Chapter 6: Something isn’t Quite Right

Chapter Six: Something isn’t Quite Right (Edited)

“We’re going to stay near the old docks this time, but don’t get on them, the wood's all rotten and I don’t trust the stone, either. We have about, let's say an hour, hour and a half to gather before the tide rolls in. Focus on filling your basket with good seaweed,” Mom said, adjusting several straps on my clothes as we prepared.

She pulled a small, shiny book from her breast pocket and flicked it open before showing me several pages. On them were well drawn, if worn, colored sketches of a variety of flora and sea life, but of particular interest were the seaweed types.  “Go for sawtooth, fairy grass like you see here, but be sure to fill it up even if all you can find is the bad stuff just like I showed you, and be sure to grab any mussels you see, okay?”

She fished a small, dull set of paper scissors out of pocket and handed it to me. I gingerly took it and put it in my basket. I refrained from pouting. She still didn’t trust me with knives after I’d nicked myself. I settled for huffing, which made her grin. She pulled out a long, bent metal rod ending in a wicked hook.

The sight of the hook nearly prompted a Pavlovian response in me to drool. The hook meant she was going after the good stuff today.

“Yes, Mama,” I said, resisting the urge to lick my lips, but I think she noticed anyway. Mom shook her head with narrowed eyes. She began prowling the rocky foreshore with an energy she didn’t usually display.

While Mom hunted for a very unfortunate lobster whose day would certainly be ruined, I began noting the types of seaweed on the beach.

In my old world, I’d been to a few lake shores, but they had been nothing special. They were yet more polluted lakes that may or may not have fish with fingers in them. At best, I’d seen piles of mud or thousands of tiny rocks with algae on them and the occasional plant lining the shore.

Here, green was everywhere, and it was slimy.

I still didn’t know half the names for the species of seaweed present on the beach. Mom’s little guidebook she read from occasionally didn’t mention all of them. I didn’t even know if they were a match from my old world or something entirely new. Yet, a single glance around informed me that the patches of seaweed in this area were less than ideal.

“Smellyweed”, as I called it because Mom and her guidebook didn’t have a name for it, was everywhere. It was in a great big patch stretching out around me and stuck to the biggest rocks and smoother surfaces in great big, self-reinforcing patches. Each one branched out into smaller leaf-like structures that reminded me of rosemary, but infinitely worse. These were what Mom used to make for breakfast this morning. They also faintly smelled of slightly off eggs and sulfur.

Yuck.

I avoided the great patches of smellyweed anchored together in this flat area and made my way along the beach, eventually finding some pools and rocks breaking up the patch. I had a bit of luck finding some strands of sawtooth seaweed that looked like tiny alligators floating in pools of water, but I was only able to find a few strands sticking out from a central anchor root in the rocks. Surrounding them were yet more smellweed colonies creeping in closer. Feeling vindictive, I stomped on the encroaching seaweed and ripped up a few by their anchor point, which was as good as killing them. It did very little to thin the populous little menaces and they’d recover by tomorrow.

I harvested a few strands using the small scissors Mom had given me. The scissors weren’t sharp by any means, but were sufficient for cutting off strands of seaweed with some level of effort.  I was careful to only cut off parts of the leaves well away from the anchor so it could recover. Sawtooth seaweed tasted okay, if strong in iodine flavor.   My overall progress was unfortunately slow, and after five minutes my knees were unhappy with my decision to kneel on dead coral and rocks.

It took me a few minutes to find another seaweed type called birdy’s tail hiding in a depression.  I remember Mom had found it growing in a new patch a few weeks back. This seaweed formed clusters of great ovals spreading like purple flowers. Unfortunately, neither of us could eat much of it.  Uncooked, it had the texture and consistency of rubber. When cooked, it tasted like savory rubber. You could chew and chew and chew and it would never get ground down. If anything, cooking it made it even more rubbery than it already was.

I huffed.  I’d wandered for twenty minutes already and mostly found stuff I’d hesitate to step on, nevertheless eat.

Wandering further along the beach, I spotted a glint sticking out from a crevice surrounded with smellyweed. Curious and holding my nose, I investigated further.  I poked curiously at first. After a faltering attempt to grab it due to my paws slipping, I eventually got a grip and heaved it into view.

Being brought into the light of day didn’t help.

I’m not sure what I found. I thought, maybe, it’d be nice and tasty little crab or other crustacean hiding in the sandy rocks, but instead what I found was a hollow tube nearly as long as my arm and twice as thick.  Holding it in the sun, it was surprisingly light despite its size and even I could manhandle it around with ease. Its surface was smooth, with only occasional bumps and nodules on its surface. One side of the tube was wider than the other, while the other narrowed, with parts almost looking like it should interlink with something. Running my hands along it, the only real comparison I had were chitinous carapaces of particularly sturdy beetles, but this was way too big. Maybe it used to be a part of some weird piping system?

“Find anything?” Mom asked out of fucking nowhere making me jump.

I tried to say, “Don’t do that!”. Instead, I literally hissed. My ears stood up, I crouched low, and I even felt my fur and tail go rigid.

Mom raised her eyebrows. I replayed the sound I’d made in my head and I don’t think a puppy from my old world would have been intimidated.

I huffed again and hid my face by turning to only look at Mom out of the corner of my eye. This made Mom smile even more and ruffle my hair.

Eager to put the entire incident behind me, I wordlessly held up the tube I’d found with as big a smile as I could manage for her to see.

Mom’s gaze fixed on it and she slowly took the offered tube. Her smile fell as she looked it over. “Where did you find this?”

“Stuck in that hole.” I pointed to said hole simply. “Really weird. Do you know what it is?”

Mom nodded. “It’s…part of a shell.” As she spoke, she fixed her gaze on the sea with a troubled expression.

I followed her gaze, but didn’t see anything but waves. “Wow, that’d be a really big crab, huh?” I asked. Maybe it was a fossil and I just hadn’t realized it? I’d found some in my old world, but they were always little clam fossils. Something that big would’ve been neat.

Mom shook her head and let the shell piece drop. “Something like that. Any luck foraging?’

At this, I kicked my feet and huffed. “It’s all smellyweed today. I found a few strands of sawtooth, but…” I trailed off.

She nodded, flicking her hair as she bit her lip in a pensive expression.  “Well, keep looking. I’m not having much luck, myself,” she said. “Maybe we should have tried the southern beach.” She  patted her own basket. Within I spotted a few grayish blue mussels, all fairly small. I hadn’t even seen any shellfish in my own hunt. “I swear, this is not how it was with Granny…”

My ears perked up. “Granny?” I asked, suddenly very curious. The word wasn’t literally Granny, but an equivalent in Mom’s language.

Mom froze but continued on a second later than she should have. “Oh. I didn’t… curious, aren’t you?” She fixed meme with an odd contemplative look before she looked away with a sigh.

“When I was a little girl, I went to a beach much like this one with my granny and we were able to forage entire buckets of clams and mussels, even big crabs and lots of fairy seagrass. But, well, it’s not the same here. I wish well, it doesn’t matter what I wish.” Mom hopped up on a large rock I’d have had to spend a minute climbing. “Keep looking, Gwen.” She walked off into the more jagged terrain I’d avoided, easily hopping over rocks I’d have had issues with my stubby legs or even as a human adult, but she somehow made it look easy.

I stared after her. Mom didn’t talk about family, or the time before she came to this island, very often.

I shook my head and shivered in the breeze.

Our lives out here on the sea weren’t normal. There weren’t many scenarios where a single mom and her daughter live in total isolation from the rest of society and it meant good things.

Eventually, I turned back to the lapping tide and continued foraging.

The problem with this beach was its uniformity, I decided. This wasn’t in terms of landscape. There were rocky shorelines, some sandy areas, and more in between. It varied, and I had to watch my footing constantly just to make my way around.

The issue was that almost everything here was just seaweed.

I was hardly an expert forager in my old world, but I’d taken my share of bio classes and watched Nature documentaries for fun. A rocky beach like this with lots of nooks and crannies to hide in should have been swarming with life. Crabs, shrimp, lobsters, mollusks, clams, oysters, barnacles, cockles, sea squirts, fish, seabirds, and more should have been everywhere on a beach like this one.

Shells crunched beneath my feet. Laying everywhere, in rocks, in sand, were old shells and bits of oysters, clams, mussels, and more. I still hadn’t seen any living ones and I didn’t think I was that bad. Every pool was nearly empty outside seaweed, the rocks had very few barnacles clinging to them if at all. There were no fish in the pools, very few tiny shrimp, just nothing out here I could find no matter what rock I overturned. The beach just felt barren. Mom had a knack for finding more muscles than I could, but even that felt minimal. If it wasn’t for the presence of one seabird flying far overhead, I’d have thought the beach was barren of animal life. It really felt like it was just us, green hate, and the wind.

I hopped over a small patch of smellyweed and did my best to ignore its pungent odor while balancing on the rock.  The breeze rustled over pools of briney water and atop seaweed leaves.   As usual, smellyweed dominated. Small patches of seaweed clung here and there, but that was about it.

I paused to harvest a bit more sawtooth from another patch, hoping to spread out my foraging when a glint of color caught my eye.

There, hidden beneath the patch I’d just harvested, was a great, big, violet shell. Curious, I brushed away the sand to reveal a clam hiding beneath. I put my hand over it and felt giddy as I saw it was bigger than my hand was. Sure, my hand was small, but that still made this clam enormous!

I dug around the clam, scraping away sand and detritus to free up the clam for its new and completely safe home in my basket that definitely wouldn’t lead to a delicious dinner. Once cleared, I gripped the clam and pulled up.

Except it didn’t come.

I blinked, and looked back. The clam was still stubbornly there. I tried again and found it stubbornly stuck. I think it even looked smug.

Annoyed, I grabbed it with both hands and pulled. Slowly, the surrounding sand started to come loose before it all gave way. I shot up, recovering as I spun. Feeling absolutely giddy, I looked at the violet clam and drew my finger along its shell before I carefully placed it in my basket. Only then did I look to see what the clam had stuck itself on, expecting a rock or bit of coral.

A stained, grit covered skull greeted me.

At first, I thought it was from a predator. The back was smooth and round, but the ear holes were way higher up than expected. Only the top teeth remained, the bottom mandible lost who knows where.  Its teeth had several sharp canines atop, although not as pronounced as I’d expect. It definitely wasn’t a devoted herbivore, at least. Other than that, it seemed like any other bit of bone left out and exposed for a while.

I was still exploring the island, but I hadn't seen much animal life outside scattered insects and the odd bird. Some plants, even a distant bird that always flew off on approach, but animals? I hadn’t seen any. It was either really old, or had washed up. Something about it stuck out to me as off.

I picked it up, shaking loose more grit and brackish seawater. I traced the teeth in curiosity, tilting the skull around and noting the large, smooth portion at the back of the skull, the cranium I think it was. I absently licked my own teeth and felt the points.

It would be a lie to say my fingers went boneless. My grip on the skull remained firm, yet I felt a peculiar, cool shock race through me as my tail stiffened and ears perked up.

I hadn’t seen any skulls in this life, but I had in my previous, in anatomy classes. The teeth had thrown me off as they were too sharp for a human, but the general shape was still close and I wasn’t exactly human anymore, was I?

This used to be a person.

Immediately, my gaze shot around, jerking my head back and forth, looking for what, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know how this skull got here. It could have been ancient beyond belief and only recently exposed, or it could have been far more recent. Natural causes, disease, accident, or maybe it was a murder, I just didn’t know, but my mind raced through the possibilities, all the while I—

A blue blob curiously poked out of the eye socket from the darkness within. I screamed. The skull clattered to the ground. The blobby tendril undulated.

 I practically leaped away in the moment.

“Gwen?” Mom shouted. A gray-blue blur bolted in the corner of my eye. I’d only just turned when Mom was upon me, picking me up and checking me over. “What happened?” she asked, worried.

I suddenly very much wished I could have called her as she was halfway down the beach just a second ago. I then realized I’d screamed not because I found a cat folk skull but because a small blob had startled me. My third and final realization was that I did not want to tell Mom that a sea slug scared me.

Wordlessly, I flailed.

Mom looked around just as the sea slug emerged from the eye socket. Her face went from concerned to contemplative to mirthful in a split second. “Oh, Gwen, that’s just a sea slug, that’s nothing to…” she trailed off, looking closer. Her smile faded to a concerned frown to a cold grimace.

She carefully set me down before kneeling and drawing a sharp survival knife from her belt. “Strange,” she muttered. “I could’ve sworn these were eradicated,” she muttered. With one sharp move, she stuck the knife beneath the slug and flung it to a flat rock. She brought her boot down, splattering it. She looked back at me. “Gwen, you did the right thing. Never, ever, touch blue sea slugs with a yellow stripe, okay? Bad things happen if you do,” she said. “Maybe I should…” she muttered, before lifting her boot up and quietly swearing.

I absently noted the words for future use, feeling a bit stunned. “But—it’s just a sea slug, right? It wasn’t dangerous?”

Mom looked pained at my question, but shook her head, sending her curly red bangs waving. “No, honey. It’s very, very bad. If you see another in the future, don’t even smoosh it, just stay away and come get me, okay?” she said.

“Okay,” I said, piecing together. It was bright. Really bright, even glowing, almost. Even as a splatter on the ground it was bright, nearly neon in comparison to the dull rocks of the beach. That likely meant very bad things, in retrospect. I did feel slight vindication for my shriek earlier, at the least.

“Now, as for this,” Mom said, kneeling back to examine the skull. “We’ll take this back with us. Honey, do you know what this is?”

“It’s a [skull],” I said simply, in English.

Mom stared at me. She mouthed the word like it was unfamiliar. “...no, honey, it’s [cloigeann],” she said, strangely. “We haven’t quite covered that yet, but this…well, he used to be someone, like you or me. We can’t leave him like this, so we’ll take care of him at home. Let’s just call it a day, okay?  I’ll show you the rites, just later.  Did you find any more bones?” I shook my head. “Well, I think we have enough for tonight,” Mom said, showing me her basket. I saw a number of mussels. Where she’d found them, I had no idea, but Mom was clearly more successful, but more pressingly was the exceedingly angry blue lobster snapping its claws at my face  once I poked my head closer to take a look. “Come along then, we need to prepare.”

“Yes Momma,” I said, a bit subdued. The sea slug didn’t look that dangerous, but that didn’t mean anything. I felt a bit of dread imagining what would have happened if I hadn’t freaked out when it first showed up. 

Suddenly very tired with this day, I drudged after Mom as we went home. At the very least, the lobster would be tasty.

It was only after the tide began to set in that I realized I’d slipped up again.

If you've paid to read this anywhere outside of Patreon, SubscribeStar, or Ko-Fi, then you've been scammed and someone is ripping you off as it is stolen.

If you're reading this on any other site than RoyalRoad, SufficientVelocity,Spacebattles, QuestionableQuesting, MZNovel, or Wattpad or it's by anyone other than HiddenMaster, it's been plagiarized and stolen.

Chapter Six: Author’s Note

This chapter alone inspired me to actually read, watch, and learn about seaside foraging to a degree I never had before. I even tried out a bunch of seaweed types which was an experience given I had never had much before beyond the occasional bit of sushi or something. Turns out, seaweed is awesome. Sea Spinach 2.0.

Also, implications! Laughs ominously.

Obligatory author plug because I'd love to write more but society sadly says I need monies to keep living (and support my growing addiction to commissioning catgirl art)

Support me on Patreon, Ko Fi, or Subscribe Star. Check them advance chapters uploaded every weekend, too. Or check out my website for links to my other author accounts, contact, socials, etc. Anything is appreciated :3

Also I have a discord now! Check it out. I would love to chat with fans. :3