Mirage

The morning sun was shining in a blaze of glory, covering the sand on the shore with a gold glitter and illuminating the sea with twinkling diamonds. A salty sea breeze blew past, and Treo had to close his eyes due to the strength of the wind. Shouts and screams arose near the shoreline as great waves crashed against the seabed one after another. 

‘Certainly’, she thought, ‘this must be the work of several Arcanai!’ The usually calm beach was transformed into a day of fun and frenzy. 

“Hysi would have hated this,” Treo smirked, imagining how the other Arcanai would likely flinch and turn back to her cave if she ever saw it. “Lucky for her, she’s got the opposite of hibernation. Aesti- something.” 

“Yo dude, are you gonna go out there or what?” A surfer-Arcanai bumped into Treo, snapping him out of his thoughts. 

“Oh yeah, sorry dude! Just got lost in the scenery out here,” She took a step back, paws digging into the sand, shocked her head to clear her thoughts. How does she always get so sucked into the scenery? He didn’t even notice when he was about arm’s length away from the waves and blocking others from accessing the water. She just really, really liked the view? 

Eh, whatever. All he knows is that she’s gotta take this time to study as much as he can about the beach, waves, surfing, and sand! Today’s a special occasion it seemed with a big surfing competition aided by the magiks of air and water Arcanai. Maybe she could even get some commissions? Doing some quick light portraits of Arcanai on the beach or in the competition. 

But the sand seemed too good to pass out on and there seemed to be a sandcastle currently being built and Treo doesn’t really have the opportunity to do sand art usually, so he settled on an emtier section and began to just draw whatever he felt like, which was mainly the scenery. 

She used her claws to carefully outline trees and used her tail as a brush, dragging it to form a great swath of a dip to represent the great waves and oh ew, there’s sand in his tail feathers! 

“Eurgh, that’s going to take a while to get out,” Treo dusts his tail off, thumping it against the floor but nothing seems to work. She eyed the shoreline again, seeing how the waves lapped against the sand, and saw how clear the water was. 

“Welp, might as well get wet,” Treo took his time as he paced across the beach before dipping his toes into the shallows. And the water was deceptively cold too, but after a while the sand had started to be a bit hot and Treo was glad for the respite. 

“Hello, erm, excuse me?” A voice came from behind her, as Treo turned around he saw an Arcanai with a flag to their body, likely an official for the event. “Are you by any chance, a Light Magik user? I’m asking this as your curio sigil seems to be a light..pen?” 

“You got that right! I’m an artist too!” Treo answers with a big grin on her face. A customer! And she wasn’t even advertising! 

“Oh? Well, that’s interesting but um we are in need of some lighting work for the competition. Like a light leading the other surfers around? Do you think you could do that?” 

“For sure! What’s the pay?” 

“Does 5 shards and 3 gift boxes seem fair to you?” 

Treo nodded. 

“Then let’s go,” the official sighs in relief. “Thank you for being here and willing to work on such short notice, we just didn’t expect the waves out there to be this dark.” 

They both stared at the deep waters where the colour of the ocean was more of a midnight blue than a seafoam teal. 

“My pleasure!” Treo smiles. It wasn’t what she specialised in, but it was a definitely something she could do. “Do you want some ambient light reduction as well? The sun’s pretty glaring right now.” 

“Oh, if you could do that as well? Go for it! But I believe you just have to focus on surfing and keeping the light up.”

Wait. Surfing? 

Oh no. Oh no no no no no. 

“Surfing?” Treo bites his lip. The official stops and they face a yellow surfboard. 

“Yeah, you don’t have to do any fancy tricks, just paddling out there and maybe catching the first big wave-” 

Treo’s mouth dropped open. Oh no, he can’t say no now! She’s always been bad at rejecting offers and requests and such, but please let his voice work, because she actually can’t surf! She’s never done that before! 

“-we’ll be starting in 5 minutes, so please get comfortable with the board.” 

Treo watches helplessly as the official goes somewhere else, mouth open with no sound coming out. 

“Well, there’s no backing out now,” Treo said, trying to instil some sort of conviction in himself. “It’s do or die time. Literally.” 

As an artist, she learns a lot by observing others. Hopefully, with the 5 minute prep time and seeing how other Arcanai surf for the past hour, he could at least not crash out on the first wave. 

The board was thin enough that her four legs could paddle out, and she saw how surfers would retract their legs and stand on the board when a wave came towards them. 

He was still trying to figure out what happens if you get turned over when the official came by again and told her to start paddling out. 

With her mouth upturned, Treo started to paddle outwards, making sure that her fur gets wetter with each stroke. 

Wait, gets wetter? 

Truth is: Treo isn’t going to try something new for such an important job. She buried the surfboard with sand and projected an illusion of himself instead, illuminating the waves. Seems like no one noticed, and with how far away the surfing actually was she didn’t have to care too much about how well it looked like she was surfing on the water. 

When the competition was all said and done, he graciously accepted the pay before hightailing out of there. 

Treo promises he isn’t a scam artist!

EN: 

Wow, I wrote a lot more than I expected and even had to cut the story short because I didn’t want to drag this on for too long. I hope that this kind of ‘surfing’ fits the prompt!