Beach Filler Episode (OPEN)

[Gildarts]

“How’d you do?” Gildarts said, expecting Molly to turn around with a few twigs.

Instead, her arms were full of sizable fragments of deceased tree and dried out segments of branch. “Look at how much I got!” Molly found her rendezvous with Gildarts was more or less in the center of the camp with everyone around. She dropped her stack at her feet and fished something out of her pockets, “Look! Look at these!”

Molly pulled out a giant’s palm sized handful of seashells, “I’m gonna keep these and use them as decoration so I always remember today!”

“You collected all those shells and that driftwood in the last few minutes?” Gildarts raised his eyebrows, impressed.

“Yup! Piqui is carrying some of the shells too!” Molly mentioned and Gil’s eyes hovered over to the floating cat who had a plastic bag full of seashells.

“Wow, you’ve really outdone yourselves,” Gildarts smiled, “Ready to make some flame?”

Gildarts felt his mind cast to the memory of Natsu and had to force himself to appraise the saline treated driftwood. A few sticks and branches, but there weren’t any shrubs around to use as logs, a fire’s main course that could be added on after the kindling.

We’ll use the driftwood first but I will need to make some more wood later. Gildarts noted and dropped his own hoard, which was about half the size of the young girl’s.

“Let’s do this!” She said with a beaming smile. “I’ve seen this on OmniDiscovery channel, you get some sticks and you rub em together really hard and fast!”

“That’s definitely one way to do it, but fire is an art, destructive, eats what it touches and scalds what it can’t eat,” Gildarts and Molly both sat on the sand across from one another.

“So you’re saying that fire is a creation and it can only come about when two sticks make love?” Molly inferred.

“No no, you have to rub,” the man’s eyes widened, she was too young to be thinking so much about making love and kissing boys.

“Like this?” Molly said, watching Gildarts’ set up.

The man had created a bed of kindling, picked out a good fire starting friction stick and set it between them, so that Molly and he could take turns when revving up the friction. Surrounding the kindling was an organized scatter of sticks.

“More like this, now you have to channel the friction with heat and movement, which’ll catch against the kindling and spark fire.” Gildarts stated, and began the rolls between his palms. After a speedy moment, he was smelling smoke and passed it over to Molly. Ushering her to make the final push.

“On OmniTelevision they also blow on it,” Molly said.

“It’s too early to do that, that’s only if your smoking embers don’t have a draft. The ocean breeze provides plenty, if you blew now it would snuff out the staring of the flames,” Gildarts informed and then reminded himself to smile. Life was a process meant to be lived one step at a time.

“Right,” the pigtailed girl nodded and fixed her gaze on mimicking Gil’s every movement, rolling the piece of wood into the other smoking pieces with vigor.

“Is it easier for you to do cause you don’t have a hand?” Molly asked.

“Uh… I mean technically my hand is made of steel, which makes it harder, no fingerprints to help me grip the wood,” Gildarts usually forgot about the lack of his appendages, since he’d lived most of his life with them. The main times he was reminded of his lack of, was when he had phantom pains, thankfully, it wasn’t as often as it was when he’d first lost his limbs, but he’d learned to repress pain very well throughout his life of fighting and creating destruction.

“There! Keep that pace! Remember creating fire is the transference of one energy to another, which will burn the wood to keep it sustained, there! There!” Gildarts was getting excited as spouts of flame were catching on the dead brush he’d set as kindling.

“Yay! Look Gil I’m doing it!” Gildarts couldn’t have been more transfixed, not by the fire, but by the fact that she had learned so quickly. So this is what it was like to be a father.

“It’s catching! Molly wonderful job! I’ll build the wood around it,” Gildarts said and his hand reached over to the pile they’d merged.

As Gildarts was creating the tent-shaped tipi, Molly had jumped up and glomped Gildarts, tackling him into the beaches sand, “You’re the best, that was soooo fun! Thank you!”

This was the first time Molly had ever shown him gratitude, he soaked it up, feeling his insides warm to goop, and Molly shrieked, “Ew! I touched your icky bloody wound! Germs! Germs!” She ran off toward the ocean, and those who had watched were either laughing, or had roused a soft smile.

Gildarts wasn’t used to being the center of attention and had bided his wait time by creating more logs for the fire, he was grateful when Molly came back and asked, “So, everyone’s set up their chairs?”

Gildarts was the only one who hadn’t set up proper accommodations. Molly rolled her eyes, it figured. “Now that my hands are free of Gil’s blood, who wants s’mores?”