A Tentacle Romance Novella

She had no spoon to eat with, and definitely didn't want to stick her hands in the stuff, but fortunately this vessel was light enough for her to lift. Or at least, sort of light enough; she amended that thought as she struggled to hold it steady while tilting it to her lips. She took a sip. It tasted... almost exactly like it smelled. Savory and slightly sweet, with a hint of salt. There was absolutely no depth or nuance to the flavor, as if it were a slurry of flour, oil, salt and sugar. It seemed nourishing, and it was bland enough that it was hard to imagine it could be dangerous. She swallowed down a few mouthfuls, until her arms started to tremble under the strain, and she spilled some onto the floor.

"Oh, sorry!" Melina spoke out of reflex, the first words she'd said out loud to the creature.

"Sorry," the creature repeated back at her.

Melina let out a yelp and dropped the bowl onto the floor. It was so thick, it didn't shatter on impact, but it landed with a loud thud, and she jumped back as the contents splashed out across the floor. The creature hadn't just imitated the sound of the word, it had spoken to her in her own voice. Now that she wasn't preoccupied with mortal terror, the effect was deeply unnerving.

"Oh shit! Uh..."

She cut herself off a moment too late, before wondering if swearing could possibly make a bad impression on the creature anyway. But it was already rushing off towards one of the huge pieces of furniture- without turning around or taking its eyes off her. It grabbed something off a high surface with one of the tentacles on its opposing side, and she realized for the first time that the creature must have eyes facing in other directions as well. It returned carrying a piece of cloth about the size of a beach towel which it used to wipe up the spill, letting out more incomprehensible warbling noises as it worked. Its tentacles moved so smoothly and quickly they were difficult for the eye to follow, and it had soon removed the mess without a trace.

Melina took a moment to assess her situation. Not only was the creature far larger and stronger than a human, with powerful, long-reaching tentacles, it could apparently see in every direction at once. Besides which, from the pace at which it moved across the enormous floor, it could easily outrun her. She mentally kicked herself for ever supposing its tree-shaped body might mean otherwise. Almost anything could outrun a human.

So, no chance of escape if things took a turn for the worse. On the other hand, intimidating as it might be, the creature was clearly trying to help her. From the way it mostly stayed out of reach and slowed down when it came close, it even seemed to be making a deliberate effort not to scare her, notwithstanding its attempts to talk to her in her own voice.

The creature pushed the bowl towards her again. Now wiped clean from the spill, it still had several mouthfuls of the bland mixture left in the bottom. With the extra weight gone, it was easier to swallow down the rest, and she placed it gently back on the floor when she was finished. The creature slowly reached out a tentacle and drew the bowl away, making more incomprehensible warbling noises.

The creature pointed another one of its tentacles towards its own body, and let out another warble. After a short pause, it pointed the same tentacle at her.

The academic in her told her to restrain her assumptions. She couldn't be sure the creature's mannerisms had any connection to a human's at all. And even if they did, it might be sharing the name of its species, or something else entirely. Still, she only had one best guess, she might as well act on it. She touched her hand to her chest.

"Um... Melina." She said.

The creature pointed its tentacle at her again.

"Melina." It repeated back at her, in an exact copy of her voice.

"Oh my god, don't do that!" she gasped. She couldn't help it, hearing her own voice coming from the creature was deeply unnerving.

More indecipherable noise from the creature. She couldn't read emotions from its voice in the slightest, but its body language seemed somehow apologetic.

"Melina. Melina. Melina. Melina. Melina." It repeated her name over and over, each time with a completely different voice. They varied wildly in pitch and timbre, only occasionally passing near the sound of human speech.

It suddenly struck her why the creature might have imitated her voice; she was the only reference it had for what humans sounded like.

"That's... That's better. Most of those are better." She said.

"Most of those are better?" The creature might be repeating the words back without understanding, but this time it managed the least disturbing voice yet, a passably human-like voice much deeper than her own which felt more natural coming from its massive body. It pointed to her again.

"Melina." It said. This time, its voice was comfortable to hear.

It pointed to itself again.

"Um, sorry," Melina said. "There's no way I can possibly say that."

She immediately felt guilty. The creature had put itself out so much to help her already, but she couldn't even begin to meet it halfway in sharing languages.

The creature only paused briefly though, before pushing the bowl back towards her again. It pointed a tentacle down at it.

"Um, bowl." Melina said. Honestly, she had no idea what function it had to this massive creature, but that was the best she could do.

"Bowl." The creature repeated back at her. Its voice was getting easier to listen to by the word.

The creature wrapped a tentacle around the handle of the huge mug of water. Although the tentacle was only about as thick around as her forearm, it lifted the mug she'd been unable to budge so gently that the surface of the water barely rippled. It placed it in front of her and pointed.

Melina splashed her hands in the water inside.

"Water." she said. She placed her hands on the rim.

"Cup." The size was closer to a barrel, but that was the best she could come up with.

"Water. Cup." The creature repeated after her, pointing at each with a different tentacle.

It rushed off to one of its huge pieces of furniture again, even faster than it had gone to get the towel to wipe up the spill. It returned carrying several unidentifiable objects. It placed one in front of her expectantly. It had a spiraled handle attached to what looked like a flat ceramic surface coated in an oil slick of color.

"Sorry, I have no idea what that is." Melina said.

The creature didn't repeat after her this time. It simply paused for a moment, then swiped the object away and replaced it with another.

"I don't think I know what any of those things are. Um..." Melina cast around, trying to find more objects with which she could continue the exercise.

Most of the contents of its house were apparently stored on top of its huge indeterminate pieces of furniture, too high for her to see. She settled on something nearer, and knelt down, pointing.

"Floor." She said.

The creature repeated after her. It seemed not to have any trouble telling a name from an apology for not knowing something. She pointed to the ceiling.

"Ceiling." She said.

The creature reached one of its tentacles up. It stretched, narrowing as it elongated like an elastic band, and patted the ceiling far above them.

"Ceiling." It said.

So, apparently it could reach even further than she'd thought. But at least they were communicating, sort of. It was clear that they shared a concept of language, but she was quickly running out of recognizable things to name. And she couldn't communicate what she needed to with the creature with just piecemeal nouns like this.

Well, might as well aim to take down two birds with one stone. She started walking towards the nearest exit to the room she could see, a high-arched door frame hundreds of feet away. The creature warbled at her again, but made no effort to stop her. It followed along behind her, keeping its distance, moving at what must have been a painstakingly slow pace to navigate its own house.

When she reached the doorway, she found with some dismay that it led to a branched hallway. She had no idea where any direction led, and the distances were long enough to make backtracking a frustrating proposition. The creature warbled at her again though, and pointed a tentacle towards one of the branches. She had no way of reading inflection in its own tongue, and couldn't tell whether the sound was a question, an instruction, or something else entirely, but it was as good a lead as she had. She set off down the branch, till she came to a massive closed door at the end. Its strangely-curved handle was well out of her reach, but the creature moved ahead and opened it for her without a word or warble. Beyond the door, she finally caught sight of the alien world to which she'd come.

~~~

Melina's first thought upon seeing the outdoors was that she'd come to some sort of arid valley. The enormous house behind her was nestled into rolling hills covered in green-yellow grass, rising up to steep cliffs in the distance. But as she reached down to examine the grass at her feet, she realized that despite its color it wasn't dry, but lush and vibrant. For that matter, it wasn't actually grass at all; It covered the ground in the same way, but the shape was completely different, with twisting fernlike fronds radiating from tiny central stalks. Further in the distance, the hills were taken over by something like forest, in the same yellowish hue.

One thing was completely recognizable though. Melina smiled at the creature and pointed up.

"Sky," she said.

The creature repeated it back at her. Its voice no longer sounded at all like hers, but somehow it seemed to imitate her tone of satisfaction.

Unfortunately, the wide-open landscape around them was lacking in something important. Melina set out alongside the house, following its wall, the creature trailing along behind her. It took her a few minutes to reach a corner, and when she did, she turned around and held her palms up in front of the creature.

"I need, um..." She trailed off. She couldn't think of any way to pantomime "privacy."

She tried backing up a bit, and the creature didn't approach. She walked around the corner of the house, skirting along another vast expanse of wall. She still felt exposed, but it looked like a long walk to reach any other sort of cover, and after about half a minute of waiting, she was satisfied that the creature wasn't about to follow her. Hiking up her skirt, she squatted down near the wall, finally addressing the issue which had become pressing enough to overtake the concerns of dealing with a new and alien world. She might be infinitely distant from any trace of human human civilization now, but the creature, whatever it was, was still a civilized being, and she wasn't about to repay its help by peeing on its floor.             

She walked back around the corner of the house, and managed this time not to jolt in surprise when she saw the creature towering over her, still waiting.

"Um, thanks." She said.

The creature didn't repeat after her, but simply waved its tentacles at her in an unclear gesture.

"Do you think you could show me more of this place?" She asked.

The creature waved its tentacles again, still unreadable. Of course, there was no reason to imagine it would be able to understand any of that. When she pointed off into the distance towards the forest though, it warbled at her and set off in that direction, slow enough for her to follow. Once again, it kept its eyes on her while moving in the opposite direction, clearly relying on eyes on the other side of its body.

Well, she might as well make the most of its company.

"Um, walking." She said.

The creature stopped.

"Walking." She pantomimed walking in place, then pointed at herself.

Then, pressing her knees together, she inched along the ground using just her ankles, doing her best to mimic the creature's movement with its rootlike legs. She pointed at it.

"Walking." She said.

The creature waved its tentacles at her with... some sort of expression? Maybe excitement?

"Walking." It repeated. That was one verb shared between them.

Suddenly, the creature took off, accelerating far faster than she would have believed possible, its roots creating a drumbeat of powerful thuds against the ground. Covering hundreds of paces in a few seconds, it stopped again and waved for her to follow.

Melina broke into a jog, and then, conscious of how slowly she was covering the distance compared to the creature, a dead sprint. Her years of sedentary academic living had left her badly prepared for this sort of exertion, and she slowed to a walk, panting for air, well before she'd caught up.

"Running!" She called out to the creature as soon as she'd regained her breath.

She felt proud for having picked up its cue, but rather than repeating the word back at her as she expected, it warbled loudly at her, waving its tentacles. It seemed agitated, and she stopped in her tracks, suddenly uncertain. Had she done something wrong? The creature's voice grew even louder, an incomprehensible alien yell, and Melina shuddered where she stood.

Finally, its voice resolved into something she could recognize.

"Melina!" The creature called out, and launched itself back towards her, even faster than it had run off before.

She could hear the air roar as it moved, and she only had time to stagger back a couple of steps before it had covered the distance between them, swinging two of its tentacles towards her. As one arced down with terrifying speed, the other swept her to the side. It lifted her off the ground as its other tentacle struck home with a powerful thud. It shook its limb, and she could see a wet streak of color glistening against its skin where it had struck the ground.

Near where she had stood lay the flattened body of a creature, long and coiled like a snake, with jagged insectile mouthparts. The creature lowered her gently to the ground, and with a free tentacle, began to stroke her just as it had when it found her back in the cave. It murmured at her, not in her own voice this time; a deep, comforting voice.

Her tension slowly dwindling, Melina looked over the body. She'd managed to miss it completely, but even at a glance, it looked dangerous. After the creature from the cave had turned out to be so helpful, she'd lost sight of the fact that this world could still be full of unknown threats.

For the first time, Melina touched the creature back, wrapping her fingers around the tentacle stroking her. It felt firm and warm, without the strong grip against her skin she remembered, as if it was slightly slick with sweat. Even though his body was nothing like a human's, she thought that just maybe, that might be because of how he'd been worried for her.

She couldn't just go on thinking of her benefactor as "the creature," especially not when the thing on the ground felt so much more like a creature and less like a person. For that matter, it felt wrong to think of him as an "it." Even though for all she knew males and females didn't even exist on this world, it felt more natural somehow to think of her companion as male.

"Thanks." She said, stroking his tentacle back. This time, she felt sure he understood what she meant.

Letting go of his tentacle, she set off again towards the forest, this time sticking close by her companion's side.

The forest, when she came to it, was familiar in form, but as alien in its details as anything she'd seen in this world. She pointed out "trees" for her companion's benefit, and a few other recognizable features, but most living things were too different from anything in her own world to put a name to. For that matter, she wasn't exactly well acquainted with the wilderness of her own world to draw comparisons.

Almost every turn brought them to some new and interesting sight; plants and creatures no humans had ever seen before, and occasional life forms which didn't seem to fall into either category. No longer feeling like her life was in danger- some things in the forest probably were dangerous, but her companion herded her away from them- the forest was fascinating to explore. But, probably not very useful. As full of life as this place was, there was no way she could take care of even her most basic needs foraging in an alien world, let alone find anything that would help her get back home.

Melina decided that for now, she'd have no choice but to return to her companion's home and continue to impose on his hospitality while she worked out some kind of plan. She wasn't going to make it back home in a day. She might not be able to make it back ever, but she tried not to dwell on that, focusing on the more manageable pain of knowing that she was inevitably going to miss her advisory meeting. She'd spent enough time studying the theory behind other worlds to be sure that she was not going to be able to conveniently return at the exact moment she'd left; time was still progressing at roughly the same rate in both worlds.

But, while the different worlds might share a progression of time, their daylight hours weren't synced. As she and her companion began to head back towards his home, the sun began to set. Soon, only a faint glow filtered through the canopy of the trees.

Just like in their first encounter in the cave, her companion seemed to have no difficulty navigating in low light, but Melina was left fumbling around, unable to make out her footing. She considered moving close enough to hold onto her companion, but even having been saved by him twice in one day, it was hard to make the first move to actually touch him. In the darkness, his body once again looked balefully pitch black.

Catching her foot on a root, Melina stumbled forward and nearly fell. She reached out her hands and caught herself on what she thought at first was a tree branch, but after a moment she recognized the warmth under her hands as one of her companion's tentacles. He warbled at her again, and the tip of his tentacle began to glow with a bright light, illuminating their surroundings.

Melina gaped in shock. The glow wasn't simply a feature of his anatomy; she could feel the mana circulating inside him. The currents twisted strangely, in a way that made her feel slightly dizzy to look at, but this was unmistakably the same trick she'd tried to use to light up the cave when she'd first arrived. Her companion wasn't just an intelligent being, he was a mage like her!

That explained the crystal in the cave where she'd arrived. It obviously had some kind of magical function, it must be something he'd made himself, or at least something he was maintaining. That was enough to light a spark of hope in her. She grasped hold of his tentacle.

"Magic!" She said, pointing to the light at the end.

Her companion stared at her. Of course, he never stopped looking at her, he had eyes on each side, but still, there was no reason to suppose he knew what she meant. That could just as easily be her word for "light." Cautiously, she tried to call up a small flow of mana to create a light of her own. Maybe it would work this time.

Unsurprisingly, it didn't. Her companion slipped a tentacle around her, catching her as she tilted over from the sudden wave of vertigo. More comforting murmurs as he patted her on the back. Even as she fought down her churning stomach though, Melina felt a wave of relief. Watching the strange eddies in the creature's own mana- which clearly functioned normally in this world- she finally had some idea what was going wrong with her own. More than that, she'd finally caught sight of a chance to make it home.