“Kin, I told you not to call me that.” A raven-haired boy was complacently sitting on the shore, his hands covered in matted sand. He made a face at the person deemed his best friend, another boy a year his junior who was running his way. “It’s Oran. Or-­an,” he articulated.

“B-But…” As Kin stopped in front of Oran, his lower lip jutted out and his blue eyes rounded adorably, forming one of the convincing pouts he was nearly famous for.

Oran’s expression looked conflicted as the sight of Kin’s pout touched his heart. In the end, he shoved his small hand in Kin’s face, and the younger boy toppled backwards into the sand with an indignant yelp, the pout dissolving in the shadow of surprise. “Don’t do that,” Oran said as he leaned over his friend, ebon bangs falling in front of his eyes. “You know I can’t be mad at you when you make that face.”

“That’s exactly why I make it.” Kin grinned and sat up, a giggle vibrating up his throat. Oran thought his laugh sounded like a little bell.

“Yeah, well…” Oran shook his head and went back to what he was doing before Kin had interrupted him. His seven-year-old hands were craftily constructing a sandcastle, complete with three-inch moat, a thick, brown outer wall, and turrets that towered above the rest of the two-foot-high edifice of carefully compacted and meticulously sculpted sand. Some might call Oran a perfectionist, and he did always score highest in his class, but he liked to refer to himself as simply a hard worker. However, others knew better; Oran fell just short of a child prodigy.

Kin leaned over his shoulder. “Can I help?” he asked.

Normally, Oran accepted help from no one. He was independent, always liking to do things on his own. It was almost a guarantee that he would turn someone down if they asked to help, and therefore he never got many offers. Except from Kin; he never refused Kin. A smile played over Oran’s delicate, roseate lips as he nodded.

“Yay!” Kin flopped down beside the older boy, disrupting a small section of the wall and causing a bit of sand to trickle into the moat. Oran didn’t flinch, but wordlessly repaired the damage, still smiling. Kin had that effect on him.

------------p-a-g-e--b-r-e-a-k--------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the sun began to set over the ocean spread before them, Kin and Oran sat on the end of the dock, swinging their legs that were too short to reach the water, though Kin’s bare toes could skim the glassy, wrinkled surface if he pointed them downwards and stretched a little. He’d always been a little taller than Oran.

Fire spilled across the blue sheet of ocean as the sun dipped below the horizon. Oran’s gray eyes flickered with the reds and oranges of twilight, gilding his metallic irises to a more coppery color. He felt something tug on his gut as he looked out to the crease between the sky and the water, as if some portent was looming there, something dark and forbidding.

It was waiting for him.

He shook his head, raven bangs skewing across his forehead and catching on his eyelashes, drawing lines across his field of vision. Then, the lines disappeared as he felt soft fingers caress his face, tucking the long strands behind his ear. He looked over at Kin, who was smiling gently and bringing his hand back to his side. “You need to cut your hair,” he said.

“You’re one to talk,” Oran quipped with an underlying laugh. His eyes roamed over Kin’s honey-brown tresses that fell across his forehead on an angle. The sides of his hair grew a little past his ears and the rest was just a little longer. Overall, Kin’s hair was just as long as Oran’s, though with a choppy sort of flare that Oran’s even, black locks lacked.

“Hey, look!” Kin whispered, as if trying to preserve the veil of peace that was descending over the coastal town. He was craning his neck back and looking up at the sky, pointing over his head. “It’s the moon.”

Oran followed his friend’s gaze and saw the iridescent half-moon that was hanging low in the sky, in a realm of dark blues and blacks that was all its own with only the company of the stars. There was a no man’s land between the setting sun and the rising moon. While the sun danced in the flames of sunset and the moon swam in the shadows of night, there was that space in between that was a mix of pink and gray and violet, a space that would forever remain between the heavenly bodies. Oran always wondered if the moon ever wanted to touch the sun, or if it was content with remaining in its nighttime dominion. Did it look down at the sun as it set and long to be beside it, not on the opposite side of the sky? Did it ever try to breach that perpetual no man’s land and reach the sun? Did it…

“Oran.” Kin’s voice derailed his train of thought. The raven-haired youth turned to his friend, admiring for a moment the way the light of twilight played off of Kin’s sun-kissed golden skin, making it glow. Then, he noticed how Kin was worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, and that his tiny hands were gripping the edge of the dock almost nervously.

“What is it, Kin?” Oran asked softly, leaning closer to the younger boy concernedly.

“Do you think…” Kin paused, as if preparing himself, before looking Oran square in the eye and blurting, “Do you think that we’ll always be together?”

For once, the quick-minded boy was struck dumb. Or perhaps that wasn’t true; he often found his mind working at a generally slower pace whenever in the mellowing presence of his friend. Finally, Kin’s words registered with his brain, and Oran replied, “Of course,” as if Kin were silly for even asking such a question.

“Do you swear?”

“I swear.”

“…Do you pinky-swear?”

“…What?”

Kin held out his left pinky, the solemn look on his face almost making Oran laugh. “Do you pinky-swear?” he asked again.

Oran suppressed a chuckle and then nodded, hooking his right pinky finger around Kin’s. “I pinky-swear.”

And with that, Kin’s bright smile returned, seeming to replace the fading light of the sun with a radiance all its own. Kin was just like that. “Good.”

Oran nodded, putting his arm around Kin’s scrawny shoulders. “Yes.”

It was very good.