knock offs
The tide was doing something interesting to the light, and that was the only reason AngelWings had come this far down the beach. Research. Atmosphere. Definitely not because RoseGold had kicked her out of the house for “being weird and sad inside all day.”
She hadn’t expected anyone else to be out here.
The blue pegasus on the sand didn’t look up when she approached, which she respected. His mane was dyed dark but the salt had been at it - streaks of color bleeding through at the roots like a secret giving itself away. He had the look of someone who’d picked this specific stretch of shore because nopony else would bother.
She could relate.
“I didn’t think any pony else bothered comin’ out this far,” she said, more to herself than to him.
He glanced up. Didn’t leave. That was basically an invitation.
She set her saddlebag down in the sand and pulled out her journal. The blue jay feather caught the last of the sunset light.
Neither of them said anything else for a while. The waves did the talking.
The water here was murky and cold, the kind that swallowed light more than playing with it. She watched a wave drag back across the sand and leave nothing behind but foam and a few broken shells. Noted details and filed them away for later. There was something in it - the way the sea took things apart slowly, patiently, without malice. Good for a chapter three, maybe.
“You come out here a lot?” she asked, not looking up from the page.
“Enough.” A pause. “You?”
“First time this far.” She turned the feather over in her hoof. “Probably not the last.”
He made a small sound that wasn’t quite agreement and wasn’t quite dismissal. She decided she liked him fine.
The sun finished setting. Her wings - frayed, pink, useless - shifted against her sides in the breeze, and she didn’t think about it. She wrote two pages about the cold water and the shells instead, and the blue pegasus watched the tide like it owed him something, and it was a perfectly good evening.
