We rescued a big crab, then things got weird.
Here, we sit in a café in the city of Fontaine, but the people live in trepidation. Sunlight beams down upon us, but the residents try to hide in shadow. There are murmurings around us. Shifty glances. Beads of sweat. Cowering. Looking at us.
A crab army has followed me and Furina. Or, perhaps, they followed Crabaletta and Crabdric. Our hulked-up new friend is perched beside our table, and on his head, Crabaletta waves her pincers around as though basking in adoration. Not that it shows on her face. She's a crab. And the only adoration comes from the army, not the Fontainians.
All through the streets. All over the houses. Across the great walls. There is nothing but crab. Look upon them and despair. See how they waddle from side to side. Gaze upon their magnificent claws, high in the air. Tremble before their mighty shells, ye peasants. The crabs have peacefully invaded Fontaine's main city just to watch over their royal leaders, and whatever we are to them. The crabs rain water on us like confetti raining at a royal parade, and the royal crab family seem to love it, visible through the splashing pitter-patters on the ground. We're just trying to enjoy our coffee, and now we're soaked and cold. Passersby are trying to dodge them like they were firing acid rain.
If you look to the table on our left, you shall see Clorinde and Navia, existing in a state between rooted in reality and hovering over the pits of hell. They struggle to understand the world around them. They're trying not to acknowledge what is happening, but it's too late. Their minds have comprehended too much, like ants that just grasped the intricacies of a flamethrower before their mound burned to cinders.
I swear that Clorinde is reaching for her gun. Slowly, so as to not alert the hoard that she's a threat.
It may be prudent that I say something. Not to Clorinde or Navia, no, their minds are too far gone at this point. No mind can withstand this many crabs at once. But me and Furina have adapted. Evolved.
"Furina."
"Aether."
"Wanna go to the beach?"
"I was just thinking of getting out of the city." Her voice is as nonchalant as can be, but her face is framed in lines of sweat, and her coffee has turned cold and watery. "There appears to be some, ah hah, di-stur-ban-ces in Fontaine today. This is not con-du-cive to a nice day out."
To the beach we go.
We had to dodge a flurry of perturbed gazes to get here, and I'm not convinced Clorinde still isn't going to gun down every crustacean in Fontaine. I don't know why these people assumed we have control over that crustacean frustration, we just live here. King Crabdric shows no emotion as he carries Crabaletta upon his shell and follows us, whisking away.
I'm lying back on the golden sands, just outside the city. It's looming wall spills some shade over the beach, but who comes to the beach to lie in cold sand? My body sparkles in the sun. In my shorts and my shades, I'm kicking a foot off my leg, hands behind my head. If I open my eyes, I'll only see the seagulls prancing amongst the sky, and I'm not really in the mood to draw their infernal ire, so I keep my eyes shut.
As expected, the crab army hath cometh. Over the wall. Across the cliffs. On the aquabus route. But they're surprisingly easy to ignore if you just close your eyes and reject reality. For now, my reality is Furina and our two pet crabs. Even if all I can hear is the rhythmic beating of their claws on shells. I soon learn that this is how crabs communicate in place of vocalising any noises.
"People, I can get a room with Furina, you can get a room away from us."
Crabaletta and Crabdric do not get a room. They're cuddling together in the shade, heart-shaped bubbles of love are erupting from between them. One such bubble pops on my head.
Furina is sunbathing next to me. In her blue bikini top and loose shorts, she twirls circles in the sand with her bare feet. Her usual hat has been hung off of Crabaletta's shell for today, and instead, Furina dons a broad straw hat. In the reflection of her shades, the tides recede at her ankles. She is eating a battered fish and 'chips' out of a newspaper cone, though I hear some places call them 'fries.'
"Ah, the life." She holds a chip between her fingers with her self-satisfied grin. "Human and crab, the two apexes of the world, gathered together in peace and harmony."
The seagulls, high above, have found their mark.
A seagull gawks, swoops down and digs into her chip cone.
"No, evil, evil!" Extreme terror overtakes her. The seagull is flapping its wings and squawking in her face. I tell you, seagulls can be pretty big. Furina knows better than me. She's entangled in its shrill screams and feathers.
She flails and fights, but the true apex predator of the beach claims an easy victory and takes off with her cone of fish and chips. No, I didn't help her. Furina has to learn to fear the seagull. She's looking up at it flap away with poise and grace, while she curls there with fear and disgust. She would later spend more time explaining this to her therapist compared to her entire traumatic backstory up to this point.
"You are doing quite little to prove yourself as my consort, so called boyfriend." She hisses like an angry little kitten.
"No." I tip my shades. "Fight the food chain hierarchy of your own volition."
Just as I finish talking, I'm looking beyond Furina's traumatised gaze.
The army of crabs dance at the beachhead. A hellish play. Small and large, of varying shell types, they are all here, watching us, and celebrating something. Now that twenty-four hours have passed, I don't quite see them as the eldritch abomination they might be, I just see them as several hundred stalkers. The world doesn't quite make sense, but I can live in it.
"Listen. Can we talk about the barnacle in the room?"
"Ugh, pour l'amour de Dieu, I so did not want to talk about this." She pushes a hand to her forehead and pulls it away like yanking the mild headache out of her brain.
"We can't go the rest of our lives being followed by an army of crabs." I gesture wildly at them. They do not acknowledge me. "Every play you produce from now on will have the crabs as extras in every scene. I could never walk around without other fighters strolling up and trying to turn them into weapon ascension materials. Society as we know it will try to shun us."
"I should hope you're not about to suggest executing them." Furina turns from me and huffs.
"No." I lower my hands like changing the gears in this wacky ride. "I wasn't saying we should get the guillotines and firing squads ready, we can deal with this humanely, so let's not jump to extremes."
"Good. I merely wanted to establish that first. There's hope for you to become a vegan yet." She reaches over and bops my nose.
"I'm not opposed to having the moral high ground that you vegans enjoy, but a lot of animal carcasses taste good."
"Right." Her smile turns into a sharp twist at the corner of her lips, but it passes in a second. "First, let us determine why they're here."
Furina climbs up by pushing off my chest, twirls on her bare feet, and joins hands to hips. She looks down on Crabdric; by which I mean, she looks at his massive form at eye-level. But she has the posture of a tall woman.
"King Crabdric, are they your loyal vassals?" She speaks like Neuvilette demanding testimony.
"…" Crabdric does not speak. Not verbally, anyway. He's tapping pincers on his body.
Our big, chunky king picks up his tiny girlfriend and holds her against the sunlight. She casts watery waves upon the burning sands. Crabaletta waves at her people, and they all wave back. All of them. Simultaneously. Like puppets on the same set of strings.
"I don't know how to describe this." I say. Deep down, I'm straddled with the heavy knowledge that I could never understand arthropods. This leaves me feeling empty and downtrodden as I look towards Furina. "Blue woman, la Dompteuse de Crabe, what are your thoughts?"
"As a crab-whisperer, I believe we are witnessing Crabdric present his beloved to his vassals." Furina tilts her sun hat like it were a safari hat. She slides her fingers to her chin, leaning in as if peering with binoculars. "More than a beloved, perhaps, he may be presenting her as his saviour."
"Because, like, Crabaletta saved him yesterday, from the poacher." I chin-wag.
"Right, right, I know these things." She also chin-wags. We're just a pair of chin-waggers.
Furina picks up Crabaletta from the clutches of her beloved. The tiny water crustacean turns within her hands, looking up at her maker with beady, adoring eyes.
"As your creator and master," Furina's voice rises in triumphant haughtiness, in the way that only she can, "shall it not come to pass that I, in turn, seat myself upon the crab throne?"
I can see into Furina's mind. She pictures herself on a mighty throne, held up by crabs lifting her through the streets of Fontaine. The people throw confetti over her. In the courts, all lesser mortals have been replaced by crabs, and Neuvilette's disposition does not change. Everyone in Fontaine now communicates by tapping their hands on various surfaces and frothing at the mouth. I don't know why Furina dreams of this world, I think it just amuses her.
Crabaletta shoots her in the face with water. Furina collapses immediately. I watch through the tint of my shades. She's face down and not moving. Maybe dead.
"Well." I say. "You're not the Archon of Crabs today."
"For today, perhaps." Furina pulls her face out of the sand and pouts at me with a bit of side-eye. She's holding Crabaletta to her chest.
Crabdric taps her back. He's waiting expectantly.
"If you want your girlfriend back, you shall best me combat, crustacean." She holds her construct away from him, climbing up to her feet. She's poising herself to start running with a churlish smile as she stumbles towards me. I'm sure, in her mind, she thinks I'll take her side in this game.
But I grab her flanks. When my fingers press against her soft skin, she squeaks and her body shoots upright and against me. I'm rising up and letting the ticklish sensation course through her defenceless body as she realises this battle will be three against one.
"No, Aether!" Her wriggly smile is almost begging me to destroy her. She wants to close her arms against her body, but doesn't want to let go of her victim.
"Frankly, I relate to Crabdric," I tighten my hold on her feeble body, easily yanking her squirming figure against me, "if someone kidnapped you, I'd fight through fire and hell to rescue you, too."
As I tickle her sides, she drops Crabaletta. The tiny crab rolls in the sand as Furina takes a sharp inhale and tries to pry my hands away before she's consumed in giggling. Through her manic squirming, Crabdric approaches, shielding his beloved and coming for vengeance.
"Furina, wasn't there about to be a fight?" I peck her warm cheek.
She doesn't respond through her breakdown into rampant laughter, even after I stop and tighten my arms over her waist and start dragging her to the water. Beneath us, Crabdric takes a very gentle hold of her ankles in his pincers and helps me carry her off the sands. In a matter of seconds, we're in the ocean. Without so much as a struggle, Crabdric flips her up and we both tumble in the ocean. Crabaletta skates along the ripples and shoots water in her face.
"No, I'm sorry!" Furina's chortles are as unstoppable as the joy bubbling in our hearts. She tries to shield her face, only for me to take her slim arms and hold them to the side.
"You're sorry now, right?" I taunt. I don't know if she can hear me through the spray of bubbles blasting her.
In the end, we're all laughing in the ocean. We float there, unimpeded by paltry matters such as reality. Crabaletta in Crabdric's arms. Furina in my arms. Just two couples living their best lives.
"This is the life, huh?" I whisper into her ear as our heads bob over the water. Her smile meets me as she turns. With the touch of our lips, with our arms and legs wrapping around one another, a warmth nuzzles in my heart. There is but one joy to be sought in this world, and that's love.
And there might be a world-ending amount of crabs watching over us, but, hey, we got used to them fairly quickly, right? We can figure out how to stop them from stalking us, I'm sure there's a peaceful solution out there somewhere.
Huh. I could have sworn there were more crabs. And I don't remember when the gunshots started.
Oh no. Crustaceans are being whipped left and right. On top of the wall, crabs have been blasted into the air in a blazing purple streak. Across the cliff, reflecting in our quivering eyes, crabs are tumbling down with fractured shells. I'm reminded of the sad violins that would play in the tragedies that Furina sometimes directs, as we witness wholesale destruction.
Within the wind-whipping slashes and the echoing gunshots, I hear the faint ramblings of 'Where evil lurks, shoot on sight!'
Clorinde is slaughtering the crabs by the dozen. The evil, evil crabs.
"No, no, Clorinde!" Furina claws her way out of the ocean, gasping and panicking. "Typical pescatarian, they all do this!"
I don't know if Clorinde heard that, but her snappy electrical movements stop at our beach in a typhoon of sand, where she holds her blade and her gun smokes at the barrel. She looks so casual in the midst of her slaughter, for better or for worse. Purple eyes catch the sun as she turns to us.
"Ah, Furina. I am glad I can accost these creatures before they interrupted…" Clorinde blinks while sheathing her weapons, "…whatever it was you were doing with Aether out here in the middle of nowhere, in the ocean, all alone."
"Stop accosting them," Furina sputters up water as she reaches the beach, "they're Crabaletta's friends."
"Crabaletta's…?" Clorinde shakes her head. "Your little water construct?"
"Yes, I mean…"
Furina stumbles between Clorinde and our two favourite arthropods, she wipes wet sand from her legs, sheepishly looking away. I'm climbing out as she crosses her arms, and Clorinde wears no emotion.
"Do water constructs have the ability to understand friendship?" The hunter ponders like a philosopher. "Are there dopamine receptors in its ganglion clusters?"
"Clorinde, please…" Furina tries to wave the questions away. Red embarrassment crawls over her cheeks.
"You can't-"
Alright, my turn. I'm the only one who can make fun of Furina, and seeing her uncomfortable is getting a rise out of me. I put a hand on Furina's slumping shoulder. She touches it, and smiles at me from the corner of her eye.
"That's enough, Clorinde." I say. "These aren't creatures, they're just goofy little animals. Put the gun away, you wouldn't drop a missile on a baby seal."
Clorinde looks into me. Of course she's as blank as always, but her tall stance, the fiddling of a bullet between her fingers; she's annoyed, just a little.
"Fine. But these crabs are as numerous as they are suspicious. And they're following you. At the minimum, they must be contained."
"They could find a good home somewhere." Furina's eyes sparkle, gazing into Clorinde's dead eyes.
"There are no people who want crabs as pets and no crabs that want to be pets. "
"Unfortunately, I agree." I cough, and avoid looking at the royal crabs, but I know they're looking at me.
"Perhaps Monsieur Neuvillette can think of something." Clorinde stores the bullet away in her pocket. She isn't looking at us. "In the meantime, I shall apprehend the crustaceans. Though I may not have enough handcuffs…"
"Be gentle with them." Furina strolls up and clasps Clorinde's hands.
Clorinde does not emote. But I do feel, that while she and Furina hold hands, she is trying to muster an emotion within her heart. Seeking her courage. She has a question, and no one is going to like it.
"Crabaletta isn't real. She's a construct of water. You know this, don't you?"
The world changes. Wind stops. All over the beach, the crabs condense into inactivity, like sculptures in a silent museum, leering over an expanding mass of shadow. The sun retreats. Clouds loom within the eye of a storm. The receding tides of a black ocean lap at us, then pull away. I do not feel the cold water. No one does.
And Furina's grip on Clorinde's hands tighten. Too tight. Clorinde shows emotion. Agitation.
I need to intervene. I don't know for whose sake, but I must.
"Clorinde. You didn't come here to start a psyche evaluation of your friend. Is it so hard to just-"
But Furina gently pushes Clorinde away with a smile that is not happy. With eyes that are wide open, but look at nothing. She puts a finger to my lips. Hair slicks over her face.
"She's been real in my mind for hundreds of years." Furina sounds so happy. So, so happy. "All those years. Before you were even born. And now she's here, in love, surrounded by an army of new friends."
They stare into each other. All over Teyvat, not a soul stirs. Every rain drop has stopped.
Until Furina speaks and sets the world right again.
"But you already knew that." Furina's hair bobs. A cheerful glint in her eyes. "Ah hah, how couldn't you? You know me so well, don't you?"
Clorinde looks so small, stepping back in whirling shadows. As the sun comes out once more, as a wind breathes life into Teyvat, she straightens her hat.
"Right. I'm sorry, Furina." Clorinde fiddles with a lock of hair. Her gaze is dismissively drawn away, to anything that's not the former Archon.
"Can you believe that Crabaletta and Crabdric are getting married?" Furina's eyes emit a black sparkle. She clasps her hands together, giddy and gleeful. "Ooh, can you even wait?"
"No. No, I really can't." With that, Clorinde turns her back on us. Within her eyes, a miasma of inner turmoil. Across her back, a mingling of sunlight and shadow. "Seeing as those two are the reasons for the crab congregation. And you command one of them."
"Mm hm." Furina looks down her nose.
Am I right? Is Furina indulging in a fantasy? Is Crabaletta real? Should I be encouraging her? Can the crabs cause harm outside of stalking us? Is Clorinde overreacting? Can I even relate to Furina's isolation of over several centuries? Is that trauma something one can recover from?
I don't know. Everything is weird. But I'll defend Furina, and her peaceful crab friends. Anything for a peaceful life of love and happiness.
Chapter 2 'Crab' word count; 68