Frieren turned with a slow, sideways glance, the kind she gave anything she hadn't decided about yet. Her hovering feet eased down through the air, bare toes brushing sand still warm from the afternoon sun. Where she landed, fine white grains kicked up in a soft spray, catching the light for half a second before scattering back down around her ankles like startled insects.
"What?" she said. Not sharp , just curious, in the flat, unhurried way she asked most things, as if the concept of urgency belonged to a language she'd long since stopped speaking.
Carin didn't look up. She dug the ball of her foot into the sand, drawing a small crescent through it, eyes fixed somewhere just past her own knees. "Let me go with you…" Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to , half a question, half a plea already bracing for a no.
Behind her, the sea kept its steady rhythm, indifferent, folding in against the shore. Somewhere above, a gull cried once and went quiet.
Frieren said nothing for a moment. She let her gaze drift past Carin, toward Kraft , who stood a little apart from the crowd of workers, sunlight catching gold in his hair, already grinning like a man who'd rigged the outcome from the start. Both his thumbs shot up into the air, unmistakable, unsubtle. Sunny, still perched on his shoulder, tilted his small head as if weighing in too.
He always did know exactly which strings to pull, Frieren thought. Centuries change everything except that.
She exhaled — not quite a sigh, not quite a laugh. "Ah… okay."
The reaction from the KraftsmanInc workers came almost immediately: scattered applause, someone letting out a whoop, a woman near the back pressing both hands over her mouth, blinking fast. It wasn't the crowd's business, not really, but they'd all watched enough of the last hour to understand what it meant. Sunny let out a short, indignant chirp at the sudden noise and resettled his feathers.
Frieren turned back to Carin, who still hadn't quite lifted her head.
"Hold my shoulder," Frieren said, simple as an instruction on how to hold a teacup.
"Why—"
She never finished the word.
The sand dropped away beneath her feet, and the whole world tilted sideways for one long, breathless second — wind roaring past her ears, salt and sun and the smell of the sea rushing up all at once, her stomach lifting somewhere behind her like it hadn't quite decided to come along yet. Carin's fingers dug into fabric on instinct, grabbing whatever was closest , Frieren's shoulder, her sleeve, anything solid in a world that had just stopped being solid at all.
Below, the beach shrank fast: the volleyball net, the KraftsmanInc building with its glass front catching the light, the small dark shapes of the workers still waving. Kraft shielded his eyes against the glare with one raised hand, Sunny motionless on his shoulder, and the two of them stood together on the warm sand, watching two figures , one calm, one still catching up to what was happening to her , dwindle into pale sky until there was nothing left to see but blue.