Merchant Crab

Chapter 301: Old Alden by the Sea

Old Alden sighed quietly as his mind drifted off under the muffled background noise of the young man rambling nonsense in front of him.All his ears could focus on was the soothing sound of the waves crashing against the sand of the beach in the distance and the soft breeze blowing over the roof of his wooden shack behind him.

The enticing smell of the fish soup cooking over his fire in the kitchen only reinforced his wish to go back inside. But Alden had a job to do, and he was not done yet.

“So you, like… have no supplies to give me or anything?” the boy in wet robes in front of Alden said. “Like… no potions, no scrolls, or anything useful?”

“I’m afraid not, son,” the old fisherman replied, sounding every bit as weathered as the driftwood posts around his shack. “Best I can offer you is some wisdom and the directions I just gave you. The rest you will have to take care of yourself.”

The soaked traveler turned and faced the path leading away from Old Alden’s shack and into the dunes.

“Well,” he said, placing his hands on his hips. “I guess there’s no use staying here then. I’ll get to that camp you mentioned and see if they can help me better.”

Without sparing the fisherman another glance, the young man started marching up the path.

“You’re welcome,” Alden said quietly but still loud enough for the other to hear. “Was nice to meet you too. Good luck, safe travels, and farewell.”

The old man sighed again and ran a hand over his prickly, unshaven face as he watched yet another newcomer leave.

Adventurers.

He had no hatred toward them, like so many other locals did, but they could still be an endless source of nuisance and frustration most of the time.

But who was Old Alden to judge them? Theirs was a life of adventure, of action, of risk-taking. Of course they were, by their very nature, impatient and rash—the polar opposite of himself.

Which was why he was the right person for his job.

Other than fishing, his job was to greet those tide-tossed youths and make sure they knew where they were and where to go next, and that was that. Simple. Just the way he liked things.

No quests, no big speeches, no messing around with junk to hand over to them.

Just a simple provider of directions and a little wisdom.

Why did Alden do it? He couldn’t tell. That was just the way things were. The way things had always been. The way he hoped they’d always be.

The fisherman was calm, patient, and wise. The sort of man who preferred listening to the tide over listening to himself speak.

He was the water that cooled the feverish expectations of newly arrived adventurers.

And lately, they had been arriving way more often than usual.

It used to be that every few weeks the old fisherman would come out of his shack to find the occasional adventurer washing ashore, dazed and confused, and he would welcome them with a smile and sometimes a bowl of warm soup—if they passed his little check for their good manners.

But for the past few months, Alden found himself having to run his little introductory routine every other day.

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He’d be sitting by the water, tending to his nets, and he’d spot yet another shipwreck in the distance, and sure as there was a shore, an adventurer would soon wash ashore.

Big fighters, lean rangers, skinny mages—Old Alden had seen them all.

But somehow, never another local. The only mainlanders who’d ever survive the perilous trip and wild storms were always adventurers.

Probably something to do with destiny, divine providence, or some other big concept the fisherman cared little for.

His was a simple life. He fished, he prepared his fish, he ate it, and he enjoyed his time with the only love he had ever known—the sea.

Well, except maybe for that one mermaid that one time, so many years ago, but Alden was not one to reminisce much.

“I said take a on the crossroads, kid,” the weary fisherman muttered as he watched the wet adventurer reach the top of the path, stop, look both ways, and then confidently choose to go left. “Ah well, another one that’s gonna be sea serpent food, I guess.”

After one last nod toward the road, Alden turned and stepped back inside his humble abode.

While winter was never too cold around those parts and it never even snowed, the warmth from his cooking fire was still welcomed by his old bones.

“Uhm. Gonna rain soon,” the old man said as he pressed one hand against the small of his back, producing a crack he knew all too well.

He peeked out of his window at the rows of wooden racks laden with drying fish along the back of his home and nodded.

“Need to remember to bring those inside before nightfall.”

With the calm demeanor of someone in no rush to get through life, the fisherman approached his kitchen area and gave the bubbling contents of the cooking pot over the fire a gentle stir.

“Hmm. Five more minutes.”

Old Alden’s shack was small and consisted of a single square room where everything he needed when not outside fit perfectly.

One corner for cooking, one corner for sleeping, one corner for storage, and one corner for his little workshop.

Settling onto the wooden stool by his worktable, the old man grabbed a needle and went back to what he was doing before a loud castaway adventurer had come knocking on his door—fixing up his fishing net.

Alden smiled, the crackling of the fire and the bubbling of his fish soup in the background like soothing music to his ears as he returned to work. Then he let out a quiet chuckle as he remembered the young man asking him if he had any Potions of Hydration—whatever that newfangled mainlander nonsense was even supposed to be.

With a satisfied expression, the old man put his fixed net down on the table and stored the needle back in its drawer.

But before he could turn his gaze back to his soup, a thunderous crash came from outside, shaking the creaky wood walls of his home and tossing a few work tools off the rack above the table.

“What in the…” Alden said, sounding far too calm for someone who had just felt what seemed to be an earthquake.

Poking his head out the window again, he squinted past the fish drying racks and saw a column of smoke coming from behind a nearby dune on the beach. Even stranger than that, he spotted a clear streak of disturbed clouds above, as though something had just fallen from the sky at great speed.

A less wise person might have thought of a meteor right away, but Old Alden knew better. Whatever that was, it had to involve one thing for sure—an adventurer.

“I swear, this better not be another young wizard trying to get to the island using a Tome of Levitation…”

Ducking back inside, the old man put on his coat and moved to the kitchen corner to move his cooking pot off the fire—earthquake, meteor, or adventurer, Old Alden wasn’t about to ruin his delicious dinner by being in too much of a rush.

With a weary sigh, the fisherman opened the shack’s door and headed toward the source of the blast.

After a few minutes of walking at a calm pace, the man reached the top of the dune and finally saw the big crater on the sand behind it. A curtain of dispersing smoke still surrounded the crash site, keeping him from seeing the center clearly, so he carefully climbed down to come closer.

As Alden trod through the streaks of disturbed sand leading toward the center of impact, he frowned at the strange brown chunks strewn about that almost looked like… chocolate.

Something moved behind the layer of dissipating smoke ahead, pulling his attention away from the odd debris and back to the task at hand.

Strange as that arrival may have been, there was still an adventurer there, and the old local would do his job as usual.

“Hey there, adventurer!” the fisherman said with a wave. “Welcome to—”

He stopped as the smoke dispersed and revealed who was on the other side.

Old Alden thought he had seen it all over his many years, but for once, even he was not ready for who he saw standing at the center of the massive crater in front of him—a giant crab.