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It was late afternoon on a storybook perfect day, the air thickly clean with scents of sea salt and greenery; organic and fresh and wholly alive. Through the paneled glass ceiling of the Grantier Resort Hotel the sky was bright and clear; through the high glass walls the beach was a palm-jeweled bracelet of golden sand far below, kissed with white foam and blue water, where the dim specks of vacationers swam in the gentle surf or lay beneath shade or sunlight. In the expansive lounge the fountain which dominated its center tossed spangles of reflected brilliance upon the artfully scalloped walls and tiny droplets of moisture onto the padded seats which surrounded it. Somewhere, children ran through the plush carpeted hallways, and their squealing laughter carried across the grounds-just one more sweet summer sound in a world without winter, a careful paradise of careless pleasure. Like the seabirds and the breeze, the music of the surf, it was sublime.

Strange among those natural sounds was the brief, subtle hydraulic hiss of an internal door-the small plaque beside it read 'Simulation Center'-as it opened to admit a young man with his eyes squinted nearly shut against the sudden brightness. He paused for a moment, an average young man of an average build with his blue-black hair cut into an average short fall which could have easily been tousled into whatever style came into fashion on the campus of his Terran college. He wore sandals and khaki shorts and the sleeveless poly microfiber zip-down which was all the rage this year in white and opened, as was also all the rage, halfway down his chest. Except for the untanned, unburned pallor of his skin, so foreign to this sunwashed hideaway, he could have been any of a hundred thousand human boys vacationing on the luxuriant equator of Hyda IV. It was, in fact, all that he was.

With a tremendous groan he stumbled away from the support of the doorway into the lobby, rolling his head on his neck to loosen muscles tight with tension and the last guttering flows of adrenaline; muscles man no longer used on a normal or natural basis which protested loudly and painfully both at being so rudely awakened. His face was flushed, and in the shifting light of fountain-dapples his arms bore their own faint sheen of sweat. But he was smiling when he dropped heavily onto the cushioned bench about the fountain's rim. He braced his hands on his knees and lowered his head, letting out another tired-but-happy sigh and enjoying the cool air that flowed from the moving water.

A large soft drink cup was thrust abruptly into his face, the straw nearly jabbing him in the eye, and the boy jumped with a shrill yelp. "Woah!" Pinwheeling his arms, he managed to regain his balance and not tumble backwards into the fountain. It left him heaving and he put a hand over his heart with a gasp, certain that he was going to suffer a heart attack there and then, at the bright young age of nineteen, before he could even complete his symbology major. He looked up to his assailant as they giggled softly and moved the drink back a safe distance.

"Here you go!"

The voice of the girl was sweet and pleasant and just high enough to be slightly grating in its cheer. She herself was not, but otherwise matched the voice perfectly with a tan only slightly too pink, which would be red by the evening, and her small hands with trim round nails painted a soft bubblegum against the bright commercial colors of the cup. The color was thematic and she wore a light shirt over her swimsuit, breezy but hooded and long-sleeved in a muted version of the shade which had once-by the tube of flavored lipstick she had owned as a child-been dubbed Peppermint Yum-Yum. When he was twelve she had kissed him with it and he had informed her solemnly that it tasted not of peppermint but toothpaste and pink bismuth, and she had hit him and run away. Now, the color made her fine brown hair look less ashy and more red where a few drying, vagrant wisps had not been pulled back.

"Ah, hi Sophia..." He blinked up at her, then made a face and took the offered soda. He was thirsty, and when he took a drink the icy cola was a shock and relief on his throat. He shivered slightly before gesturing with the cup as she sat down next to him. "You startled me. I thought you were going swimming down at the beach."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before letting it out and turning her small nose imperiously upward. "I was waiting for you, but you never came!" Leaning forward, Sophia fixed him with a look that seemed dreadedly similar to the petulant glare he had received upon debunking the myth of the sacred lipstick-hurt and angry and one hundred percent girl; that very essence of guilt trips. "You said you'd play a few games and then head right over."

For a moment, all he could do was flinch slightly as he continued to suck at his straw and pretend to be unaffected. After a moment he swallowed and ducked his head submissively towards her. "Uh...I'm sorry! I didn't plan on staying so long. I just, you know, got kinda sucked in..."

"All right, well." He cringed at the tone, which was one his mother herself used only when he was really, deeply, and truly in for it. She shook her head, lip moving out slightly in a pout as she gestured in frustration. "That's what I thought happened. You're so predictable. If you're going to ignore me you could at least have a decent excuse. Didn't you say you said 'such an awful ton' of homework to do before we came to Hyda, anyway?"

"But- I-" His jaw worked as he scrambled for a defense. Finally he popped out of his seat to stand in front of her. "But- I was fighting so well today! And I leveled up a lot too, you know?" He tried to keep the excitement out of his pleading tone. The narrowed look of her eyes, and the continued presence of the pout, told him its presence was not appreciated.

"Yeah, yeah. How nice for you."

"Huh. Someone's in a bad mood today."

The switch to a more teasing tone did not work, and Sophia looked pointedly away. "What do you expect? You'd rather play silly games than hang out at the beach with me!"

He decided to try again. Looking down, he lowered his voice slightly, and bit his lip in a passably apologetic manner...for a child, perhaps. "...Sophia?"

"Hmph!" The cold shoulder elevated a level: she both turned her head away and stood to walk away, leaving her back to him. Her sweater was wet in the back still, and had ridden up slightly over her swimsuit. It was blue, pale blue, because it had always been that way. It would be modest and one piece, and there would be a pink heart on the front between her small breasts. It was the kind of thing only a little girl would wear, or a college student who still called her favorite pink by the name of a child's lipstick and drew disproportional stick-cats beside her signature and still, sometimes, dotted her 'i's with small hearts if she was not careful not to. The boy came up behind her as timidly as if he approached a wild animal.

"You aren't...mad, are you?"

"I'm not mad!" But she said it in a way that meant she was, she was very mad, and that he had gone and done something even worse than debunking the sacred lipstick.

"Ah...Do you..." He paused, lowering the drink and swinging around in front of her again, this time with an ingratiating smile. "Do you wanna go to the beach?"

She slipped past him and stalked away again even as he made his hopeful proposal, head still turned up and away. Her sweet voice dripped with accusatory, injured scorn. "I swam enough. While somebody I know was having the time of his life, playing games all by himself!" And if he likes it that much, that big mean jerk, he can keep doing it for the rest of the week.

He refused to take the hint. "So...do you wanna take a walk through the hotel?" Swinging around in front of her again, he grimaced at the impatient way she turned away-again-and put her hands on her hips, glaring stolidly at the wall. He decided it was time to break out the big guns. Because they always worked, and he was really in it now. He put his hands on Sophia's shoulders and turned her towards himself, assuming the most guilty, puppy-eyed expression of pleading he could muster after years of perfecting the art. "I bet it'll be fun. Right? What do you say? C'mon Sophia...please? Pretty please?"

"Well..." She tried to look up at him critically, but the smile was coming through onto her small pretty mouth again, and the petulance was seeping out of her pretty grey eyes behind the long lashes. She knew she had won, but she was used to that. There was something very self assured in the way she tilted her head and finally smiled up at him as she leaned in, speaking as though she were a queen imparting some massive favor on a commoner. "If you want to hang out with me that badly I guess it's all right..."

"Great!" He grinned, offering his hand to her, and some slightly squeamish corner of his masculinity wondered if it wasn't a bad sign that he did consider Sophia's allowance a grand victory. Most of him was just glad she wouldn't be snubbing him for the rest of the day, or week, or however long it took her to decide he could be forgiven. Once it had been a month, when he had told her it was silly to wash down a burger and box of cookies with diet soda and been accused of calling her fat. "Let's go. Time's a-wastin'!"

Sophia giggled, and took his hand.