Alone in the trap, Dan the lobster enjoyed the furtive thrill of finding himself captured, destined for the dinner table. The oddly arousing thoughts rooted themselves in the forefront of his brains and wouldn't leave him in peace. He tried to distract himself by exploring the confined space of the trap's collection parlor, which at the moment held only himself.
Dan's seclusion came to an abrupt end when another lobster, attracted by the same bait that had lured Dan, stumbled into the trap and dropped into the parlor, almost on top of a rather startled Dan, who had lost himself again in contemplation.
Dan flicked his tail and scurried backward into a corner of the trap and regarded the newcomer with wary eyestalks. Clambering around the trap, seemingly confused by the lack of an exit, the newcomer studiously ignored Dan. He felt a fleeting sense of rejection by his own kind until he realized the trap of that thinking.
"Own kind!" Dan waved his claws in agitation. "I'm not like..."
He didn't finish his thought because the longer he studied the other lobster the more it became glaringly obvious that there existed no physical differences between Dan and the other lobster. Well, other than one minor one. The newcomer had an absurdly small crusher claw. Nerdish Dan considered the striking abnormality and recalled that lobsters and crabs can lose a claw and regrow it. The other crustacean sharing the trap with him must have lost its claw at one point to some unknown misfortune. The replacement hadn't yet quite grown to fit the rest of the creature's body.
He had started to wonder on the possible causes of such a mishap when the entire trap shook violently and lifted from the rocky ocean floor. On the surface of the sea a lobster boat equipped with a mechanized system of pulleys had arrived to collect another trap. The crew began to hoist the trap toward the surface. Dan and the other lobster were thrown together by the lurching motion. Dan broke free of the spiky embrace and tried to secure a grip with the pinchers on his walking legs. Dan savored the feverishness caused by the intense blend of fear and excitement. He was getting one step closer to becoming dinner!
Once the trap broke the surface and was brought aboard, rough human hands plucked him from the trap, measured him, and dropped him into a barrel of sea water containing a dozen or so other lobsters.
"I'm not like them!" Dan protested, almost by rote, simply to experience the electric jab of finding communication denied him. He felt sensations pulse along his ganglia, overwhelming him as he sank deeper into the mass of his fellow armored crustaceans.
After a disappointing day, the boat limped back to the seaside lobster wharf. The traps hadn't yielded the catch the crew had hoped, but there was nothing to do but unload the lobsters they had harvested and hope for a better day tomorrow. The contents of the collection barrel went into large plastic bins kept filled with fresh seawater.
An employee with the market and restaurant attached to the wharf visited to make a critical survey as the water in the bin frothed as Dan and his fellow lobsters thrashed amid their attempts to settle into new surroundings. "Least it's a lively bunch," a gruff voice said.
The captain of the boat came alongside. "All from rocky bottoms, no mud-dwellers?"
The captain made a rude sound that dismissed even the thought that he would set traps in such unfavorable terrain. "I just hope we have enough," the market man said. "We'll have plenty of tourists this weekend."
Dan, unlike his other ignorant bin-mates, realized a rather disturbing fact. The fewer lobsters on hand, the more likely he would be among those chosen by hungry customers dining in the restaurant adjacent to the wharf.
He must have been sending out some rather powerful thoughts because Kat chose that moment to disturb him. "How's it going, Dan?"
Dan retreated to a corner away from the scuttling chaos. "Kat! I'm at a wharf. A boat collected the trap and brought us here."
"Us?" Dan could almost see the smirk behind her question.
"Me and other lobsters," he admitted, feeling a strange thrill describing himself in connection with the other mindless crustaceans.
"You're almost there now, brother dear."
Dan thought briefly of throwing himself on Kat's mercy, begging her to come find him. Instead, he asked for reassurance. "You're certain the respawn spell will work?"
He felt Kat's prickly defenses. "Are you really questioning my abilities?"
"No," he said with a mental sigh. "Of course not."
"You'll be back home in no time," Kat said. "Just get on with it. Get yourself eaten!"
Dan shivered and Kat must have glimpsed his feelings. "Well, that's my signal to go. I don't need any of those sordid details. Good luck, Dan."