Sharkfin Sulfur Soup

Soleil

“FUCK, LEFT!” Soleil doesn’t wait to be listened to - she snatches Flora’s elbow and yanks them both sideways right as a leathery nose pops out of the sand where the Doubletake’s foot had been a millisecond before. 

Grabbing Flora’s hand to remain tethered, Soleil sprints toward the noxious, questionable safety of the gleaming pools before them. “I’m killing that tour guide! Where’s the boat?!” It’s a breathless shriek, curls whipping her face as they spring errantly from her ponytail. 

They can’t jump into the water, but it’s the skyboat meetup point - if the captain is even coming back. Can landsharks swim? Can they stand on the edge of the water and fling it in if it tries to surface and boil it to death? Soleil’s never had shark soup but it sounds fantastic right now. 

“Can you see it?!” Wait, which of them should be looking back and which of them should be taking point?

sunkissed even in my darkest hours

karma's a relaxing thought, aren't you envious that for you it's not?

For a split second Flora can't tell her lefts from her rights, and had it not been for Soleil's arm around her elbow she'd likely have been sporting an anklet of needle-sharp teeth marks. Only able to breathlessly grunt her thanks as they dart across the sands, Flora twines her fingers tightly through Soleil's as if her life fucking depended on it.

Which..y'know..

"Fuck—" They hadn't even really strayed that far from the beaten trail; Flora had just wanted to get away from the other tourist types they'd come here with who wouldn't shut the fuck up (actually, it had been a too-lovey-dovey couple that had been the last straw), and now here they were potentially running for their fucking lives.

Glancing over her shoulder, her striding momentarily suffering as she twists to try and catch a glance of a fin or the sands heaving behind them, Flora shakes her head. "No, but—" Not seeing something was almost as dangerous as seeing something, when it came to landsharks. Had it dived down below? Was it listening to their footsteps to gauge where they'd be in order to rise up from the sands and swallow them down in one bite?

"You don't happen to have a magic carpet in that bag of yours?"

Soleil

Should Sol be the one to look back while running since she’s taller? Wait, but are her legs longer? That’s what would matter right? Flora has killer legs - carpet in that bag of yours? - so would it - “What?” - wait, not the time, also what?

Luckily as she tries to turn her head over her shoulder to look at Flora somewhere past blinding sun on egg-water and her own curls stabbing her eyes, she instead finds salvation. Pointing, Soleil urges through huffed breaths, “Rock!” Sunbleached as it is it hides in plain sight, more sloped than she’d prefer with teeth at her heels but beggars and all that. 

Turning mid-stride, Soleil wobbles on the loose sand and the strap of her sandal snaps and nearly takes her down (which would have also meant Flora, ice-skating-couple style). The sand is hotter than Safrin’s tits and makes her yelp, but she kicks off the shoe regardless. “Go go go, ladies first!” Soleil rubber bands their connected arms to launch Flora forward toward the rock while she spins to watch their back while the Doubletake climbs. Oooh, that’s gonna be hot. The rock, that is. Ouch.

sunkissed even in my darkest hours

karma's a relaxing thought, aren't you envious that for you it's not?

"What?" Having forgotten the joke she'd made, or, well, it hadn't been a joke so much as it'd been a shitty suggestion, Flora veers sharply to the side. Rock? Squinting, her sunglasses lost somewhere in the initial scramble the pair had made resulting in the loss of their picnic blanket and their lunch, it's all Flora can do to make out the lip of rock as being more than a mirage before Soleil is lagging behind.

"Wh—" Yanking the other girl instinctively, Flora throws herself against the stone thinking she might have to pull Soleil from the jaws of the landshark, only to find her suddenly pressed up against her from the force of it, and gods if the rock wasn't the only thing that was hot.

But then she's being yeeted, and despite the heat on her palms and knees, Flora doesn't need to be told twice. "Quick, quick!" Reaching down as if she somehow had the strength to pull her counterpart up like it was a fucking movie, she had to spit out salty strands of hair from her mouth where they'd come loose from her ponytail. Unfortunately, she was unable to do anything about the sweat pouring from her brow, dripping down onto Soleil like the world's worst sprinkler.

Soleil

Soleil can’t speak shark, but she’s pretty good at charades, and the fin that emerges sounds like a comedic third-party echo of what? Except, y’know, a lot more ominous than hers and Flora’s. 

It’s almost a relief to look away like that’ll somehow make it disappear, though it’s not exactly voluntary with how Flora yanks her and squishes them both against the rock. Soleil’s breath leaves her in a pitiful woosh and - woah okay pretty hard to stay vigilant and panicked when Flora makes a lovely egg in this hot-stone sandwich -

Except Flora is movie-level strong, strong enough to uproot trees according to some sources, and Soleil is more twig than trunk. Saliva-sprinkler aside, Soleil is ripped from the ground like a pesky dandelion and lands with a meaty thwack on her back on the scorching boulder. “Safrin’s tits you’re strong,” she wheezes, air lost somewhere between sand and sky and lungs actively rebooting. “Should’ve just boxed the thing.” Oh right, landshark. Sitting up sharply, Soleil flaps her hand clumsily at Flora’s bare skin to check it over. “Did it get you at all? I’ll kill it in your honor my Queen,” she declares fantastically, bravery renewed now that she’s out of reach of the beast (and armed with a returning weapon that is conveniently harpoon-shaped).

sunkissed even in my darkest hours

karma's a relaxing thought, aren't you envious that for you it's not?

"Pffft, I'm not really—" Flora begins to argue, not able to think of her strength in context with Soleil's, but instead only comparing herself to her family which offered about the same disparency as between she and the adventurer. "Yeah right." The queen laughs, adrenaline making her voice shaky and a touch too bright.

The touch of Soleil's hands across her bare skin has Flora hitching in a breath, the girl's touch far warmer than the stone currently threatening to turn her skin red. "Did it..? Wh—" Blinking, lost in the deep almond depths of the other girl's concerned gaze, the temperature of the stone eventually snaps herself out of a moment of gay reverie that has her hissing and shifting toward. "Come on—" Reaching for Soleil the Doubletake tries to lift her up as well. "Okay, okay. I've got my daggers—" Reaching into what was basically a bejewelled fanny-pack, Flora produced three feathered daggers, each dripping with poison. "But I also have these." Holding out her hand, she waggled her fingers to draw the adventurer's attention to her rings.

"I can make one of us invisible, and I can also conjure a sea-panther to try and distract the shark, or..." Pulling a face as she combs flyaway strands from her forehead, Flora gives her head a little shake. "We could wait it out? See if it loses interest? Maybe it'll go pick on that really obnoxious couple that kept talking about how the spices on their fish had been too strong."

Soleil

"Yeah huh," Soleil scoffs, equally strangled and a little like she's snuck helium in the time between sand and scorching rock. Parroting 'no you' is about the extent of her mental capacity right now.

Snagged and drawn up in Flora's wake, Soleil admittedly thinks something very different when Flora wiggles her fingers, and the flush on her cheeks and width of her eyes make it clear for a little too long to pass off as confusion. Clearing her throat, Soleil slips her spear out of its holster on her back and twirls it in one hand as one might a pencil, mindless and practiced. "I've got a returning pike, if we want to spear-fish," she adds to the brew of chaos, then snort-laughs when fish is the next topic on Flora's lips. "They were miserable! If their noses weren't so high in the air the tips are scraping Safrin's feet I'd say we could lure them down there in our place, but then we'll really lose out on a ride home." As if she isn't proposing sacrificing snobby tourists, Soleil grins and gestures with her spear at the fin that appears and begins to circle their rock.

"Which is more fun though, waiting it out or making it a trophy?" Not that Soleil trophy hunts, but she isn't sure how edible landshark is...

sunkissed even in my darkest hours

karma's a relaxing thought, aren't you envious that for you it's not?

What Flora assumes is first interest in her rings turns into something else, leaving the queen biting at the inside of her cheek as she mentally kombucha girls' about it. If they were going to die, why not do it with each other's names singing from their lips? If they timed it right, maybe they wouldn't even feel the lethal bite of teeth severing their torsos.

"err—" Now it's Flora's turn to blink herself back into the moment, her aqua eyes focusing on the pike. "Hey, cool. Weapon twins." Bouncing her eyebrows and then leaning into the shaky adrenaline-bright laughter that slips from her lips, Flora nods. "Right? Honestly. I wonder where they even went.." They'd probably made it back on the boat; they were probably telling the captain to leave her and Soleil behind because they had some fancy dinner reservation to get back for.

"A trophy, huh?" Grinning, Flora pulls out another of her daggers, holding them both aloft and grinning. "Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who has to sweet talk the captain into upping our baggage allowance."