The Beach, Sunday Morning

[endsthegame]

It wasn't, in the strictest sense of the word, really Ben's 24th birthday; relativistic space travel had a habit of making your age largely meaningless, a number rough to keep track of. After all, in an absolute sense, Ben was turning somewhere between a hundred and two hundred years old today, if not more, and that was assuming that it was still July 27th on their calendar, never mind any other number of factors that came into play when you crossed universes and space-time in all the ways they had.

So Ender felt that there was no real problem with having a party that wasn't, in the strictest sense of the word, a party. He'd gotten an ice cream cake the previous day and hidden it in Ben's moving mini-freezer-- the same freezer that he'd deposited on the beach just an hour ago by itself, trusting it to defend itself. (Ben had made it. Of course it would.)

He'd left some of Ben's friends some cordial messages mentioning the date last night handwavily but included no real imperative to be here, just a mention of the place and time. If that meant they'd have a quiet celebration with just the two of them and an ice cream cake, so be it. He wouldn't complain.

Now? Now he was back on the beach with a picnic blanket, waiting for Ben to come on by on his daily run.

[[ open. also to anyone who wants to use the beach, or wants to wish ben a happy birthday ]]

The Magic Box, Sunday, July 27

[not_every_mage]

The shop was still decorated for Halloween (or All Soul's Day, if one was Ferelden), and Anders had absolutely no intention of taking the decorations down. He had, however, decided the paper skeletons seemed a bit ... lacking. So the one near the door was now sported a dapper cloak made out of multicolored silks, and a stick of wood for a staff had been glued to one hand.

Satisfied with this work, Anders lit Elsa's candles and settled in for a day of reorganizing the bookshelves. He swore they were out of order every time he got there.

[Open shop, no OCD!]