She bends down and pokes at the ooze again. "If it follows the pattern of the last cycle, maybe a full turn of the moons?"
"Enough time to prepare, then." N'dek rubs one of his hands along his jaw. "Do we pack now, or wait?"
"Oh, we wait. We'll have more signals before we need to take action."
I cross my arms over my chest. "Hey, this is a great conversation and all, but do you mind letting me in on what the kef you're talking about? What does this have to do with flowers?"
The human female squints up at me, confused. "It doesn't have anything to do with flowers. It's the nautilus invasion."
"Nautilus," I echo. "Remind me what that is, friend?"
She gestures with her arms, flinging them in the air to indicate something massive. "They're cephalopods, but cephalopods of an enormous size with spiral shells. N'rav calls them big snails, even though that's the wrong phylum. Snails are gastropods."
"And this is important…"
"Right! They're coming here. The cephalopods. Snails. It's a snail-vasion. Like we talked about at the Ding-Ding Feast." She shrugs. "Snail-vasion has more of a ring to it than a cephalopod-vasion. I was outvoted on the naming."
It's like we're having two separate conversations here. "I was not at the Ding-Ding Feast," I point out. "I was banished."
"Oh." She straightens. "Then you should know that it's cephalopod season."
I'm not familiar with that season. "Is this a food thing?"
The little boy grabs his father's hand and tries to pull him away. N'dek follows the child's lead, glancing back at his mate. "It is a problem. We will tell the others."
"Thank you, love," Devi calls after him, waving as N'dek lets the boy lead him down the beach, towards someone fishing in the cold waters. She turns to me. "You weren't here last time it happened. It's an invasion of nautili here on the beach."
"So, a war." I'm vaguely annoyed that there's combat here after all. To think that everyone has been claiming there are no battles to be fought and there has been a war brewing all this time?! I should be happy that there will be a chance to show off my fighting skills, but I'm mostly irked that they are breaking their own established rules.
Devi shakes her head and picks up another piece of seaweed on her stick, examining it. "Not a war. They're just sea creatures. Big ones. They're going to come up here on the beach for a few weeks, lay eggs, and then go back into the waters."
"This does not sound so bad."
"You don't realize how big they are."
"So we...fight them off? Prevent them from taking over our beach?" I rub my hands together. Perhaps this is something April will enjoy watching me do.
"What? Oh, no. We let them do as they please. We'll haveto move out of their way. You'll want to pack up your things so they don't get crushed. Keep all the valuables in the caves until they're gone. Then we see what needs to be rebuilt." Her eyes flare with a crazy enthusiasm. "And we study them, of course."
"So...we don't fight? We just let them take over the beach?" This seems ridiculously passive. "Let them destroy our houses?"
"Well...no one can own a beach. They have as much right to be here as we do. If you think about it, their species has probably been descending on beaches like this for millennia and we've only been here for, what, five-ish years? I'd say if anything, we're the interlopers. I'm just letting you know so you can have your things packed." She snaps her fingers. "Oh, and if you're going to build a hut for your mate, maybe don't do it just yet. Wait until the snail-vasion is over."
A hut? I stare at her, dumbfounded. I haven't thought that far ahead...but of course April's going to want a hut of her own. A hut where we can be alone together...the idea is far more appealing than it should be. "No hut until after the snails leave. I understand."
"Snailpocalypse?" Devi muses. "Does that have a better ring to it?"
It all sounds like nonsense to me. "How much time do we have before the snails arrive? Hours? Days?"
"Oh, it'll be a few weeks, I think. Last time they arrived, I noticed that all the seaweed was getting coated by this thick mucus. I couldn't identify what was causing it, so I thought perhaps there was just a particularly rotten patch of seaweed that had washed up, but once the nautili arrived, it all made sense. The entire beach was a little slimy while they were here. And then there were the eggs."
Uh oh. "Did we...eat the eggs?"
"What? Of course not. We're not monsters." She looks appalled at the thought.
April will be relieved to hear that, and I am glad I asked. So many unspoken rules that we are expected to be aware of. "No huts until they leave, no combat, and do not eat the eggs," I state, repeating the rules for the upcoming scenario. "I think I understand. Observation only."
"Precisely. We study them as scientifically and unobtrusively as we can so our data is as pristine as possible." She beams at me. "You get it."
