Every furry deserves a holiday, ideally one involving lots of sunshine and plenty of food, relaxation and fun things. And that's exactly what three furries decided to do one fine summer's day. A certain easy-going striped skunk led two of her friends to the beach: one a scarred and sick-looking, but bright-eyed wolf and the other a very artificial leopard/mouse hybrid made of plastic, neon and hardware.
"This is going to be amazing!" Joypad exclaimed as she, Valy and Jamalia crossed over the path to get from the row of shops selling candy and lollies and shells and innertubes over to the beach. She pulled her goggles down from her face. "I just read on the Internet that the beach is full of chunks of quartz, which is one of the most common minerals on the planet. I wonder how big they are? As tall as us? or even bigger? Can you imagine that, Valy? Enormous crystals!.." She looked right and then left, at the expanse of the beach. "I can't see any. Jamalia?"
Valy and Jamalia gave each other a look, but it was the skunk who answered. "I don't know if you mean sand Joypad, but you're already standing on it."
Joypad stopped in her tracks and blinked at the skunk with her power-sign eyes, not understanding. Then slowly she looked down. She swirled the sand under her boot. "You mean... that's it?" she asked, her voice sounding a little weaker than a moment ago.
"'Fraid so."
Joypad's shoulders slumped as the reality sunk in. Her ponytail swayed a little with the movement but her blue plastic fringe didn't move one bit. "Oh."
The skunk paused too and folded her arms in a not-unfriendly way, and tilted her head to one side which made her beads clack against each other. "I'm sorry you're disappointed chicka," she said. "Here. Why don't we settle down and chill a while?"
Joypad seemed to have lost the will to speak. She avoided Jamalia and Valy's gazes, nodded to sitting down and helped half-heartedly as they spread out a blanket and angled a big, stripy parasol against the sun. Jamalia sat down, her luxurious tail a huge black and white plume behind her. She leant forward to take off her sandals and kicked them off, then leant back and wiggled her toes as if that was the hardest work she was going to do today. And then she pointed her snout into the air and closed her eyes, apparently enjoying the hot summer sun.
Valy started to feel uncomfortable about the silence. She knew that it happened sometimes - Joypad occasionally got pouty when she realised she'd misunderstood stuff like this and Jamalia didn't mind being quiet when Joypad sulked - but she never liked it. She looked at Joypad, who'd put her goggles back on and was apparently reading a web page: her head moved slightly left and right as if the anthroid was reading. She frowned and muttered something like, 'bigger than silt but smaller than gravel.'
Suddenly Valy couldn't stand the silence any more. "Well guys," she blurted, "I don't know about a-you but I wanna go down-a to the sea. Come on Jamalia! Joypad, you coming?"
Valy's enthusiasm usually kicked Joypad back into action and the wolf felt herself relax as she saw the hybrid take off her goggles again. The look on Joypad's face reassured Valy a little: wide eyes, her mouth slightly open as if ready to speak, ears high and keen.
"Okay," the anthroid said tentatively and stood up.
But as they walked down to the sea Valy could still see that Joypad wasn't happy.
xXx
The sand was a pale yellowy-gold and fine to the touch. The ocean went out further than any of them could see but turned vibrant green-blue in the mid-distance. Salt and cool spray hung in the air like an unusual perfume and whenever Valy licked her lips she could taste it. The sea's heart beat placidly against the shore.
Jamalia had long-since tired of rock pools but she always seemed to enjoy showing them to other furries, so she and Valy had a great time hopping from one rocky patch to another, squinting into clear pools of seawater and trying to spot crabs and shrimps and tiny fish.
Joypad screamed and Valy whipped around to see what had happened. The anthroid picked herself up, her snout wrinkled with irritation, and dusted sand off her strange, pearly fur. She still wasn't speaking much.
"Are-a you okay, Joypad?" Valy asked hopefully, softening her voice so that her Italian accent sounded as soothing as possible. Maybe I should have known to warn her about the beach, she wondered.
"Why aren't there any anti-slip panels?" Joypad said plaintively, pointing at the rocks with an accusing finger. "Someone could break their neck!" She eyed the rocks mistrustfully and then picked her way extra-carefully to Valy's side so that she could join in with the pool-watching. Not that she'd been enjoying it so far.
"And this stuff," she muttered, picking up a strand of seaweed.
Jamalia battled to keep her face straight, won, and then asked, "Why, chicka? What's wrong with it?"
"It's... slippy," Joypad announced, as if 'slippy' was the worst insult she could think of.
The skunk looked closely at the weed Joypad was holding up as if seeing it for the first time. "Well, it is that. Makes amazing sushi, though. Oh look Valy, anemones."
xXx
Google (Images) Anemone
The search came up with mostly flowers and some strange things that looked like they were made of jelly.
Related searches: sea anemone, marine anemone...
The first one would do. Joypad clicked sea anemone through virtual space.
Sea anemones looked like flowers. Sea flowers.
She pulled her goggles down so they hung under her chin, then wrapped her arms around her knees. She'd made the excuse that out in the sun she was too hot, so needed to rest under the parasol to let her hardware cool down. She wasn't sure whether the skunk and wolf had realised she just wanted to be alone but they let her go, either way. With nobody to talk to, Joypad pressed at her glove and scrolled through a few choices for music before settling down to Chime by Orbital.
Jamalia and Valy stood out in the shallows playing a game with the waves. They waited for the next one, Valy giggling like an overexcited puppy. They crouched... then leapt, and almost cleared the wave as it surged under them. They landed with a splash and an hysterical round of giggles. Valy half-fell onto Jamalia who propped her up with a sinuous black arm and laughed along with her. Valy's hair had become an untidy, dark mass and both of them were speckled with sea water and clumps of sand.
Joypad huffed at the reminder of her disappointment with the quartzy sand. Sometimes the anthroid wished she had a better understanding of biologicals: fun was a difficult concept for her. Sometimes loneliness crept in, though.
She was just wiggling her goggles back onto her face to sourly search the word 'Fun' when something shone in the sand in front of her, making her blink.
It had pincers and eyes on stalks and dainty legs that ended in points with no feet, so Joypad knew it was a crab. But the strange thing about it was that it had squashed itself into a sardine can. It soldiered forward with great difficulty, crossing in front of her as if it had important business to get to.
Maybe it's stuck in there and can't get its body out? I wonder if it needs help.
Joypad shifted around to sit on her legs. Carefully she scooped the crab up, her banded, pearly tail flicking out behind her as a counterbalance. She suddenly found the spangly sound of Chime distracting and pressed pause in case it frightened the crab.
It panicked and tried to shuffle backwards into its tin. Its eye-stalks retracted and it formed a kind of barrier with its pincers and legs. As if it actually felt comfortable in its unnatural little sardine tin.
Maybe you do. If I didn't know better, she thought with a building sense of delight, I'd think you were an anthroid crab!
What kind of crab are you, anyway? With her free hand she wrestled her goggles back on and searched 'Crab' and 'crab "tin shell"' but couldn't find an answer to her question. If Joypad was honest with herself she had almost no idea where on the Internet to start searching for the answer.
And then it occurred to her that the Internet may not be the best place to start searching. A black and white shape bobbed in the shallows, swathed in a multicoloured swimsuit and splashing lazily at the surface of the ocean. Jamalia will know.
With her tin-shell crab in hand, Joypad struggled to her feet and hurried down to the surf. "Jamalia, what's this?"
The skunk struggled to plant her own feet on the undersea ground, walked awkwardly over, wrung several bucket-loads of water out of her tail and leaned forward to inspect the little creature in Joypad's hands. "Ah, you found a hermit crab. Valy, come and look at this. Hermit crab in a tin."
Hermit crab, Joypad thought with pleasure as Jamalia took the crab to show to their wolf friend. As Valy gasped and squeed at the crab Joypad checked the Internet again.
Google Hermit crab
Hermit crabs travelled around in search of shells of their own instead of growing one like other crabs did. But a natural shell hadn't been Joypad's crab's choice. It probably thought the tin was a shell, but it was wrong.
Images
The first hermit crab on Images page 1 hadn't chosen a normal shell, either. Somefur had given it a glass replica of a shell instead, and Joypad could see its soft, lumpy body curled around inside.
"Their bodies are so vulnerable," she breathed, and pulled her goggles off again.
Jamalia was grinning at her. "Looks like you've found a new favourite thing, chicka. Why don't we go for sushi later to celebrate?"
xXx
As the sun went down over the curve of the planet and made some pretty amazing colours on the way, Jamalia took her friends to a place she didn't go to very often but which served sushi, made with seaweed gathered from the very beach they'd spent the day on.
"It's-a really nice!" Valy exclaimed with her mouth full, then remembered herself and ducked her head in apology. She gulped down the latest of her sushi rolls and shrugged at a magnanimous-looking Jamalia. "Well, it is!"
"'Tis that," agreed the skunk, popped another wasabi roll into her mouth and closed her eyes as she chewed. Her eyelashes fluttered with enjoyment and she involuntarily made a hand sign that could easily have meant, 'perfect'.
Three years previously when Joypad had gained her physical body, she'd learned that she'd been blessed with a tongue and functioning tastebuds, but couldn't digest things. So while Valy and Jamalia happily filled their stomachs, Joypad plugged herself into the mains and picked delicately by the light of her neon-bright markings at a small selection of sushi, taking little bites and savouring the deep and salty taste of the seaweed, the fierce heat of the horseradish, the chewy stickiness of the rice.
Not to mention the neat, orderly perfection of the rolls.
THE END.
Characters Copyright Valery91Thunder. Story Copyright Palantean Writer.
