“Take it easy, it’s all good,” Martinique heard a familiar voice that reached her as if from a great distance because she couldn’t grasp the meaning, only the intention, “You are safe, nothing can happen to you.” Slowly she came to because she felt Christian’s hands, one that was holding her, the other that gently stroked her forehead and cheek. It was probably still in the middle of the night when she only saw him vaguely when she finally dared to open her eyes.
“I dreamed,” said Martinique shortly.
“I thought so,” replied Christian, and she felt the concern in his words, “You cried and trembled and fought for yourself. It was bad.“
“I’m sorry,” said Martinique.
“It was bad because I couldn’t do anything,” said Christian.
„But you did something, you held me, you comforted me,“ Martinique explained, but it wasn’t enough, she knew that, so she continued to take him with her into her dreams and fears because she knew that he could carry her.

“I was a crab girl who had accepted a gentleman’s offer to move into the cave he had made for her. Because when crab girls unite with the opposite sex, they have to take off their armor, which makes them completely helpless. Defenseless and defenseless. Did you know that?“
“No, it’s the first time I’ve heard that”, Christian admitted, “And the crab boy abandoned his girl?”
“No, not at all,” Martinique rejected Christian’s thoughts firmly, “On the contrary, he protected her the whole time, as if it were about his own life. Actually beautiful. „
“Actually yes”, Christian agreed, “But what was so bad then?”
“That was just the beginning,” explained Martinique, “Anyway, that time passed and I left the cave to continue my normal crab life. To eat and then gradually lay eggs. So far, so good, but one day there was this crab trap, which I promptly stepped into. How should I have known that I couldn’t get out of this. After a while I was taken out of the water with the trap. Now they would see their mistake and let me go again. I was convinced of it, but they did take me out of the trap, but instead of letting me go, they wrapped something around my scissors so that I could no longer move and threw me into a box with many others. I don’t know how long I was in that box, but there was no food and no water. In the end the hunger was so great that I thought I was going to die. Then I was finally taken out of the box again, and when they threw me into the pot of boiling water, I wished I had actually died before. The heat was slowly eating its way through my body. It felt like an eternity before I perished in agony. „
“Now I understand”, said Christian, in order to hold Matinique all the more firmly and emphatically in his arms, “living, sentient beings who subject people to unimaginable, unnecessary torments.”
“I was the crab and it was my fate,” said Martinique, “but why does nobody see that? Just because a crab can’t scream? „
„If the same thing happened to kittens or other animals, people would be on the barricades right away, but a crab is so far away as if it were actually a thing, without a life, without a sensation.“
“The more different a living being is from us, the more our empathy, our ability to feel compassion dwindles”, concluded Martinique.
“It looks like it, and besides, it’s still considered a delicacy. If you can afford that, then you are one of those who have success and money, „said Christian,“ and apparently there are also people who have thick armor that they never take off, but hide behind it. „
“So that nobody notices that they have no heart under the armor,” added Martinique, “Otherwise you couldn’t just accept it as if it had to be. It would also work very differently, „
“In Switzerland it was forbidden to throw lobsters into hot water without anesthetizing,” explained Christian.
“Well, this is a first step, but I don’t understand that it is necessary to ban such practices at all, but that people do not do that on their own, avoid suffering that is unnecessary, let life where Whenever it is possible, it wouldn’t need more, ”replied Martinique with logical consistency.
„Stop eating lobster, that would be the message,“ said Christian, „and one can only hope that someone will hear it and act accordingly.“

Once more his hand stroked her cheek to cool her feverish forehead, to wipe the tears until she fell asleep again.