Two Hours and 117 Shellfish Later
((5 February 2008))
The 151st trap contained a rather agitated makrura, which Calsh quickly dispatched.
He still wasn't entirely comfortable with the sensation of water in his lungs. As promised by the [Elixir of Water Breathing] which he'd been periodically taking over the last couple hours, he was able to breathe the fluid that would normally drown him, but it still felt entirely unnatural. The urge to gag was overwhelming, but doing so would only make him feel stranger. He also wasn't entirely looking forwarding to surfacing; he knew from experience that the subsequent coughing fit that would result as his body cleared itself of the murky liquid was rather unpleasant.
His 152nd trap held nothing but [Shellfish].
The thought that the missing fishing pole wasn't even in any of these traps had crossed his mind several times. But Nat Pagle himself had mentioned the rod when Calsh had recently returned four specific fish to him; it wasn't Nat's rod, but he'd known the owner, and the owner had supposedly had to leave the rod behind to escape the overgrown lobster-like creatures that lurked off of the southern Desolace coast. Nat had seemed less than sober when he'd related the story to Calsh, though, and with as many traps as he'd checked with no success, Calsh couldn't be certain that the whole story wasn't completely fabricated. Still, he had nothing to look forward to tonight but a boring evening at Nijel's Point; there was plenty of time to check a few more traps, he'd kept telling himself.
His 153rd trap boasted yet another pair of [Cross-stitched Sandals].
This was the thirteenth pair of shoes he'd found in the shellfish traps; most had been sandals, but he'd found a few pairs of boots as well. Calsh didn't understand why so much footwear ended up in these traps; the shellfish didn't wear any, as far as he'd seen, and it didn't seem plausible that this many swimmers could have left the water barefoot. Even odder was the fact that he always found the shoes in pairs; if they'd truly been left behind, it seemed like at least a few of the shoes would be missing a mate. The only explanation he could come up with was that the trolls of nearby Shadowprey Village baited the traps with old footwear, which, although a humorous thought, didn't seem very likely.
He opened his 154th trap, and the feeble glint of a dirty iron object reflected off of his suddenly-widened eyes.
