Crab Walk (Patreon)

Woman: Artist's References
Crab: PInterest

Sarah shared a college dorm with four others. The space was always too messy, too noisy, too -- something. Sarah, in short, was not a well-liked member of the group. She was always complaining about something. Her roomies, of course, put up with it because none of them could afford other accommodations but Sarah's continuous complaining was a drain on everyone.

It's not that Sarah really cared one way or the other about the rest of the group. She'd been assigned to the room when she arrived at the college and hadn't been given any say whatever. That would never have been conceivable back home. She was an only child and had gotten pretty much what she wanted. "Spoiled" is the usual term for such behaviour and Sarah had it down pat. She seemed to enjoy complaining and making everyone else miserable. So they avoided her. That made her lonely and even more miserable. Of course, since it was their fault, she took it out on them.

That would have gone on for the full four years (or more) of her college career had she not been in marine biology. Once a year, her landlocked college arranged to fly the entire fourth year class to a marine research station. There they were worked hard under the watchful eye of the lead researcher but they learned. Everyone except Sarah, unfortunately. She complained at the work. She wheedled others into pulling her share of the load. She even tried to verbally brow beat the researcher in charge into letting her get away with less than everyone else. The researcher responded by assigning her the arduous duty of species counting along the beach.

This meant she had to stake out an area of the beach and carefully count each kind of animal and plant in the staked out area. Such counts, though an important ecological measure of beach health, were not popular as it required a keen eye for detail to not count and recount the same organism. Sarah, or course, would rather take the easy road so her counts were sloppy. Everyone, even those at the bottom of the class, could tell hers were wrong. The species balance was totally wrong and it was apparent to all she'd done the most cursory of counts and wasted the rest of the day doing something less productive.

Finally Dr. Finneaus, the research team leader, could take it no longer. She took Sarah aside and told her that her sloppy attention to detail was unacceptable. She insisted that Sarah go back to the staked out area and do a proper and thorough count or she, personally, would ship her back to the college with a failing grade. Sarah's marks were never very high (just above C level -- which Sarah found somehow funny for a marine biologist). An F in a core course would prevent her from graduating and she'd have to spend another year making up the course the following winter semester.  In a real snit, Sarah huffed angrily back to her section of beach and straightened the cords. She was angry, angry to the point of near uselessness. Had the piece of jewelry not caught the sun, it would have been very unlikely that Sarah would have noticed it. Sarah, ever up to sloughing off a necessary task, dropped her poles and dug the sparkling object from the sands.

It was a tiny crab in gold with sparkling stones that, to Sarah's eye, were diamonds. To her it was beautiful and she spent many long minutes admiring it. She decided she might as well wear it. She turned it over again and again but could find no pin nor any place where such a pin might have been. It wasn't a charm or part of a necklace either. All it was, it seemed, was a tiny crab, carefully crafted in gold, and encrusted with sparkling gemstones. Well, never mind, she'd take it in to a jeweller when she got home and have something useful made of it.

She returned to the dirty and unwelcome chore of laying out the stakes and ropes of her count square. Her good mood at finding the crab quickly evaporated in counting. She hated the damn class and wondered why she'd even thought to be a marine biologist. In her muttering to herself about the unfairness of the task, she didn't notice that the world was changing -- or rather Sarah was. Everything was growing larger and her hips and legs were changing. In fact, she didn't even stop muttering when she switched from walking on two legs to scuttling along on considerably more. Even the disappearance of her clothing didn't stop the muttering. Only when she became hungry did the muttering stop. She wondered what time it was but was quickly distracted by a wonderful smell from a pile of seaweed near the shore.

A dead fish! That was indeed a treasure! Quickly, Sarah used her four claws to tear bits from the carcass. Greedily she stuffed herself until she could hold no more. Then she scuttled off down the beach to search for more treasure.