Softball practice had been fun, but it was always fun. Though Satu suspected that it'd been even more fun just because they all knew that it was the last one before school started. Really, practice hardly even counted for anything now. It was like a sort of thing that they did for the fun of it. Satu didn't get why that meant they had to goof off more than normal. Softball was supposed to be serious. Or it was to her but over half of her teammates had spent this last practice being goofs. It had been funny for awhile, but the real fun had been when Satu had cracked the ball so hard that it slammed Theresa right in the face. Now that was fun and she was pretty sure the girl wouldn't be just pretending to play shortstop anymore. Nope, she'd do it because now she knew what could happen when she wasn't paying attention when a line drive came shooting right at her face. Satu had pulled on her best innocent face when asked if she did that on purpose and had just said that she'd only been hitting the ball, wasn't her fault that Theresa was talking instead of paying attention. She'd had it explained that it was a just for fun practice, and she'd pretended to understand but she didn't. Why would she? Softball practice wasn't for fun.
When she'd been dropped off she'd been surprised to see that she was the only one home. Valterri was probably still at practice, or Linnea had gone to pick him up and taken him to a late lunch to celebrate or something. 'You said that she does lunch with one of her friends the day before you go back to school,' Blastoise pointed out as Satu let him climb up onto her shoulder. 'Maybe she's still out. Does it matter? Can we go to the river?'
Her mother had said something about it possibly raining soon, too. That and Satu never actually needed a reason to go down to the river. She was a water elemental and if she wanted to go and play in the water then she was going to. Things had been said about being careful because there were mermaids or something like that, but Satu hadn't really listened then and she wasn't now as she made her way down the long, sloping lawn to the river's edge. See, this was why they were the only family she knew of with a house by the river who didn't have to go and stay in a hotel or someone else's house just because the river had decided to flood. Her mom had been smart enough to pick a place high enough up that things like that wouldn't happen. Was it really that hard? Oh and speaking of families that didn't know, there was one of the Snow boys up a tree. Even without getting a clear look she was going to guess it was the weird one, Otter, the earth elemental. 'Say hi.' Satu didn't feel like it. She felt like diving into the river and giving her familiar a good scare, which was exactly what she did. And when she surfaced she was closer to the other side. Tredding water, she worked herself up into the shallows and wrung out her hair before searching for her small familiar. Ah, there he was, back on the shore on the other side. "Coward!" she shouted, grinning. 'Am not!'