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Wind whipped through Elara's hair but the large gold-rimmed sunglasses she wore kept the worst of it from stinging her eyes. Ingrid had dressed for the occasion in her usual flair, so Eel had opted to get an outfit for the day too. Her black and yellow shorts clung close to her middle thigh, with a bikini top and an unzipped hoodie to match; Elara got cold easily. Flip flops and a small straw hat finished off the beach-day ensemble. She clung to Ingrid as much as she felt was couth to do, feeling an anxiety-inducing lack of control at being on the back of the speeding bike of prismatic light, but not wanting to make Miss Karina uncomfortable. Still, despite the salty air that rushed past her, Elara relished in the warmth of the other woman.



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It wasn't a long ride before they'd stopped, parked on the rainbow air somehow inches above the sand. Eel would maybe never get used to that. The attestation that it had been 'hours' almost made Elara laugh, but she held it in. Didn't want to make light of Ingrid's frustrations. She loosened her grip now that they'd stopped.



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"Sure, a trap. I don't really have anything shiny though, so maybe food?" Eel had straightened when Ingrid had, and now stretched herself and felt for the weight of the pack against her back- still there. She'd packed treats for each of them, or at least enough for what was supposed to be a short little ride along the beach in search of goblins, and trinkets respectively. "Suppose we could post up and wait a little? It's about lunch time anyways." She lifted an arm from Ingrid's waist and pointed to an arbitrary spot in the sand nearby, maybe a couple hundred feet from an pathway that had been built in past Earth to facilitate walking to and from the beach proper. There was probably an old abandoned parking lot up top. "Bet there's gobbos around there."



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Elara dismounted and started toward her impromptu picnic spot- er, ambush spot. She hadn't brought a towel in her pack but she had some in inventory from an afternoon spent on the beach after watering plants. Eel set it up and smoothed the sand under as best she could before depositing her pack and setting another towel next to her own, patting it expectantly while managing a small smile. Elara was being put in mind of bittersweet memories of her and Wendy, and did her best to detour her depressive thoughts by wondering if someone as prim and haughty as Ingrid would actually sit in the sand on a beach towel, or if she'd whip out a folding chair set with a patio umbrella and table to match.

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Of course Ingrid had a chair. Elara's more fanciful imaginations didn't come true, but the chair was enough to give her a light chuckle. She shuffled the second towel to be closer between them now and moved her own closer to Ingrid, setting the pack in between them and starting the spread but deliberating for a moment to produce a tray. Eel arrayed her own food haphazardly on the towel, a packaged sandwich of peanut butter and some fruit preserve, some assorted nuts, and an orange. Pretty simple, but all things she liked and could easily make given that she had no real permanent residence as of yet.



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"So usually in fantasy, goblins are like, squat green humanoids, ornery and often full of mischief, right? Given how much Earth-chan likes to stick to tropes, I imagine they wouldn't be too different, which makes me wonder why they'd be on a beach. Maybe they like those smelly beach-side public bathrooms." Elara hadn't really written too many goblins into her series, and so was mostly pulling from other fiction, but she wanted to imagine they might be a bit more reasonable to deal with. Granted that this was an earth-changing apocalypse a-la Earth-chan though, goblins were probably exactly like they were in some rpg. At that thought Elara glanced around, listening past the sound of the gentle ocean waves rolling in nearby, not seeing any movement in any directions besides the water, of course. Eel turned her attention back to Ingrid.


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"So where've you been living? I just keep renting rooms with the money from jobs but I wonder if I can just squat somewhere. Is that even allowed by, you know?" Elara glanced to Ingrid to find the other woman sketching, and left the conversation there for her to pick up. Response or no, she set to arranging the things she'd brought for her companion on the oval tray- chocolate croissant still packaged from a shift at the cafe, another pastry of some kind that she hadn't tried but hoped Ingrid would recognize, and a thermos of iced-coffee. "Mmm." It seemed kind of dismal, so Eel put the spare package of salted nuts on the tray as well. Hopefully Ingrid would appreciate the protein.



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Elara moved with the tray to Ingrid's side, taking the slightest peek at the drawings while leaning over the side of the chair slightly, holding the tray to the side and considering whether to rest an arm behind the artist but deciding against. Probably too familiar, that. Staring was probably too familiar as well, and Elara made a bit of a show of looking directly at Ingrid and glancing to the hillside next to them occasionally. Still no sight or smell of the goblins.



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"You'll have to tell me of some things you like so I can pack more the next time we're traveling together," she added with a little half-smile.

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"Finding the perfect place..." she muttered to herself more than to contribute to conversation. That damned feeling again, crawling back in, insidious in it's own way. One day it might be a place of peace, a gentle reminder of what could be, but right now it was so fresh, it all stung like so much seawater in a gaping wound. The home Elara had with Wendy, the place that had been and furthermore, should have been. It hurt to remember. The perfect place had existed for Eel. Emphasis on 'had'.



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She physically shook herself to clear that cloud that had begun to hang over, and would likely do so again before the day was done. Hells, Elara had to do it every night before bed. She forced her gaze to focus where it had lingered, on Ingrid's art, but was having trouble focusing. Instead she kept her gaze where it was but listened, to Ingrid and the waves beyond them. Elara realized she was squinting, the afternoon sun growing lower and lower and bouncing it's ray across the water. She'd be blinded if not for the sunglasses. Ingrid's genuine attitude shift at having noticed the food- namely the pastry- that Eel had offered was probably the most happy Eel had ever seen the designer. It helped distract. Elara even found the slight smile coming back to her, entirely unbidden but still welcome.



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"I'll grab more next time I take a shift at the café. Quaint little place in Paris, if you ever want to visit." Her peripheral caught some kind of movement, but looking to Ingrid's side she saw nothing standing out. Elara turned back to the median towel leaving the tray on the chair's arm and went to search her pack. "As for fruit... uhhh..."



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The backpack was gone. "The shit?" Elara turned left, right, did a few loops around before spying green movement racing up the pathway away from the beach. The smell of something foul hit her just after, though the wind carried it away rather quickly. Eel was able to follow with her eyes small humanoid footprints in the sand moving away from the picnic space. If she listened carefully, she could hear shrill cackling, and a string of expletives far more coarse than anything Elara would utter herself. "Ingrid, we've got goblins, and they've got my stuff!" She kicked off her sandals and hauled ass toward the pathway without another thought, entirely forgetting that Ingrid's bike would have been way faster, kicking up more than a little bit of sand. Elara had grown really fond of that backpack.

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She'd taken off at a run in the sand but Elara wasn't the fastest. Regardless, Ingrid was quick enough to catch an olympian, by Eel's untrained standards. She heard the call behind her and continued toward the base of the pathway, still a bit away from the ascent. The smell of the sea-spray now had a strong whiff of something foul, like a chamber pot that had been left in the sun. "Oof-" Elara almost stopped running, almost considered the repercussion of taking her thing's back, but carried onward- the job was to get trinkets, after all. Eel started up the hill, hearing the chiming of an otherworldly vehicle pick up behind her. Ingrid would be close-



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"Oh-ey!" She'd squirmed for a moment before she realized what was happening, the wind suddenly whipped around and an arm wrapped around Elara's waist, pulling her into position behind Ingrid on the bike. Eel's sunglasses barely stayed on her face. She wrapped her own arm back around Ingrid's waist but, rather than hanging on for dear life, hung slightly to the side to survey their climb, fast as it was. Elara's hair felt like it had left her, they were going so fast. Her partner had taken even the turn at a breakneck speed, and Eel could only assume the goblins had stolen something from her designer friend. She took a deep breath as they entered the open-air bathroom with an intense slide, straight out of an action story. Adrenaline helped distract Elara from the smell.



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The goblins held a variety of things, some with jewelry improperly hanging from themselves, one with a snow-globe dangling from their waist like a trailer hitch adornment, and another with- formerly with- Ingrid's pencil. The backpack was set in the middle of the little group, the food already spilled out. Elara's lunch was ruined. Still doing her best to hold her breath, she stepped off the bike, hands raised. The goblins cowered.



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"Not exactly warriors, then." She sounded a bit nasally. Most of the goblins had frozen, fight or flight giving way to terror-stricken paralysis. There were lots of types of goblins in fantasy, and probably in this new Earth as well, but these seemed like the mischievous, weak sort. With one already dead and adorned in a new tire print pattern, just getting the trinkets back would probably be enough...



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"Drop all the shit you stole, and leave." Elara did her best to sound authoritative, albeit still quite nasally. She would need to breath soon- but thankfully the goblins, albeit with a bit of chatter, immediately moved into action dropping a collection of baubles and of course trinkets. They were still issuing a torrent of insults and slurs that Eel would happily omit from memory. "Try a metal detector next time." There was maybe one goblin that hadn't run out of the door or climbed through the gap between the makeshift ceiling and wall; the gobbo was wriggling themselves into the hole of a toilet until they disappeared completely, going...somewhere. Elara collected her backpack and gathered up the quest junk into another bag, one she cared less about having a permanent reek, then got back into passenger position on the bike, one arm around Ingrid again.



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"Should be- should be good-" She involuntarily inhaled, and had to hold back what threatened to be a rather bad bout of dry-heaving. Still, 'Mission Complete' she thought, through tears and hacking coughs.

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