Chapter 2015: Squirted On

Brena crouched beside her, studying the smooth mud.

"Could they be mud crabs?"

Tavi came down the slope so quickly that she nearly walked into them.

"Mud crabs? Here?"

"If that’s what she’s smelling."

"Blossom knows where they’re hiding," the dogkin assured her. "Blossom doesn’t know what they are."

Della looked from the hidden bank to the fluffy ears pointing toward it. If Blossom was right about something living there, it was exactly the place a mud crab would choose.

Her mouth began to water.

"Are they good?" Black asked, coming to join them.

"They’re a true delicacy," Brena replied. "The restaurants charge a fortune for them."

"We look at the menu, then order something else," Tavi added. "Usually whatever comes with the most bread."

"We could’ve walked straight past a whole dinner’s worth," Della murmured, peering beneath the roots again.

"We’ve probably done it before."

She couldn’t even argue with Brena. People trained specifically to find their burrows, learning to notice tiny changes in the silt where they breathed. The shells disappeared into the mud, and a disturbed crab could retreat far beneath the bank before an ordinary hunter knew where to dig.

Blossom had pointed straight to them.

"Can Blossom catch them, Master?"

"Yes. Let’s taste this delicacy."

Her tail rose with enthusiasm.

"They go deeper if you disturb the bank," Della warned. "You might have to-"

Blossom vanished from beside her. A short void step carried the dogkin onto a flat stone in the shallows, where she crouched and slipped a gauntleted hand beneath the roots.

Mud split around a broad shell as she pulled.

"Found you!"

A claw swung at her wrist. Before it could close, Blossom turned the crab over against the stone and drove her free gauntlet’s claws through its exposed underside. Its legs kicked against her arm, then fell still.

She raised it for the women on the bank to see.

"Is this a mud crab?"

It was large enough to fill a washbasin. Water slid off the ridged shell, revealing dark green beneath the coating of silt.

Brena’s lips parted.

"Yes."

"That one is enormous," Tavi whispered. "Probably worth as much as our quest reward will be... If not more."

The women watched the dogkin smile at her master, tail wagging with pure joy. To others, catching these things was an art mastered over a lifetime. Blossom hadn’t even known they existed, yet she’d just plucked one from the mud.

Life wasn’t fair.

Della put her spear down and reached to help bring it ashore. She’d spent the afternoon trying to look respectable in front of Lord Black, but the prospect of eating that much crab had driven most of those concerns out of her head.

"Careful with the legs," Brena said, moving to take the other side.

Together they lowered it onto the grass. Tavi crouched beside them, touching the shell as though she needed to make sure it was real.

"We’re really eating this?"

"That was the idea," Black replied.

"You could sell it for hundreds!"

"I’d rather eat them."

Her smile spread slowly across her face.

"Oh, I love this quest."

Blossom was already moving toward the next clump of roots. She paused to sniff above the water, then thrust her hand into a gap Della would have mistaken for a shadow.

"This one is trying to leave!"

The dogkin braced a foot against the bank and hauled another muddy shell into view. Its claws snapped at empty air as she caught it from behind, holding its underside away from herself.

The three women crowded at the bank’s edge as Blossom held up her catch.

"Another big one! Blossom, you’re amazing-"

The crab shot a jet of muddy water from beneath its mouth, spraying straight across the women leaning over it.

"Kya!"

Tavi jumped back, clutching the front of her drenched tunic. Della and Brena yelped as the rest splashed down their legs, and a string of curses followed Brena’s discovery that some had gone into her boot.

Blossom stared over the crab’s shell with a shocked expression. "It squirts just like Blossom when Master has his way with her!!"

"Ehehehe!" Her giggling made Tavi look up from her clothes.

"Blossom," Black said. "Don’t laugh at our companions."

"Blossom is trying, Master! But dinner just squirted on them!!"

Another giggle escaped her before she managed to press her lips together.

"...Sorry!"

She turned it onto its shell against the stone and drove her gauntlet’s claws beneath its mouth. Once its legs stopped moving, she set it on the bank beside the first.

Tavi pulled her muddy tunic away from her chest.

Then she looked at Black.

"At least we didn’t lose the crabs."

On the path above, Ayame pressed her fingers to her mouth as Tavi tried to brush herself off and discovered she’d only spread the mud farther.

"Stop rubbing it in," Brena said, reaching for a cloth.

"Thank you for that wonderful advice."

Black came down the bank while Tavi was deciding which part of herself to clean first. At his will, water rose from the stream and curled around her muddy skirt, washing the dirt free before running back down into the shallows.

"May I?" he asked, indicating her tunic.

"YES!!!"

The answer came out with an eagerness that made Brena turn away.

"I mean, ehem, please..."

Water moved over the cloth in a thin sheet, gathering the mud without soaking what lay beneath. Tavi held her staff very still while Black’s magic cleaned her sleeves, then drew the remaining dampness from her clothes.

He reached toward her hair.

She forgot to breathe.

His fingers picked a fleck of mud from her hair above one ear.

"There."

"Thank you, my lord."

Tavi looked up at him with such helpless adoration that Della suspected the mud had become her favorite part of the afternoon. Her clean sleeves remained lifted while she waited to see whether he’d found anything else in her hair.

Black offered the same help to Della and Brena, rinsing their boots and cleaning the splash from Brena’s trousers. Once they were dry, his wind lifted Blossom’s catch from the grass.

"Good job," he told the dogkin, stroking between her ears. "You found us a wonderful dinner."

"Master can always count on Blossom’s nose!"

Her tail resumed sweeping behind her. Della smiled at the delighted dogkin, then looked at the floating shells with an excitement she couldn’t remember ever feeling about trail food.

There was dried meat in her pack. Hard bread too. She’d been perfectly prepared to sit on a damp log chewing both, provided Lord Black was somewhere she could look at him.

Now they were taking luxurious delicacies into the woods.

"We should get these cooked," she said, retrieving her spear.

"Della," Brena murmured, "you’re drooling."

She wiped her mouth before she thought to check whether that was true. Her friend’s laughter followed her back onto the path, where Blossom was already asking Lucille how they should prepare the meat.

Tavi stayed beside Della until the others had started moving.

"He touched my hair."

"There was mud in it."

"He could’ve used his magic from afar."

Della had no answer for that.

Brena glanced down at the mud beside the path.

"Don’t you fucking dare," Della told her.