“Known as the Dripkin. A secret society of beings who can…” Lina trails off.
“Manipulate water,” I provide.
“And time,” Lina adds on.
Frankie is highly tickled by this oceanic urban fantasy. And frankly, judging by the look on everyone’s faces, so is everyone else.
“Each fortress holds immense power over an element—one controls the tides, another controls the moon’s pull, and yet another governs the whispers of forgotten ocean spirits,” Lina tells Frankie in a spooky voice.
“Don’t scare my daughter,” I tell her, the hair on my arms rising.
“I’m not scared—you’re scared,” Frankie huffs at me.
“Lina is pretty scary,” I admit.
“Hey!”
“But you, Frankie, are theSeekerin this tale,” I continue. “You’re the only human with the ability to enter Dripmoor through a hidden portal beneath the largest drip castle. This one that I’m building right now.” I grab another wet clump of sand and drip it onto the top. “This is like, the most satisfying feeling on my fingers.”
“It really is,” Georgia agrees.
“I feel like I can hear the sand plopping,” Oliver contributes. “I like the sound it makes.”
“That makes no sense,” I tell him.
“Neither does the giant, gaping pothole in your Dripmoor story,” Lina fires back.
“Pothole? Dripmoor can’t have potholes. The constant wave erosion makes it impossible,” I inform her.
“Plot hole,” she clarifies.
“What plot hole? The plot is ironclad.” I am indignant.
“Why is Dripmoor beneath the sand, when the fortresses are above the sand?” Lina frowns.
“So they can be affected by the moon’s pull,” Oliver jumps in to defend my honor as a story teller with an even more nonsensical answer.
“How can this one control the tides and that one control the moon’s pull?” Lina demands to know.
“I don’t know! You’re the one who came up with that story element!”
“The Seeker is on a quest to unite the Dripkin factions to stop a terrible curse that’s rising from the deep,” Georgia cuts in, “threatening to flood the human world with eternal high tide.”
“I feel like I’m high just watching them,” I think I hear Tito Ben say to Tita Gloria.
I look over at them, and they are perched up on beach chairs a few feet away. I look at the five of us, ranging in age from five to forty, hunched over like gremlins in the midst of dozens of phallic towers of sand. I lose it.
Lina looks at me and dissolves into giggles.
“It looks like you two are babysitting all of us,” I tell Tita Gloria and Tito Ben in between gasps, because I seem to have lost control of my lungs.
“We are, technically,” Tita Gloria responds.
Everyone looks around and digests this and also dissolves into giggles.
Frankie is fucking loving this and jumps her sandy body into my lap. I squeeze her tight. “Am I squeezing your eyeballs out of your head?” I ask her.
She lets out a high-pitched squeal, like a teakettle.
