“All right, now it’s Parker and Grace’s turn!”
It was the shy girl who spoke, which caught the attention of not just Tina, but the twins and the boy as well. They didn’t seem to have a plan in mind; the twins, who appeared to be Parker and Grace, smiled at each other while the boy didn’t seem to like the idea.
“What? Aw come on, our mermaid prisoner needs to be punished!”
The boy knelt down in the sand, and confirmed Tina’s fears that he had spotted her ticklishness when he stuck a finger into the pale sliver of skin sticking out of the sand. Her soft midriff squished with his poke, and she tried her best to stifle a giggle that wanted to jump out of her throat; her small squirms began to shake some of the sand built up around her body, which caused the shy girl to step in and grab the boy’s shoulder.
“No, don’t!”
Tina was thankful for her saviour, even if the girl had been accidentally doing most of the tickling earlier. The boy stood up to face her, which caused her to wince in shyness, but staring up from underneath the wide brim of her hat, she gestured to the now-slightly cracked mound of sand around Tina’s chest.
“Don’t make her move, then you’ll ruin the sculpture! We were trying to win a contest, remember!”
The boy stopped, and bit his lip; Tina had seen this attitude in her younger sister plenty of times, where a child knew the other one was right but they didn’t want to admit it. The shier girl continued.
“Besides, she’s not a prisoner! She’s a mermaid queen! And Parker and Grace can be her princesses, they have red hair too!”
The idea seemed to get the twins excited.
“Ooh, cool! Yes, yes let’s do that!”
The boy was outvoted. “Fine.”
Tina felt inclined to join in with a friendly “sounds good to me!”, but the boy and the girl with the huge hat both ignored her as they began to dig holes on either side of her. The twins helped with one apiece, quickly creating two small dugouts similar to the one Tina had sat down in before. The speed ended there as Parker and Grace sat themselves in; they were able to twist their torsos to help pile stiff on, but once the vague shapes of their mermaid tails settled in, they had to lean back and leave the rest to their two friends.
Over the course of the decorations, Tina gathered that the boy’s name was Daniel, and the girl with the glasses was named Violet; their relation to each other, she couldn’t grasp, though Daniel seemed to try and act the boss whenever he could and when Violet couldn’t stand up for herself. Eventually, Tina also clued in that of the twins, Parker was on her left and Grace on her right, but if there were any telltale giveaways or small differences between them, she was uncertain. The two were, however, less subtle about their ticklishness than Tina was.
“Heyhehehe! That ticklesAHAHA!!!”
“Stahahap! AHehehehe!”
“Stop squirming! We’ll have to start over if you knock it down!”
Violet could seem very shy, but every once in a while she stood her ground just like she did with Tina, and Grace quieted down as best she could as the young girl patted down the sand around her midriff. The mermaid princesses, like their “mother”, received long beautiful tails and crowns made out of sand; every once in a while, Daniel or Violet would get a new idea for a decoration to add on to Tina as well. The girl was thankful that the kids had an umbrella for her to be under for the next while, though she admittedly wasn’t sure how well she’d explain this absence to her manager when she got back. The sandcastle contest was a big feature on weekends, and she was helping out with it, but…
“HEYAHAHA! You did that on purpose!”
Tina’s thoughts were disrupted when she craned her head to the left. The sand covering Parker’s upper torso had slid down and fallen off, while Daniel crouched over her with his hands close to her exposed sides.
“I did not! Just sit still!”
“You totally tickled me on purpose!”
“Daniel, stop!” ordered Violet, but Daniel just rolled his eyes and went back to work.
Eventually, the final touches were added. Tina wished she’d be able to see how well of a job they did from above, but for now, she was still stuck in the sand with her two “princess daughters”. Just like their mother, the girls had scale-like decorations on their tails, and royal designs carved into their fins and tops, though Tina’s was still the biggest. It was at the twins’ insistence that Daniel went closer to the surf to find two appropriately sized shells for their belly buttons as they asked to have piercings like their mother’s. Daniel and Violet then stood back and admired a job well done, a mermaid queen and her family; the boy’s snobby attitude had somewhat lessened, and the girl’s self-confidence seemed to have improved over the course of their build. That broken sandcastle was a thing of the past.
After a few rounds of pictures with their phones, Daniel turned to Violet.
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