Jessica smiled faintly as she awoke. Sunlight beamed through the window and the thin white curtains that were so long, they brushed the hotel room’s smooth wood floor. She rustled the sheets of her bed, matching in color to the curtains and rolled over onto her back, enjoying the sun’s warmth on her face.

A hand reached out from next to her and touched her arm, before slowly stroking her chest.

“Good morning. You sleep well?” Erica asked, lying on her side right next to Jessica.

“After last night? Like a rock.” Jessica replied. “But I was still awake enough to hear your snoring.”

Erica chuckled and gave her girlfriend a light shove. “Still, you can’t deny that last night was a blast, huh?”

Jessica blushed in response. “I hope we didn’t keep the neighbors up.”

- “Now do you see why we got the room with soundproof walls?”

They laughed for a little while. “C’mon, let’s get dressed. We still have to meet our friends in the lobby by nine.”

They got out of bed together, taking a few moments to admire each other's bodies before realizing the other was doing the same. They both blushed and got dressed quickly as they fought to contain their grins and laughter.

“Today’s the beach day, right?” Jessica asked.

- “Yep! Might as well close out the California vacation with a classic West Coast beach party.”

Jessica dressed accordingly in her swimsuit, a nice one-piece outfit with pink and white stripes. She also grabbed a pair of sunglasses and a nice, large sunhat.

The California vacation had been in the works for over a month. A nice, five-day trip to visit the state’s famous landmarks, enjoy its many amusement park rides, and, for today, the last day, enjoy a trip to the beach. It wasn’t just Jessica and Erica, though. Jessica’s centaur friend, Claire, and her four-armed friend, Kallahan, had been brought along too, and were waiting in the hotel’s food court for the rest of the party.

Jessica was happy Erica was getting along so well with her friends. She had been cautiously optimistic when she first introduced her girlfriend to the others, but she had nothing to worry about in the slightest. It was even Erica’s idea to invite them along in the first place.

Erica dressed in a one-piece swimsuit, like Jessica’s, but instead of a striped design pattern, it was blue with a white, four-petalled flower in the center of the chest. She didn’t wear a hat or put on any sunscreen, because elves couldn’t get sunburned for some reason, but she still wore aviator shades and striped, blue sandals.

After they were finished preparing, they went down to the lobby, where they met their friends. Claire, unable to swim, simply wore a white T-shirt with a silhouette of a famous centaur on it. Kallahan had struggled to find proper beach wear, with four-armed swimsuits not being exactly common on sale. Still, she found one at an albeit overpriced cost at a store down the block from the hotel. It was navy blue, with no design or pattern on the outfit. Kallahan carried several beach bags and towels in her arms, while Claire carried a pair of umbrellas with them for some shade.

Both wore hats and glasses, but Kallahan wore a baseball cap as opposed to all the other hats in the group being sunhats. When asked why, she simply said “the brim was too large to be comfortable.”

Flagging down a bus ride to the magnificent beaches of San Diego, the four friends arrived on the beach and set up shop, laying their towels and bags down, and propping up umbrellas to cover their spot. Among the things they brought was a soda cooler. Jessica, Erica, and Kallahan went down to the shores as Claire just sat in the shade, watching over the group’s possessions and sipping a Cola.

Jessica dug her toes into the wet sand, made soft and easily formable by the constant hammering of waves onto the shore. All three let out sudden yelps as the next wave rushed up the beach to greet them, sending chills up their legs and spine, then down their arms, giving them goosebumps. They smiled and didn’t wait for the next wave to arrive, rushing to meet the next one.

Swimming in the tide, it hurts to open your eyes, and you can’t see anything well without goggles, which, unfortunately, none of them had. The salt in the water also made it taste terrible to open your mouth. Still, all three had excellent swimming abilities, and enjoyed swimming about for a while.

After about half an hour, they went back to the shore. As they walked back to their spot on the beach, wet, panting, and covered in sand, a mischievous grin formed on Erica’s face as she spotted some surfboards sitting alone and unclaimed in the hot sand. “I’ve got a fun idea!”

Once the others noticed the surfboards, they smiled too. Picking them up and rushing to the beach, they let the tide carry them out and paddles to where the waves reached heights of twenty feet. “Wait for it...” Erica said, waiting for the perfect wave to arrive. Then she spotted it, approaching fast. “Now!”

Turning around to face the beach, the three waited for the wave to hit them with tremendous force and carry them all the way to the beach. The wave didn’t disappoint. They whooped as it propelled them towards the shore, and fast.

Too fast.

Apparently, the God of the Sea wanted to mess with them pretty hard. The waves continued increasing in speed until it smashed into the shore, violently depositing them onto the beach. Erica landed the hardest, landing the furthest up and tumbling through the sand, grunting in discomfort and Kallahan had a slightly smoother landing, but was forced to dig herself out of the wet sand as more waves battered her. After getting out of their predicaments, they checked themselves and sighed in relief as they were all at least still in one piece. Or at least two of them were...

Jessica had the most violent impact of them all, crashing and tumbling up the beach, the impact breaking her into nearly a dozen pieces and scattering them across the beach. There was a muffled yelp from the sand as Jessica’s head wriggled in the hot sand, trying to get face-up so she could talk, a difficult task without her body attached.

“Hey!” She spat out some sand. “Down here! A little help?”

Noticing it, the two stared for a moment and started laughing, the humor of the whole situation overcoming the shock and confusion of the event. Kallahan bent onto her knees in laughter, apparently finding the situation far more humorous than Jessica. Erica stifled a laugh, covering her mouth as her face turned red. Claire, still sitting in the umbrella’s shade, had taken notice and begun taking pictures. While Jessica had half her face buried in the stand, she could still see enough to notice the hysteria unfolding, and she chuckled lightly, but still groaned at her own misfortune.

After Erica stopped laughing, she walked over and picked up her lover’s head. “You know, if I had a nickel for every time I found you in pieces, I’d have two nickels.”

- “Yeah, I know. ‘Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.” Jessica said, finishing the quote, slightly annoyed at the situation but fighting down too much laughter to show it. Still, she blushed, remembering what happened after the last time Erica found her like this.

Together, they went around the beach, picking up Jessica’s parts like digging for seashells. Jessica’s body was prevented from splitting into two or three pieces by the one-piece swimsuit holding it together. A couple of kids had found her arms and had begun using them as swords. After Kallahan chased them down and took the arms back, they began looking for Jessica’s legs. The first was just sitting on the beach, covered in sand, but the other sat close to the tide, and there was panic as the waves had begun pulling it out to sea.

“Oh nonoNONONONO!!!” Jessica panicked, watching her leg disappear beneath the water.

Erica realized what had happened and chased after it, unceremoniously dumping the other parts she had gathered on the beach, diving into the sea to pursue the limb. She returned with it tucked under her arm a few minutes later. Jessica let out a loud sigh as her parts were gathered again.

One of the largest bags they brought was emptied out to put Jessica’s parts in until they could be reassembled later. At that point, as Kallahan and Erica washed the sand off their bodies in the beach's showers, they deemed their beach adventure over and boarded a bus back to the hotel. On the way, they tried reassembling Jessica at the back of the bus.

Claire, holding one of Jessica’s arms in her hands, was still laughing. “I just think that the rest of the vacation was nothing compared to what I just saw.” She said between chuckles, before she yelped in pain as the arm she was carrying punched her in the chest.

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have sand caught in the stumps between your parts. It still chafes!” Jessica said, her head laying sideways on the seat cushions as Kallahan and Erica reattached her legs.

Claire kept laughing, even as Jessica’s arm punched her again, and she rubbed at the point of impact.

“You know,” Kallahan said, smiling. “You still owe me for sneaking you across the border a few months ago. You also owe me for today, getting your arms back.”

Jessica scowled at her. “You would have done that anyway! Besides, that wasn’t that hard.”

Kallahan laughed. “You didn’t see the explaining I had to do to that kid’s mom as to why I was chasing her sons who were carrying detached arms and using them as weapons!”

As upset and uncomfortable as she was, Jessica chuckled at the thought of that conversation. After arriving back at the hotel and receiving slightly confused looks from the guests and workers in the lobby, Erica carried Jessica back to their room. By now, it was dark outside, and the brilliant lights of the city clashed with the peaceful white glow of the moon and stars.

Jessica went to the bathroom to undress and wash the sand out from her hair and from between her parts. She took pleasure in the warm water running though her hair, down her body, and across her stumps, whisking the sand away down the shower’s drain. After drying and rinsing herself off, she covered herself in a smooth white towel and ventured back into the bedroom. She blushed at the sight she saw.

Erica was lying on the bed, on her back, kicking her legs in the air and resting her head on her hands. Also, she was fully nude, and glaring at Jessica with a romantic and somewhat lustful look in her eyes. Jessica blushed and smiled. Erica might as well have been Abraham Lincoln, because she was causing a massive uprising down south.

“You know...” Erica started. “The last time I found you in pieces and put you back together, we had quite a night together... and it’s a long drive back home...” She rolled over, showing her smooth and gorgeous chest to the ceiling, only making Jessica hornier. “Wanna do it again? After all, I always thought you looked better in pieces.”

Jessica walked over towards the bed as Erica sat up to greet her.