NOVGO.NET Chapter 1910 A Master Architect
Chapter 1910: Chapter 1910 A Master Architect
— Sylvie —
“Is this really the best way to build something cool?” asked Sylvie as the gazed up at Callisto. The girls had all decided collectively on a beach day… despite none of them wanting to swim in the salty water. This had caused Callisto to be in charge of activities for the day. Vivian had driven everyone out there, but she was currently relaxing in the sun. Potentially asleep. There were some plans to mess with her later, depending on how things went.
“Yes indeed it is,” confirmed Callisto as she helped deliver her next bucket of wet sand.
“Why?” asked Penny. “What are the maths behind it?”
“You want sand that’s just wet enough to clump together but not so wet it’s basically a fluid,” explained Alice. “It’s actually a bit of a complicated balance to strike. Too dry and the sand crumbles, too wet and it… sort of slides? If it’s just wet enough than we can make just about anything we want,”
“Anything below knee height,” grumbled Sylvie. She was exaggerating, the pile went to about chest height on her… which was about knee height for Callisto. So not entirely wrong.
Callisto shrugged, “I have entered a few sand sculpture contests before and this is basically how it is done professionally.”
“Basically?” asked Sylvie as she struggled to dump her next load of sand into the pile.
“Usually they have a company ship in crates of sand that have a good water to sand ration. That way they start in a nice cube and you can chip away at the sand as you desire. Building the sand pile up is a bit of effort… but you all said you wanted to go big with this so just piling a few buckets on top of each other is not going to cut it I am afraid,” explained Callisto.
“I see… still do you have the maths on that?” asked Penny.
“I would need a blackboard,” stated Callisto. She would also probably need a textbook. Shear force in regards to wet sand vs dry sand were not the type of numbers she could simply conjure from her mind. “It is not so easily explained. It is a combination of fluid dynamics, shear forces, chemical bonds and ionic bonds.”
Alice shrugged, “I don’t know why you guys are complaining. This is going to be so cool! I’ve got a bunch of ideas for the sort of things we can do and it’s so hard to decide! We could go for a super cool cathedral type thing, or maybe a classic like the Eiffel Tower or if we want something easy we could make Big Ben!”
“It’s kind wide for those… and really not all that tall,” offered Sylvie.
At the same time as Penny complained, “That’s going to be so much work. My arms already feel like they’re going to fall off…”
In fairness to Penny, she’d picked the second largest bucket they’d brought on the trip. Callisto had the largest, and the other two had ones about the same size if in different shapes. It was… perhaps a bit much for her in truth and it wasn’t entirely full either. Even then, it was probably twice the weight that the other two were carrying. “You should consider pacing yourself then,” offered Callisto. “While it is admirable that you wish to carry as much as you are physically capable, you do not seem to be taking into account the long term exertion.”
“Ah,” Penny considered how she’d chosen her bucket… which was by picking the largest one and then putting as much sand as she could before it became impossible to carry. “I see where I made this miscalculation. I shall endeavour to pick a more appropriate bucket next time.”
“There’s a spare over there,” said Sylvie as she gestured over to the pile of buckets in different shapes and sizes they’d carted over. “In fact there’s a bunch of spares. You could just pick one of those now.”
Penny glanced at them all before shrugging and continuing to struggle with the bucket she currently had on hand. Sylvie sighed and went back to pick up another load of sand. “How tall are we even trying to make this anyway?”
Alice paused and gave it a bit of thought, slowly falling sideways as the weight from the bucket of sand in her right hand started to pull her over while she wasn’t paying proper attention. Callisto, seeing this, and seeing the bucket was about to end up on her foot, grabbed the handle before Alice let go. “Ah,” intoned Alice. “Woops…”
Callisto lent over and emptied the bucket out before returning it to Alice and going back to doing her part to gather more sand. Sylvie sighed and wished that Kat was here. She’d be able to lift ALL the sand they could ever need… *Actually… Lily might be able to lift even more with her shadow. How big can she make it now? Probably pretty big right?*
“Did Alice give her answer yet?” asked Penny as she came back from the ocean. “I may have missed it with the crashing waves.”
“Nope, she’s just been standing there, and if she doesn’t get back to moving or answering the question, this high,” Sylvie said while kicking the sand pile. “Is how high we’re going to go.”
“Ah, sorry… I was just thinking about it… but it really depends on what we want to build out of it. I tossed out a few ideas but I get that this activity in particular is more for ME than for you guys… so if you have something cool you want to build then I’m happy to accommodate.” Apologised Alice.
“A pyramid,” offered Penny.
“That… wouldn’t be too hard but might be a bit boring,” countered Sylvie. Penny shrugged at having her suggestion rejected not particularly concerned. “I think the cathedral idea was fine if we can’t think of anything better… but honestly I’d like to do something fancier like… a dragon or something.”
Alice however, considered both suggestions. “Well, we could always make a pyramid with a sphinx or two guarding the sides. If we wanted to go extra crazy we could put a different animal at each corner but… well it took us a while to get to the beach and we need to leave before it gets too late so I don’t think we’d have time to go too crazy. Ah, but the one sphinx is fine… or like, whatever animal you want Sylvie.”
“Umm… hmm…” Sylvie hadn’t expected Alice to merge their ideas like that… but now that it had been said out loud it made sense. *I don’t know if I want to go with just a basic sphinx… but it won’t be too hard I don’t think. A lot of shapes that we can smoothly make out of sand and we all have a good idea of what it’s supposed to look like so we can work on it together without trouble.
Which wouldn’t necessarily be the case if I picked like… a dragon or something. A sphinx just feels sort of boring though. Like nothing special. If we’re doing a pyramid I want to add something eye-catching to the outside… just perhaps not too ambitious. Hmmm… phoenix would be too extravagant, dragon has too many variations. What about a kraken? If we stuck just to the tentacles and make it seem like it’s trying to surround the pyramid that could be cool? Plus we’re on the beach so it’s somewhat thematic.*
“How about a kraken? We can just do the tentacles and make it seem like the rest is hiding in the sand. Feels like a good compromise between interesting and difficult. Plus we can work of separate ones so that they’re at least consistent on an individual level,” offered Sylvie.
“Sure!” cheered Alice. “We’re going to need a lot more sand though,”
“Urgh,” groaned Sylvie. “Why?”
“Well… if we were just doing a pyramid we could focus on stacking the middle up in pretty normal pile before compressing it down and then adding a bit of detailing. Then have a separate smaller pile for whatever animal you wanted. If we’re adding tentacles all around though? We’re going to need a bigger pile so that the tentacles can be appropriately tall and it should probably be mostly square-ish,” explained Alice.
“Can I change my answer?” asked Sylvie.
“Nope,” said Alice with a grin. “If we kept swapping things around we’d spend more time planning than actually doing and dad says that kills plenty of projects so… we’re not doing that. Not when we only have a few hours to get it all done nicely,”
“Can’t we just go back the sphinx idea? That would just be the one small pile. A few good buckets of sand in place and we can be done…” offered Sylvie.
“Nope, I think your kraken idea is super cool, and if we mess with the sand in the right way we can make it seem like we put way more effort into the whole thing than we did. We’re doing the kraken idea,” stated Alice.
Sylvie looked over at Penny hoping for some support, but her red-headed friend was already back on sand duty. Sighing, Sylvie started her own trek to the ocean. Better not to waste breath complaining.