So it was that Etjole Ehomba and Simna ibn Sind came to sit on the railing near the bow of the graceful sailing vessel, their sandaled feet braced against the rigging, delicately sipping tea while the herdsman conversed on matters of wind and weather, tide and current, the nature and flavor of various seafoods, and the vagaries of men who set forth to travel upon the surface of the sea, with as intimidating and alien a beast as ever plied the deep green waters.
In the course of their conversation the Kraken’s skin would undergo dramatic shifts not only in color but of pattern. Merely by willing it so, it could generate the most captivating designs and schematics utilizing its own body as a canvas. By the time it was reproducing intensely colorful herringbones and checkerboards, the crew had abandoned its initial fear in favor of spontaneous bursts of applause.
“Just how,” Stanager asked Ehomba as she stood nearby sipping her own tea, “does the Kraken develop a taste for something as foreign to the ocean as coffee?”
Putting the reasonable question to the multiple-limbed sea beast, the herdsman received an immediate and unequivocal answer. “It was once dozing on the surface at night when it collided with a merchant ship cruising down the eastern coast that now lies far behind us. Furious and alarmed, it reacted instinctively, and attacked. The merchantman was slow but well laid up, and fully loaded from a trading expedition to the eastern reaches of the Aboqua. Included among its cargo were several tons of coffee. The smell, I am told, was quite powerful.