"Careful, Godzilla, you're starting to sound more like Prince Charming than lizard," she warned without the typical biting criticism behind her voice. Rhiane was teasing the heir to the throne for expressing even a passing desire for her to enjoy the promised sunset since they spent the better part of the day either inadvertently or purposefully irritating one another. Her words were hyperbolic but not insincere. Luke [i]was[/i] charismatic when he had a mind to be and it easy to imagine why he was the royal heartthrob. People on a whole were willing to look past personality defects if the person in question was highly attractive. The few times that his highness lowered himself, albeit briefly, to anything approaching casual congeniality was made all that more magnetic because he was handsome. It was shallow but the former farmer had long ago accepted that humanity had done little to evolve beyond looking at the exterior and judging a person according to their symmetry or body proportions.

"Change of clothes on an island with no one else around- how unexpectedly modest of you, your highness," she remarked with a raised brow. Swimsuits were practical and she had nothing against their use, not that she ever had one, but she was also not opposed to nudity on a whole. Most of the rural lands harbored pervasively conservative views that made them more misogynistic than the cities. It was this adherence to traditions of centuries past that had made her struggle more than she ought to to establish herself as a female farmer with two male relative employees. Rhiane had never felt bound to those societal expectations and had been naked before several men that she had no inclination to see after their night of passion had concluded. The media had assumed that the princess elect, despite her sultry appearance, had been a product of her environment without the streak of rebellion she possessed.

"I assure you I [i]could[/i] jump off that cliff, though, without panicking. Unless you have a doctor lying in wait at the bottom of the water there isn't anything that I fear out there," she asserted. What she was dancing around delicately was that no one with a well-developed survival instinct would have ever entered the contest. Even the optimistic candidates had to admit the chances of their death being delayed more than a decade in the future were woefully slim. Not every fellow peer had been a daredevil but they had been on a whole a brave lot. No matter how firmly their eyes were on the prize, each woman that aimed for the crown had to accept and be prepared for their eventual murder, and they had to pass enough psychological assessments that even the queen and judges were confident they would not become psychologically unraveled as their time drew near. Mental fortitude had been just as important a quality as physical endurance.

The princess elect wasn't sure how to respond to the offering of teaching her how to swim. While she didn't want to reject him as a swim instructor she couldn't imagine it would be remotely pleasant for him to teach a lowly commoner such as herself. Then again, Luke did not strike her as someone who made generous proposals flippantly. Either he truly believed it to be necessary for survival (a statement she found ludicrous for both farmer and future princess) or was motivated by unknown reasons to make certain she went into the water. Not even the image manager would care that she was unable to swim. If anything she suspected such a deficiency would be spun into another facet of the Cinderella narrative, proof of how her poverty made her one of the masses, and that no amount of wealth would transform her completely beyond those roots.

Despite her nap earlier Rhiane had begun to doze off again in the comfort of the hovercraft as they passed over the more familiar landscape of rolling hills, plowed fields, and grazing livestock. It was her fiance's words that jolted her out of her drowsy half-sleep and made her sit upright to get a better view. Rhiane had read how vast the ocean was but [i]seeing[/i] the seemingly endless stretch of blue towards the horizon was more breathtaking than she had thought it could be. Her seat belt protested as she lifted off the plush cushions to crane her neck and gawk at the expanse. Luke had tossed out the words 'island' and 'sea' and she had known what he meant but not in the same way she did now. Her breath caught in her throat as she spotted cresting waves and the movement of tides beneath them.

"This is where you go every time you need to relax?" she asked incredulously as they began their descent towards the donut. Everything, from the guest quarters of the palace, to the breakfast options that were longer to her arm, to the private pool in Luke's suite, had seemed so absurdly luxurious it was divorced from the reality of her former life. These did not compare to an uninhabited oasis only frequented by the crown prince that allegedly had a cliff suited for driving and unobstructed view of dusk. Rhiane's head spun as she realized how vast the differences were between herself and the aristocracy. They were not of different worlds but of different galaxies.

They landed, Luke yanked off his boots, and came to her side of the hovercraft presumably to help her out. Bewildered by his almost kind disposition she slipped off her flats and exited the vehicle with wonder at the soft feel of sand beneath her feet. The closest she had come to a similar texture before this moment was standing in the dirt of a barren patch of land close to the road but still within the borders of her property. The foreign sensation wasn't unpleasant but it was strange how different it was to the firm footing of land. "Why wouldn't you bring someone here?" she asked, staring down at the granules between her toes and the remnants of broken shells that had been washed ashore some time ago. "There has to have been someone in your life you wanted to share this amazing place with," she breathed as she reached down to feel the sand with her fingers. It was clear she would be content to stay in that very spot rather than exploring what else the island had to offer as she was hypnotized by the newness of this small trip.