First thing after their fight, Tavras needed to heal the gaping wound in his shoulder, obviously. Some water flowed around his shoulder and took on its glowing form. This did not change the appearance of his shoulder at all, but perhaps he had numbed the pain. They wandered back over to the tide pools where Tavras claimed to have an easier time of healing wounds.

While he healed himself, Val took the quiet moment to think about her newfound situation.

“Oh no,” she breathed.

“Oh no, what?” Tavras asked, lifting his attention from his shoulder, all better now.

Quickly, she pulled out her phone to check its condition. The case still felt wet in her hand, as must be the device inside. “Tavras, could you dry off my phone?” She asked this hastily, panicked that her phone had already been ruined.

“You have one of those things,” he stated. Based on the low tone of disapproval in his voice, Tavras seemed to not like technology.

“Yes, I have a phone,” she agreed plainly. “Can you save it?”

“I think that you would be better off without one anyway.” Tavras shrugged.

Val could only gape at him in shock. Would he really refuse to fix her phone just because he did not like technology?

“That is one thing that I have never understood about technological advancement. Why do people have to be so obsessed with their devices in these modern times?” He continued to go on in a little monologue.

As an old god, Tavras must not have adapted to technology very well. This came as no surprise, given the way that he wore leather clothes and carried a stone knife on him. Tavras looked more like a man belonging to an ancient, tribal village than the modern world.

“Uh…” was all that Val could say. If Tavras had not accepted technology on his own, nothing that she could say would convince him otherwise, right now.

Just because he lived off the grid did not mean that Val should have to live that way too. Her mouth opened to express this, but Tavras had already pulled all of the water from her phone.

“I have no idea if that will make it work, but there you go.”

“Thank you!” she said, truly appreciative that he had been willing to help. Now, she could only hope that her phone had survived the dip in the sea. The screen lit up as she tried powering it on, making her sigh with relief. “Thank Suvier.”

Did Val really just invoke the God Supreme’s name in front of the Sea Itself? “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I meant no offense by that.”

“None taken. Even I bow my head to the God Supreme.” Tavras admitted that in a disjointed voice, sounding quite dissatisfied with having a superior.

It was weird, considering how Tavras must know Suvier in reality as an actual person. Already, it was crazy enough for Val that she had met the Sea Itself.

Once her phone had turned on, Val checked for networks, but none existed for her phone to connect to. It had been a vain hope to get cell service on this island, but she had hoped nonetheless. “Hey Tavras, you call this your Paradise, right?”

“Yep, that I do.”

“Does your Paradise have Wi-Fi by any chance?”

“No, of course not. That wouldn’t be much of a paradise if it did, now would it?”

With a sigh of admission, Val had to give him that much. Tavras’s version of a paradise would not have any Internet, despite how anyone in the modern world would find this much more akin to the Netherworld. Rather than bemoaning about this for complaint’s sake, Val brought up her concerns instead.

“I had promised my mother that I would text her every evening to let her know that I’m doing well. While I did tell her that I would be in a dead zone for a few days, if I am staying here with you.... I just don’t want her to worry.”

“Yeah,” Tavras drawled out, “I hear you. Well, it sounds like your mother needs to stop being overly protective around you, starting now. She will figure out that you’re okay whenever you find yourself able to reach out to her again.”

Her brow scrunched up in a glare at Tavras. “Except, she will worry about me so much in the meantime. She’s just a mortal woman.”

A sideways smirk lifted up one corner of Tavras’s lips. “Sure she is, but she is also a grown woman—not that I know anything about her or anything—but I would sure hope so anyway!” Tavras started laughing nervously at first, before growing into a heartier laugh at his lame joke. “Trust me, it will be good for your mother to stop hovering around you so much. How old are you, by the way? Are you somewhere between fifteen and twenty years old?”

“Eighteen,” she specified shortly. There was no way that she looked fifteen. Val still felt mad in her disagreement about contacting her mother, but if Tavras would not take her anywhere with cell service or an Internet connection, there would not be much that she could do about it.

“Also, as you could probably guess,” Tavras continued, “I do not have any random wall outlets on this island. Your phone will be as good as useless while you are here.”

“Still, thank you for fixing it. That means a lot to me.” At least she would still be able to call her mother as soon as she returned to civilization. Plus, she got to preserve the first few pictures of Foofy that she had ever taken of him, after she had rescued him from the local animal shelter.

On her phone, she opened up the photos app to show these to Tavras. “Look. I have some pictures of Foofy! I’m really happy that I will get to keep these.”

Tavras leaned over to observe her phone, but his face squinted up with confusion. “Why do you have pictures of your dog when he is right here?” He gestured over to one of the adjacent tide pools where Foofy stuck his nose down to the surface.

“Because he’s cute.” Val played a short video clip of Foofy wolfing down his kibble as quickly as he possibly could.

For a solid few seconds, only the sound of Foofy’s recorded munches and crunches could be heard.

“Sorry,” Tavras said at last. “I just don’t find land creatures very cute, especially when they look like they’re trying to choke themselves.”

Her mouth dropped open with shock and tucked her phone away. Now, she opened her hands out to Foofy sniffing around in a tide pool. “You mean to say that you don’t find Foofy cute at all?”

Tavras pressed his lips together, almost as if he held himself back from speaking his mind.

The yelp of a puppy came from Foofy as he leaped back from the tide pool.

“Your beast was trying to disturb aquatic life. A crab just pinched his nose,” Tavras said with a chuckle. “Maybe I found that a little cute.”

“I can’t believe that Mr. Crab would do something like that to Foofy!” Val cried.

Tavras had nothing else to say about this. Some moments passed, and he pushed himself up to his feet. “We should get going.”

Val put her phone on battery saver mode and powered it back off again. From now on, she would only intend to use it as a camera, namely to take pictures of Foofy for the duration of her stay on Tavras’s Paradise. With that, she hopped up to follow Tavras elsewhere on the island.

According to their arrangement, Val might just have to stay here in training for a long while in order to meet his standards.