Lotus finally settled on an oversized t-shirt for herself as nightclothes and wandered out to see what Elea was up to.

"We both needed that," she said as she brushed her damp hair over her shoulder.

Elea nodded. "Yeah. That was fantastic. We need to do that more often." She smiled, stirring her hot chocolate. "I don't know if we can go out every other night, but at least more than we have been."

"Agreed," Lotus replied. She sat down at the kitchen table and absently rubbed some sand from between her toes. "If I wasn't so sure I'm going to be called in to work tomorrow, I'd spend the night outside. But my phone wouldn't appreciate it."

Elea snickered. "No, technology doesn't appreciate water overmuch." She grinned and sipped her hot chocolate. "Oh man this is good. That is one thing about going swimming; hot cocoa tastes better after."

"Really?" Lotus asked. "I never thought of it." She grinned a bit. "The salt, it must be."

"No kidding. Ingest salt, everything tastes better after." Elea grinned.

"I already add salt to everything," Lotus pointed out, grinning a bit. "So salt and chocolate is just kind of right up my alley."

"Salted chocolate... oh god I want now..." Elea almost groaned. "You just had to mention."

"So add a little salt to the hot chocolate," Lotus said, shrugging a bit. "I bought a new sea salt grinder just last week, there's plenty."

Elea got up and went to go add some salt. Because salt was always fantastic.

Lotus grinned a bit when Elea added the salt to the hot chocolate.

"Better?" she asked.

"Oh yeah." Elea grinned. "Very tasty." She went back to lounging.

"You ever find it odd that we don't see anyone else when we're in the water?"

Lotus blinked and thought about it for a second.

"Sometimes," she admitted. "Sometimes not. We stick fairly close to shore most of the time, after all."

"True." Elea finished her hot chocolate. "But even so, there aren't any others in the area. You'd think there'd be more of us hanging around in a nice area like this."

"True," Lotus mused. "Maybe they're further out? In deeper waters?" It was possible, right?

"Maybe. Your kind can do that, definitely. Mine has to be closer to shore, because we need to sleep and breathe and stuff." Elea shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe we just found a spot no one else has yet?" Unlike, but remotely possible.

"Maybe," Lotus replied. "My kind usually lives in colonies in deeper water, so it's entirely possible we just haven't run into them yet. But I don't know about your kind." She gave Elea a bit of a grin. "Paranoid as a whole and all."

Elea chuckled. "What can we say? It's in our collective nature." She got up after a few moments. "Well, who knows? It might be a good thing that we haven't seen any others."

"Yeah, probably," Lotus agreed. Standing up, she stretched. "Alright, I'm heading to bed. Anything in particular you want to cook tomorrow that I need to pick up?"

"No, I think I'll just cook whatever's available." Elea shrugged. It didn't make that big a difference to her. "But I should get to bed too, or else I'll be very grumpy tomorrow."

"Alrighty, sleep well," Lotus said, giving her friend a hug. With that, she retired to her own room to get some sleep.

Elea woke up first the next morning and was out to work before Lotus even got up. Little did she know, but today was going to be different.

Lotus slept in, but still woke up with enough time to go and visit Elea at work for a while. She had no idea that today was going to be any different, either, and clearly was not prepared for such an eventuality. It only took her a few minutes to track down Elea.

Elea grinned at her and took her break, going over to go join Lotus.

"Well, at least it's not too crowded today," she said, moving over to a quieter area. "Want to grab a snack and go sit by the water?"

"Sure," Lotus said with a grin. "Your hair is suspiciously damp, by the way."