Vashine swam through the towering pillars of coral, sunlight dappling their pink and purple hues. She'd decided to leave her crew to their odd behavior; she could always do a surprise check later to make sure none of them had pilfered any treasure. Right now she needed a bit of solitude, a little peace and quiet, and the chance to swim off her bellyful of fish.
Of course, there was such a thing as a little too much peace and quiet. And as the merwoman wove her way through the reef, she was starting to feel just a little peaced out.
Schools of glinting sunfish hung motionless in the water. A barnacle-covered crab emerged from the reef and stood silently at attention, like a footman. The dark shadow of a ray drifted across her path, aimlessly, as if the animal had forgotten where it was going the second it got close to her.
Shit and sand dollars, she thought. It's Poseidon's own insane asylum here t'day.
She'd swallowed a few of the smaller fish as a matter of principal--a proper pirate had to be greedy, after all--but she quickly reached a point at which the thought of more food made her gills tighten with dismay. Waving off a particularly persistent clownfish which seemed to have mistaken her mouth for an anemone, she thrashed her tail a few times, lifting herself with just a bit of difficulty away from the jagged candy-colored landscape.
"Captain! Captain! I did what ya asked, I did!"
Vashine turned to see one of the wretched little dolts from before. She growled and tried to outpace the girl, but the little minnow was a speedy slip of a thing, and Vashine was bloated and slow. Soon her merminion was swimming beside her.
"I made myself useful! Look! I caught us a right big load o' oysters!" She held up a net. "Hundreds of 'em! Found a whole nest on t' other side of the ship, an' I went all walrus-an'-carpenter on 'em! We'll have a feast!"
Vashine felt the fish shifted in her belly, and a few stray bubbles of air escaped from her mouth.
"Captain? Don't ya want ta try the first one?" The girl help on a particularly large oyster and waved it temptingly.
"Get stuffed!" Vashine growled crossly.
The girl blinked her nictitating membrane, then, without a word, cracked open the shell and slurped down the oyster. She repeated the process with another, and another, empty shells falling from her hands like raindrops to rest against the coral below. Vashine just watched, puzzled.
"Th-there," the girl grunted when she'd swallowed the lot. Her middle bulged with the bulk of her fleshy meal. "Now I'm stuffed."
"Neptune's briny balls!" Vashine exclaimed. "What's got inta ya, lass?"
The young mermaid covered a burp. "Lots an' lots of oysters, mostly."
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