It's Always Been You

The Offering

“Alberto?” Luca poked his head out of his family home to find him waiting at the entrance. “What are you doing here?”

“Giulia owed me a favor, so she’s doing the deliveries for me today. I thought that maybe we could hang out?” Luca’s eyes lit up in the way they always did whenever he was really excited, and Alberto felt his stomach twist for some reason. When Luca started to frown, Alberto’s stomach started twisting for a different reason. 

“I want to. Really, I do. But-” Luca sighed and ran his fingers through his head frills. “I promised my nonna that I would help her look for sea cucumbers.” The dread vanished from the pit of Alberto’s stomach and relief washed over him.

“Oh, is that all?” Alberto scratched the back of his neck in what he hoped was a nonchalant gesture. “Well, I could… go with you? If you’re okay with it, that is.”

“Oh! You… You’d want to?” Luca’s head fins flicked up with interest, and that hopeful glint reappeared in his eyes. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to. Sea cucumber hunting isn’t exactly an adventure.”

“Nah, I don’t mind. Besides, with how much your nonna talks about them, I’ve been meaning to try one of her recipes. Maybe I’ll find the sea cucumber queen and become their new king!”

“That’s… not how that works,” Luca snickered, “but I get what you mean.” He turned back towards his home. “Nonna! Alberto is gonna come with us!”

“Is he now?” The elderly siren appeared in the doorway a moment later, a basket hooked on her elbow. “Well, I’m always happy to have more company.”

“Here, I can carry that, Signora Paguro.” Alberto slipped the basket off of her arm and gripped the handle tight.

“Why thank you,” she hummed appreciatively. “But I’ve told you that you don’t need to call me that, Guppy. I’m not actually a Paguro, afterall.” Alberto frowned.

“But… I thought you were Luca’s grandma?”

“I am. But I’m Daniela’s mother, not Lorenzo’s.” Alberto felt his face go warm with embarrassment. “You can call me Nonna.”

“I- You’re sure?”

“Of course. I think you’ve more than earned it. Now,” she turned to look at both boys, “let’s go find some sea cucumbers.”

Sea cucumbers, Alberto quickly learned, did not in fact look like land cucumbers. While they had roughly the same shape, sea cucumbers were rarely ever green. They were shades of mottled brown and yellow with dark speckles and soft spikes. Alberto would have made a joke about what he thought they looked like, but he didn’t dare with Nonna Paguro hovering over them. 

After about two and a half hours, they had managed to gather quite a few sizable sea cucumbers and decided to call it a day. They began to swim back towards the village, and Nonna Paguro occupied the silence with how she planned to prepare her favorite snack. 

“I was wondering how you even eat those things,” Alberto wondered out loud. “I mean, Luca’s told me that you can eat them, but like… how?”

“Oh, well, there’s a number of ways. Normally, we just pickle them or eat them raw, but when I started sneaking off to the surface, I learned about how to cook them properly.”

That, of course, led to a conversation about Nonna Paguro’s many misadventures in Portorosso long before Luca had ever come to the surface. Alberto thought not for the first time that Luca’s grandmother was the coolest. Listening to her tell stories about how she used to sweep out the locals when playing cards was always fun to hear.