“Delicious,” sucked Drutherstone. A heap of membranous shells grew at his elbow. The shells had a catching quality to them, still outfitted with little spines and naturalistic curvatures. It was almost as if the shells found some comfort still being huddled together and were frightened to part ways even as they were periodically swept into the trash.
Ungulen closed his eyes, wrapped his mouth around a claw and slurped. Valley crabs were his absolute favorite and he had spent many solitary hours collecting them off the oozing green lakeshore down in the valley earlier that morning. The mountain of shells in front of his seat at the table was tremendous. A monument to his enjoyment and and an honest day’s work.
Marrionetta stuck out her tongue and gagged for the fifteenth time that night.
“What’s wrong, love?” Ungulen’s lips shimmered. “Not good enough for ye?”
Marrionetta fixed Ungulen with a haughty and sarcastic stare which produced a sound like billiards colliding. “I’ve dined on the finest crustacea on several continents so don’t condescend to me, Ungy.”
Ungy rolled his eyes.
She continued, “I just find it disgusting you could eat these sad little tacks that have done nothing but roll around in groundsmuck all their lives, not to mention whatever skim finds its way out of Drutherstone’s sinuses.”
In response, Ungulen smacked a fat plug of crabmeat out of a tubule. Drutherstone too merely picked his teeth.
Drutherstone, Ungulen, Marrionnetta and Goren Hargus sat around the round table, eating under the swaying silhouette of an oil lamp. Outside the mess hall, night closed in, in its greenish way.
This was a private dinner. All the other employ had been banished both from the discussion and from the intoxicating fumes of boiled slime crabs. A lever boy or two had managed to steal hot specimens from the pot, their fingers singeing and warting up all the way back to their barracks. Otherwise, the party remained undisturbed.
Goren Hargus was the first to conclude his appetite. “So,” he announced. “Shall we review the financials?”
x9dread 