Packing, when it came, was done separately but with affection, not fear. Tess packed slowly, the way she did everything that mattered to her, folding clothes carefully, choosing a sketchbook that was not her festival sketchbook but a newer one, still mostly blank, and placing it on top of her bag as if to say, I am ready to see what comes next. She packed a light jacket for early mornings at the centre, a pair of sturdy shoes for walking the shore, and a small, smooth stone she had found months before and kept on her windowsill, not as a lucky charm, but as a reminder of Greyhaven itself. Mara packed more quickly, and more loudly, with music on and a list she kept losing and finding again, throwing in training clothes and a whistle she had been given for the course, and a notebook in which she had already begun to jot down ideas for drills, in handwriting that was enthusiastic if not entirely legible. They helped each other in small, unforced ways: Tess lending Mara a spare bag when Mara's zipper stuck, Mara carrying Tess's heavier box downstairs without being asked, both of them laughing when they realised they had each packed, independently, the same battered, beloved snack for the journey. It was not a dramatic farewell. It was preparation, done side by side and then apart, with the easy affection of people who trust that they will see each other again soon.
Before their separate summers began, on an evening when the light stayed late and the air was warm enough for bare arms, Tess and Mara walked together to the shore. It was not a planned farewell, and neither of them called it one. It was simply what they had always done when something mattered: go to the water, look at it together, and let the quiet do part of the talking. The path down to the rocks was familiar under their feet, worn smooth in places by years of their own steps, and the smell of salt and seaweed rose up to meet them as they descended. A few gulls called overhead, and further out a small boat moved slowly across the harbour, leaving a pale wake behind it. Tess stopped at a tide pool she knew well, one that had taught her, over many seasons, how a small world could hold both stillness and change. The water in it was clear, and in its shallow depths a tiny hermit crab moved with great seriousness across the sand, and a starfish clung, orange and patient, to a rock. Mara crouched beside her, not because Tess needed her to, but because she wanted to see what Tess saw, and for a moment they were simply two sisters looking closely at the same small, miraculous place.
They sat on the rocks for a while as the evening deepened, talking in the easy, wandering way they had talked since childhood, about the mural and how it would look in summer sun, about the centre and the coaching course, about Elena and the house and the small, ordinary things they would miss and the new things they were curious to learn. Mara talked about the younger players she hoped to coach, about wanting to be the kind of coach who noticed the quiet child at the edge of the group, and Tess talked about the longer days at the centre, about wanting to learn more about the shore not just as an artist, but as someone who could help others understand it. Neither of them hurried the conversation, and neither of them tried to make it into a lesson. They had already learned the lesson that mattered most, on a porch in autumn and in all the months since: that protection was not control, that love could look like holding steady while someone else climbed, and that a sister could be close without being in the way. As they talked, the tide, which had been low when they arrived, began its slow, inevitable return, water creeping over sand and rock in small, patient advances, filling the pools a little fuller, a little brighter, with each wave.
The tide, as it always did, came back in its own time, and the wall, and the sisters, were still there to meet it.