Or alternatively, In Which Family Beach Trips are Precious and so is Wick

Author's Note:

Hello, everyone! Back with another short. I really like this one but wanted to say something ahead of time. This one takes place post-Magic's Memories when Sedgewick and Feyla have been married for a while and so contains a few references to their physical relationship. There's no smut but since my writing usually doesn't address that subject, I thought I'd issue a warning that most of you probably won't care about. XD

And now back to you semi-regularly scheduled Feywick...

"I'm the Minister of Magic, a council member of the Ivory Tower and a leading expert in the study of magic. I do not need help building a sandcastle!" Sedgewick insisted despite the crumbling attempt in front of him.

Feyla reclined back onto her blanket spread across the sand and raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?" Waves lapped at the shore gently, shifting from a deep cerulean blue to a foamy green the farther one gazed. The smell of salt drifted in on the breeze, tickling her nose. Feyla tapped a finger against the pristine white sand.

Her husband and son sat crouched in front of her blanket. Sand stuck to their matching red hair and made the strands stick together in clumps. The loose white shirts they both wore were wet and sand-stained from splashing in the shallows and digging for little creatures. The maternal side of Feyla worried over the fabric chafing her little water baby while the wife in her secretly hoped Sedgewick would get wet enough to make the thin shirt cling to his chest again.

The two gave her the exact same deadpanned stare. A regular pair of matching sea creatures staring at the silly land woman. "Papa don't need help! He's the smarterest!" said Wick with all the conviction his tiny, baby-faced self could muster.

"There. See, Feyla?" Sedgewick's ears preened and he turned a satisfied smirk onto her. "I'm the smarterest and will build you a hundred castles."

Wick nodded emphatically, utterly convinced of the importance of building castles for one's personal queen. The two went back to work and Feyla watched as Sedgewick had their son experiment with different compositions of sand and water until they'd found one which stuck to his satisfaction. Materials in hand, the two set to work again and finally, graceful towers of wet, tan sand rose above the crystal-white dry sand below. Her two boys conscripted her after that and the three of them adorned the sandcastle with colorful shells of orange and pink.

"Your mother has very particular taste," Sedgewick said in mock seriousness while holding out another shell and giving her a wink. Feyla rolled her eye and pressed the shell into the topmost tower.

"You like my seaweed, Mummy?" Wick asked her. He stretched the brown-and-green weed out like a garland during a summer festival. "Papa says you can make three potions w'it."

"Well, not just the seaweed. You'd need several other ingredients too," Sedgewick explained. His voice drifted into his "expert" tone as he launched into a brief lecture on the various potion ingredients one could gather from the sea. Before he could expound further on the many uses of a rare luminous squid's ink, Feyla kissed her captivated son on the forehead and redirected them all back to the castle.

"It's a lovely seaweed, sweetie. Go hang it on the east tower for me."

Wick nodded seriously and promptly began draping it over the west tower. Feyla scooted closer to her husband and poked him in the chest. "Don't give me that look. We're on a vacation not in a lecture hall."

"It's a learning opportunity. Besides, the boy likes it. Don't you, son?" Sedgewick turned back to his protege.

Wick wasn't listening. He'd ripped the seaweed in two and after placing half on the castle, had proceeded to wrap the other piece around his head. "I'm a sea monster!" Wick growled at his parents, showing off his white baby teeth and the gap from the one he'd lost recently.

Feyla gasped dramatically. She pressed a hand to her chest and shielded her eyes with the other.

"No, not a sea monster!" Grabbing her husband's shoulder, Feyla pretended to cower behind him. "Take my husband instead!"

"Don't worry, Feyla, I'll protect you— Wait, what?"

Wick pounced on his parents then, a roar in his throat. The three of them toppled to the ground and Feyla landed a breath from her husband's lips. "Save me, Sedgewick!"

Sedgewick smirked. "Oh, now you want to be rescued?" He pushed himself up even though Feyla was already leaning in to steal a quick kiss. Sedgewick snatched up the second piece of seaweed on the castle and flung it on his head. "Well, you're too late! I've joined my son and there's no one here to save you!"

"You traitor!" Feyla gasped through her laughter.

"I'll save you, Mummy!" Wick declared before promptly betraying his father. The small boy flung himself at Sedgewick and "pinned" him down. "Grrrr!"

Feyla pressed her hands into her husband's shoulders and smiled down at him.

"Should we eat Papa?" Wick asked conspiratorially.

Sedgewick gave them an exaggerated affronted look. "Abandoned by my own monsterling..."

"Aww, I don't know, Wick. He's kind of cute for a sea monster." Feyla brushed a stray bit of sand off of his cheek. Sedgewick's eyes went as round as his glasses and his stare both begged for her love and whispered his ardor with equal, wordless fervor. She flicked off the bit of seaweed hanging about his ears and leaned over. Feyla kissed his soft lips like he was a cursed prince in a story, careful to press a tiny extra one against the scar on his bottom lip before she pulled away. "There. You're my Sedgewick again."

"Ewww!" Wick wrinkled his nose in disgust. His father chuckled as he sat up.

"Keep that up and she might give me more." Sedgewick raised an eyebrow to let her know that he rather hoped she would. Wick wisely stopped complaining.

"Well now that I've saved one sea monster, I think I should save another," Feyla declared.

Wick let out a yelp and scrambled away, but not fast enough. Feyla snatched her little one up and smothered the laughing, fighting boy with kisses. "There. No more monsters."

"Aww..." the boy grumbled, contradicting his words by cuddling closer. "Can we go swimming again?"

"It's about time to head back to the house, lad," Sedgewick replied. He pushed his smudged glasses up and squinted at the horizon. "I believe those clouds are holding rain."

"But we haven't built Mummy a hundred castles yet!"

"No arguments," Sedgewick insisted, his brow wrinkling slightly as his voice took on the stern, paternal tone Feyla had first heard him use with Eleyna all those years ago. "Go grab your bucket."

Wick reluctantly clambered off of Feyla's lap to collect his things but quickly became distracted by a crab scuttling through the sand. Feyla laughed softly under her breath. "We're going to have to take turns dumping buckets of water on him if we want to get half of that sand off."

"When we're done, we should send him off to bed early." Sedgewick moved closer, his arm brushing her own.

Feyla hummed softly in consideration. Wick continued to chase after the crab with his bucket, oblivious to his parents' discussion. "He is going to be pretty tired."

"Well, that's a good second reason, I suppose."

Before she could ask what the first reason was, Sedgewick pressed his lips to her neck and answered it wordlessly. "Oh..." Feyla sighed, her view of the horizon blurring at the simple touch.

Sedgewick snuck a second kiss against the shell of her ear before drawing her to his chest. Wick shouted about catching the crab in his bucket before his excitement caused it to escape and started the chase all over. Feyla smiled at their son's antics and savored the steady beating of her husband's heart against her ear. It chased out the memories of that day in Vacia when that thumping had stopped.

"We ought to use our time here wisely and give him a sibling," he said as he ran a hand through her tangled hair. Feyla craned her head up to catch Sedgewick following their son's chase. His eyes found hers a moment later and the intensity in their amber depths made her blush despite decades of marriage.

The clouds on the horizon now rumbled, refusing to be forgotten. The sound broke the spell and brought them back to reality. A reality where neither could ignore that Sedgewick's words were wistful thinking. Even if pretending that a few focused nights of passion were enough to give Wick a sibling felt more comforting.

Sedgewick ran his hand down her hair again in soft brushes. The warm intensity of his gaze had been quenched and cracked, revealing an old, shared wound underneath. "I'm sorry, Dearest. If I'd been younger when we'd met..."

Feyla took his free hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. "We still aren't sure it's you. It could be me. It's...it's probably me since I lost the first—"

"No," he said it the way he might have ordered a wizard to silence his lies. "No, my wife. If I can't take the blame then neither can you."

Feyla held his hand to her cheek and nuzzled it. Even when her doubt and guilt had dragged her down to dark places, Sedgewick had been there fighting to free her from those burdens to bear. They had struggled for years to conceive and losing her first pregnancy had made Feyla give up on it ever being more than the two of them. Wick had been their unexpected blessing. To say he was loved was an understatement. But...

"I just didn't want our child to grow up alone like I did," Feyla confessed as she watched Wick play by himself. Her brother had been long grown when Feyla had been born and her parents had separated soon after. Feyla could recall many days when it had just been her and Arilla. She and Sedgewick had spent long hours talking about children as they'd prepared for their marriage. They had both hoped for a large family but they had at least wanted two close together.

That pretty dream had been eroded like a sandcastle during the tide.

"Wick would be an excellent older brother," Sedgewick spoke quietly. "Better than mine was." He gazed at her again and she could feel his guilt seeping through as he squeezed her hand softly.

The thunder rumbled again and the two finally stood. Sedgewick's touch left her as he called out to their son. "Let the beast go, lad. It's time to head back."

Wick presented his captured crab proudly to his father before dumping it back into the water and demanding Sedgewick pick him up. Feyla folded the blanket and the three walked back to the house. Wick's head bobbed tiredly the whole journey back and it was a struggle to get the little dear to stand while she and Sedgewick washed the sand off of him before carrying him inside.

Sedgewick laid down the clean child in his little bed. Wick's head slumped onto the pillows even as his small hands still clung to his father's shirt. Sedgewick freed the shirt and let each hand curl around his own. "Goodnight, my son," he whispered, giving Wick's hands a squeeze before slowly easing his own free.

"'Nite, Papa." Wick yawned, his coppery eyelashes fluttering against his cheek before sleep took him.

Feyla tugged the blanket over Wick's shoulders and kissed his brow. The feelings in her chest swelled and cracked as she stared at her sleeping son. His skin tone rested right in the middle of Sedgewick's pale white and her tawny brown. Wick's features, however, were already so much like Sedgewick's. The shape of his nose, the arch of his brow and cheekbones, and the fluffy red of his hair had been pulled straight from his father's mold. Feyla didn't begrudge these similarities, although Sedgewick had been pleased that Wick had at least gotten her eyes. If she was cursed to only have one child then she was glad that child resembled the man she'd chosen to have him with. The best man she knew.

Warm arms wrapped around her, anchoring Feyla back to the room after she'd been adrift in her thoughts. Warm. He was always so warm. Feyla didn't know if it was a side effect of his magic or if it was just him but whenever a chill stole over her, he was there to thaw her again. Sedgewick guided her out of the room silently. Feyla stole a last look at her sleeping son before they reached the hall and Sedgewick shut the door.

During the day, the wood panels lining this hall would be slipped open to welcome Kingsford's bright light and clean sea breeze, but the house's staff had already sealed them up tight before they'd left for the day. A preparation for the coming storm.

Sedgewick summoned a harmless orange essence flare to his hand. The ball of light flew on his command, spinning around her sarong and nuzzling her cheek before mellowing out and floating in front of them both.

"Speak to me, Dearest," he said softly yet firmly.

"It's nothing." She brushed the concern in his voice aside and wrapped her arms around her stomach. They'd had a good day and she didn't wish to ruin it now.

"Lying is unbecoming," he whispered in her ear before tucking a still-damp strand of hair behind it. Sedgewick's finger grazed her cheek and she caught a hint of sea-salt mixed with his normal scent of musky potions, papers, and magic. The smell seeped into her skin and cleansed her senses. His other hand skimmed up her back and tickled her spine before both arms curled around her waist. A flicker of heat coiled down to her bare toes and back up again, finally settling in her stomach.

"Do that again," she whispered.

Sedgewick chuckled, the sound vibrating his chest against her back. "You can try to distract me but I'm not abandoning my inquisition. Dearest, please... Speak to me."

"I feel...selfish," she admitted at last.

"You? The most giving woman I know? The one who puts up with far too much from her husband? Surely not."

"Ungrateful then. I love Wick and you and our life. We were so blessed when we had him. But then I think about..." Fenroy and Eleyna and their four—four!— children and they weren't even trying so why do I have to struggle and fail and cry and— "Other families," she finished. Her bouts of jealously toward Sedgewick's daughter-figure were something she never shared. "And I think about all the plans we made." Her voice cracked. She rubbed her palm across her wet eyes as guilt jabbed at her pain. "Why does it feel like we're always fighting to live normally?" she asked, anger breaking through.

Sedgewick turned her around to face him. He brushed the sand off of his sleeve and dabbed the tears from her face. "Because the best things in the world need fighting for," Sedgewick spoke softly. "I don't believe in predestined loves. There's hardly the evidence to support it. Except, perhaps, in the way things aligned for us. But I do know that I would fight through every struggle I survived again as long as it led me back to you." He pressed his forehead against her own. "And I would rather blast my way to a life with you and Wick than surrender to a thousand easier options."

Feyla's tears fell messily down her face. She screwed her eyes shut and bit her lip to keep any noise that might wake Wick from escaping. A sob slipped out anyway.

Sedgewick chuckled, not mockingly but in affection. "And besides, if things always worked out the way they were planned then I would still be an irritable bachelor and you would be doom to a life bonded to the likes of Daydrel."

Feyla laughed and the hurt in her uncurled. It still ached the way all dying dreams do but for now, that death no longer chilled her. Sedgewick was right. Their lives had never gone as they had planned. "You saved me from a terrible fate." She brushed her hand up to where his undershirt had come undone, and her fingers grazed the warm skin of his chest. "I don't want to dwell on all of this anymore."

Sedgewick's amber eyes darkened and his hand finally skimmed up her back again. "Then let me save you from dwelling as well," he answered, his voice low and filled with promises.

A squeak of surprise escaped Feyla's lips as Sedgewick picked her off the floor. "Your back—"

"Will be hurting tomorrow regardless since someone encouraged our son to betray me." He winked at her. "I'm sure you can dust off your old healer tricks to aid your poor, mistreated husband," Sedgewick answered dramatically. The door to their room flashed orange and slid open silently.

"I love you," Feyla said, wrapping her arms about his neck.

"Well, I am rather bewitching if your mother is to be believed."

Feyla let out a gasp of outrage. The door closed behind them and they did not sleep for a very long time.