The Darkness Before the Dawn (Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas 2)

Jedra's stomach growled. "I wish we could find some food," he said. "It's been a long time since we had those rolls."

"Yeah, I could use something more to eat. Something substantial." Kayan turned once around, scanning the beach. "Too bad there aren't any trees around," she said. "If there were, I bet we could coax one into giving us something else."

"Maybe we should fly back to the forest," Jedra suggested.

"Maybe. There must be something to eat here, though. The ancients wouldn't have flown back and forth every time they got hungry, would they?"

Jedra thought about that for a minute. "No, you're right, they would probably have food brought to them."

Kayan said, "That would be great, but I think we're the only people here." She laughed. "That's the perennial complaint of the rich-you can never find a slave when you need one."

Jedra laughed with her, but he stopped abruptly when a wave broke with a louder than usual rush and a hard-shelled, eight-legged creature crawled forward out of the foam. It was only a couple feet across, and most of that was legs, but it also had two enormous claws in front which it held raised while it advanced toward Jedra and Kayan.

"What is it?" Kayan asked, backing away.

"It looks like some kind of bug. A big bug." Jedra got ready to run, or even fly away if it looked like the creature would attack, but it merely crawled forward at a steady gait. It stopped about five feet from him, lowered its body to the sand and stretched its legs out, then it lowered its claws as well and stopped moving entirely.

Jedra heard a soft sizzling sound over the constant hiss of the waves, and a few seconds later he smelled a wonderful, buttery aroma of cooking food.

Kayan smelled it too. "Eeewww, disgusting!" she said. "It's cooking itself!"

"It is, isn't it?" Jedra stepped closer, fascinated. The sea bug's dark brown shell was turning red as it cooked. The creature was like nothing he'd ever seen before, but the aroma of its heated flesh made his mouth water. He was suddenly ravenous. "I wonder how you're supposed to eat one of these?" Kayan looked at him as if he'd just gone crazy. "You can't be serious."

"But-" Kayan stuttered for words. "But it was alive just a second ago! And it killed itself!"

"Yes, isn't that amazing? I wonder how the ancients managed to breed a creature that could do that? It would have to have some kind of psionic heating power, but the moment it died, the power would stop, so there would have to be some way to keep it going afterward, and-"

"Jedra, it isn't amazing, it's disgusting."

"It is?"

"It just committed suicide!"

He tried to see what she was getting at. "Well, yes, I guess it did. But it didn't look like it suffered any."

"That's not the point! The point is, it killed itself for us. I can't eat something that killed itself just so I could eat it."

Jedra held his hand out over the sea bug's corpse. It was now bright red, and too hot to touch, but it had stopped sizzling. "You'd rather kill it yourself?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Hmm. What makes that any better? When you do it, you're eating something that didn't want to die. At least this way we know the meal was its own idea."

"It's just-just-arrgh!" Kayan growled, turning away.

Jedra looked at the creature with his poison sense, but saw nothing dangerous. "Come on," he said, "we're hungry, and it's food. Let's argue about the moral implications later." He took one of the segmented legs in his fingers, bent it backward until i

ts hard outer shell broke, and pulled it apart. White, stringy meat stuck out the ragged end. Jedra wondered if it would be tough, but he'd eaten much worse in his life, so he blew on it to cool it a bit and took a bite.

The meat was soft and tender, buttery, and nearly melted in his mouth. "Oh, yeah," he said around a mouthful. "Mmm." When Kayan still didn't move to try any, he couldn't resist adding, "This is even better than halfling."

"You've never eaten halfling." She looked over her shoulder at him. "Have you?"

"Not knowingly, but a lot of what you buy in the market could come from anywhere." Jedra cracked the leg open along its length to expose another big bite of steaming flesh. "Here," he said, holding out the leg to her. "It really is good."

Kayan eyed the leg as if it might eat her. "I'm not hungry," she said.

Jedra shrugged. "Suit yourself. More for me." He bit into the soft meat and ate heartily.