Page 99 - NS 2024

one of us made it to the island rst, but it was Owen who found the collection of es. ey were all dierent colors, sitting atop a carefully craed nest.
When Owen looked at them, he looked like a child arriving downstairs on Christmas morning; it looked like he was witnessing proof that Santa Claus was real. He snapped himself out of whatever spells the es temporarily cast on him and looked back at us.
“I don’t know how our mom did this, but...”
“Look!” Sienna exclaimed. She was a little further down the island, diing out something from the sand. We ran over to her and helped her dig. Just underneath the sand were three foam swords, the type we used to ght with all the time.
“It’s to ght the dragons with?” Sienna hypothesized.
Owen groaned. “Please stop.”
“Well, why would our Mom give us swords?” I asked.
“Not to ght a dragon with. I did not just swim across that water in my clothes just to nd
some fake es and a few foam swords. is is some sick joke.”
“I don’t think so...” I said, staring at an object buried just beneath the foam swords: a
keychain. On it were a few dierent keys, all embroidered with the logo for our mother’s old workplace: the local college’s library.
“Woah,” Owen exclaimed. e word seemed to fall out of him subconsciously. I shot a look at Sienna, but she was preoccupied with our new foam swords.
“I just don’t understand why she would put the swords here. Like, what’s the point?” Sienna asked.
“Maybe she wanted us to ght with them,” I suested.
“No,” Owen shot that idea down uickly. “e sun is going to set soon and we still need to swim back.”
“She doesn’t want us to ght with them...” Sienna started. “ese are pool noodles! She didn’t think we would bring our own.”
“You brought pool noodles?” Owen asked.
“Yes,” Me and Sienna replied simultaneously.
Owen’s face wavered between disbelief and awe. He snatched a sword from the ground and
took o towards the car without a word. Me and Sienna ran aer him to catch up. e whole swim I was focused on not losing the keys. Perhaps that’s why my mom gave us the pool-noodle swords, as extra support so we wouldn’t drop the keys.
We returned to the shore with the keys intact. We loaded our sword pool noodles into the back of Sienna’s car where the other unused pool toys were.
“Do you care if we get your car wet?” Owen asked, reaching for the door of the front seat. “No,” Sienna replied. “But you are not sitting in the front seat.”
“Why not? I’m the master of directions,” He replied.