[html]  There were crabs everywhere and it was a frenzy that Poe was happy to take advantage of. With the assistance of a dead fish and the fire-nibbled remains of a dress, she had been relatively successful for a late morning's worth of crab fishing, and the dismembered remains that scattered the beach behind her stood as proof. Even in her largely aquatic diet, Poe found the crustaceans to be a sort of delicacy that would quickly become a staple in this new landscape.
At least when the just-healing burns that scattered her left side stopped reacting with dramatic screams of pain when the salt water licked at them, making the whole ordeal a little more awkward than it should have been. Crouching on a rock thirty feet from dry sand, the pitch girl dangled a long strip of fabric with a token fish head, down against the slimy rocks below, stretching out an arm this way and then that to tempt the attention of a fat, strolling crab. Enough bobbing and dragging and it latched on, allowing Poe to slowly-slowly pull it up to the surface where she used the rest of her old dress to scoop it out with a little squawk of victory.
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He had been sitting there for quite some time, but it seemed as though he had gone unnoticed. He supposed that his fur blended in with the sand well enough, for he was a multitude of light browns, golds, tans and whites. Even his eyes were fairly common, usually appearing a gold-green colour, more often gold than green. As a rule, he was not a very interesting-looking fellow, and he supposed that the only thing really 'different' about him was his size, for he was a little smaller than other males his age.
He had learned his lesson the last time he met someone, and did not move from where he was sitting. He did not say anything, refusing to betray his position (to the enemy). Although he was tempted to move closer, to see what the girl was doing with the cloth and the crab, he did not want her to see him. Perhaps if he sat as still as he could, he would go undetected until she left. Then, perhaps, he could see if the water was warm enough to go swimming (although, he doubted it was).
[html] As soon as the crab found itself cradled in fabric instead of a tide, it began to writhe and squirm on its back, grasping at snags in the cloth to upright itself. Poe stood up, ready to tiptoe across the rocks and return it to shore with her, but stopped to watch its valiant struggle. A little too valiant for her liking, she decided quickly and hoisted the whole package out towards the sea, and then flinging it back at the beach. Long, bony legs and wet, burnt fabric twirled and splayed in the air, then came crashing down all together a short distance from the boy, abruptly giving away his presence to the fisher-girl.
"Oh!" she loudly exclaimed, a delayed warning and half-assed apology. It was a short lived concern, though, as she spotted her fresh catch slowly wriggling against the sand, with a clear path for water. "Hey!" the dark girl shouted, pointedly determined in a mildly viscous way, and began to scramble across the slippery rocks just above and below the surface into shore. "Catch that crab! He's too delicious to live!" she called to her unknown relation, scrambling sloppily in his direction.
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