The following morning there was breakfast at the Grand, then free time until lunch at Palm Court on the pier. The party separated to do as they pleased—shop the Lanes, head down to the marina, ride the Brighton Eye, tour the Royal Pavilion, and Grelle and Sebastian were simply headed to the beach and that was what Auden wanted to do, so she joined them. Ronald, too.

They carried towels down and rented a couple of beach chairs to set up on the rocks. Auden had put on her swimming suit, but the second she stuck her feet in the water, she went straight back out, cursing about how cold it was. Sebastian had just laughed at her, an I-told-you-so glint in his eye. Grelle lay out on her towel and as Auden bundled into a sweatshirt and pulled the hood up over her head, teeth chattering, she marveled how she could stand to be in only in a swimsuit. The sun was out, but the breeze was cold. Auden sat on her chair next to Ronald and shivered.

Sebastian spent a moment rearranging the rocks on the beach before lying down perpendicular to Grelle and resting his head on her stomach. Auden watched them quietly, wondering how it was that two people came to spend one hundred and twenty-five years together. Grelle brushed her fingers through Sebastian's hair and eventually closed her eyes, continuing the motion absently. His head rose and fell on her stomach with her breath, and as she started to drift off, she must have forgotten he was there, because the motion of her hand stopped and she just rested it on top of his nose and mouth and Sebastian bit her finger.

"Ow! Stop it!"

"Well, don't put your hand on my face."

In response, Grelle mashed her hand all over Sebastian's face, which didn't end up working out so well for her, since he sat up immediately, turned around, scooped her up into his arms and went running across the rocks straight to the water.

"No no no no no no no!"

Grelle shrieked the whole way down, and was still shrieking as Sebastian got just deep enough to where he could toss her in and she probably wouldn't hit the bottom. She came up with a gasp, coughing and spluttering, her hair a wet and heavy curtain over her face, though it didn't hide her glare. He laughed at her and she fumed, tackling him and knocking him over.

When they resurfaced, Sebastian was still laughing. Grelle snapped something at him and stood up, sending a splash his way which he didn't bother to dodge, but just shielded his face by turning his head. She whipped her hair back over her shoulder and waded out of the water, carefully picking her way back up the beach, obviously not amused at all. Sebastian followed shortly after her, snickering.

"It's not funny, Sebastian," she pouted, plopping down on her towel and picking up a second one which she wrapped around her shoulders.

"Oh, come on." He sat down behind her. "It was fun."

"It was not fun. It's freezing."

"Fun."

"I hate you."

"No you don't."

Grelle smiled and tucked her knees up against her chest to wrap her whole self in her towel. Sebastian separated out her hair and began weaving it into a braid. Auden sat and watched them discreetly, her chin rested on her own knees, her hood still pulled up over her head, admiring the gentleness Sebastian took as he wove Grelle's hair into an elaborate plait, the contented way she closed her eyes and let him.

"What's on your mind?" Ronald asked and gave her a little sideways nudge to get her attention. She glanced at him, and then at her toes.

"I don't know," she replied into her sleeves. "Just that…even after so much time together they still seem so…" She trailed off, but he picked up the thread.

"In love?"

She shrugged. It didn't seem fair. Why couldn't everybody have a relationship like that?

Ronald seemed to catch onto her mood. He mulled the thought over for a moment before he spoke. "They weren't always that way, you know—well. I guess Sebastian wasn't." He chuckled and shook his head. "He used to despise Grelle, though Grelle's always been in love with him."

Auden sat up. "Really?"

"Really. Couldn't stand the sight of her. Actually tried to kill her—and me—on multiple occasions. To be fair though, Grelle was—" He laughed, apparently unable to find the right word for a second. "Pretty awful."

Auden's mouth fell open. He couldn't possibly be telling the truth. Sebastian and Grelle were…well they were Sebastian and Grelle. They were like no other couple Auden had ever seen or heard of, and sure, they weren't perfect or anything, far from, but they loved each other pretty perfectly, and seemed to understand one another so well, it just didn't make any sense that at one point in the past that they hadn't been the way they were. Much less that Sebastian had hated Grelle. The way Auden had seen him look at her it just didn't seem possible.

"They've struggled through a lot, those two," Ronald continued. "I doubt if there's anything in this world that could separate them now."

She looked at him and he smiled.

"Hey, you're supposed to be sentimental at an anniversary party, right? That's the whole point." He laughed and elbowed her again. "Come on, let's go to the pier. I'll win you something."

Ronald got up, so Auden followed and they picked their way slowly up the beach to the sidewalk, headed toward the pier. Eventually they had to go up to the street, falling easily into the flow of people traffic headed the same direction. Ronald took her to the Dome, digging a ridiculous mountain of change and a couple of notes out of his pockets.

Auden held onto the change while he went to a machine to exchange the notes for coins, retrieving a plastic cup from a stack of plastic cups provided for exactly the purpose of holding your money and it suddenly struck her how perfectly ordinary the two of them looked. They were just two friends out for a day at the pier together, ready to waste their money playing pointless games for worthless prizes, but to have fun doing it all the same. She looked down at the one and two pence coins in the plastic cup, a couple of fives and tens mixed in, silver among the copper. She was a Shinigami, a soul collector. A few weeks ago she'd died. How was it that her afterlife had suddenly become so joyfully mundane? She'd never done things like this as a human.

Ronald came back with the change from the machine, pouring half of it into Auden's cup. The sound and sudden added weight startled her and he laughed.

"What's first?" he asked.

"Air hockey," Auden replied.

She wanted to kick his ass.