Teru was surprised to find another person on the beach that day. It was overcast and drizzling, and she thought everyone she knew was staying in. She would have stayed in as well, but her son was a very insistant five years old. So insistant was little Sora that he was running into the surf toward the boy before she could stop him. She hitched up her skirt and went in after him, grabbing his arm.
“What have I told you about running off like that?” she asked him. Sora just smiled and resumbled babbling at the other boy. Teru noted that, while he couldn’t have been more than a year older than her own son, she’d never seen him before. His white hair and piercing green eyes made her sure she would have remembered him. The islands, and even Mideel proper, were small communities where everyone seemed to know everyone. She wondered if he was on vacation with his family.
“It’s dangerous to be out here without someone to watch you,” Teru admonished the strange boy, but he only blinked at her.
“He’s not alone,” came a voice from the beach behind her. She turned to see an older boy, probably at least twelve, with hair the same muddy brown color as the sand.
“Who are you?” she asked him, leaving Sora to talk to the younger boy.
“My name’s Alamuir,” he said politely. “We’re new down here.”
“We?” she echoed.
“My brothers and I, and Professor Braig. We just got here.”
“Oh, you poor things,” she said, assuming their parents must have died. “You’ll have to come by for dinner some time.”
“I’d like that,” he looked out toward the boys in the water. “I think my brother would too.”
*
The next day, as Teru made dinner for Sora, there was a knock on the door. She opened it to find the young boy from the beach and a man about her age with salt-and-pepper hair.
“Yeah, sorry to barge in, but is there a kid called Sora over here? Because Kaddish here said–”
“Riku!” Sora yelled, running past his mother to take the boy’s arm.
“Riku?” Braig asked, confused.
“Yeah, ’cause he didn’t tell me his name and I met him on the beach,” Sora answered, and turned to the newly-dubbed Riku without appearing to breathe. “Come see my room. Can he stay for dinner, Mom?” She smiled and said yes and the two were gone in a minute, Sora’s grin more than wide enough to make up for the confusion on Riku’s face.
“I guess that answers my question,” Braig watched them go, smiling. “Hope it’s not too much trouble?”
“No, not at all,” Teru returned the smile. “Sora gets a bit lonely with just me for company.”
“Just you?” he asked. She thought she heard genuine curiousity and a bit more in his voice.
She offered him a seat and got out another teacup. “Yes, Sora’s father died years ago.”
“I’m surprised a cutie like you is out here alone,” he said, waving away the tea, then sniffing it and changing his mind.
Teru laughed. “You know, you’re not quite what I had in mind when that other boy said they were living with a professor.”
“Guess I’m not,” he said, but she could sense something — tension, maybe — under the offhanded remark. She guessed a lot of people found it hard to take someone with his easy-going manner seriously.
“I’m glad. I like this better,” she said, trying to reassure him. He smiled again.
She figured dinner would keep a few more minutes.
