Beach Stroll (4)
“How’s that?”
As the thick, long shaft drove deep into the earth, Monia watched it with flushed cheeks.
“Mm…”
“Want me to push it in deeper?”
“Y-yes.”
Monia’s face tightened for a moment before she carefully nodded. Chester murmured an acknowledgment and twisted the stake in a slow circle, driving it farther down.
“Nnh.”
A shiver ran through her.
Chester stopped the spinning motion at just the right depth, then leaned his weight hard onto the stake and shoved it home.
“Hhk!”
Monia flinched and shrank back, trembling—then sneezed.
“Achoo!”
She watched Chester stamp the soil firm around the properly planted stake.
“Cold?”
“Mm. A little, I think.”
“I want that salt sooner rather than later. Need to make you proper clothes, too. Want to wear one of mine for now?”
“Mmm… no, I’m still fine.”
“Say you’re fine and then get knocked flat by a chill.”
Once the stake was solid, Chester shrugged out of his outer layer and handed it over.
“…Thank you.”
“You made the thing for me in the first place. No need to thank me.”
Monia accepted the coat carefully. Whether it was Chester’s body heat or the insulating power of the bear hide, a gentle warmth settled over her. She nocked an arrow and took aim at the stake he had driven into the ground.
In the early days she had used broad planks as targets. As her skill improved, the targets had shrunk to simple wooden stakes.
“Huu…”
She drew a steady breath, lined up the shot, and loosed. The arrow streaked away and buried itself cleanly in the wood.
“Yes!”
“Nice shot.”
“I’m a perfect marksman now, aren’t I?”
“Then maybe we should raise the difficulty.”
Chester pulled the arrow free, checked whether it could be reused, and handed it back.
“Someday I want to shoot like you do.”
“You’ll need a better bow for that. Range and power come from the bow itself. No matter how good your form is, a poor bow has a hard ceiling.”
They were spending the day at the Seaside Villa. On ordinary days they filled the hours with small chores, but even chores eventually ran out—unused rope piled high in a corner of the storehouse, every tool already inspected and repaired until nothing new needed making. When free time appeared, Chester and Monia turned to extra training by the shore: swimming in the sea, walking the beach the way they had the day they found the octopus, teaching Monia new skills, or simply playing with Ant when there was truly nothing left to do.
I’ve changed so much…
Monia felt, with sudden clarity, how completely her life had transformed. Not the gulf between the noble daughter she had once been and the woman she was now, but the distance between the Monia first abandoned on the island and the Monia of today.
Back then every day had been a desperate scramble. Steady food was impossible; stockpiling it was pure fantasy. Even Chester failed at the hunt often enough. There had been days they simply went hungry. If a man as mentally tough and seasoned by nature as Chester had struggled, how much harder had it been for a fragile young woman?
Dense, lived experience had a way of overwriting older memories. The years she had spent as a noblewoman now felt thin and empty by comparison. Almost without noticing, the foundation of “Monia’s life” had shifted to the years spent on this island.
Sleeping on a moss mattress laid over a bamboo floor with a wooden block for a pillow felt more natural than sinking into a vast, cloud-soft bed. A fish caught that morning, brightened with a little fruit and a pinch of seasoning, tasted more familiar than the elaborate masterpieces of chefs who had spent lifetimes perfecting a single dish with the finest ingredients from across the kingdom. Running through the forest to build stamina, drawing a bow, climbing trees, and doing every kind of odd job felt more natural than sitting in chairs for endless chatter, tea parties, evening soirées, or nights at the opera.
No—she had not merely grown accustomed. She had made herself at home. This island she had once hated, dreaded, and despaired over so completely that she had contemplated ending her own life… this place where everything had terrified her… now felt comfortable. A bug crawling near her no longer registered. Spotting a snake she once would have mistaken for a demon only made her think of meat, and she would charge after it.
When we first landed I was sure I’d be dead within a week.
Yet here she still was. Monia stroked the bow in her hands. The first time she had carved one she had sliced her fingers raw. The island’s mysterious water had healed the cuts without a scar; without it her hands would have looked like Chester’s. His were covered in the small, old nicks of a lifetime spent with knives and hard labor. Anyone who saw them would have taken him for a man who lived by the blade rather than a butler. The skin had risen and fallen with each wound and healing until it was uneven, yet he had surprisingly little callus. According to him, the constant cycle of callus forming and peeling had finally stopped the calluses from taking hold at all. In their place his palms had simply grown thicker than most people’s—almost leathery.
“Oh.”
“What?”
“It’s starting to split here.”
“Hmm.”
Her fingertips caught on a rough edge. She showed him the place where the grain was beginning to open, just as she had said.
“I really do want a better bow, like you said. The one Father owned stayed perfect no matter how many times he drew and loosed it.”
“Monia, comparing that to this is just unfair.”
The duke had shared his daughter’s obsession with the absolute best—whether in art or at the table. Chester and Monia had no idea, but the Sky Knights the duke had raised to counter the royal order had been equipped with the finest weapons, armor, and warhorses money could buy, and the bow he loved so much was no different. Ironically, for all his passion, his own skill with the weapon had been mediocre—almost as if the bow itself resented him—while Monia, who possessed world-class talent for judging art, had never shared that particular gift.
“Do you think we could find that tree again? The one that made the best bow. The one I made from it was my favorite.”
“Hmm. Tomorrow, then. We’ll look for it.”
While he spoke, Chester drove a fresh stake deep into the sand and secured it, then untied the sling from the cord at his waist. The sling itself had changed. The earlier version, made from an inner pocket and cord, had eventually torn; the new one was pure cord, free of every flaw the pocket design had carried—a true masterpiece of simplicity.
“I’ll go work on a new bow, then?”
“Sure.”
Using the bow as an excuse to return to the villa and work on her map, Monia settled in to watch Chester’s training while she drew. After he finished spotting for her, it was his turn.
Ever since they had been cast onto the Floating Island, Chester had skipped training only when circumstances left him no choice. No matter how satisfied he was with his own skill, no matter how excellent he judged himself, he never knew when or how those senses and that edge might slip away.
This time had been no different. After the fight with the bear, his body had recalibrated around the injured leg. When the lake’s power restored the limb in an instant, the mismatch between a healthy leg and twisted muscle memory had plagued him for days. Stones from the sling missed. Arrows with perfect form still went wide. Even simple work with the machete or a wooden spear sometimes went wrong if he let his guard down. He had finally realigned body, technique, and sensation, but there was no telling what might break the balance again. So he kept honing himself—so that even if everything fell apart, he would still have a usable minimum left.
His target was a thicker stake than Monia’s, driven deeper still; an ordinary sling stone would barely rock it. A clean hit could shatter the wood easily enough, but that was not the point.
“Let’s see…”
Chester’s arm swept in a smooth arc. The motion looked almost leisurely, yet the stone left the sling faster than an arrow. Throwing a stone with a sling was only an extension of ordinary throwing—except in Chester’s hands the phrase no longer fit. To Monia’s eyes it looked far more like he was shooting the stones.
Thwack!
The stone grazed the stake and flew on. He repeated the motion, again and again, never rushing, never letting breath or focus fray, every movement linked in one organic, elegant chain with not a single wasted motion. He moved as though his body had been built for the single purpose of launching stones from a sling—beautiful, purposeful, like a lighter whose only reason for existing is to make fire.
Stone after stone kissed the wood, shaving it little by little. Chester shifted position and fired again. After a few more shots he moved once more. Circling the stake, loosing stone after stone, he gradually transformed the roughly hewn post into a clean cylinder.
“Huu.”
When he finally stopped, the stake was a perfect cylinder—rough and pitted up close, yes, but from a distance it looked clean and true.
“Wow.”
Monia hurriedly hid her map as he turned, unable to keep the admiration out of her voice.
“You didn’t hit the stake dead-on even once this time.”
“Yeah. Took longer than I expected. Next time maybe I’ll walk a circle around it without stopping and keep throwing.”
“What? Is that even possible?”
“It’s not about whether it’s possible. You do it until it is.”
“You’re not some legendary sculptor carving the masterpiece of the century, you know.”
“Close enough, isn’t it? Haha. Let’s head back.”
Chester casually tossed the cylindrical stake aside, packed their things into the basket, and started for home. With Ant, who had been playing near the water, the three of them returned—only to find unexpected visitors waiting.
Ant caught the scent first.
—Krrn?
Chester saw them next.
“Huh? That’s Black Wind.”
“What?”
By the time Monia’s eyes found them, the massive black-furred figures had turned to face the newcomers.
“There must be at least ten of them… one, two, three… oh, one’s up in the tree. Seven.”
“Wonder what brings the whole pack.”
Barely ten days had passed since they parted from Black Wind. Chester and Monia were reuniting with him far sooner than expected—and in a form they had never imagined.