I made you cry when I walked away

The sandcastle contest drew quickly to a close. In Nick’s opinion, they probably should have budgeted a lot more time for it- an hour wasn’t long at all for building a sandcastle! But that would have to do, because there were other things the girls wanted to do. Already, everyone who hadn’t been involved in the competition (Dani, Carly, Marley, Dawn, Holly, Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin, and Nola) had come up to watch, having finished with the volleyball game.

They needed to move on; there were plenty of fun things to do at a beach party, and they couldn’t waste the whole day on just this!

So even though it had only been an hour of building, it was time for the judging.

The girls were happy to present their sandcastles, for the most part. Ella and Morgana were both nervous about their groups’ sandcastles, and Dakota just looked irritated. Which, when paired beside the anxious but smiling Sylvia, didn’t seem like a good sign.

The pair of Kim and Vivian seemed like the only group where both members were confident in their presentation, which was surprising in its own way.

“Come right this way good sir, yes, right this way!” Vivian bowed with a flourish, a rare display of humility from the irreverent heiress. She led Nick, Rose, and Mary over to their section of the beach, where their sandcastle stood.

It was surprisingly modest, given that Vivian had a hand in it. A very traditional castle. Nick couldn’t really find any fault in the structure if he was being honest. The walls were smooth, and the whole thing looked very sturdy. One thing he took note of was that the castle had several large towers with little crenellations and carvings into the walls, the kind of things that you would normally need a specialized bucket or tool to make. And the girls had really done this by hand?

“Hey, this isn’t bad at all,” Rose chirped, almost making that sound like a compliment. “Mary, take a look! It’s actually pretty nice!”

“You’re right, good work, Kim!” Mary complimented her friend honestly, unlike Rose. “I like the way you got the towers to look.”

“Eh, it was nothing,” Kim said, scratching her head and smiling sheepishly. “I did the best I could, but… Vivian helped out a little, too.”

“Just on the tops,” Vivian clarified. She took out a pair of sunglasses. “I used the hooks on my shades to carve out those little ridges there and add some finer points. Kim and I, we both agreed that attention to detail is important.”

“It really does look authentic,” Nick said, circling carefully around the sand sculpture. “I’m surprised you guys found the time to make it that stable.”

“Well… we didn’t need as much water as we thought,” Vivian chuckled.

Nick didn’t miss the way Kim stiffened when she said that.

“Hey! Shut it!” Kim hissed, elbowing the other girl in the side.

“What’s going on? You guys didn’t cheat, did you?” Mary’s accusation was aimed primarily at Vivian- she knew Kim would never do something that underhanded.

“Eh!? No, no cheating at all!” Vivian shook her head and waved her hands. “We just had a secret weapon on hand, isn’t that right, Kim?”

Kim sighed and hung her head, feeling three pairs of eyes staring at her.

“…Okay, so… we kinda used, um… some of my sweat to keep the sand glued together,” she admitted, her face burning with shame.

The trio just kept staring at her, at a loss for words.

“I-I-! Well, what did you want me to do, huh!?” Kim groaned. “It’s not like what you’re thinking! We got plenty of buckets of water, it’s just, my hands are so wet, and it’s hot outside, so I mean-!”

“Well… you were certainly dedicated, we can say that,” Rose said, trying very hard not to look actively disgusted at the sweaty sandcastle.

“I think that was a very creative decision!” Mary said tactfully. She wasn’t exactly thrilled by it either, but didn’t want to put Kim off or anything.

“Honestly? I don’t really mind either way,” Nick admitted, surprising not only Kim and Vivian, but Mary and Rose as well.

“Really? You don’t?” Rose’s mind started to race as she analyzed that statement. She really, really hoped that Nick didn’t have a sweat fetish she’d have to entertain. Though given his fascination with Mary’s breastmilk, having a thing for bodily fluids wasn’t out of the realm of possibility…

“That’s a little…” Kim shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, not sure how to respond to that. Mary also had no idea what to say, she just tried to smile through it.

Vivian looked a little shaken, though, which was a rarity for her. Maybe she was thinking the same way Rose was.

Nick quickly clarified his meaning.

“I just meant to say that I think it’s impressive, is all! Using the resources you had available to make things easier for you!” He tried to explain, only sounding a little bit ****. “That’s all I meant, really.”

Kim cracked a half-smile. “Well… that’s good enough for me!” She said with a laugh. “But anyway, yeah, this is our sandcastle. So what do you guys think?”

“Minus the sweat, it’s nice enough,” Rose nodded, greatly appreciating the girls’ attention to detail on the towers.

“Yeah, definitely gets some high marks from me,” Mary nodded. Though she wasn’t sure what criteria she should be grading on. Aesthetics? Effort? Teamwork? The fact that Kim hadn’t choked out Vivian over it?

It was hard to say…

Nick’s vote was the only one that really mattered though. Fortunately, he seemed to like it.

“It’s pretty good,” he agreed. “Definitely a strong first entry. But I have to see what the other girls did, first.”

He was doing his best to be neutral and not show any favoritism. He liked the castle nice enough, but he didn’t want to heap too much praise onto it, in case he couldn’t keep up that same level of emotional impact with the other girls.

A fact that was quickly put to the test when he got to the second group.

“So? What do you think?” Gina smiled from ear to ear as she gestured at their creation. “Pretty awesome, right?”

Ella just squirmed, her face flushed with shame.

“It’s… unique,” Nick said, trying his best to be polite as he looked over the structure that could charitably be called a sandcastle.

“Yes, you made some very bold aesthetic choices!” Mary said, looking at whatever positives she could about it.

“It’s a piece of junk!” Rose blurted out, utterly ruining both of their efforts.

And sad to say… she wasn’t wrong.

The sandcastle was a sandcastle the way a tree stump was a redwood. It looked like it had been burnt up by a dragon! Half-collapsed towers sprawled out in the sand, and sharp bits of wood and debris stuck into the crumbling sides. A shaky foundation to say the least, with jagged walls that looked like they would fall over if someone breathed on them.

It looked like a wreck.

Ella shrank back, feeling sick to her stomach. Her fingers trailed towards her wrist, but before she could snap her rubber-band, Gina just laughed.

“Why, thank you! That’s what I was going for here!”

The three judges all stared at her in surprise.

“…Wait, what?” Mary asked, not sure if she heard properly.

“It’s not any ordinary sandcastle!” Gina declared, holding her head up with pride. “What you’re looking at here is a massive disaster zone! I wanted to go for a punk, post-apocalyptic theme, you know, like in a Mad Max movie! Like, a castle in ruins, in the middle of a wasteland. That sort of vibe! See over there, on the tower?”

Now that Gina pointed it out, it did look like the choices she’d made were a little more intentional than anybody had given them credit for. One tower may have had the top half shorn off, but everything beneath that was carefully sculpted and crafted. Even the holes in the walls looked a little more deliberate than Nick thought at first glance.

“So, wait, your entry for the contest is a sandcastle you tried to wreck intentionally?” Mary questioned in confusion.

Gina shrugged.

“Well… not intentionally, but you know, Ella fell onto it about halfway through, so I just rebuilt it in that style afterwards. Make the best of things, you know?” Gina laughed and clapped the shaking girl on the shoulder, making her jump.

“I-I’m sorry!” She wailed, her eyes spinning in her skull. “It was an accident, I swear!”

“THWAP!”

“Ella, Ella, I told you, I’m thrilled!” Gina shook her head. “You shouldn’t be freaking out over this. It’s no big deal at all!”

Ella looked shakily at Gina and tried to smile, but she wasn’t doing a great job of it.

As for the judges…

“Hmm… well, now that I know it’s an intentional choice, I guess it’s not as bad as I thought,” Rose admitted, stroking her chin thoughtfully.

“It’s definitely creative,” Mary agreed. But she didn’t think it came close to what Kim and Vivian had made. “And points for style, too.”

“Honestly? I like the idea,” Nick admitted with a sheepish grin. “I’m not that good when it comes to art, so if I had to grade everything on the same standards, it would get a little messed up. But the fact that you did something so unique and personal, it really stands out to me, Gina. So you definitely get points for that.”

Gina looked proud. “I didn’t care if I won either way,” she said, stretching her arms over her head. It was good to move again after spending so much time crouching down. “I’m the kinda gal who makes what I want to make, and that’s that! Win, lose, no big deal.”

It was just a fun little competition anyway.

“Gotta respect that,” Carly agreed, nodding. She might not be a judge, but she was still checking out the castles. “You’ve gotta be true to yourself, Gina!”

“I can sympathize with that, too, as an artist,” Dani agreed. “And like you said, it was just a fun little competition, right?”

Nick nodded. Another good point.

And hey, maybe Gina was taking herself out of the running too early! After all, if everyone else had built “traditional” sandcastles, Nick might struggle comparing them to one another. Which would make her more unique design stand out even more in contrast.

It was worth considering, anyway.

Frankly, he still couldn’t decide whose castle was better, group 1 or group 2. He knew he was stalling in putting off a decision, but he didn’t want to make a final choice until he had all the evidence.

That was the responsible thing to do, at any rate.

Which brought him to the next sandcastle on the list, which was the one made by Amelia and Morgana. And… wow.

If Nick had been impressed by Vivian and Kim’s attention to detail, this one really blew him away.

What he was staring at looked like something he might see in a museum as a model. It looked like an authentic European castle, right down to having an outer wall with towers and an inner wall with tiny little gates, and even two moats. It was clear that whoever had come up with this design had put a lot of hard work and effort into it.

Morgana looked hopeful, but Amelia was impossible to read. Seeing the stunned expressions on everyone’s faces, she cleared her throat and adjusted her glasses.

“I based the design on a classic concentric castle, while also drawing inspiration from stone keep castle designs as well, for the inner sanctum,” she explained. “Morgana did excellent work in sculpting the walls and making the gates.”

As proud as she was of her design, however, it wasn’t without its flaws.

For one, even though the castle was visually impressive and a testament of architecture and authenticity, it was rather sterile. There weren’t any flourishes the way Vivian had added crenellations, or all of Gina’s “creative” interpretations.

It looked like a perfect replica, and yet, once Nick got over how impressive the design was… he couldn’t find anything else to compliment it on. The walls were completely smooth, the towers were sculpted nicely, sure, but it didn’t feel like a contest entry.

And yet, he couldn’t say that to Morgana’s hopeful face.

Mary didn’t have that problem at all, though. “So you both made this? Wow, I’m so impressed, Morgana!”

“Ehee… really?” Morgana beamed, scratching her head, and inadvertently getting sand in her hair. “I put a lot of work into the details. Well, I mean… I wanted to… but there wasn’t enough time, unfortunately,” she said, her mood souring.

Rose frowned. “Yeah… that’s what I feared.”

She and Nick were on the same page about this one. It was an ambitious design. Definitely the kind of thing Nick would have expected from his stepmother, especially given her fine attention to detail. He had no doubt that, given the opportunity, she would have been every bit as meticulous as Vivian and Kim.

But she only had an hour.

“…I will not claim my work to be perfect,” Amelia said, sensing what they were going to touch on. “It’s a remarkable feat of architecture. But the aesthetics could be improved.”

Nick nodded. He felt the same way. And the question was, what should he weigh more? Vivian and Kim’s castle was more simplistic, but more detailed. Amelia had gone for a very well-built and impressive design, but looked more foundational as opposed to being complete.

And for that matter, if Nick was going to weigh more on detail and creativity, shouldn’t he include Gina and Ella’s castle for consideration, along with Vivian and Kim’s, and Amelia’s?

That just left one castle left. And it was the one he’d been dreading the most, given who had built it.

After giving the girls their compliments on the impressive structure, Nick slowly approached Dakota and Sylvia’s sandcastle.

The first thing he noted when he looked at it?

Effort.

The style of the castle was simplistic. A circular wall lined with towers stretched around a little mountain in the center, surrounded by a moat, with another tower in the center. It was smaller than the other castles, but with a lot of focus on the design. The kind of thing that he could imagine Dakota having dreamed up in an instant, and then directing all her focus onto constructing. Somehow, she’d even managed to fill the moat with water. Nick didn’t even have a clue how THAT happened.

“Welcome to the faerie palace!” Sylvia declared with a flourish. “We put our hearts and souls into making the perfect castle!”

Dakota rolled her eyes. But at least she hadn’t said anything about Sylvia lacking a heart or a soul. For her, that was a step in the right direction.

“I picked the name,” she clarified, stepping forward. “And the design. Fortunately, that girl is capable of following instructions.”

“I-I was the one who put up the flag, though!” Sylvia interjected. “It wasn’t all Dakota, you know! I helped too!”

Nick glanced at Dakota, who gave an exasperated sigh in response. “…Yes. There’s also a flag.”

She gestured to the central tower, which had a tiny twig sticking out of the top, with a little scrap of cloth poking through it. A tiny faerie had been scrawled on the cloth in pen.

“…Of course, time spent making that flag could have been spent reinforcing the wall,” Dakota added, her voice aching with contempt.

Nick winced. But to his surprise, Sylvia was smiling.

“Any great castle needs a banner!” She proclaimed. “You have to focus on that, too!”

Dakota didn’t have any argument. Just a disinterested grunt. Nick hoped that would be good enough for Sylvia’s self-esteem, but he doubted it.

“I really like the wall,” Mary noted, trying to improve the atmosphere. “It must have been hard to make such a good circle!”

“Faeries rely on faerie rings, even in their castles,” Dakota said simply. “Of course I would make it as detailed as possible!”

“And I helped!” Sylvia added, her voice cracking slightly. “Dakota showed me how to do it! It was so cool!”

“You nearly knocked it down several times,” the host said, her voice reeking with scorn.

Sylvia flinched and looked down, her face red with shame. “B-but… I did get better, right?”

“Yes. Next time, do it right when I tell you to do it in the first place.”

Sylvia’s eyes widened and she looked at Dakota with two gleaming blue piles of hope. “…Next time?!”

Dakota returned her hopeful look with a withering glare that practically turned the entire beach into a winter wonderland.

Then she turned back to Nick.

“So? What do you think?” She asked the only person here whose opinion actually mattered to her.

“It definitely feels like something you would make, that’s for sure,” he said, forcing a smile onto his face. It was hard to share his positive thoughts on the matter, given the tension from moments ago. “And I can really feel the personality from the two of you coming out from it. I really like how much effort you put in!”

Dakota stepped closer to him, practically getting up in his face as her golden eyes gleamed with determination. “So do we win?”

“Whoa, hey, I think it’s a little too early to decide that, don’t you think?” Rose pulled Nick back. “We need to consult with the judge, and help him come to a decision!”

“You just heard him, though,” Dakota snarled. “He said he liked our efforts.”

“Right, but he’s a nice guy, he says that to everybody!” Rose pointed out, inadvertently throwing Nick under the bus with that.

Mary sighed and rubbed her forehead. This wasn’t making things better.

Nick winced as he saw anger continue to build on Dakota’s face. He knew how poor of a sport she could be. His childhood friend was a massive sore loser, and that was before she’d died and obtained unquestionable power over everything on the island.

He had no idea if it was even safe for him to share his opinion at this point. But he knew he wasn’t about to let Dakota intimidate him into giving her the win if she didn’t earn it.

On the other hand, though, it was clear that Dakota and Sylvia had put a lot of heart in their design. It may not have been as personalized as Gina and Ella’s was, but it was definitely not something to dismiss out of hand.

He really did have a hard choice in front of him.

Great. Thanks for the save, Rose. Now, which castle do I even think should win?