sam as she plays in the shallow water, Mathias wishes his cast was off already. He has only a few days left, hopefully, but he wants to be in that water with her now, he wants to be diving and swimming and surfing, but he still can't do any of those things. It isn't that he's in a bad mood,

Comments

[little_moons]

It hadn't occurred to me that I oughta shy away from him. I see him standing in the water, and I don't think about slipping away, unseen. That sorta shit's never been me, anyway, and as much as I get that we probably made a mistake, it's not something I'm actively ashamed of.

Even if I wanted to slip past unnoticed, the pack of dogs and four-year-olds I've got with me kind of make it impossible. Gordon and Max run off with King, while Dexter sticks close with Mack and Flo, who are carrying between them a bucket of saltwater and sand, little mole crabs burrowing inside.

Slipping up beside him, I bend down to pick Sam up, saying to Mathias, "Dude, get outta the water." Sam's little arms go around my neck and I tell her, "Let's not give him a hard time. Okay, kiddo?"

[little_moons]

"'Cause you're a fuckin' idiot?" I say with a crooked grin, "And I followed you for the same damn reason."

We haven't talked much about it, about whatever it was he thought he saw down there, whatever it was he was so scared of. I wasn't even down there with him, so I don't know what was goin' on, but from what I could hear, I know it wasn't good.

"I wanted to leave Hutchinson more than anything, but I dunno... I don't think I could keep movin' like that on my own." I've never been very good at being alone. That's not the sorta person that makes a good tourist.

[plntfood]

That's part of the problem, Mathias thinks. For so long, he hadn't been alone. First there had been Henrich, moving from place to place with him, traveling and visiting and being tourists together. Veronica hadn't been a replacement, not at all, but he hadn't been alone on the island for very long before meeting her and though they hadn't moved around a lot, she'd been a constant, just like Henrich.

Now he's alone. Now he has to figure out a way to do everything he'd done before, but without anyone else.

"My brother came with me," he says finally, smiling slightly. "Most places, anyway." Not here. Henrich could never come here.

[little_moons]

"Were you with him, before you ended up here?" I ask, scratching behind Max's ears when he nudges at my hand with his nose.

Mathias has never talked much, and if he's mentioned anything about his brother, I can't remember. I've known him for a while, now, but he doesn't exactly offer up information. Honestly, over the last week, I feel like he's said more words to me than he has in years of knowing him.

[plntfood]

"No. No, he had died already," Mathias answers and it's as simple as that. His brother is dead and Veronica is gone. No amount of wishful thinking is going to bring either of them back. "I was with some..." He's hesitant to call them friends -- except for Stacy -- but he can't think of what else they were either. They were friends at the time, the kind he'd always met on vacations. Friends for a week before you forget them, but he can't forget these ones.

"Some other tourists," he says finally. "Friends, I suppose."

[little_moons]

"Shit, man, I didn't know..." I say, frowning, though I don't know if it's worth feeling guilty for bringing it up. Not when he's so matter of fact about it.

Flo wanders over, her eyes wide and fixed on something resting in her palms. "Look," she breathes, leaning forward so I can see the little sand dollar she's found, a kind of greenish brown instead of the bleached white you see in souvenir stores, and probably still alive.

"That's really cool, kiddo. Why don't you show Mathias," I say to her, grinning crookedly as she walks across the towel with her sandy feet to show him what she's got.

[plntfood]

"Me too," Sam says, trailing after Flo, trying to take a peek at what she's found and Mathias holds his arms out to her so they can look at it together.

"That's very nice," he says to Flo. "Did you know that they're alive? Animals that live in the water."

Maybe she already knows this; it's another area he needs to work out, discovering what it is that little girls do and don't know already. Sam, though, sounds surprised that he's said this and she stares at him for a moment, trying to figure out if that's true or not.

[little_moons]

"No it's not," Mack argues, coming between them and reaching over to poke at it with her fingertip, but Flo curls around it protectively, squealing out a distressed, "Stop!"

"Hey, calm down," I tell them both, giving Mack a don't you fucking dare look when she reaches for it again, though the look she gives back to me is a challenge, and I know she's just biding her time.

And just like clockwork, the sand dollar moves in Flo's palm, it's tiny little legs or whatever the fuck it has tickling her palm, and she shrieks, dropping it to the towel and taking a step back. "See?" I say to all three of them, smirking when they all lean down in unison to get a closer look at it.

[plntfood]

"I want one," Sam says, looking up at Mathias. Before he can answer, though, she's turned back to the shallow waters to look for one on her own and he imagines he doesn't have much of a say in it if she actually finds one.

"Four dogs, but that is not enough to keep her occupied," Mathias mutters, shaking his head in amusement. "No, she must have a sand dollar as well."

Maybe he'll find some kind of bowl and they can get a fish, because he has no idea how he's going to keep a sand dollar alive.

[little_moons]

"It's not like you gotta worry 'bout keepin' it alive. Doubt she could tell the difference," I point out, snorting out a laugh when Flo parks her ass between us, squeezing her way into the space and tucking herself against my side, the sand dollar back safely in her palms.

"Anyway, 'til you gotta damn pig and two cats to deal with, I got you beat."

[plntfood]

"This is a competition I am alright with losing," he answers with a grin of his own, looking down at the towel he's sitting on, then at Sam out in the water. "I never liked dogs either and now I have four to look after." He misses his cat now and then, though he imagines the baker's daughter adopted him and looked after him when Mathias never came home.

It's rare that he thinks about Munich, but he does now, wondering what people said when he and Henrich never returned.

[little_moons]

"How the hell did you even end up with that many?" I laugh. The sand dollar is sitting on the towel, now, and Flo's watching it, waiting for it to move again, playing idly with the ring on my finger. The wedding ring I haven't been able to bring myself to take off.

Normally, I don't even notice it's there, but she's brought attention to it, and now, it's all I can do not to pull my hand away. I'm still smiling, but it feels off, and it's weird, but I can't really decide if I want him not to notice, or if it'd be better, somehow, if he would.

[plntfood]

"Taser is Veronica's and Rembrandt is Sam's," Mathias says, looking at the dogs that are milling around. "A friend of River's disappeared some months back and she... she'd lost so many people, I couldn't bear to make her deal with the dogs, too. I offered to take them."

And he's grown to love them, too.

He glances down when Flo starts to play with Neil's hand and smiles sympathetically at the sight of the ring. If he and Veronica had been married, he suspects he'd never take the ring off either.

[little_moons]

"Lennox," I nod, pointing to the dog trailing along behind King, "That's how we ended up with Gordon."

Honestly, when we took Gordon, I didn't even really ask Mike what happened to the other dogs. I was just kinda glad we didn't end up with the whole fuckin' pack.

I drop a kiss to the top of Flo's head, huffing out a laugh when she cuddles up closer against my side. They've sort of seesawed between being unusually clingy, to defiantly independent, over the last few weeks.

[plntfood]

"I FOUND ONE!" Sam shouts from the water, startling Mathias out of whatever he'd been about to say. She runs back to the towel and proudly displays a handful of seaweed to Neil, then says, "Look!" and points to a round, flat rock in the middle of all of it.

It isn't a sand dollar, but if she wants to take that home, Mathias will be more than happy to let her.

"That's very nice," he tells her, but she frowns at him.

"Neil look," she insists. "Not you."

[little_moons]

"Wow, let's see that," I say, leaning over like I'm real interested, then cutting him a look.

Mack barges her way into the conversation, peeking around Sam's shoulder, frowns and says, "It looks dead."

"It is not!" Flo argues, like Sam's sand dollar needs defending.