By the following afternoon, the tropicaal heat on Aethel was thick enough to chew, but Saira’s devotional fervour showed zero signs of cooling down.
The collapsed remains of her stick-and-palm-frond shelter had been completely abandoned.
In its place, right at the center of the beach’s highest erected architectural marvel: a three-tiered shrine made entirely of driftwood logs, dried coral heads, and stacked flat stones.
Resting at the very apex of this majestic structure, perched upon a throne of woven seaweed like a sacred deity, was the fifty-pound, glowing pink pearl.
Saira dropped to her knees on the yellowing palm fronds before the shrine, her hands held high above her frizzy hair, her eyes closed in deep, theatrical reverence.
“O sacred Pink Orb of Divine Betrothal,” Saira chanted, her voice echoing dramatically across the quiet shore.
“Token of the Deep, Symbol of Eager’s indescribable, passionate Devotion…hear your humble High Priestess!” A few feet away, resting comfortably in the shade of a hollowed-out sea-coconut shell near the base of the altar, sat Crabby.
The little crustacean was wearing a tiny, makeshift necklace made of tangled red kelp that Saira had forced upon him to mark his official promotion to Supreme Keeper of the Sacred Shell.
He clicked his pincers twice, took a slow, methodical bite of dried sea-grass, and watching his human boss with complete, unwavering detachment.
“First ritual of the afternoon!” Saira announced, snapping her eyes open and standing up with grand, aristocratic purpose.
“The Polishing of the Divine Affection!” She retrieved her primary religious relic: a damp, highly questionable piece of gray sea-sponge soaked in a concoction of crushed hibiscus petals and rainwater.
For the next twenty minutes, Saira threw herself into the sacred duty of pearl-maintenance with terrifying, manic precision.
She buffed every single inch of the massive pink sphere until her arms throbbed with fatigue and the pearl gleamed so brightly under the noon sun that it almost blinded the local gulls.
“Salmon-boy may be a timid, brooding entity who hides in his underwater trench to process his overwhelming romantic emotions,” Saira explained aloud to Crabby, vigorously scrubbing a microscopic speck of sand off the pearl’s left hemisphere.
“But a woman of my refined upbringing knows how to handle a delicate suitor.
We must honour his gift!
We must show him that his fifty-pound symbol of external love is cherished!” Crabby gave a single, slow blink of his eye stalks.
“Now!
The sacred offering!” Saira declared, setting down her polishing sponge and dusting off her hands with flair.
She turned toward her altar’s offering plate-a wide, flat clam shell resting right in front of the pearl.
With utmost solemnity, Saira placed her holy gifts upon the shell: three slightly bruised wild mangoes, a intricate fan made of woven palm leaves, and a tiny, carefully drawn portrait of Eagre scratched into a piece of smooth tree bark.
In the drawing, Eagre’s terrifying sea-god features had been rendered with extreme, generous artistic liberty.
His sharp, predatory jawline was framed by soft, romantic waves, his eyes were drawn as sparkling, starry night-orbs, and a giant, exaggerated love heart war floating right above his head.
“A fitting tribute to the groom,” Saira whispered, dabbing an imaginary tear of artistic pride from her eye.
“When he rises from the surf to gaze upon his shrine, he will overcome with tears of pure, unadulterated joy.” Out in the turquoise surf, fifty yards away from the shore, a red hair slowly broke the surface of the water.
Eagre had been lurking in the shallow reef for the last hour, nursing his bruised ego and telling himself that he was only monitoring the land-pest to ensure she didn’t starve before he could properly defeat her.
He narrowed her glowing emerald eyes, squinting through the sea spray at the top of the dune.
His ear-fins twitched violently.
His gills flared with sudden, horrified alarm.
“What in the name of the ocean floor is she doing now?” Eagre muttered underwater, his clawed fingers gripping a rock ledge beneath the surface.
He watched in mounting horror as Saira began to perform what could only be described as a frantic, ritualistic victory dance around the wooden shrine.
She was waving two giant palm fronds through the air, chanting rhythmically in a language she was clearly making up on the spot, and bowing low to the glowing pink ball every three steps.
“Oh salmon-boy, Great Sardine of my Heart !” Saira’s voice carried across the water, amplified by the coastal wind.
“Accept these mangoes!
Gaze upon your divine likeness!
Know that your giant pink cannonball of passion has won my soul!” Eagre’s jaw dropped so low a tiny hermit crab almost swam into his mouth.
His face flushed a dark, violent shade of neon-blue that extended all the way down his neck and into his chest scales.
She hadn’t just kept the pearl.
She hadn’t just ignored his attempt to crush her skull.
She had built a literal, functioning cult dedicated to his accidental courtship gift!
“She is worshipping it,” Eagre whimpered, his voice cracking in sheer, existential terror as he sank lower into the surf.
“She built a temple for my projectile.
She drew a picture of me with…are those hearts?!” He watched as Saira picked up a small seashell, filled it with saltwater, and dramatically poured it all over the pearl’s crown while singing a high-pitched hymn about “eternal marine matrimony.” Crabby, sitting at the base of the alter, raised his tiny claw, clicked his pincer in rhythm with Saira’s singing, and casually took another bite of his kelp.
Eagre slammed his forehead repeatedly against his underwater ledge, sending a series of tiny bubbles rising to the surface.
“I am a god of war and tempest,” he whispered mournfully to a passing jellyfish.
“I have brought down empires.
And now a feral human girl is offering bruised mangoes to a fifty-pound Clam-stone because she thinks we are engaged.” On the beach, Saira finished her sixth lap around the shrine, threw her arms into the air, and let out a triumphant laugh that echoed across the bay.
“The gods are pleased, Crabby!” Saira cheered, wiping sweat from her brow and staring out at the ocean with a proud, completely delusional smile.
“I can feel his divine presence out there right now!
He is probably weeping tears of profound gratitude into the sea!” Eagre let out a long, soundless scream beneath the waves, kicked his massive tail, and dove straight back down into the dark, merciful depths of the trench.