While it was nice having what amounted to a private freshwater beach of her own that she could visit once a week, there was something to be said for the festive atmosphere of a non-private beach. It wasn’t the same, somehow, without all the cheerful noise of humanity thronging around a body of clear water on a hot but pleasant day - without children shrieking and distant music and laughing and even, she had to admit, without the risk of some living creature in the water brushing up against your leg and giving you a start.

And there was, also, the fact that she had a selection of cute bikinis that - due to the aforementioned private beach situation - she’d barely been able to break out at all. What was the point of having a cute little swimsuit if you had no one to admire it?

(Nail, certainly, was not admiring them. He always had that absent, determined look towards the distant ocean, as if posted up waiting for boats that would never come, or else he was looking at her with something more like disgust or distress than anything approaching admiration. Thank god, she told herself, and if some part of her didn’t mean it, she had concealed it from herself to the point of invisibility.)

Ideally, she’d be on some Caribbean beach somewhere, soaking up the sun and drinking something out of a coconut with a little umbrella and mint leaves in it, paid for by some doting admirer that she’d met three days ago and would cheerfully and mutually ghost six hours after the plane landed back in Destiny City. But life had seldom been ideal in the last six months, and so she knew she would not be able to head off to some palm-tree laden emerald-sea paradise, nor even some gator-infested Gulf hole. She’d have to do the best she could locally: at the Reservoir.

So she rolled up with the morning sun, donning the cutest swimming ensemble she had, and she looked around with cheerful optimism for someone to flirt with. Preferably an old man - her favorite targets. But there was a decided dearth of potbellied, white-haired bachelors, and so she had to console herself with the water.

She hesitated, however. Last year she had taken a dip in this very reservoir and ignored the silly local legends about something living in it. Things were different, now, and she not only believed the rumors, but also had developed a sneaking suspicion that being marked out for Fated Bullshit had a way of attracting creatures and cryptids to your general vicinity. Maybe things brushing up against your leg weren’t actually a great feature of outdoor swimming after all.

So it was that Elaine enjoyed about fifteen minutes of cool water and warm sun and the noisy cheer of the busy beach before she felt something grab her ankle. It didn’t do much - it let her go so fast that she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just her foot snagging on some bit of sunken vegetation. But when she finally - forcing herself not to scream - kicked herself free, she made a hasty exit out of the water, across the beach, and back into her car. <******** this, she thought, and she opened her phone to look up flights to Hawaii.

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