Amy pushed her heels into the sand. River bounced up and plopped down next to her, corkscrew hair lank and stringy with seawater.

River shook her head and wrung out her hair. "What's wrong?"

Amy looked at her. This glorious golden woman, older than she was, yet still her child.

"I wish we'd been able to find you as a baby."

River smiled wryly. "That wasn't possible. It would have changed too many timelines. Mine, yours, Rory's, the Doctor's, not to mention Kovarian, the Church, and timelines you don't even know about."

Amy grimaced and tossed a handful of wet sand toward the water. "I know that. And it's not like you didn't turn out magnificent."

"Well, naturally."

Amy grinned at her. Out in the surf, Rory floated, the Doctor popped up beside him and dunked him, like an evil porpoise.

Rory floundered back up and swiped a splooshing wave over the grinning Time Lord. "Not funny!" he yelled faintly in the distance.

Amy and River laughed. River rubbed her hair down and wiped droplets off her shoulders with a towel.

She cocked her head at her mother, who'd become solemn again. "What would you have done with the baby me?" she asked. At the time, her parents had been involved with traveling with the Doctor, going on adventures, saving worlds, not much time in that for an infant. She'd always wondered.

Amy just turned to look at her, "Loved you." She said calmly, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.

River shrugged. "I know that. But what is it you so particularly miss? After all, we did grow up together. It's not like you never saw me as a child."

"That was different. You were Mels then. You were my age. We made fun of Rory together. Got in trouble together. We weren't your parents."

"Could have fooled me." River grinned at her, that particular jaw cocked grin that just shouted orneriness.

It was a grin Amy had often seen, on a darker, younger, no less beloved face.

"Well someone had to take you in hand. Seriously, stealing buses?"

River waved a hand out in the surf, where Rory was holding a surfboard steady while the Doctor tried clumsily to climb aboard. "He stole a time machine."

Amy cocked a red eyebrow at her. "Vortex manipulator?" she reminded.

River waved that away haughtily. "Not at all the same thing."

"Hmm." Amy stared at her. She looked over River's shoulder at a familiar blue box shape. She glanced back toward the boys in the water, all their attention focused on the Doctor trying to stand on the slippery board.

She grinned at her daughter. "I suppose time travel doesn't really take any time at all."

"No, not really," River pretended to look everywhere else but at her mother. She flicked a fleck of sand off her arm.

Amy grinned. "And you actually know how to fly the Tardis."

River inspected her toes, brushing sand off her pedicure. Ostentatiously not listening.

The Doctor slipped and whooped and fell in the water. Rory grabbed the board before it shot away.

Amy stretched her own legs out, studying her red painted toenails. "Wanna go shopping?"

River turned a sly look on her, still bent over. "That's how I know you're my mother. We think alike."

She stood up, towel slung around her neck. "Walk casually," she instructed. "I know just the place." She shoved open the door to the Tardis with a familiar creak.

"Have you ever been to the Aldeberan Nebula Spiral Sky Mall?"

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