Don't Clam Up On Me [Kadrath]

[Raiha]

A tiny part of Kanikra laughed with glee at how easy that had been. It was like poking a hornet’s nest with a sharp stick. You could enjoy your fun, but at the end of the day, you had better be prepared for run. But Kanikra wasn’t running. Oh, no. Kanikra wasn’t running. This was do or die. Kanikra had no intention of being brought before the council by some big blue arrogant jackass who needed to be wiped off of the map before he procreated. She grunted at the way he twisted her hand and arm that he held. The glove prevented her from getting her thumb nail into his vein or into the fleshy part between his fingers. Digging and pinching in there produced a surprisingly sensitive spot, and she had wanted to exploit it. She certainly tried through the cloth. Kanikra didn’t believe in honorable fighting. She fought to win. There was no point in being honorable if it just got you dead.

When he released her hand, she made a play for the suvai, looking to get it out from where it was hidden on her belt, only to find herself pulled into a bone-crushing embrace, belly to belly. “You’ve never had a woman put you in your place before, have you?” the Akontak bubbled, taunting, goading, wanting him out of focus, off balance, even as he crushed her. The angrier he got, the less he thought clearly. She needed every possible advantage. “You will -never- dominate my sister -or- me,” she ground out, trying to get her arms some wiggle room to get the suvai. Just a scratch. Just one little scratch... While she had watched him, and Raiha and Rath had gotten chummier, they still had not yet seen him practice any sort of weapon. Pulling her down made no sense, because she could breathe under the waves, and pulling her down only kept him under. Did he hope to crush her breath out of her or choke her this way, before he couldn’t hold his breath any more? To suffocate her until she was weak from lack of air and throw her aside?

There was no time to think about it. This was what her father had said when you had to learn to fight quickly and instinctively, and work it all out later. But Kanikra was analytical at heart, even when the idea of killing someone came naturally. This meant that this Akalak was holding out on her. In any case, she needed to buy herself some time, because she felt a pain in her ribs underneath all of that padding. If this kept up, he was going to break something, and as easy as it was for Kavala to heal cracked ribs, Kanikra wasn’t giving him the satisfaction. While she struggled to break his grip and keep him under - he was doing better at not drowning than she had hoped - she had another trick up her proverbial sleeve, aligning her body just so, getting a feel for where he was. The more she bucked, the more she tried to shove him down on the sandy bottom of the ocean. Her face was in close proximity to his, now, and as she strained to move her head up, she got her knee out of the water and brought it down hard, aiming for his manhood and testicles.

And that was when she saw the gills.

“You’re an Akontak?” she questioned, still not ceasing in her fight to get free. That changed things. Now she needed her hands.

Well, well, well. That changed things. Only a little bit, of course, but it did change something. Kanikra was particularly racist. She respected the Akalak, but they were still beneath Akontaks, which she was.

Now you can’t kill him, if he’s an Akontak, Raiha soothed, trying to distract her. He broke easily. Wouldn't he be more fun to keep around for kicks?

Maybe. Maybe not. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Kavala was a very good teacher...

[Raiha]

When her knee connected with his manhood, Kanikra found she was released as Uruk curled up on himself, and she stood up, moving out of the range of him in the water, looking down at him, tossing her hair. Her clothes were soaked, and she was a mess, but she backed up off of him, one hand on her hip, the other tapping her side. “I’ll never understand,” she said dryly, “why when people say others need to strengthen themselves and their courage, they say ‘grow some balls’... when clearly they are an extremely weak part of the anatomy. They could say ‘grow a vagina’. Those, at least, can take a pounding.”

“But I meant it, Uruk, when I said you would never dominate my sister or I. You do not frighten either of us. You may think you’re some big bad boy... but deep down, you’re just unsure. You act out like a child throwing a fit when things don’t go your way. Learn some patience. And get off the ground and act like the man you think you are. Because Akontak or not... you have a long way to go,” Kanikra grabbed the shovel, and set to work on the clams, keeping the implement on hand in case she needed a weapon. She didn’t turn her back on him, just kept an eye on him as he eventually staggered to his feet and picked up the shovel, getting to work.

There was perhaps the beginning of mutual respect there, as they continued to gather clams before taking the heavy buckets back up the path towards the Sanctuary. They could steam and prepare them for dinner. The dogs hardly knew what to make of it, this quietness. It had been resolved before they could get in there, and Raiha was glad it didn’t come to that - their boss dogs probably would have killed each other before they could get them back to Kavala for healing.

The dogs helped carry the supplies back afterwards, Fidens with his harness and Diallo with his jaws. The sun was well over its zenith by the time they arrived at the kitchen, and Rath, probably still aching from the well-placed knee to the family jewels, deposited the clams and left, leaving Raiha to contentedly clean and get the clams going. The big pots of water were pulled out from the hearth, and Raiha began to scrape and clean the beards off of the clams, scrubbing any and all dirt, sand, and debris off of them, before chucking them in the pot and pushing it over the fire so that they could start boiling for dinner. The massive geoduck would take a little longer, sitting there in its bucket. It got its own pot, and she would have to wait for it to boil before she could do anything with it. The boiling gave it a quick end to its long life. She couldn’t just cut into it while it was still living, after all. That was unnecessary cruelty.

When she had the water boiling, she plunged the geoduck into it, counting to ten before taking the tongs and fishing it out, putting it down on the towel. She checked on the other clams while it was cooling, before working the knife along the shell and through the abductor muscles that held the body of the lam to the shell and popping it open with some old-fashioned elbow grease and determination. She rinsed it down again, looking to get rid of any remaining grit and sand. That never tasted pleasant, after all. That done, she removed the round, dark, egg-sized stomach and set it aside. She could dissect it and give it to the dogs later. The boiling served an additional purpose - it made it very, very easy to remove the thick skin that surrounded the clam. One slit with the knife, careful prising with her fingers, and off it came. She began to thinly slice the clam - those pieces could be done in a pan. The big siphon, much tougher than the rest of it, could be made into a chowder. In any case, despite the cool, wet weather, they would be eating well tonight. The slim pieces could be pan-fried, and the big siphon would be cut down and put in the soup.

She found some salt pork, and began to dice it down as evenly as she could, taking her time to try to get as even a cut on it as possible so that it would cook uniformly. This went into another boiling pot, the one that had killed her geoduck for her, so that it could boil for a few chimes, and she began to peel the potatoes. That she was better at - the small thin knife moved fairly quickly, following the curvature of the potatoes, deftly flicking out the pits and eyes of the meaty tubers, and put them down before dicing them as well and setting them aside for the moment. The pork was done, and had to be drained, which meant pulling it off of the fire with a heavy hot pad and upending it over a colander. The pork went back into the pot, and she got her hands on some slightly stale bread - waste not, want not - and chopped that up into tiny pieces. It didn’t have to be uniform this time - it would dissolve and thicken the chowder - so Raiha didn’t worry about it. The crust, however, she stuck in her mouth, half of it sticking out, as she began to peel and slice the onions.

She’d learned that trick from her mother. One could avoid making themselves tear up from the scent of onions if they had a piece of bread there to absorb it. It was weird, but it worked. The ends were the first thing off of the onion, then the skin, and then she cut it in half. These she tried to get thinly sliced, tucking her fingers in and the joints of her fingers to guide the blade, keeping it away from her nails and fingertips. The onions were taken care of, she chewed and swallowed the bread before pulling the rest of the clams off of the fire. Once she got those cleaned out and prepared, she could continue on with the chowder. Her stomach growled at the thought. The weather was perfect for it.

She used the wire spider to pull the clams from the pot, setting them in the basin and sluicing cold water over them. Most of them were opened. The ones that weren’t, she knew, were dead and had to be discarded. She shucked over a bowl, trying to reserve as much of the juices as she could, the clam meat going in one bowl, the shells in bucket. She knew she had to hurry - people would be getting hungry. But the hardest part of the chowder was now done. She checked on the pork in the heavy-bottomed pot, and threw in a large pat of butter and the long-handled wooden spoon, letting the pork cook and crisp and get just brown. The sliced onions were next, cooking and getting translucent and golden, and now... now the kitchen was beginning to smell good. The clams were dumped into the pot along with plenty of the cooking juice that had been checked over in a glass container to ensure that she’d been good about keeping the sand out. Her arm was beginning to get sore from the stirring, but she could sit down once it was done and relax and reflect on the events of the day.

Potatoes. A bay leaf for seasoning and flavour, salt and pepper. Milk and plenty of heavy cream. The fire was lower, and Raiha only kept it just hot enough to let the chowder get below a simmer. That way it could cook to the right thickness and get all the flavour. She tested it after she cleaned up, making sure to keep stirring so that the bottom didn’t burn and scald, sipping it and smacking her lips. That was done.She rang the bell. “DINNER!”

OOCFinished since Rath is gone.