First Steps | OPEN

The beach doesn’t tend to attract the attention of many people due to the difficulty of getting there, but this day was far too hot for anyone to really care. The beach was covered with people, whether they were in the water splashing around or on land soaking up the scorching sun’s rays. One small young girl was creating a sand castle which looked more like a hill of sand than a castle of any sort. Though given her expression she didn’t seem to care really.

The girl’s joyous expression quickly soured though once the shadows of two older children covered both her and her creation. The two young teenagers didn’t quite look impressed by her structure and one of them grew an evil grin as he charged up a kick. The little girl eyes became watery as the early teenaged boy destroyed her hard work. The two had a good laugh, until they noticed the ground began to move. Within seconds a large scale model of the Eiffel sprouted out of the ground towering over the two older kids. The twenty meter tall replica began to tip over toward the two miscreants. They both ran away with a combined expression of absolute fear and surprise.

Before the structure actually impacted against the surface of the beach, it was sucked back into the area where it had originally grown from. The small girl watched in amazement as a torrent of sand shot out from the ground and began to pile up in an area not too far away. Tem began to take form into her true Golem form. She got in a good chuckle as she watched the children continue to run away. “Wow, thanks mister!” the young child said toward Tem’s back. She altered her form into the one she usually was in during her days off of the police force. “Things aren’t always as they seem, kid” she turned to correct the child. She then walked away from the child as many of the beach dwellers watched from afar trying to understand what was going on.

Her original plan wasn’t to better the mood of the child, only to frighten the teenagers, though she felt good of herself regardless. Now that her cover was blown though she wasn’t going to be pranking anyone else by surprise.

A few yards away, close enough to the water, without actually getting wet, Harper had been slipping into a light sleep. The old, wrinkled paperback had stared to bore her and the sun had felt marvelous against her skin. She had leaned back, her skimpy maroon bikini helped in receiving stares and the perfect tan. She was not embarrassed by the newness of the deep scar on her calf, and thought it had given her that final air of mystery she had been missing.

When the ground had started to shift and vibrate, Harper had roused her interest enough to tilt her head in the direction of the small girl building a sandcastle. The growing tower had her lifting her overlarge sunglasses, and finally she stood. "Wow! Impressive," she called out, waving down the woman who had come from the sand. Harper touched her loose bun briefly. Then she pulled the costume pearls from her neck. A slight sheen of ocean sweat had clung to them uncomfortably. She waved at the other woman again before approaching her.

"Hi." Her expression curious and smile wide, Harper looked around the beach pointedly. "You know, not everyone on the beach has talents. Bold of you, don't you think? Bold to be flashy...not that I'm against that sort of thing." She held out a hand. "Harper Quinn. Are you new to the school?"

Tem’s directionless stroll was quickly interrupted when a person seemed to have called to her. She stopped in her tracks upon hearing her holler and twisted herself around to where she predicted the noise came from. The rest of her day was unplanned so she was in no hurry to get anywhere. The girl that seemed to want her attention was fairly young and in beach attire unlike Tem for a variety of reasons.

The girl introduced herself and complimented the way she almost crushed those teenagers a little while back. Maybe that wasn’t the intent of her compliment, but Tem took it as that way and was a bit glad that she wasn’t being frowned upon for it. Harper also seemed to think that Tem was a student, she wasn’t sure if she should take that as an insult for her lack of craftsman on the face of her current form for not making it look older. Regardless, she hastily joined hands with the other woman to complete her gesture. “I’m Tem Demostrate and I’ve barely ever visited Foresta since I first arrived here” she also spoke hastily. She tried to remember how long ago it was she arrived at the port, but she wasn’t good with time. Decades barely felt like a year to her.

“I don’t look that young do I?” She asked bluntly as one end of her lip curled in curiosity. As she finished speaking she grew tiny crow’s feet at the end of her eyes and a subtle amount of frown lines to attempt to make herself look slightly older. “Do I look a bit less student like now?”

With an airy wave of her free hand, Harper said, "Oh it's not that. You just don't come across gifteds much outside the school. I haven't since I've been here anyway." She hadn't let go of Tem's hand, and watched careful as she changed her appearance. "Your not human. I can't read your hand." Harper finally let go and she spoke with keen interest. Only a twinge of bitterness had settled on her tongue. "Your super old though. I can tell that! The wrinkles suit you...very distinguished."

She flicked a lock of hair away from her freckled shoulder. "How long have you been in town for? I'm dying for village gossip." A few village boys her age, but utterly plain and ununique, cat called. She turned grinning, wriggling her fingers at them coyly. Physical gratification of any kind had always been welcome. She could get away with murder all because of a smile. Sure there were more statuesque, more delicate, or more classically beautiful girls, but Harper? She had sensuality. She had risque.

"So how old are you, really? And what are you doing on a bore of an island like this?" She dropped her buglike sunglasses down her nose and peered around. "Don't tell me this place strikes you as adventurous."

It was strange, a girl she had only met for a couple of seconds was about the fasted to figure out that Tem wasn’t a human with some sort of gift. She’s gotten really sick of being identified as such. She accepted the comment of her wrinkles suiting her as a compliment. She gently rubbed her cheek making it seem like something someone would do on impulse in order to collect any stray bits of sand that might be on her face after the modifications she made. “Hrm, the extra wrinkles would only put more work on myself to create. The less busy work the better.”

Tem watched the interaction between Harper and the boys she waved at. Tem didn’t understand the need to acknowledge them at all, but then again she could never understand sexual attraction. “I’ve been around for… I can’t even remember. It’s been a while though, time isn’t a factor that concerns me really. The same with my age, I know that I lived before the time of the development of electronics, but that’s about it. Considering that I lack a brain, memory isn’t one of my strong points.”

The girl said that the island lacked adventure and Tem could only agree, though adventure wasn’t what she was looking for. “Here, I mostly came because I was sick of being discriminated for being something I’m not. Since I couldn’t just wipe the floor with the people that hated me I had to find somewhere that would accept me. Besides I did enough adventuring a millennia ago, I tend to jump in and out of phases. Maybe I’ll go out to see the world again next millennia. For now, I have a job and I have my purpose, I don’t need much more”

“Also, I’m a cop. People don’t tend to discuss gossip with us. I do have some idiot criminal stories though.”

She perused her lips with disbelief. "You don't have a brain? How can you move around? Use reason?" This was probably an inappropriate time to make a joke about cops not having brains, but it didn't stop Harper smirking. "How.are we having this talk if you don't have a brain?" Harper was liking this woman more and more, especially about how open she was in her desire to absolve the world of humanity. Her feelings were mutual. Of course she'd protect her parents from any kind of massacre, but they might not like her for it.

Right now, all Harper could think of was how Tem's friendship could be beneficial, and the sweat starting to trickle down her exposed back. Harper circled Tem, examining how she carried herself. "Nope. I don't believe it. You must have something controlling your legs and stuff." She wondered if she would ever be able to read something like Tem. What could she see of the future? How much of it? "Which is better, now or then? And why a cop of all things?"

The girl asked the next logical question, how is Tem even alive without a brain. It was a question that stumped most humans, but she aged without the knowledge of what makes her body and mental state work the way it does, so it was just commonplace for her. It was definitely a hard question to answer since most humans don’t have a reference to anything living without a brain. “Well, jellyfish don’t have a brain either. They’re still seen as living are they not? They may not be sentient, but whatever. I don’t know exactly how it works, I’m just saying I don’t have a squishy pink thing in my head” she attempted to reason.

She held her hand out in front of her and displayed it for the girl to see. Her hand changed its appearance back into a sandy structure and back to its original colour. “My best theory is that every grain of sand acts like the molecules inside your human body. The thoughts and opinions I have is like a collection of some sort of hive mind. But I don’t know, I’m no scientist. All I know is that someone enchanted a pile of sand and here I am. In a way, it’s like the origin of humanity; nobody quite understands how they worked at the beginning and then they learned. No award winning scientist is studying me, so questions will be left unanswered.”

She shifted the bits of sand on her arm for a little bit to show them to her curious acquaintance and then pulled it back to her side. Harper then questioned which was better; current times or the past. “Hmm, good question. Well the past had the benefits of there being less people around and that if you fled from country to country it was near impossible for anyone to follow you, but modern day transport makes getting around much easier than letting the wind take you wherever and people have become more tolerant in a way. I’d have to say that the past has the better benefits, a person could get away with things much easier like myself. As well they’re much easier to fool, I once had a cult who believed I was a God. That was pretty fun.” She spoke off the top of her head.

“Golems have a natural impulse to protect something, mostly structures and treasure. I suppose that would be the main reason.”

Harper took in all this information that was so freely given. Most of the time people leaned towards speaking on their superficial selves, or not speaking about themselves at all. She nodded here and there, occasionally let out a noncommittal noise, but eyes lit up suddenly. The idea of being worshipped, something she felt was a woman's right, was very appealing. "Why would you quit a job like that? Being celebrated as a god, I mean,".said Harper at last. To herself, she wondered where she could sign up.

Wriggling her bare feet in the warm sand had her curious about other things. Like why wasn't the sand drawn to Tem, or would it be, if there was a particular kind? A funny and grotesque image of Tem wilting into a lump after getting wet, ran through her thoughts as well. How long would it take to recover? What were her insides like? Would life ever get boring? She let her focus turn briefly to the sounds of the ocean scrapping across the shoreline. People kicked up clumps of damp sand, laughing, running, playing with cookie cutter sandcastles. What if they were all standing on top of more...what had Tem called herself? More gollums? Standing on bodies...or on the roofs of the beach version of mole people.

It was a powerful idea. One that Harper clinged to. She wasn't necessarily a bad person. She just preferred to be on top. The one in charge. Harper reached out for Tem's hand again and traced the newly formed lines. Would she let Harper study her? There seemed to be an underlining bases for Tem's makeup. It would be fun to see if Harper could unravel the puzzle. "How long do you think you'll stay here?"

It might seem strange to others that Tem was so open about herself, but to Tem being questioned about was basically her everyday life. She hadn’t gotten tired of it just yet because the more people who knew that she wasn’t a gifted the better. There were benefits to being associated with the group of people, but to her it seemed to under mind what she really was and she hated that. Besides she enjoyed the range of questions she was being asked, it seemed to be more unique than usual. “To be honest I wouldn’t have quit if it were up to me, but there was a rival group of heretics and they were a larger faction than the ones who believed I was a God. They didn’t believe in me due to the advent of gifted people, they thought I was a freeloader because I couldn’t perform miracles that didn’t involve sand. The loyalists were out number and eventually killed. It’s a shame, they were nice folk” she spoke without a hint of emotion toward the people she was speaking of.

Harper asked of how long she planned to stay on the island. Her face displayed that she deep into thought since she hadn’t really considered such a thing before since time wasn’t an object to her. She let the human investigate her hand as she pondered. Normally she was hesitant to let anyone investigate her body thoroughly, but she felt the woman earned it for entertaining her for a short while. “I’ll probably be here longer than your lifetime, unless the island is destroyed somehow before then. Why?” She answered expecting her own question to be touched upon.

With another shrug, Harper replied, "Oh...no reason." But her grin held some of secret desire, she hadn't even put into focus yet. If Tem had seen the expression, Harper wasn't concerned. As open as she was, Tem might prove to be a viable asset to Harper's growth as a soothsayer. She needed people, or gollums or whatever, like that in her life. It wasn't about being friends, it was about having allies. For what, Harper was still unsure.

So now what? She turned to face the sun again, raising her sunglasses to the arch of her hairline, and watched the waves. It wasn't like she could ask Tem to join in a swim, not if all of her was sand. Harper's sandals, suit cover, towel, and book were still where she had left them. There wasn't anything anyone would want to steal. "So, like, can you do magic at all? Or do you just to this shifty stuff?" Knowing she should probably stop probing eventually, Harper kept a casual tone. There were probably others like Temp and most likely not as forth coming or nice. "Thanks for being so cool about me asking stuff. I know we just met and all." Gratitude was not something to be given freely, not in Harper's world. Her thanks had been payment for Tem's openness, and she wondered if a thank you to a gollum was like a thank you to a pixie; something of value.

Tem didn’t care much for Harper’s answer to her question, she’s questioned enough criminals to understand the way she spoke meant she had some sort of intention. Then again she looked no older than a teenager so she felt that she couldn’t possibly be that manipulative and if she was Tem could rebel against her with relative ease if need be. Besides, she was young how dastardly could her thoughts possibly be.

“I don’t have a reason to not answer you if you have any questions about me. The more well informed the citizens are, the better for myself anyway.” she answer simply. She hardly felt any fear of exposing herself for what she really was, it didn’t give anyone a better angle against her. In fact it gave criminals less of a chance against her if they knew how little regard she felt for human life.

Tem stared blankly at the beach after Harper asked what other abilities she had. “Well, I can control sand itself. I can make it move by my will and in fact I could probably move this entire beach and place it somewhere else on the island if I really wanted to” she answered grinning as she did imagining if she actually did such a thing. Her thoughts were sidetracked once she noticed a sunbather who seemed to have fallen asleep on the shoreline. She grew a devilish smile as she whispered over to the girl “watch this…” The ground around the sunbather began to sink until it became a meter deep rectangular hole. A wave of sand blanketed over the unknowing woman, burying her. The surface looked as though nothing was there to begin with since it was flat and almost unaltered. Tem burst into a maniacal chuckle. “Humans can dig through a meter of sand right?” she asked for reassurance once her laughter came to a nearing halt.

Harper watched slightly slack jawed. To have that much power over anything was something she had hungered for. Did Tem's power come with practic, or had she been designed (born?) With that amount of strength? "I think," said Harper evenly, we might be able to...slowly. If we're not getting suffocated by it. She's probably uncomfortable." She brushed back a thick strand of hair that had fallen away from the loose knot on top of head. What would it be like to suddenly have your mouth and nose filled with sand? 'uncomfortable' didn't seem like an aggressive enough word.

With not much moving from the sand, Harper edged a little closer. Interesting that Tem, after so many hundreds and thousands of years, still couldn't understand the human shell. People could only withstand so much. "Maybe you should help her a little bit. She didn't look very strong. And cops aren't supposed to kill people for fun," she added casually, her bright eyes still focused on the mound where the sunbather's head should be.

Tem rolled her eyes as Harper mentioned that ‘cops shouldn’t be killing people’. “Look she isn’t dead yet, so don’t go claiming things that haven’t happened. Besides I’ve never killed a person on accident ever since I joined the force.” She then stared at the patch of sand she buried the sunbather under releasing a sigh of inconvenience as though she was made to do a minor task she didn’t want to. “I suppose I’ll make it easier for her” she spoke with a hint of sass.

As she prepared to move the sand, the ground where the sunbather once was began to shift and it wasn’t by her command. She grew a curious face as she watched the phenomenon unsure of what was going on. Within a split second a spout of water burst out of the ground with the girl who was tanning being at the top of it. Tem quickly turned to her current acquaintance to assure herself that it wasn’t her doing. It didn’t seem like it.

Tem was quick to realize what the reasoning was, the sunbather must have been a water elemental. Her face suddenly shrunk in a quick pace of slight panic. Water wouldn’t kill her, but it would definitely make her day a whole lot worse. “Oh shit, I didn’t think she had an ability” she cursed in a less than joyful attitude. She prepared herself to run if the woman were to strike at her which was a high possibly if she were angry.

Harper had appreciated Tem's sass, and responded with a chuckle and a dramatically staged eyeroll. "Well then!" She said with a fake huff. When the ground began to rumble, Harper's first reaction was to look for something to hide under, or hold on to. She hadn't expected the sunbather to be a gifted, either. Now her attitude changed to sour. She should have seen this in her morning reading, but nothing the cards said had anything to do witb what was happening now...not even vaguely.

Water sprayed everywhere, flicking small gobs of wet sand. Harper stumbled over herself to get away from the dangerous base, while trying to see through squinted eyes. Finally losing her footing, by tripping over another girl who was too stupid to run and trying instead to take a picture on her phone, Harper fell squarely on her small backside. "Oww, watch it bitch!" She yelled and still flying bits of beach became grit in her mouth. She pushed the girl away from her, still trying to find safe ground, but she liked Tem enough to linger. "Let's get out of here, Tem. I think there's a changing hut..." She pointed east. How far was this gush of water going to spread? Would it follow them the way Tem's sand could?

The woman riding the spout began to scatter large spheres of water all around the beach, apparently wanting to ruin everyone else’s day at the beach after hers had been. That was Tem guess anyway, her true motives were nearly impossible to determine besides the fact that she was probably upset. Tem needed to return to the regular world, people without gifts didn’t really fight back too much after she pranked them.

The spray of water reached her as it did to almost everyone in the nearby vicinity, though their skin probably didn’t peel if they got splashed by water. Tem took a couple of seconds before she finally took the beach’s sand and raised a wall to block any more water from hitting her. It was taller than she was and not too wide, a minimum of two people could hide behind it and not get sprayed by the water completely. Though, the wall could only take so much before it would fall apart.

Tem searched where Harper pointed eventually finding the changing hut she spoke of. Luckily Tem could see through a lot of the chaos much easier. She sort of enjoyed the view though, besides the chance of becoming a pile of mud within seconds. She didn’t want to spend the next few days trying to dry off. “Okay, see you there” she replied as she reverted to a pile of sand. Once she was a mound of dirt once again, an army of small scorpions scuttled out of her hill until there was no sand left. The army made a b-line toward the change room as they scurried through the crowds of people whose attention was all on the geyser of water at the beach. It was a safe assumption to believe that Tem had transformed herself into the army of arachnids.