On the marshy shores of Lake Lerna, the crab Karkinos scuttled sideways out of his cozy burrow and delightedly observed that it was a pleasant evening. The first stars were beginning to speckle the sky, and wisps of white vapor drifted off the water into the humid air. A fat, golden moon had recently heaved itself over the horizon.
Karkinos’ horoscope for tonight had warned, “You may encounter obstacles from unexpected sources, but try to not let them get you down! These are just passing problems, and you can take heart from knowing that it gets better.” Thus, he was prepared for a night not entirely free of difficulties, but it would, of course, all turn out right in the end. Besides, it was such a lovely evening and he was so glad to simply be alive in this swamp, at the start of a new night!
The crab broke out into a happy dance, but a particularly over-exuberant caper landed him on the slickest, slimiest patch of mud any crustacean had ever had the misfortune to encounter. All eight of his legs flew out from under him in various directions, and he flipped over onto his carapace, which offered no traction whatsoever. As he slid down towards the lake, Karkinos retracted his eyestalks in horror and flailed his legs uselessly, all the while gaining speed at an alarming rate. Well, it’s sure to get better any minute now, he attempted to reassure himself.
He hurtled into the lake with an incongruously small plop. Being a decapod, he had ten limbs, but these did no good to a land creature that could not swim, and his air-adapted gills were overwhelmed by the water smothering them. Thrashing wildly in the murky lake, he fought the panic that rose in proportion to the distance he sank, reminding himself that it would get better!
A whole swarm of snake heads and many lengths of scaly, sinuous reptile materialized around the crab. With an effortless flick, a tail batted Karkinos out of the water, putting him on a parabolic, airborne trajectory for the shore. He crashed into a tussock of grass, more or less right side up, at last. A monstrous mass of heads and coils breached the lake’s surface and loomed up out of the nearby shallows; Karkinos hopped up and skittered from side to side, positively effervescent with gratitude.
The gargantuan hydra patrolled bottomless Lake Lerna, guarding a largely unknown entrance to the Underworld. It shook one of its heads at him, hissed with three, and sighed with the remaining five. Karkinos went still and chirruped apologetically. The hour was awfully close to the hydra’s bedtime; he was lucky it was not hissing at him with seven or even eight heads. In fact, it covered one mouth (full of glistening fangs) with its tail as it yawned widely. Then, like a strange sequence of falling dominoes, the nearest mouth caught the yawn, then the next, and so on until the hydra had undulated its tail in front of them all. Karkinos waved his claws enthusiastically as the hydra plunged back into the water and swam off to the dark crevice that constituted its lair.
Despite the inauspicious beginning, Karkinos was optimistic that his night would improve. However, his cheerfulness- and his trust in his horoscope- were severely tested all night long. First, a pair of ugly two-legged beasts were skulking in the marsh vegetation where he had hoped to have breakfast. They were quite a lot larger than he was; he narrowed his eyestalks at them, but prudently went elsewhere. Then, while he was eating lunch, he accidentally scooped up a mouthful of mud.Yuck! Later on, a very fetching female crab passed his way, and he attempted to court her. She paused and paid attention to his display only long enough to roll her eyestalks through a full 360°, then flounced off, entirely unimpressed. Still, these were momentary setbacks, and he refused to let them get him down. After all, his horoscope had assured him: “It gets better.”
After a night heron tried to make a meal of him (and partially succeeded), Karkinos decided to retreat to his comfy burrow and call it an early day. He huddled inside dejectedly, thinking. He was lucky to be alive, and the claw which the heron had snapped off would regrow eventually, true; but, in the mean time, that dratted feathered menace was eating what had been a perfectly good claw, up until it was no longer attached. This was a problem that would get better, with time, but he had to really work hard at not letting it get him down. Eating with only one claw was going to be a terrific inconvenience.
It was still early morning when Karkinos was awoken by several clumps of the ceiling thudding onto his carapace. Instantly alert, he crouched in place and listened intently. Should he dig deeper, or should he evacuate?
There was little doubt that creatures on the surface were responsible for disturbing his rest and making such an inexcusable mess in his cozy burrow: he heard loud mammalian cries, splashing, outraged roars, and the thumps of heavy feet. The footfalls drummed rapidly nearer, until the walls were trembling. Suddenly, a calloused, humongous foot crashed into the burrow, landing on the floor scarcely an inch from the terrorized crab; if he had still had his other claw, the hideous foot would have crushed it. The dirty, thick ankle connected to the foot bowed out at what was clearly an unnatural angle. Karkinos nipped the offending limb with his remaining claw, more out of reflex than anything else. Shrieking curses, the creature extracted itself, further widening the new, unwanted skylight it had installed in the burrow’s roof. Karkinos skittered out through what had once been his ceiling, shaking debris off his carapace and making indignant clacking noises.
A furious battle was taking place where the lake met the land. The hydra was fighting the two ill-favored creatures who had rudely kept Karkinos from his breakfast last night. The smaller one was crouched over a fire some yards off, holding a sword in the coals. The larger one, a true brute, was blundering about, heedless of the traumatized crab underfoot, and using a massive club to bludgeon any part of the hydra that he could reach. Karkinos unleashed a series of furious clacks and raps while he darted from side to side. How dare this beast attack his nice hydra friend and crush his comfy home?! He was so upset that he even temporarily forgot about his horoscope’s predictions.
The burly human caught the hydra by a neck with one hand, swung his heavy club with the other, and (despite the desperate, frustrated outburst of yammering from the smaller human by the fire) crushed the attached head into the ground with such barbarous force that he severed it. The grisly impact occurred not a hairsbreadth from Karkinos, who scuttled out of the way only to crash into one of the brute’s ankles- he was churning up the shore, stomping and skidding, as he struggled to maintain his grip on the hydra’s neck while avoiding the strikes of its eight remaining, seething heads. When he got the opportunity this time, Karkinos deliberately bit the horrid beast with all his strength, finding a soft strip of flesh that severed very satisfactorily under his claw.
The big human howled in pain and let go of the hydra’s neck. This caused the little human to redouble its exasperated yammering and run up, waving its glowing sword ridiculously; it entirely failed to get the hot metal anywhere near the writhing neck- not before two new heads had sprouted from it. Of no help to his intelligent companion at all, the big human was rather comically hopping about on one leg while clutching his injured foot; it took him a few moments to make the connection to the savage bite, but he finally looked down and spotted the poor crab. Too fast for Karkinos to react, he had a fleeting moment when he saw the bloody foot hurtling at him, and thought, now, how on earth is this supposed to get better? Then, he was stomped, and, immediately thereafter, kicked into the water. As Karkinos found himself sinking into the lake yet again, the gates of the Underworld rushing up at him, he flattened his eyestalks unhappily and reinterpreted his horoscope. Oh, yes- it gets better. It just gets better and better and….