Merchant Crab

Balthazar looked up through his spyglass, scanning the sky for a target from atop a boulder on the edge of his pond. All was quiet until he saw it: a small brown sparrow fluttering against the white of the clouds behind it. The tiny feathered creature hovered around before landing on the tip of a thin branch of the islet’s tree, its plumage blending in with the brown and gray tones of the tree itself. But the crab had it locked in his sights now.

“Right there, Blue!” he yelled out, one pincer firmly stretched out toward the bird.

With a sudden whoosh, a long blue body flew over the crab, the golden scales on its neck reflecting a shiny yellow under the sunlight hitting them. For such a large creature, she moved with incredible ease through the air, her wide wings making her soar in the tree’s direction.

The tiny sparrow fluttered in a startle, scrambling to flee in the other direction, beating its wings as fast as its small body allowed, the drake hot on its trail.

Had it been a different creature, and perhaps Balthazar would have felt bad for it, but the crab knew better. Birds were nothing but balls of evil, filled with nothing but hatred and contempt, devilish creatures with no other purpose but to mock every land dweller from above.

Like the time when he was still a small crab, and one of them swooped down and stole a juicy berry he had found near the water right off his pincer. He never got to taste the sweetness of that fruit, but he got to watch the flying fiend gorge itself on it up on a high branch.

Needless to say, Balthazar was the kind of crab to hold a grudge.

As the much larger wings of the drake easily allowed it to catch up to the sparrow, the bird found itself with nowhere to hide, with nothing but open air around them. Blue opened her mouth as she neared her prey, and with one swift snap of her maw, the bird was no more, gone down her throat in one gulp.

Balthazar put his spyglass down and took a sip from his fresh lemonade, cheering to another job well done.

The two of them had spent most of the afternoon practicing their bird spotting. The crab would have never imagined the easiest path to winning the drake over would be a shared dislike for feathered creatures and corrupt human merchants.

“That was even faster than the last one, well done!” he congratulated the drake, as she landed on the boulder next to his. “Just remember, imagine each one of those birds is called Antoine. I find it doubles my satisfaction watching them flee that way. Also, I always picture a silly little pencil mustache over their stupid beaks.”

While drakes did not seem capable of laughing, Blue showed a clear air of contentment. Whether that was because she could somewhat understand Balthazar’s words, or simply because she was pleased with herself for the chase, the merchant did not know nor did he much care to know, for at least now she was no longer throwing her head back and looking disdainfully at him. Small steps were something a crab could appreciate.

“Boss, boss!” a voice called from below.

Balthazar looked down from his boulder and saw Druma on the dirt path, returning from the road, waving one hand at him.

“Back so soon?” the crab asked. “Did something happen?”

“Yes, yes!” Druma responded, looking excited. “Bouldy get big tree for last pillar.”

The goblin pointed a scrawny finger back towards the road, where the tip of a tall and thick tree trunk was coming into view around a corner, soon followed by the rocky shoulder that supported it.

“Are you sure it's the right size for it?” Balthazar said, as he made his way down from the boulder and joined the two arrivals.

“Friend,” said Bouldy with a proud smile, as he placed the trunk upright on the ground, which stood taller than even the golem himself.

The crab walked around the tree trunk and tapped it with his right claw. “Seems nice and sturdy. It should do it.”

“Boss want Bouldy and Druma to place it?” the goblin asked, hopping left and right in excitement.

“Sure,” the crab answered. “Let’s try to get this roof done before the first leaves start falling.”

The rocky giant lifted the trunk back onto his shoulder, and the three made their way to one of the corners of the trading post’s platform.

All the other three sides already had their own crude pillars placed. Each one’s bark a slightly different shade, one with a few short branches still sticking out of it, and the one furthest from the entrance still had a bird’s nest attached. Thankfully, its former occupant had already vacated it and had not come along as well.

“Alright, let’s place it right here,” Balthazar instructed, while drawing an X on the dirt with the tip of his claw. “Bouldy, just like the other times, you know what to do.”

Nodding his stony head at the crab, the golem gripped the middle of the trunk with his two massive hands and brought it up horizontally above his head. Buckling his knees, the friendly giant drove the intended pillar down with all his might into the mark.

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Balthazar took a few steps back to avoid the cloud of dust lifted from the impact. “Alright, now twist!”

Bouldy gripped the now upright tree trunk with both arms, like a rock hugging a tree friend, and began twisting. Alternating between clockwise and counterclockwise, he slowly drove the giant stake deeper into the earth.

“Druma, shovel!” said the crab to the goblin.

With a quick nod, the small assistant grabbed his equally small shovel and ran around the pillar, digging away the dirt that spilled out from the hole created by the golem’s efforts, and making room for more to emerge as the wood went deeper.

“That seems good enough, you can stop, Bouldy,” Balthazar yelled, with one pincer in the air.

“Friend,” the walking boulder said, letting go of the pillar.

The golem stepped back and sat down on the ground, out of breath.

Because as a golem, he did not breathe or even have lungs, so there was no breath within him.

“This looks about even with the others, right?” said the crab, staring up at the trunk.

Druma held his thumb up in front of one of his eyes and closed the other. With his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, he moved the thumb left and right as he eye-measured the pillars in the other corners.

“Yes, yes! Look good to Druma!” he finally said, opening his other eye and stretching the upright thumb to the crab this time.

“Great!” Balthazar exclaimed. “Now that we got four sturdy pillars, we can finally get started on the roof proper.”

The crab gave the pillar two approving pats on the side with his pincer.

A sound of wood creaking came from underneath him and the dirt around the base of the pillar shifted as the pillar began slowly leaning away from the crab.

Before anyone could react or do anything, the tree trunk toppled over the short wooden fence around the trading post, and crashed loudly into a group of shelves and tables.

Balthazar spat out and shook off the dirt the uprooted trunk had thrown on his face and stared at the disastrous scene with the grumpiest of looks.

“Noooo,” the goblin howled with a sad frown as he picked up pieces of broken wood from the ground. “Druma’s nice table.”

As the crab walked around to the platform, he surveyed all the damage. Broken bottles of potions, cracked helmets, books with their pages ripped out and spread all over.

“This is a mess!” he finally yelled, letting out his pent up frustration.

“Woah, what happened here?” a woman’s voice said from the trading post’s entrance.

Balthazar turned to see a young girl with a bow on her back walking in from the road.

“Just a small setback on our, uh… renovations,” the merchant said. “Don’t worry, it’s all still perfectly safe around here. I promise nothing will fall on your head. Just… maybe watch your step for broken glass.”

“Why are you placing tree trunks around the place?” the adventurer asked, looking around at the other pillars. “Is this some kind of silly crab decoration thing I don’t understand?”

“No,” said the unamused crab. “We are working on a roof for the place, so silly adventurers like you don’t have to shop under the rain.”

“A roof?” the other said, with a mocking chuckle. “And those were supposed to be what, your support beams for the structure? Four crudely cut tree trunks, just like that?”

“Uh… yes? Why, what’s wrong with that?”

“Mate… you have no idea how to build a proper structure, do you?”

“I’m a freaking crab. I’ve never even been inside a building. What do you think?!” the exasperated Balthazar exclaimed, opening both arms in frustration.

“You haven’t even cut your wood into proper boards and beams,” the girl said, stepping to the edge of the platform and looking at the gathered wood for the build that was pilled on the other side. “You’re just using it all raw like that!”

She continued moving around the trading post, looking at things and shaking her head as she went.

“All this stuff is all so crudely made, it’s a wonder how nobody has injured themselves leaning on these flimsy guardrails yet.” She grabbed one of the wooden fences and gave it a wobble. “Total working hazard. Who even made this?”

“D-Druma make that,” the goblin sheepishly said from the other side of the rail, with an embarrassed look and his head down.

“A goblin building things?” the archer said, as she looked over the rail to the goblin and the golem on the other side. “I thought goblins only ever destroyed things. Either way, that does explain a lot. I mean, come on! Your building crew is composed of a small goblin that looks like any small gust of wind could send him flying away, a golem that is probably as smart as the rock he’s made of, and a crab with literal pincers for hands. How do you ever hope to build a proper roof?”

Balthazar was fuming. In part because of all the unpleasant things he was hearing from the girl, but also because he had no arguments against it, and there was little that irritated the crab more than admitting an adventurer was right and he was wrong.

“And what makes you such an authority in the matter?” he blurted out, failing to come up with a better counterargument. “You’re an expert carpenter-archer, or something?”

“No,” she responded. “Nobody takes carpentry as a skill. Are you kidding me? What’s an adventurer going to need that for? Going to build a nice stool to sit on while exploring a dungeon? My father was an architect, and I grew up around building sites, so I caught a thing or two about structure building. And let me tell you, the way you’re going, if by some miracle you do bring a roof over this place, it will be a matter of time before it comes crashing down on you.”

As much as he hated it, Balthazar knew there was a dose of truth to what the girl was saying. He just wished she wasn’t so blunt about it.

“You need a proper specialist, a human one, preferably,” she continued. “There are plenty of builders, masons, and carpenters in town. Why don’t you hire one to come down here and do the job?”

“Paying someone? That doesn’t sound like my kind of thing.”

“Suit yourself, but if you’re not willing to pay for quality, don’t expect to get a proper job done.”

“Either way,” the crab said, “your fellow townspeople don’t let crabs like me through their gates anyway, talking or not, so even if I wanted any of that, I couldn’t hire anyone.”

“Oh yes, I guess that’s one problem,” she conceded. “Sounds like you need a town representative. But that would be another hire, and you don’t seem to like that.”

A town representative. Balthazar had never considered it, but the way things were going, perhaps there was some merit to the idea.

The archer girl poked with her finger through a hole in one of the floorboards of the platform, shaking her head in disapproval.

“Anyhow,” the annoyed merchant said, “what were you looking to buy or sell, anyway?”

“Who? Me?” the girl said, standing up and pointing her finger at herself. “Nothing. I just heard the crash from the road and came down to check what it was. I can’t resist stopping to watch a wreck.”

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