Page 7 of Holiday Wishes and Tentacle Dreams
Even the stores that shuttered for the season put up the cutest decorations for Christmas. The olive oil store to the left of them had an elaborate holiday village in its window, and the owners had the lights on a timer so they would pop on at night. Across the street, the pottery shop had erected a gorgeous kiln-fired clay tree. The town even strung lights down at the public beaches, despite it being winter.
Doren adored it all. Their alien culture didn’t have holidays like that, at least not according to Mother and Father. Having never been to the home planet, Doren wouldn’t know firsthand.
“It’s all so delightful!” Doren couldn’t control the excitement in their voice. “Humans have developed such interesting technology. What a boon to use it for the winter celebration!”
Bard rubbed at their eyes with a sigh. “You are one hundred percent going to get caught.”
The two of them turned down a shrub-lined public path as Doren scoffed. “What do you speak of?”
“You talk like a historical novel!” Bard shouted, then quickly looked around, checking to see if any humans were near.
“I? I speakest not so.”
Bard groaned. “Now you’re just fucking with me. You have to be.”
Doren couldn’t help themself. It was fun to taunt their sibling. Bard was so easily annoyed.
“Perhaps I employ a more expansive vocabulary than some humans. But that’s only due to my appreciation of their linguistics and brain mechanisms. If you made an honest attempt to read any Ben Jonson or Aphra Behn, you might comprehend my fascination.”
“Well, you’re not a seventeenth-century playwright, and neither is anyone who lives here. You just come off as a weirdo.”
Doren didn’t know how to respond, but it soon didn’t matter as they had reached the largest of the public beaches, Endless Sand Beach. An ostentatious name, maybe, but itdidhave a lot of sand.
Doren smirked as they turned to their sibling. “Let’s the two of us play before we return to the depths. The surf is fabulous today, and there are longboards hidden in my cache. If we make our way down the beach, we’ll have more privacy. The houses further out are uninhabited during the winter months, other than a couple of locals, and they all love me. So, no need to worry. It’s been too long for you, sib.”
“I came all this way to bring you back!” Bard’s face was suddenly red and splotchy. “I’m not going to?—”
A loud crash sounded from the beach just beyond them as a good-sized wave hit the wet sand. From the longing that lit up Bard’s eyes, Doren knew they’d won, regardless of Bard’s protestations.
With a sigh, Bard gave in. “Fine. An hour. Then we’re going home.”
Doren giggled with delight, stripping off their shirt to reveal the sun-kissed and muscular chest of their human form. They’d modeled it after a surfer they’d met at a beach further south sixty years prior.
“Come on,” Bard said, rolling their eyes. “Who would believe that a human would surf bare-chested at the end of November? It’s too cold for any normal person.”
“I despise wetsuits,” Doren called out as they darted forward, eager to get out on the water. Out of the corner of their eye, Bard reluctantly removed their shirt. Bard had gone for a much beefier form than Doren’s, muscular and dark-haired. Dorenwas fairly lean and sported a light blonde beard, while Bard was wide and solid as a rock, with a smooth, clean-shaven face.
It was like Bard had deliberately chosen the polar opposite of Doren. Maybe they had. They got along well—Doren considered Bard both sibling and best friend—but Bard had always concerned themself with differentiating from their siblings.
Doren had never cared about such things. Which perhaps was a privilege of being firstborn. After all, they’d had fifty years of their parents’ full attention before Bard was born.
Ah, well. The least they could do was help loosen Bard up.
“Come on!” Doren shouted, running down the beach, the sand giving way under their footfalls. After three quarters of a mile, they reached an old wooden dock and bent down to fetch their gear from underneath it. Doren waded out until they were waist deep in water and waited with both longboards as Bard caught up to them.
Bard’s eyes flashed as they sped out to meet Doren and wordlessly grabbed a surfboard. Before long, the two of them were aloft, speeding along atop a wave.
Doren couldn’t help but let out a ringing laugh. Even Bard couldn’t help but smile, which made Doren laugh even louder. The spray in their faces as they shot forward was bracing, a perfect shock to diffuse their previous argument.
The whole town spread out before them as the wave brought them closer to land. An old woman sitting out on her ocean-facing porch waved at the two of them. She was hard at work crocheting a colorful afghan and seemed unfazed by Doren and Bard’s shirtlessness.
She was so cute! These humans weren’t like the ones that went after Ren. They were kind. They happily provided multiple peppermint lattes a day. They smiled all the time and loved to chat about the Linwood Falls gossip. Doren refused to believe any human here would want to harm them.
Chapter Three
JAKE
“Why don’t you come live withme, sweetheart?” The words were compassionate, but there was an underlying edge to her question, as if his grandmother dreaded the response might be “yes.”