Morning broke over Aethel in a haze of pale gold and lavender.
The storm from two nights ago had fully cleared, leaving behind a pristine shoreline littered with sea glass, tangled kelp, and-most importantly-a bounty of splintered wooden planks from the ill-fated ship.
While any ordinary shipwreck survivor might have spent the dawn weeping into the sand, Saira was already hard on work.
With her sleeves rolled up and her face smudged with dry ash from last night’s campfire, she dragged a heavy mahogany beam across the beach.
Her teeth grit, her boots sank two inches into the wet sand with every step, and she was muttering a rhythmic string of curses that would make a veteran sailor blush.
Twenty yards away, behind a massive, moss covered coastal boulder, Eagre watched her in complete silence.
Only the upper half of his face poked above the waterline.
His sharp, luminous eyes tracked her every movement as she heaved another piece of driftwood onto a growing, chaotic pile.
He had every reason to swim away.
The ocean was endless.
He had his own cavernous kingdom beneath the tides, miles of coral reefs to roam, and an entire sea of creatures who actually treated him with proper, terrifying respect.
He could have left this unhinged, greedy human to fend for herself.
She had insulted his voice, smacked him with a driftwood, made a pun out of his name and tried to barter his dignity for deep-sea pearls.
By all logic, he should have abandoned her to the crabs.
And yet…every time he tried to submerge and swim back to the deep, something pulled him right back to the surface.
It was maddening.
It was an invisible, heavy anchor hitched to his chest, drawing him back to this specific shore just to see what utterly ridiculous thing she would do next.
No human had ever treated him like an inconvenience before.
No human had ever looked at an ancient predator and immediately treated him like an underperforming landlord.
CLANG.
Saira dropped a heavy iron-bound plank onto her pile, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist.
She stood back, resting her hands on her hips, inspecting her collection of shipwreck debris.
“Right,” she announced loudly to the empty beach, entirely unaware-or entirely uncaring-that a pair of glowing eyes were watching her from the rocks.
“Step one: secure structural timber.
Step two: built a grand villa.
Step three: make the fish-boy clean the floors.” Behind the boulder, Eagre’s fins flared in sheer indignation, his jaw tightening as he sank an inch deeper into the cold water.
She was going to built a hut.
On his island.
And she was planning on making him her servant.
Saira hauled another damp piece of timber toward her pile, but as she reached down to grab a splintered oak beam, something small and orange scuttled out from underneath it.
She froze.
The creature waved two tiny, defensive claws in the air, clicking them aggressively at her boots.
Any ordinary person might have backed away or looked for a heavy stick.
Saira, however, gasped in absolute delight.
“Oh, look at you!” She squealed.
Without a single shred of caution, she darted her hand down, snatched the crab up by its sides, and held it right in front of her face.
The crab flailed around its legs helplessly, clicking its claw in sheer panic, but Saira was already marching down to the shoreline.
She stopped at the water’s edge, right in front of the massive boulder Eagre was trying-and failing-to hide behind.
His glowing eyes and the blue-scaled tips of his webbed ears were sticking out plain as day over the top of the rock.
Saira thrust the snapping crab forward like a offering.
“Hey!
Eager!” She called out, completely ignoring his pathetic attempt at stealth.
“Look what I found.” Eagre didn’t move for a long three seconds, hoping against hope that if he stayed completely still, she would think he was just a strangely vibrant piece of coral.
“I know you’re there, your fins are sticking out,” Saira added, tapping her boot against the wet sand impatiently.
With a long, aggrieved sigh, Eagre slowly rose out of the water, resting elbows on top of the boulder.
His wet hair slicked back over his shoulders, and his luminous eyes narrowed at her.
“I am an ocean predator stalking his prey.
I am not hiding.” “Sure, sure, deadly stalker,” Saira dismissed him instantly, lifting the crab higher.
“More importantly: can you talk to this guy?” Eagre stared at the crab, than at Saira, his brow furrowed in deep confusion.
“Can I…what?” “Can you speak crab?” She pressed, her sapphire eyes wide with genuine, eager curiosity.
” You’re the king of the sea, right?
Do you speak crustacean?
Tell him to stop clicking at me!
Ask him if there’s a fresh fruit tree nearby!
Or better yet, ask him if has any friends who want to help me built a roof!” Eagre sat there in the shallow waves, his jaw hanging slightly open as he looked at the tiny, frantic crab waving its pincers in Saira’s grip.
“It is a decapod,” Eagre said, his voice dripping with utter disbelief.
“It has a brain the size of a sand grain.
It does not have a language, and even if it did, I am a siren of the high ocean, not a marine translator!” “So that’s a no?” Saira asked, her face instantly dropping into a disappointed pout.
She looked back down at the crab and sighed.
“Useless.
Absolutely useless.
What good is an ancient sea monster if you can’t even tell a crab to stop snapping at my fingers?” Her disappointed pout dissolved in an instant, replaced by a wide, wicked, shit-eating grin.
“I guess, I will save him for later.” Saira said, her voice dropping into a cheerful, sing-song tone as she turned her eyes back to Eagre.
“Crabby will be my emergency food.” Eagre’s fins twitched.
He looked at her, then down at the tiny, doomed crab she had already named.