felix :: a.irwin

chapter one

The warm sand burned the soles of her feet, only the beginnings of what would soon be blisters. If not from her brother's old and pale blue flip-flops, which she was borrowing, that looked like they were one size too big (at least). She stood on the sandy bank, dry pieces of grass wedged in between her toes as the girl's eyes gazed across the blue landscape.

"C'mon Dakota," her mother's voice pulled her out of her trance. She trudged forwards toward the older woman, wrinkles decorating the edges of her eyes. Laughter lines. Sometimes Dakota felt like when she was older she'd have lines of age in the middle of her forehead from frowning too often. "The weather is perfect..."

Her mom started talking about something that Dakota had yet to pay attention to. The sun's rays were burning into her black tee, and every breath she took felt hot and sticky. She was mad at her mom for making her tag along with her today, out of all days. She had stayed up late watching reruns of her favorite show and had been planning to sleep in. Not being dragged out of the house at the crack of dawn (which was really nine o'clock, but for Dakota that was the crack of dawn).

Dakota felt like she would have been perfectly fine in her room sleeping or eating some honey nut cheerios and reading a good book... or trapped inside of the internet on her laptop.

Her mother's voice tugged her out of her thoughts again, "The water looks perfect. Are you sure you don't want to go in?" She gave her mom a blank stare, still cranky about her lack of sleep. "... Dakota?"

"Huh? Sorry." She sighed, "I was too busy thinking about the sleep I'm not currently getting." Her words dripped with sarcasm and she gave her mom a sickly sweet smile. "Don't mind me, I'm just going to lie here and catch up on those Z's." If the goddamn seagulls would just shut up. The end of her snappy sentence was hidden in her mind.

The 18-year-old rolled her eyes playfully at her mom and wrangled her curly hair into a makeshift ponytail, which she then strangled into the small hole in the back of her baseball cap to keep out of her face. The remaining tufts of hair she tried to shove up under the brim of her hair and out of sight. Dakota was proud to be biracial, her mom black and her dad white... But sometimes she could stand the things she had to do to tame her hair, although she loved her crazy curls.

"Alright then," The older one of the two chuckled a little at her daughter's attitude, "I'm going to take a dip and go on a walk along the shore. I'll be back in an hour. Don't forget to use sunscreen!" She was gone just like that, as Dakota started to fall in and out of sleep, her mom's silhouette blurring in the distance, until her body became a tiny blue speck in a sea of blue specks.

No sooner had she drifted off to sleep did it feel like Dakota was jolted awake again. Not by her own will however, it was a thud and a stinging sensation that caused her to sit upright very quickly, so much so that her head spun for a moment and the blood rushed from her head. Blinking away the spots, she looked around, feeling very startled and a little disconcerted.

"What the..." she rubbed her head where most of the pain she felt was coming from, and didn't see her mom anywhere in sight. But she did see a red Frisbee laying on her beach towel.

No sooner had she stood up to brush off her denim shorts, a large dog knocked her back onto her butt. With an oof, she hit the hot sand once again, and the canine that looked to be some kind of German Shepard mix began licking her face, and softly barking with excitement.

The slobbery animal took a couple steps back as Dakota lightly pushed it away, only for it to pounce onto the Frisbee secured in her hand, it's tail wagging. The dog's ears perked up as a name was shouted in the distance. As the figure came running closer, it was revealed to be a small blonde boy, looking to be maybe five to seven years old.

"Kitty!" The toddler clapped his tiny hands together and panted as he came to a stop in front of Dakota and the dog (apparently named Kitty). "You found my dog! Thank you!" The little boy smiled, one of his front teeth missing, and Kitty nuzzled up against the boy's neck, giving him a kiss on the cheek, "Ew, no kisses." Giggling, the kid wiped his cheek off with the hem of his light blue shirt, adding another smudge to the many stains he already had.

"You're welcome, that's what I do," Dakota's mouth curved up in a closed-lip smile to her joke, and she watched, amused, as Kitty continued to give the boy kisses. "Is this yours too?" She picked up the red Frisbee that was covered with slobber and held it out for him to take.

"No," he shrugged, "That's Calum's. Let's go back and find him! C'mon Kitty!" he grabbed her hand in his tiny one, and pulled her behind him. "I'm Felix, by the way. Felix Hemmings. What's your name?"

Dakota fought back a smile. "I'm Dakota." She copied his structure, "Dakota Crawford." They continued to walk down the shore of the beach, Kitty carried the Frisbee in his mouth, and Felix still held onto Dakota's hand. "Who's Calum?" The name seemed familiar rolling off her tongue, but she couldn't place a face to the name.

"My friend," the wind blew hair across Felix's forehead, and he swung his arms back and forth. "I also have two other friends with me, and my cousin. But my cousin is already kinda my friend anyways." He paused for a breath, "Also how old are you? I'm seven but I'll be eight soon, can you believe it? Kitty is gonna be four years old too, which is really exciting for him and me. I named him by the way. I'm pretty creative with names. And I think I'm gonna call you Kota, because Dakota is too hard for my mouth the say sometimes if I'm talking really fast... Like right now!"

Dakota tried to organize all the questions and answers in her head before replying. Felix was talking a mile a minute, and she could barely keep up with him. "I'm eighteen, and yeah you can call me Kota." She smiled down at him and he smiled back up at her. She felt pretty comfortable talking to the tot, and wondered if his friends talked as fast as he did. "You sure do talk fast for such a little one." Dakota grinned down at him.

"Yeah, that's what Lu says." Felix kicked a pebble with his grey-sandaled foot and then pointed at a seagull in the sky for Dakota to look at too, "He says that I have a lotta words for a lil' mouth." Then he added, "But he's like, nineteen whole years old! And he's probably just jealous because he's bad at talking to girls. Especially pretty ones like you." His blue eyes twinkled with mischief and Dakota let out a chuckle. "And I'm not little, I'm practically eight, Kota!"

"Of course, you're right, how silly of me," Dakota played along. "Thank you Felix."

"No problem. Michael tells me if you think a girl's pretty you should tell her. One time he told me that the more you give the more you get, but I don't even know what that means. I'm just good at remembering stuff." Felix took a breath of air before continuing, "And anyways, you're my only 'lady friend' so far. Right Kota? Well, I have a few back home, but I'm visiting my cousin Lu for the summer, so I only have a couple friends right now which are all guys. That's okay though because they're really nice. And they teach me cool stuff like how to restring a guitar."

"Sure thing," Dakota answered, and his grip on her hand tightened a little bit as he bent down to pick up a sand dollar, afterwards handing it to him, "Where are you from?"

"Darwin. Hey did you know there was a guy named Darwin and he figured out how people became people?"

They came around a corner and she saw a few teenagers that looked about her age, maybe a year or two older. Two of them were kicking around a football, and one of them was sitting on a lawn chair doing something on his phone. They were all guys, and she felt her heart rate quicken at the situation. Instead of continuing down the beach like Dakota had hoped he would, Felix pulled her faster behind him, running up the bank to the older boys.

"Cal!I found your Frisbee! And Kitty! And this girl!"

alright here's chapter one!! i'm super excited for this story to continue. 

comment, vote, read! <3 i love hearing your thoughts about the characters so far.

fleur x

(dedicated to mads b/c i miss her and i hope she's well xx)