[treasure] Searching the Ever-Shifting Tidepools

In Writing Only Prompts ・ By straysoul

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The sun sat high and proud in the sky, heating the sand to just above tolerable temperatures. Not many symprites were on the beach at this time, opting for staying in the shade of the trees or cooling off in the calm ocean waves. There was one, however, taking advantage of the nearly empty beach to search around for some useful things for her shell-ter.

Eden reaches up to the brim of the large sun hat that sat crookedly on her head. She shifts the hat back and forth to fit it over her heart-shaped horns with a sharp tug, the last thing she'd want is some stray breeze to take her accessory from her. The shade cast by the hat allowed her to avoid the worst of the sun, but the heat rising from the sand made the white-scaled symprite hurry over to her destination. Intent on searching through the tidepools, Eden was quick to jog across the beach, after fixing her hat, and to the cooler grey stones of the pools.

She breathes a sigh of relief as her pastel yellow hooves clack against the cooler gray stones of the tidepools. Surely this place would have items worth keeping. The ocean always washed every type of odd trinket or fish into the small pools until the tide rose once more to take the trapped treasures back at night. Fiddling with the woven basket she held at her elbow, Eden squats down to peer into the clear waters swaying gently against the stones that trapped it. A gentle smile settles on Eden's maw as her soft pink gaze flicks about the shimmering waters.

Every now and then she'd catch sight of bright purple flashes of multiple Flashy Lilas darting about the first pool, hiding from any movement that betrays Eden's position over the pool. Eden giggled as they darted about, as cute as those fish were, she was looking for a bit more to either sell or decorate her home with. She reaches slowly into the waters, wanting to be careful not to scare the fish too much, and begins flipping the sparkling shells over. With a disappointed hum, Eden sets about flipping them back over, unsatisfied. Leaving the pool the way she found it, the white-scaled symprite stands back up and makes her way over to another pool, carefully stepping over loose stones and avoiding stepping in small holes.

Eden crouches by the second, bigger pool with a hopeful hum as she scans the surface of the sand under the water. A few Brilliant Gemfish glittered brightly, the sun's rays making the gems embedded in the fish's scales scatter color across the calm water. Curling her biote in delight at the spectacle of colors, Eden gently reaches into the tidepool and begins to repeat the process from before. Check out each shell, top, and bottom, keep the ones that are in perfect condition, and flip the others back over.

As Eden was going through each shell, her hand brushed through the soft sand on the bottom of the pool. As it does so, she ends up tapping her knuckles against something hard. With a curious hum, the soft-colored symprite leans forward, setting her knees on the edge of the tidepool's stone wall. She frees up both of her hands by setting the basket of shells aside and begins to gently shift the sand aside. It takes a few, long minutes to clear up enough sand for her to see what the item was.

An old and worn Seaside Chest.

Jackpot.

With a delighted chirp, Eden carefully makes her way into the tidepool, careful to not disturb the fauna too much, and begins to pull at the edge of the chest. With how deeply it was buried, and how the sand kept pulling back like quicksand, it took Eden roughly an hour to finally free the chest from its watery home. She hefts the large chest out of the water and places it down on the stone before taking a moment to catch her breath. This seemed like a good time to call it a day, the haul was good and it was best not to test one's luck too much.