Sebastian knew there was only one way to ask her, it didn't take a word, not a single word. He was careful to sneak silently through the halls, his multi-jointed legs sinking quietly into the sand-coated floors as he stuck to the shadows out of reach of the seashell lights hanging in the sconces. What would merpeople say if they knew the king's advisor was creeping through the castle in the middle of the night with designs on such a beautiful prized pearl? Just like with a literal pearl, his metaphorical one had started off as a piece of irritating grit but over her sixteen years had developed into a smooth and semi-precious gem, far out of the reach of his lowly crustacean claws. He shrunk back into his shell as a pair of patrolling yellow-fin tuna made their rounds through the hall, letting out a sharp exhale of bubbles like a mechanical toy clam in a fishtank as they disappeared around the corner. He was so close now and could not bear to be caught yet again, just like the previous night when he had had to make up some asinine excuse about returning the princess' whosit. Like the mysterious patch of warm water that slides past you at the ocean when you are playing in the surf, he slipped into Ariel's room and swam up to her bed, whispering "Ari-el" in his fake Jamaican accent in her ear, the accent he had picked up to please her after hearing her say something to her sister about wanting to get cornrows put in her red hair. "Ari-el," he whispered again, in a voice dripping with garlic butter sauce. Delicious and greasy, the only good thing about ordering crustacean because they're such a pain in the ass to open up even when the restaurant gives you tools to do so because you know those hammers and pliers are never good enough and while sure you might crack his exoskeleton open with a satisfying pop, it's just going to slip in the oil and fling meat everywhere. Honestly, any meal that comes with its own bib is probably a meal that should either not be served at a proper sit down restaurant or should be prepared for you in the back. As a whole we have been moving away from the natural presentation of food, distancing ourselves from any unpleasant reminder of the realities of our base natures and the blunt fact that in order to eat we must kill. Birds are given to us plucked, fish are gutted, and any semblance of a face is removed from the animal before it is laid before us on the table, although in the past (as well as, to be sure, in many parts of the world today), the head was not only considered edible but a delicacy. Our food is sanitized for our comfort, allowing us to hold onto a false moral high ground, looking down at those who have a more intimate relationship with their dinners, like Ariel, who, as a deep sea mammal with teeth rather than baleen and not a human being, lunged upon Sebastian when he startled her awake and grabbed his soft head in her mouth, ripping it off with a spray, and hungrily prying his shell apart with her strong claw-tipped fingers to better suck out his juicy interior.
