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After two days of unpacking boxes and making the rounds to find a grocery store, gas station, and decent ice cream shop, both Eddie and Christopher are ready for a break from their move. The last thing Eddie wants to do is add another item to the “find a handyman” list or hassle another utility company, and Christopher - Christopher wants to see the ocean.
The drive there is hell - any driving in LA might be hell, Eddie is starting to suspect - but they manage to get there in one piece. Unloading the car means wrangling a makeshift beach bag, a blanket, multiple pairs of shoes, and a very antsy boy with crutches. He manages it with less finesse than he might want but it’s fine. It's fine. His parents aren’t here. No one’s going to comment on the awkward juggling act. Besides, it’s worth it when Christopher finally gets his toes in the sand and laughs, loud and clear and delighted.
“Come on, Dad!”
Eddie swallows past the tightness in his throat and hitches the duffel higher on his shoulder. “I’m coming. Pick out a spot for our stuff,” he says as normally as he can, and remembers to breathe.
This entire new life is all going to be worth it if he gets more moments like this; more time like this.
The afternoon passes in a blur: cool water, blue skies, sandwiches that are only a little extra crunchy from the sand blown into the open duffel bag. (“Guess we’re eating real sand-wiches, huh.” “Dad.”) He forgot to pack napkins and the water doesn’t stay cold for nearly long enough but they have sunscreen on most of the time and fend off the pretzel-stealing seagulls, so Eddie calls it a win.
As the sun sinks slowly towards the horizon, Christopher’s boundless energy winds down as well. They eventually end up the little island of their blanket hunting for the best of the baby carrots in the bag. It’s the first time in days that Eddie’s been exhausted and actually proud about it. Somehow the feeling is clean and hard-earned in a way that arranging furniture or wrangling change of address forms just can’t match. Christopher is hardly better off, having done most of the supervising for the lumpy, beautiful mess of a sandcastle just beyond Eddie’s toes. Looking at the handprints they’ve left on the sides makes Eddie blink too hard.
They’re building something here, lopsided and unremarkable though it may be to everyone else’s eye. They’re making it themselves with their bare hands and imagination, creating something out of nothing. Thinking about the unevenly spaced towers, the shallow moat, Eddie can almost allow himself to believe that he can do this. He can make this work. He can be the father Christopher deserves.
Instead of risking having to explain to his son why he’s glassy-eyed, Eddie leans back on an arm to take in the orange-hued sky. That’s when he sees it: something thin and high, moving westward and shimmering like a cloud. He tracks the way it moves automatically. Not a plane or helicopter, way too high for a kite, so -
Another shape soars overhead, this one low enough that he can see the sinuous way it swims through the air. Behind them someone gasps with delight.
“The dragons are here!”
As if it’s a cue more come into view, flying from the city out over the ocean to delighted noises from the beach-goers. The golden light turns every dragon into a living jewel: this one turquoise, that one bronze, this one a swirl of green and gray. It’s only when Eddie’s chest complains that he realizes he’s momentarily forgotten to breathe.
“Hey Christopher,” he manages, looking down at his son. “Did you hear that?”
“Can you see the dragons?” Christopher’s head is angled up, the sun glinting on his glasses.
Eddie’s heart pangs. “Yeah, I can.”
Christopher grins in surprised delight. “What do they look like?”
Eddie begins to describe them: the colors and movements, how none of them have wings - markers of seaborn dragons, an old documentary narrator reminds Eddie, who in turns reminds Christopher. They must be going back out to sea to their families; a shoal - crest - crush? He’ll have to look it up - of dragons. Most snake their way across the sky with fluid movements; several seem to bound, as if the air turns solid just under their paws, just for them. One dragon, marbled like the colors of the deep ocean, swims down and does a series of loop-de-loops just over the beach that bring out cheers from the onlookers. Eddie swears to Christopher that the dragon seems to be grinning when they fly away.
Christopher tilts his head to one side, attention focusing somewhere else. “It sounds like they’re singing,” he says after a long moment.
Eddie pauses to listen as well. All he catches is the wash of waves and excited remarks from the people around them. He can’t hear anything that might be song, but they’re dragons. Who’s to say what’s possible?
“Maybe they are,” he replies, looking at his amazing son; at the hint of sunburn on the tip of his nose and the sand in the curls of his hair. At how he’s excited and vibrant and so very alive in this new place, this new city Eddie’s chosen for them. Something very much like hope is rising up underneath his lungs.
The dragons are going home, and so are they.
“Maybe they are.”