THERE WERE OTHER moving shadows here. What Vetta thought were rocks resolved into more combers who shuffled towards Glasseye and Crackey to find out why a morsel of privilege sat among them.
'Is she starting combing early?' one said with a cough and a sniff. 'Turning her back on high society like?'
'Fancy a swig, dearie?' another said, reaching out a bony hand that clutched an amber vessel only slightly full of amber liquid.
'I'd rather not,' Vetta said, recognising it for what it was.
'Pish, Smudge, she's a blessed child,' Glasseye pointed out. 'She'd need a glass to drink from not a bottle neck.'
'Papa says alcohol can be a mixed blessing, like building a house half on firm foundations and half on swampy mud,' Vetta observed as she continued to refuse the proferred drink.
'Well, your Pappy's a wise old codger,' Glasseye agreed. 'So, let's get down to business.'
With a blush barely visible in the coloured light of a setting sun, Vetta looked around for the tall figure who had possessed himself of the coin.
'I only brought the one,' she whimpered, fearing what else to say.
'And that's plenty enough.'
There was a hacking cough just then and Crackey spat upon the sand near where the girl sat.
'Pish, Crackey. Ain't you no manners? Spitting like that right on the good, clean sand,' Glasseye said.
'Where else then?' the man replied unabashed.
'Go spit in that pool instead.'
'Cain't. Got a stinger in it. They's watching you all the time, just waiting for a chance to fry your brains. Been there all day it has.'
Vetta heard this conversation with only a slight understanding of what was being said.
'Has some poor defenceless sea creature been trapped by the tide?' she asked. She had learned about tidal pools in a module on littoral fauna.
'Don't always take things littorally,' the teacher Mr Bantlebury had said in an attempt to add humour to the lesson but was left high and dry by a lack of response from the first years in his class.
'Some poor defenceless creature,' Smudge laughed. 'Listen to the girl. Stingers ain't defenceless.'
'It might die.'
There was a sort of mumbling silence at this simple statement. Responses there were, some quite unsavoury, but somehow the presence of the girl restrained the gathered combers. Their restlessness affected Vetta also and she stood.
'Where is this pool?' she asked, looking around at the glittery shadows all on fire with sunset glow.
'The bluish one,' someone said before there was a hiss to be silent.
Vetta did not wait for any more information. She plodded along on the damp sand to where she could see a kind of opalescent shimmer framed by a dark mass.
'Careful miss,' Crackey warned as he hovered near, unsure what to do.
Vetta stopped by a rock which had its upper surface scooped out by the actions of water-borne sand particles over a thousand years or so and now was filled with a shallow pool of sea water. Within that liquid was something she could not quite make out. It seemed somehow part of the water and yet apart from it. There was a light persistence to the shape, a blob that pulsed hypnotically at the centre of strands of light and glistening coils.
'Why, it's beautiful,' Vetta gasped as the thing shifted slightly at her approach. There was an uncanny sense that the thing could see her. It watched by suggestion rather than vision.
'Been there all day, miss,' Crackey said. 'Waiting for the end of the world no doubt.'
Vetta stared some more, trying to make sense of the feeble little dance of light within its liquid substance. What might have been a tentacle flopped to one side, making brief ripples on the watery surface.
'It is suffering,' she said, clutching herself tragically.
'As are we all, one way and another,' someone said quietly.
'We must save it.'
Vetta turned to the shadowy figures that swayed among the rocks and her expression somehow made some of the watchers take a few unsteady steps back.
'And how might we do that miss? Sea's quite a ways away yet. No high tide till morning.' The combers knew the tides to the minute in this area. Especially considering they were very near Drowned Drifter's Gulf.
Vetta took off her hat, the one with the badge, and turned it upside down so it resembled a bowl made of straw.
Everyone stared at it, even those without a full set of eyes.
'Well,' Glasseye said. 'Seemed a nice idea.'
Vetta said nothing but went down to the edge of the water and came back in a moment carrying a little bit of the Big Blue Sea with her. Then she stood by the pool, her hat slowly dripping, realising there was only so much time before the weave of the straw gave way.
Everyone still stood around watching, waiting and wondering.
'Please can you hold this?' she said to Crackey, who was the nearest. That stinger was an old acquaintance of his and he bore no sympathy for it.
'Well miss,' he said, fidgeting in the shadows. He could feel that pulsating glow of nerve endings in the rock pool watching him. Then he moved, knowing what the girl was about to do.
Reaching out with trembling hands he quickly scooped up the jellyfish and tumbled it into the hat with only the slightest of grimaces. Then before it could reach out for Vetta, he took her hat and ran down the beach into the shadowed part of the water. There was a scream and a bluish light could be seen soaring into the surf where it turned green in the sea water.