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[color=slategray][sub]Featuring:[/sub][/color] [color=17aa99][sub][b]A Double[/b][/sub][/color]
[color=slategray][sub]Location: The beach
Mentioning: HIS FRIENDS [@smarty0114] [@Silent Observer][/sub][/color][/center][hr]
[indent]Look, everyone had priorities. No, really! From the top of the food chain down, everyone had their priorities. Things they wanted to focus on. Things that required effort. Sometimes, people had their priorities mixed up. They [i]wanted[/i] things they thought they [i]needed[/i]. It caused problems! In some instances, it caused death. Humans were just that, human. It led to priority mixups, which sometimes led to problems! Big ones, even.

Humans were weird. Emotions were weird. Lots of things humans were weird. Like, time. Ever thought about time? Humans are the [i]only[/i] creature on earth who keep time. A dog is never [i]late[/i], a bird will never check its watch, animals never think about their coming birthdays. Everyone keeps a schedule, has dates, thinks about what’s coming at lunchtime…

Because of these normalities, Alan Alexander Bishop was ‘special,’ or ‘different,’ depending on who you asked.

A Double, as he preferred to be called — or Double A, if [i]you[/i] preferred — didn’t much have priorities. Nor did he care about time. Those would be too stressful! If he had priorities, he wouldn’t be able to do whatever he wanted when he wanted to! If he adhered to the fear of running out of time, he would never spend time doing what he loved, just working.

No, A Double was raised better than that. He was born on this beautiful, majestic planet to have a good time appreciating it for just that. Beauty and majesty. Spend your time doing what you love and what makes you happy, that’s what his dad told him. So, that’s what he did. Almost one hundred percent of A Double’s time was devoted to hanging out with his friends, eating chips, and smoking weed.

This chunk of his time was for something else. He’d sent Q off to deal with the business part of this gathering, while he had taken all of his shovels and his pails, and gone off to the seaside. Now, he was chilling by the bonfire, closer to the ocean. While working on building himself a wonderful sandcastle, A Double learned two thing about himself, and one about the universe:

[list][*]One thing about himself: He was very good at digging holes
[*]Thing two about himself: He was not very good at building
[*]And one about the universe: Louis Sachar had lied. Digging holes did not build character.[/list]

And so, A Double had resigned himself to his fate. He had given up on actually [i]building[/i] a sand castle, and had instead decided to… attempt to craft himself a seat, of sorts. Really, it was closer in size to a throne. At the edge of where the water touched, A Double had moved the sand. He’d built himself a giant chair. Just big enough to seat himself, as he watched the ocean rise and fall.

His bare feet dangled from the chair into another hole he’d dug at the front of the chair, slowly filling up with the water of the ocean. The light of the bonfire cast his shadow out along the shore and into the ocean. The boy stared out at the starry sky, clutching in one hand his bong, his other hand clicking the lighter before the bowl lit.

He cleared the smoke out and sat the bong in its custom BongHolder™ in the arm of the chair and coughed a few times, before blowing the smoke out. He dropped his lighter to the side and rubbed tears out of his eyes. A Double was made emotional by the sight of the moon over the ocean, with the stars dotting the sky — was there a prettier sight to see that night? He didn’t think so.

Where were his friends to see this, anyway!? Probably off smoking and eating Doritos… Man, that was the one thing that could make this better! Doritos, that is. Wait a second…. A Double’s hand slapped around in the sand on the left side (the bong side) of his chair, and he grabbed his backpack, unzipping it and pulling out a family sized bag of Cooler Ranch Doritos.

He tore the bag open and stuffed a handful of the tortilla chips into his mouth. Crunching and munching on them, he could feel more tears formulating. Wiping them away with his chip-less hand, A Double realized the truth of the matter: it had been maybe twenty minutes (he wasn’t sure, he didn’t keep time) since Q had left him, and he missed her. He missed them all!

[color=17aa99][b]“I wish my friends could see this, man,”[/b][/color] he choked out, blinking a few tears down his cheeks, as he crunched more chips.[/indent]