After the grimness of the heavily forested Dread Isle, the sight of sun beams pervading the lower decks through cracks in the wood was certainly a pleasant reprieve. It was a reminder that, even after facing death and destruction, life pushed forward. There was hope after the war.

"Uncle Merlinus," Nino asked, eyes focused on the weaponry before her as she helped the merchant in sorting the army's supplies in the cargo hold of Fargus' ship. "What are you going to do when we get back to the mainland?"

"Oh, continue my shop, of course," he replied simply. "Lord Eliwood promised to assist me with my endeavours in Pherae."

"Can I come with you?"

"Wh-what?!" Merlinus exclaimed, nearly dropping the arm full of vulneraries he was sorting. "Nino, you've only recently turned fifteen. As much as I care for you, living with an older man like me would look suspicious! I have a reputation as a businessman to uphold!"

Nino laughed. "I don't want to move in with you, you silly! It's just... I realized I don't really have a home to go back to anymore."

"Not in Bern?"

"No." Nino looked down, her bangs casting a shadow over her face as they fell over her forehead. "'Home' for us was with the Black Fang, but..."

That was right... the poor girl had lost the only family she'd ever known, hadn't she? "Oh... I'm sorry, Nino. I should have thought of that before mentioning it..."

Nino managed a thin smile. "I think I've come to accept it now, that I'll probably never get to go back there."

"In that case, what were you planning on doing, now that Nergal is gone?"

"I, um..." A shy blush appeared on her cheeks, and her smile turned into a grin. "I haven't told anyone yet, but Jaffar proposed to me."

If it was physically possible, Merlinus' jaw would have sunk to the floor. "Y-you're engaged?!" Here he was, in his forties already, and even he wasn't married yet!

Nino nodded excitedly in response.

"Goodness gracious... I suppose opposites really do attract, don't they?"

"Yes..." Her eyes twinkled as she spoke, like the soft glow of stars in the sky. "I love him."

"Yes, I know, but love doesn't pay the bills, Nino. Luckily, you have your merchant friend here who cares about where you're going in life – you have so much ahead of you! So you should have a safe place to stay – I can help you find a home in Lycia, certainly. Though I think we should also speak to Lord Eliwood and see what he can – agh!"

Having abandoned the weapons she was putting away, Nino threw her arms around Merlinus for a hug before he could finish his proposition. "Uncle Merlinus, thank you so much! I love you!" she cried. "How can I ever repay you?"

"I haven't done anything yet!" Merlinus replied frantically, weakly attempting to free himself from Nino's bear hug. "Now please, let go of me! If your... fiancée sees this, I'll surely be killed..."

Nino laughed as she stepped away from him and returned to her work. "Just the promise means a lot to me, Uncle. Thank you."

Merlinus sighed. Believing so strongly in the power and sanctity of promises... Nino was naïve to a fault. Yet she was strong, having come out of the darkness of the Black Fang with a smile still shining on her face. She was innocent, kind, and optimistic, and had become a daughter of sorts to Merlinus, now that he thought about it. She, above anyone else, deserved a peaceful future.

Earlier that morning, Nino had felt a tad nauseous, and a headache continued to pester her as the afternoon approached. Jaffar said she didn't have to go out if she wasn't feeling well, and they really should call on a cleric; but nonetheless, Nino insisted on the day trip. Perhaps she did still feel a tad yucky, but a slight illness wasn't enough to bring her down. She'd seen worse, after all.

So now she stood in cool sea water lapping at her shins, soft sand squishing beneath her bare feet. Nino took a deep breath - salty scents wafted all around as she gazed out on the southern sea expanding before her, watching seagulls diving down to feed and distant ships floating about the waters. In this moment, nothing could possibly happen; it was as if the world completely stopped for one serene day at the beach, one pleasant moment for Nino and Jaffar.

She let out a sigh, which settled into a smile as she turned to her husband, who still stood a few paces behind her on the shore. "I'm so glad you were off work today, so we could come out here."

Jaffar gave his typical thin smile in return. "Are you... are you sure you want to spend the day at the beach?" he asked, adjusting the wicker picnic basket in the crook of his arm. "Because... if you're still ill, I can take care of you at home..."

"No!" Nino replied. She walked back from the shallows to stand before him, arms crossed in solidarity. "I probably just ate breakfast too fast, that's all. I'm fine. Besides, we already decided that the next chance we got, we'd spend the day here, right?"

Jaffar didn't argue with her.

Playfully, Nino grinned in thanks and took his hand. "Come on, now that we're here, let's... let's build a sandcastle!"

"Like... children?"

"Exactly!" She pulled him down to sit cross-legged on the ground with her and almost instantly went to work, digging and packing and shaping sand to form four walls in the patch of beach between them. When that was done, she began creating cylindrical turrets on the corners, and without need for words, Jaffar helped too, piling sediment to raise towers on his side of the fortress. To top them off, Nino found four palm-sized conch shells and wedged them into the pinnacle of each turret for decoration – a castle had to be pretty, of course.

"Now..." she mumbled as she examined their creation. What else? Before she could figure it out for herself, Jaffar answered as he began digging a shallow trench around the castle's outer walls. "Jaffar, what's that?"

"A moat. It's... to protect the castle."

Nino couldn't help but smile as she watched him carefully carve the moat with his hands, noticeably calloused from work on the docks these past few years – fishing work was easy to find in the coastal Pherae. Sunlight glimmered orange off the auburn hair falling over his forehead as he focused on the project; no longer was he shrouded by cloak and hood. He'd put his old assassin garb away years ago, not long before the wedding. "I'm not an assassin anymore," he'd told Nino. And so he wasn't.

It wasn't just that part of Jaffar that changed, however. As time went on, he opened up more and more, revealing more of Jaffar - he was always there, after all. He was the one who spared her in Bern, who stood by her in confronting Sonia, who kissed her in the starlight, who held her hands, gently and sweetly, in an Elmine church and married her. Every day, Nino saw a little more of that Jaffar, saw him take over the cold-hearted man she once knew. And every day, Nino fell a little deeper in love.

She picked up a small, loose piece of driftwood from beside her and set it over the moat. "There. That can be the drawbridge, so we can let our friends in, and..." Finding an oval-shaped scallop, Nino set it into the side of the castle. "That's the door! How does that look?"

Jaffar smiled and looked over their creation. "I like it," he said. He picked up a couple of snail shells and set them upright within the enclosure of the castle walls. They sat side by side, and though they could have come from opposite sides of the sea as far as anyone knew, they looked as if they belonged there together. "There. That's... us. In our castle."

"Aw, Jaffar!" Nino squealed as she scooted around the building to his spot in the sand, throwing her arms around him and pressing her cheek against his. She beamed at the miniature replication of her own family – though she secretly wished there were more shells in their castle, she and Jaffar hadn't exactly discussed such prospects yet. Just the two of them was perfectly fine for now, however. "I love it," she whispered – she couldn't be happier.

Jaffar's lips pressed lightly against the top of her head. "Do you want to eat lunch?" he asked. "I packed us sandwiches."

"I'd like that," Nino replied cheerily.

She reached to pull the picnic blanket out from the basket, and Jaffar helped her lay it out on the sand. Lunch by the sea was quaint and uneventful – mostly just Nino teasing her husband about getting breadcrumbs all over his shirt – until Nino got an upset stomach again.

This time, she listened to Jaffar and let him take her home early, abandoning their sandcastle to be washed away by the evening tide.