Giggle. "Correct. I'm being pragmatic."

She pulls the scallops closer with a scoop of her tail, and then gets to displaying feats of strength and dexterity with her claws! ... Mostly that second one, it's more of a matter of leverage than of strength.

"Not showing off at all, I see."

"If you are impressed and delighted it is a nice bonus, but not the reason for my actions," she says loftily. Scallops: get opened. "Do you need to cook these, because I just eat these raw and don't see.... how.... you'd cook them."

"Inside their shells, usually. One would fill a container with water and then boil them in it."

"Oh. Oops." She has not actually made it through all of the scallops; she stops. "Should I eat all of these opened ones and let you boil the unopened ones and then open them?"

"That would probably work better, yes."

"Okay." She gives him a last affectionate snuggle, then she scoots away to give him room to do cooking things. And for herself to do eating things.

He does cooking things! She can try some if she wants.

Sure! If he has enough to eat.

"Though if this isn't enough I can go hunting more. These, or fish, or crabs or lobster, or some other edible sea creature, probably, as long as it's not a shark or a dolphin or something."

"I would not have expected dolphins to be a problem."

"They are actually way scarier than sharks, because they work together! I could maybe ambush a shark and avoid the mouth of sharp teeth, but it's much harder to outwit an entire pod of dolphins. Besides, they're too smart to eat, so I refuse to figure out the trick to it. I won't ever bring you an octopus, either, for similar reasons. They're not as dangerous and I think I'd win, but they're very clever."

"Huh. Clever how?"

"Mmm. So I've seen young octopi, and they're all.... confused about their many limbs and kind of overwhelmed? But they're very methodical about figuring things out. The older, bigger octopi show a lot of awareness of themselves, and memory of what works and what doesn't. They're curious in a 'how does this work,' kind of way, not in a 'can I eat this,' kind of way, like you see with fish. Mostly fish just want to see if they can eat things. There are exceptions, but they mostly sort things into the categories of 'will it eat me' and 'can I eat this.'"

That description makes him giggle. "I suppose you have met many more fish than I have and would know better."

"The bigger ones like to be pet," she informs him, grinning. "The little ones might too, but I'm big enough that they generally want nothing to do with me because I might eat them. Which is pretty fair, really."

"Bigger fish or bigger octopi?"

"Fish. I don't know if big octopi like being pet, I haven't tried it. I probably won't, they're the sorts of things that seem dangerous to get that close to. If I wanted to beat them in a fight I'd stay back and try to take advantage of my longer reach and see if my venom slows them down a little."

"—your venom?"

"Oh. Right. I hadn't been mentioning that because it seemed like a smart thing to keep to myself in case you were lying. Oops. I'm venomous, I'm pretty sure it's not deadly to humans, but it works fine on little fish and stuff. The guy Chrysanthe got lived through it, he just seemed to find it really painful."

"...how do you apply this venom? And how painful, exactly?"

"Little glands underneath my claws! See?" She shows him her hands, and... huh, yes, there's a little ridge in the middle of the sharp claws on the ends of her otherwise mostly-ordinary looking hands. Eutelia gently squeezes the claw and the tip of her finger together, and a little clear droplet of venom leaks out. "I have some degree of control over it, I don't gush venom when I'm using them to climb things, but it's not completely under my control. And the spines on my back are more potent but I have even less fine control over it. And... I don't know, I'm immune."

"oh."

He is perhaps very very fond of this little bit of information.

She looks up from educating him about her physiology and actually spots the look on his face. Among other things. Once she sees it, she blinks several times, then flushes. "... why, did you want to use it on arrows or something...?"

This is not the question she wants to ask, but. It's the only question she feels quite brave enough to ask.

"...that is also a possible use, yes."

Yep. He is quite very fond of this little bit of information. He is not doing anything about this fondness right now as he is making food but gosh he is so fond.

"I... don't know what else you would use venom for?"