#non binary monster

The bloom that Aspen had dropped for you that first night fed on lust, just the same as them. Small and dainty, with a single stem, you’d brought it home and put it in water, charmed by the gesture. You hadn’t thought much of it for a few days. Hadn’t done more than give it a few glances, thoughts drifting to Aspen’s rumbling voice and slick tongues. It looked normal enough, but after a few days you’d noticed that it was still fresh, and after a week that it had grown.

Nervous, and wondering if you were going to have to tend to some kind of child-like Ent creature, you’d brought it back to Aspen a day later, but the sight of the thriving blossom had only made them laugh.

“This was meant to be a gift only. A reminder.” Aspen had bent, their branches creaking, threads of lichen getting caught on your shoulder as they prodded the petals. The bloom hadn’t moved, hadn’t grown or opened beady little eyes, but then Aspen had tilted their head to rest upon yours. A leaf sprouted along the stem when Aspen touched you, quickly followed by another bud. The motion had left you both enraptured, wide eyed and silent until it stopped growing. “As long as you desire me," Aspen had murmured, lowering their voice as their wooden mouth brushed your ear, "I believe it will remain fresh. Indeed, it may well grow larger.”

“Will it be sentient?”

“I know not,” they’d confessed, truthful. You hadn’t missed the teasing glint in the depths of their dark eyes though. “But I doubt it. Many of my blooms have dropped here through the years, but none have lingered for long.” Aspen had plucked the bloom out of your fingers and then had tucked it behind your ear. It had sprouted more leaves, had grown a small offshoot, but a day after you’d gone back home, it had… If not exactly withered, had returned to its original state. And then every time you’d been in the same room as the bloom, every time you’d even felt a hint of arousal, the flower had perked back up, had flourished like it had roots and the perfect soil. Until midwinter.

Aspen, for all intents and purposes, hibernated during the coldest months of the year. There had been little reason to try and stay awake when humans stopped coming to Makeout Point before you, but even with your presence and touch bolstering them, Aspen had begun to grow drowsy. Three days before midwinter, they’d barely been able to speak past cracking yawns, the moss and lichen on their shoulders and chest grown dry and brittle. The lack of them, of being able to look forward to seeing them, had put a damper on your spirits. And then the bloom going into stasis three days later had been a bit worse.

Winter felt like it lasted an age, but two days ago the little white flower had perked up again. You’d been walking past the small vase, lonely and lost in thought when the moving petals had caught your eye, reaching slowly towards the weak sunlight shining through the fogged windows. You’d assumed it had only been disturbed by a breeze until you’d reached for it, extending two fingers. The blossom had shot up, stem growing long until it bumped into your skin, Aspen’s heady scent filling up the room until you’d breathed deep and, overwhelmed, sneezed. You’d felt a bit silly asking the little plant if Aspen was awake, and even sillier when it hadn’t reacted in the slightest. There was little cause for doubting though, not after the flower had followed Aspen into its own rest, all you need to do now is wait.

But waiting is proving much harder than you want it to be. You miss Aspen, have been missing them and their rumbling laugh. You miss the way they can’t seem to stop stroking your cheek or your shoulder, eager to touch you, to have your attention. You’ve thought about them frequently through the winter, but that nectary taste is so heavy on the back of your tongue now, no matter what you drink, no matter how deeply you breathe in that it feels… Off. I should go, you tell yourself a few times a day, but as soon as you make it to your car, you find a handful of excuses to stop. To stay. The winter might have been long, but another week won’t hurt anything, will it?

Twice you drive halfway there, but the state of the roads always sends you back. Rain has been pouring from the sky, leaving the underbrush of all forested areas slogged with mud, and Makeout Point will be the worst of all. The normally well traveled paths are always dotted with leaf litter, and this time of year they’re likely to have puddles, floating with decaying leaves, unassumingly deep. All it would take is one misplaced step, your feet gliding through the slick mud, for chaos to reign. If Aspen is awake, they would most definitely attempt to help, but you can’t imagine a giant tree person carrying you back to your car without a few lingering consequences.

The rumors about Big Foot and wandering bears died down towards the end of November, but at best that would start them up again. At worst—well, you don’t really want to imagine the worst. Most of those thoughts have to do with mob mentality, and you can’t let yourself imagine that fallout without feeling sick.

You swallow, finding yourself back on the road to Makeout Point, heart beating a bit too fast. You don’t fight the urge to go this time. The flower had been much larger today, dotted with new buds and leaves, and all it had taken was a single inhale of the little thing to make you ache.

Even if all you do is spend a short time by Aspen’s side, you have to see them. Just to make sure they’re awake. Just to make sure they’re okay.

You’re clutching at the curved handle of your umbrella, rain splattering against the arch of water-proof material, as well as the sleeves of your zip-up hoodie, when you realize you may not have thought things through. Again. You look down at your feet, frowning at the amount of mud already caking your boots, and glance back up at the winding path disappearing through the trees. It would be smartest to head back, rather than risk a dangerous slip down a too-soft hill. Smarter to keep the visit short, rather than risk getting soaked through.

You think of the soft fan of Aspen’s fern-like eyelashes when they blink, and the way they shiver every time you press a kiss to the whorls on their cheek. They always turn to kiss you in the best way they know how, afterwards. A gentle tilt of their head, the slow, slick curl of one of their tongues around yours. You can taste the faint sweetness of them on your lips, can feel the pressure of their fingers on your back. You’ve already come this far out to see them. You can take a few minutes to give them a kiss, despite the chill and splatter of rain, can’t you?

The trail becomes worse as you go on, the rain having battered down the dirt in places where the branches overhead are thin. You have to hug the trunk of a twisted oak as you slip by one of the deeper puddles, fingers scrabbling at the craggy bark when a root proves too slippery. You don’t fall, but it’s a near thing, and your heart doesn’t thank you for the scare. Moving slower becomes necessary the longer you walk, searching out patches of thick moss to dry and wipe your boots on. Even on drier patches of dirt you’re still sliding with mud and leaves sticking to your boots. When you finally crest the small hill that leads to Makeout Point, you assume your impatience will wane, that this arduous ache will ease now that you know Aspen is close. Instead, it grows tenfold.

It’s cold outside, the rain is freezing, but as soon as you see the riot of fauna and moss crawling down the path, you feel terribly hot. It’s like you’ve been running a marathon in your winter clothes, like the umbrella is keeping the relief of the cold rain from your face.

You toss it aside, striding up the path, barely paying attention to the unsteadiness of your steps. You can still feel the mud sliding under your feet, you recognize the sensation of rocks and bits of dead branches catching in your boots, but none of that matters now that you’re here.

Makeout Point no longer looks like a mildly haunted hangout for people looking to bring a bit of a thrill back into their lives. The rough campground atmosphere has vanished in the wake of springtime. The sky overhead is still grey, still covered over with clouds, but they’re thinning, bathing the spot in the promise of sunshine soon to come. The fire pit, made of forest found stones or carefully cultivated bricks, is overgrown with ferns and green and purple leaved clover. Dainty white flowers are brilliant in the tide of greenery, drawing the eye like a meandering path of scattered stars. As gorgeous and awe-inspiring as Makeout Point currently looks, the calm feeling that you came here for, prior to Aspen finally deciding to speak to you, is utterly absent.

The humidity has risen, and sweat dots the back of your neck while you slowly creep closer, staring up at the ocean of thick leaves and blooms and buds swaying with the breeze. It’s always been shadowed, has always sported full branches, but this is almost overkill. The branches are so heavy with buds and new growth that they’re bowing, and the gentle weight of a single bird looks like it could make them snap. You breathe in deep, fumbling with your hoodie, eager to shrug out of it, when you finally turn and spot Aspen, standing straight and tall in their normal place.

They’re waking, the obsidian gleam of their eyes mildly unfocused as they blink. The horn-like branches on their head are draped so thoroughly with vines and thick leaves, and the blooms that match the one you have back home, that all you can bring yourself to do is stare. You’d thought that Aspen looked impossible the first time you’d seen them, a being so strange but artfully put together that surely they could be nothing but animatronic, something you would normally only ever see through a movie screen. A creature pulled straight out of someone's imagination.

“Lovely,” they say, and their name for you reaches right down into your depths. Your bones, you realize, have felt like kindling placed too close to the fire, and Aspen’s voice is the bright burst of heat that finally makes everything pop. They take a step away from their spot, caught midway between two towering redwoods, and half the branches overhead seem to come with them. They have to pull free of a net of vines, so thickly overgrown that when the vines and loose branches fall, and they do, scattering like a strong storm has passed through, you have to skip back a few steps to avoid being caught in the deluge. You suck in a breath, almost choking on the sweet taste of them as your eyes catch on their shoulders. The tiny mushrooms that had dotted them all through autumn have grown, tall and thick, and faintly yellow or white, and then there are shelves of them trailing down Aspen’s biceps, edges gone periwinkle blue.

They cross the little clearing in a handful of steps, swooping you up into their arms and cradling you against their chest. The thunder of their movement startles near-by birds into screeching and taking flight, branches snapping as they take off, and then Aspen turns in place. They’re a walking, talking tilt-a-whirl that leaves you breathless until you rap your knuckles against the least green covered spot you can find, closing your eyes to try and keep them from stinging.

“St-stop spinning!” You gasp and the world jolts to a halt, leaving you blinking and panting. Aspen is ripe with the scent of growing things, and it feels like you’ve been rolling through a field absolutely chock full of sweet smelling flowers and the tang of pine. If you thought Aspen made you weak kneed before, with their scent and taste and rumbling voice, it’s nothing as to now. You’re overheated and happy to see them, and blood is rushing to all the right places—but your wanting is so terribly strong that it still leaves you feeling off kilter.

“I have to ask,” you get out, doing your best to breathe through your mouth. It doesn’t help much, you can still taste everything on the back of your tongue, can see their wooden jaw lowering, writhing tongues just barely visible. “In Spring, your… You said once, that I made you feel like Spring when—”

“Ahh,” Aspen murmurs, and then very, very gently, lowers you back to your feet. They keep hold of your shoulder until you’re standing straight, and only then do they take a few careful steps away.

The space is a little maddening, even though you’d been hoping for it so you could get your head in order. You have to swallow to keep from following after them, to tamp down the urge to move your feet and instead make your mouth speak. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, knowing where you come from,” you say with a wry laugh, clutching tightly at your sweater sleeves. “...Does, has your presence always been a kind of aphrodisiac in spring-time? Or is that just with me?”

Aspen flutters those little fern eyelashes, slowly crouching, elbows resting on their knees. Considering. “Perhaps it has been. I don’t intentionally give back what was given to me, but it’s hardly outside the realm of possibility.”

And it might well explain why, even after it became a little less cool to wander through the forest rather than head to the movies, couples still continued to flock here. You’d noticed that Aspen had fed from your pleasure, had bloomed every time you kissed or touched, so it isn’t entirely a surprise to know that they feed upon others. Granted, in a much less hands on kind of way.

“Does it make you uncomfortable?” Aspen asks, reaching for you, and then thinking better of it. Their long, branch-like fingers curl, hesitating before dropping back to their side. “While I am wonderfully glad to see your face, Lovely, if you want to leave—”

You wave away their words, closing your eyes to see if that will help with anything. The ache of yearning for them is still very much present, but you’ve yearned for their touch since the night you first had it. It’s stronger now, but you were still able to reason through it enough to ask. You were still able to stop yourself and think before stripping off your clothes. You forget to breathe through your mouth though, and that sweet scent makes you shudder, makes your mouth grow terribly dry and then fill with saliva to overcompensate. If you stay, or if you wait and come back when the height of spring has passed, what will change? You’ll still want Aspen. Still crave their company and the refuge that their home has become. You’ll still want their touch. You’re just… A little more horny than normal right now, and a little more willing to speak about it.

“Not leaving,” you finally say, blinking your eyes open when one of their fingers presses against your shoulder. You’re swaying forward, most of your weight balanced against their precarious hold. “I want- I want to stay, but I have to tell you: All I can think about is getting out of my clothes.” Whether the statement might have shamed you normally or not doesn’t seem to matter. The words are so overwhelmingly true that a weight vanishes from your shoulders, decision made. You do your best to slow your movements though, trying to straighten your stance as you lift both hands to grab hold of their arm. Your fingertips brush over the spongy edge of a mushroom on their forearm, and another mushroom promptly pops into existence right next to your hand.

“Oh, good,” Aspen says, reaching out for you with both hands now. You let them lead you close, let them lift your feet onto the bend of their knee, leaving you within range of their mouth. “I dreamed of you while I slept,” they confide in you, and the deep rumble of their words makes your knees want to buckle.

Even with the heavy humidity pressing in on you from all sides, making your back faintly damp with sweat and pushing your hands to quest for zippers and buttons, your brain is still working. A flicker of half recalled knowledge about dreams clamors for attention. If they were dreaming of you, if Aspen is more akin to humans that either of you think, their dreams were recent, had in the moments or days just before waking. Maybe that was why the bloom grew, why it started budding, why whenever you breathed in the faint scent of nectar, you started to ache for the lack of them. “And what did I do in these dreams?”

For a single second, Aspen looks abashed, ducking their head close enough for you to press a kiss upon. Their eyes fall closed when you brush your lips on their face. Your hoodie comes off, tossed over your shoulder to land somewhere upon the carpet of multicolored clovers. “Shall I tell you? Or would you rather I show you?”

There it is. Their mouth opens, a single fingertip finding your chin. It’s softer than normal and cool compared to the normally temperate feeling of their wooden body, and you have a split second to glance down and see that those blue edged mushrooms are growing along the length of their finger. Then Aspen is tilting your head back to kiss you. Like the first kiss you’d shared, they start out slow. A single, sticky-sweet tendril traces your lips until you part them and then slips into your mouth to curl around your tongue. You suck on it, hands pausing in their overeager quest to strip off your clothes. You want to brace yourself against Aspen’s face, to press your hands to their chin as you roll your tongue, arousal flooding you so fiercely that you can barely breathe. You forget about your clothes entirely when you tilt your head back a little more, gasping as another one of those thin green tongues flicks out to touch your lower lip. Aspen’s hand, gentle in the middle of your back until now, curls around your torso, fingertips pressing a little uncomfortably into your ribs. They groan, in that lovely, low tone of theirs, the noise filling you up with a gentle, steady vibration until you wonder if you could get off on that alone.

You pull back, just trying to get a hint of space to breathe, but Aspen chases after you, more green tendrils flicking against your lips and trying to slip into your mouth until you gasp out for them to slow. You tip your head to rest against theirs, breathing hard and smiling too wide, and then get back to the business of shedding your clothing. Aspen’s grip on you trembles, but they allow you the space to shuck what feels like yards of material, fingers tensing like they half want to help. They tried, just the once, in the very middle of November, thumb and forefinger pinching at the end of your sleeve. They’d been careful, truly, but Aspen had still moved a little too fast, a little too sure. They’d split the seams of one of your jackets at the arm and then nearly dropped you in fright. For both your sakes, it’s better that you handle most of your own clothing. Now they just stick to watching. You can catch the vague shape of yourself in the dark mirror of their eyes, and can feel the soft wind of their breath on your quickly bared skin.

“Is all of this you?” You ask, looking away when your face becomes a little too clear in their large eyes. Makeout Point is rife with plants now, and looks more like humans haven’t been in the area for decades as opposed to a single winter. A cool drop of water splashes onto your shoulder from the crown of greenery still circling their horn-like branches. You jump, and Aspen reaches out to swipe the scattered droplets away with their finger while you unlace your boots and push your clothes down your hips. “The new growth. The flowers.”

Aspen hums, turning their finger until the new blue tinged mushrooms drag over your skin, leaving behind a trail that tingles, even after they’ve stopped. “I suspect so. I’ve never been quite so ardent in my dreams of spring as I was this year. But then I’ve never gone to my dreaming knowing I may well wake to your Lovely face.” The end of their finger comes to a stop in the hollow of your throat, eyes dropping to watch you swallow, to watch your pulse speed faster. You shake one of your legs, letting your boot drop to the ground and clothes slide down your skin. You switch, uncaring about the muddy boot print you’re putting your foot back down on. The other boot and the rest of your clothes drop to the ground. The chill in the air is all but gone, or what senses you have that would notice it have been overwhelmed by lust alone. The press of your thighs, the warmth of your own skin, is enough to make you want to slide your hand down yourself. As impatient as you are though, you want Aspen’s touch more. You tilt back your head again, reaching out to rest your hands against their jaw—and pause.

“After this, the growing is going to get a little out of hand, isn’t it? Will I still be able to make it through when it comes time to leave?”

It takes a fair amount of effort for Aspen to drag their eyes away from you, but they make a quick glance around Makeout Point, noting the shiver in the still moving plants. “I won’t let the forest cage you,” Aspen promises and then huffs when you grab hold of one of the dangling vines twisted about the branches on their head. They let you tug, let you pull their attention back to you, and their eyelids lower as you tilt back your head for another kiss. When Aspen’s vine-like tongues curl around your tongue this time, there’s more than just the one. They angle their head to the side, pale green shoots tracing your lips before pushing into your mouth with the others. Aspen doesn’t choke you, leaves plenty of room to breathe, but it’s still a little overwhelming, have that many vines snaking into your mouth. They twist and writhe against your tongue, drag over the edges of your teeth like they enjoy the sensation, and desperate ache for them grows stronger, until it feels like you shouldn’t need to breathe. Aspen picks you up off their knee, a deep rumble echoing through their chest when you keep hold of them.

They’re slower even than they were the first time, without the cushion of your clothes to keep your skin from pressing too hard on some of their fingers. They cradle your back and neck and head with one hand, while the other curls around your hips and thighs as they stand up straight. The rush of movement is strange when you’re still holding onto their face, still sucking on their tongues, eyes closed, but you don’t care about it right now. You trust them, and nerves have been pushed far to the wayside when you want them so badly that every inch of you feels like it’s on fire.

There’s a gentle pressure as they urge you to open your legs, but you barely need the prompting. You part your thighs willingly, gasping when they finally pull their mouth away from yours, tongues flickering over the hollow of your throat and along your collarbone. You expect them to lift you higher, to angle you towards their mouth as their tongues are still sliding down your chest. Instead Aspen’s thumb, ridged with those blue edged mushrooms, drags over the top of your thigh. That tingling feeling spreads over your skin and then your legs start to shake as the mushrooms press between your legs, soft and growing warm from your own body heat. The tingling sensation turns sharp as they stroke their thumb gently over you, and you can’t help but whimper when they drag the gills of the mushroom down to your ass and then back up. You can’t see what it looks like with their head in the way, Aspen’s fern eyelashes closed as their tongues curl and pluck at one of your nipples, but it's starting to feel like the mushrooms must be secreting something slick. The next drag of their thumb, the tip of it pressing into you, makes you arch and moan. You reach back to grasp at the finger bracing your head, legs shaking as you get closer to orgasm and then Aspen pauses, one of their tongues fluttering over the edge of their wooden mouth.

“Did you dream of me, Lovely?” They ask, but not entirely like they expect you to answer. “Was that why you rushed to see me when spring dawned?”

“Yes,” you gasp, immediately. That was partially why you came, but every inch of you is hot, and you’re still right on the precipice of coming. It’s too hard to cobble together a coherent sentence.

Aspen’s thumb pushes and turns and then your eyes are rolling into the back of your head as you come, breath leaving your lungs in a harsh, almost painful gasp. Their mouth finds you as you do, slick, sticky vines pushing into you alongside their mushroom ridged thumb. They drink down your pleasure, moaning when your thighs tremble against their face. They don’t seem to notice when you dig your fingernails into the smooth wood of their skin, they just keep moving, the pressure of their tongues and thumb leaving you full and clenching as you finally whimper. “Fuck, fuck, fu- Aspen! Aspen, I’m-” You buck against their face, noise dying on your parted lips as that only presses them deeper. You kick out your leg, bare toes brushing over the moss on their shoulder, but that only makes Aspen adjust their hold.

Maybe it’s because it’s spring time, or because yearning for you has been building up in them as steadily as it had for you during the winter, but even after you stop shaking, even after your legs go limp, Aspen isn’t quite done. Their thumb pulling out of you makes your back bow again, and then they turn you over. You’re on your stomach in their giant hands, Aspen’s tongues filling you up over and over again before you breathlessly ask for them to cease. Your legs feel like jelly, and that strange, hot ache has finally ebbed.

When you blink, glancing around the circle of trees, it looks like the forest has erased all signs of humanity. Vines are thick and tangled over every inch of the area, laced between trees. Ferns peek out from the ground, and those pale, white blossoms are scattered around the area like wedding petals. Aspen’s next lick is gentle, cleaning rather than fucking, and you shudder in their hold.

“I don’t know if I want to leave,” you mumble, tired and sated. “I missed you something awful.”

There’s a creaking noise and then you clutch at their fingers as they sit, flowers and leaves puffing up into the air and raining back down. Aspen carefully turns you to sit on their thigh, arranging you against their midsection until you’re lounging and grinning for all their effort. “...shall I come with you?” They ask, and when you glance up at them their head is tilted to the side. “While I know you will return now, it’s always difficult to part.” Aspen hesitates and then places a fingertip to your lips, eyes filling with pleasure when you kiss it tiredly.

You’ve watched them turn back into nothing more than a tree in the presence of others, and… And a bigger yard would be nice. A backyard, you amend, thinking of neighbors catching sight of a moving tree, or simply noting the fact that a tree has switched places somehow overnight. “Not yet,” you say, trying and failing to hold back your grin. “I think the park rangers and the rest of the town might notice if you were following my car back to my house. But… But soon. I would like that.”

Aspen hums again, that deep rumbling noise making you warm a fraction. “Simply tell me when, Lovely, and I will always follow,” Aspen vows, and plucks your hoodie out of the nest of vines. They spread it over you like a blanket and a spiral of flowers blooms along their forearm.

...Maybe you should just find a house out in the middle of the forest.

Fear should have been her first reaction, but instead excitement thrummed through her. Something out there had perceived her, and it too was curious.

Though she couldn’t have articulated the exact sensations that sparked across her mind as the entity continued to shift a fraction of its focus from the freighter to her, the overwhelming impression she got was of a scientist who had discovered an unfamiliar species of insect and was stooping low to the ground to inspect it.

Having decided to go closer, she nudged her ship over and docked against the side of the freighter.

“Don’t you fuck up my ship too,” she muttered as she donned her helmet and space suit to make the short hop to the freighter to begin exploring.

If the entity chose to reveal itself, it could, but she was damned-well going to salvage what she could from the cargo ship in the meantime; a ship like this could hold ore and a plethora of valuables in its belly, and if not, the core would sell for more than she made in fifty trips.

Despite its contorted exterior, the interior of the ship was exactly as it should have been. To her surprise as she opened the small access hatch, the corridors were also ablaze with light, and the gravity field was still active. She fully expected a crew member to come around the corner at any moment, but her scanner had revealed no recognisable life forms aboard whatsoever. The instruments on her suit told her that the atmosphere and pressure were safe for human survival, so she slipped out of the bulky gear and helmet and began to poke about in comfort.

While she explored the lower cargo deck, something brushed against her mind again and she shivered.

Like a handshake or a tentative greeting, the gesture had been respectful but insistent. Behind that, however, came the distinct impression that the entity hadn’t been able to simplify their request down far enough for her to process the nuances of it. There was a definite hint of frustration in there, and she froze, tilting her head.

“Where are you?” she asked, and something else flickered across her mind, like a brain freeze — intense and sharper this time. “You’re everywhere, aren’t you?”

Something akin to a scoffing laugh thrummed through the air, which she felt and heard at at once.

“Close enough?” she smiled. There was absolutely no threat to the entity that seemed to hover around the ship, encasing it like a bubble, and her instincts were usually good. After all, a lot of people had said that the towering, nine-foot tall Kharmorian with a jaw like a deep sea fish from Earth was dangerous, but he’d been nothing but courteous to her, both in bed and out of it.

“So… what are you doing here? You messed up the outside of this freighter pretty good, but somehow the inside is still the same… How’d you manage that?”

Instead of an answer, a curious sensation probed into her mind like a needle, and she found herself viscerally reminded of a visit to the medical bay for a routine checkup, when her head had been tilted back, and the doctor had instructed her to ‘say ahh’. So the entity was curious about her now. It had apparently finished picking through the cargo ship, twisting whole sections of it like a Rubik’s cube, perhaps to try and figure out what had happened to the crew.

Fleetingly, as the entity rifled through her mind like it was simply a filing cabinet of memories and sensations, she wondered if the being was responsible for the crew’s disappearance, and was met with a rebuking blast of scorn so overwhelming that it brought her gasping to her knees. Instantly the sensation retreated, like a child who had poked at an animal and hadn’t realised their own strength for a moment.

Static buzzed in her ears and she struggled to catch her breath, thoughts feeling scattered and fractured, but after a moment or two, she blinked and like a shattered mirror seen in reverse, clarity returned to leave the distinct feeling that the entity would hardly be interested in something so petty as devouring the physical. They didn’t consume primitive flesh to survive. Quite how she knew that, she wasn’t sure, but the thought remained like residue in her mind.

“Ok then,” she croaked, and, staggering a little, began to make her way over to a large, sealed industrial container in a corner of the cargo bay. “Maybe go a little easier on me?” Scanning the code on the exterior with her reader, she found it contained refined ores, and was not on any of the imperial databases. Jackpot.

All the while she worked, she felt a presence over her shoulder.

“You just going to stare, or are you going to introduce yourself properly?” she asked as she slid her decoder into the locking device and watched it get to work on opening the container.

While she waited and leaned her body against the smooth side of the container, her arms and legs crossed casually, she wondered just how the entity worked. Tapping her temple, she said, “You’re still poking around in here, aren’t you? Any chance you can tell me a bit about yourself while you do?”

Again, the sound of laughter, rough and scattered like flakes of metal, filled her consciousness. They liked that she was sassy and unafraid — carrying on with her business while they carried on with theirs. They actually found it endearing, though they rather patronisingly conveyed to her through another bout of incomprehensible static that she literally couldn't understand how something like them functioned. Something about her being limited to a mere three — four at a push — dimensions…

“You’re too complex for me, huh? Ah well, any chance you can give me a taste anyway? Nothing that’s going to leave me a broken wreck like this ship though, if you don’t mind…”

Nothing visible changed around her, but the room pulsed and began to feel heavy again, and she felt that if she were to raise her arm, it would feel like the gravity had been dialled up by a factor of ten. To her surprise though, a wrench drifted past her a moment later, spiralling lazily and unaffected by the freighter’s active gravity generator.

She blinked and watched its passage, fascinated.  

In the next heartbeat, she felt the entity abandon their exploration of the ship entirely and focus their attention on her.

In the same way a specimen in a glass slide beneath a microscope cannot comprehend the intricate mind and body of the scientist peering down at them, she gasped, feeling simultaneously folded up and opened out as they probed around her mind in earnest, rifling through her most distant memories in a too-fast-to-follow flash until they discovered her most recent ones. Namely, sex with a non-human back at the hub.

A wry, slightly embarrassed smile twisted her lips as the entity’s curiosity blossomed again at that, and they began to sift more carefully through the sensations they discovered. A quick flash of an impression told her they didn’t really understand the physical needs she experienced, but they wanted to experience them too, slowing down the memories until even she could follow them, and repeating them until she began to feel hot and flushed. They were enjoying the reaction that each replay prompted in her.

“It’s just sex,” she laughed, the noise breathy in her own ears. Heat pulsed beneath her thighs as she remembered on her own the scrape of teeth and the feeling of his cock deep inside her. She opened her eyes, not having realised she’d closed them in the first place, only to discover that she was floating prone in the centre of the cargo bay.

She got the impression that the entity was cradling her body, but she couldn't see anything. A second later, they sent her a flash of something that she interrupted simultaneously as ‘let me show you how we take our pleasure’ and ‘I wonder if this will work on someone like you without obliterating your mind completely’. It was all rather vague, but the idea of it filled her with a thrill she couldn’t quite articulate.

She licked her lips.

Was she really considering this? Could she even say no at this point? It had felt safe enough until then, but could the entity truly understand her if they were so incomprehensibly complex in comparison? At their scale, could they tell the difference between apprehension of the unknown and fear for her safety?

A shimmer ran down her back, like a physical ripple against her body, inside and out, and she just breathed for a moment.

Reassurance.

Like a doctor calming a patient before beginning an invasive procedure, the entity reached out to her. The option to retreat, to leave, flickered at the edge of her consciousness, and she nodded. Whatever they were, this entity was giving her the chance to refuse, and a rather professional promise to be careful.

She paused, mind racing, and then murmured, “So long as you don’t break me — mentally or physically — I’m up for finding out what happens…”

They seemed pleased then; pleased that they had managed to communicate the mere kernel of their desires to her, and even more so that she had consented. The impression that that had been really important lingered long in her mind, along with a nauseating and visceral revulsion that rolled through her as it tried to convey the depth of that significance. The sensation wasn’t her own, however, and it was gone almost before she’d experienced it.

“Incomprehensible yet oddly sweet,” she muttered distractedly, still reclining in the soft blankness of anti-gravity that seemed to have enveloped her.

The already-muted colours of the cargo seemed to fade to black and white as she dangled there, waiting. Was ‘there’ even where she had been? Did ‘there’ have any significance beyond ‘here’? Her mind reeled and she realised the entity was already exploring her, causing her mind to slip sideways. She hadn't even noticed when it had started.

A moment later, the entity found what it was looking for and brushed against the pleasure centres of her brain, like the backs of fingers gently exploring the effects of their touch, and she yelled and arched, lighting up all over, every nerve tingling and thrumming. Pulsing waves went right to her core and she twisted, bucking helplessly against empty space.

The sensation was beyond intense, and, being the scientist they apparently were, the entity repeated the gesture just to see if that would garner the same reaction a second time, which of course it did. She laughed, feeling dizzy and floaty; mentally as well as physically. It felt like the entity was trying to recreate the effects of the venom that they had encountered in her memory, but even that was too simple a concept for them and so the gesture was laced with a million other sensations, too densely-packed to process individually.

Like a spool unravelling, she felt her mind unravel as the entity toyed with her, manipulated her. They probed deeper and deeper into her consciousness, delighting in the reactions they provoked. Confusion soon gave way to utter disorientation as she allowed the strange entity more and more access to her, and they soon discovered what she enjoyed. Instinctively she spread her legs, her body relaxing and tensing in convulsing waves, beginning at her core and radiating out in wild ripples that left her gasping for air.

Something physically brushed against her, and she jerked, but like a cold hand leaves an imprint on warm skin it was gone before she could remember how to open her eyes.

“Can you show yourself?” she asked, shocked at how wrecked she sounded, and finally her eyes rolled open. “Without… you know… breaking me?”

The air hummed, a gentle vibration that went through every cell in her body. The entity was looming all around her, just beyond her perception. Then, while time seemed to stretch forever between heartbeats, a pinprick of prismatic light appeared in the space between her parted legs.

Shimmering, made of more colours than she could ever have conceived, something was trying to manifest in front of her. Whatever the entity was, condensing themselves down into something she could make sense of seemed apparently beyond them. It couldn’t hold any kind of tangible shape, and when she looked at it for more than a heartbeat her mind hurt and her eyes narrowed as if she were looking at the sun. A spike speared up from the centre of it but was gone before she could process it, and something dripped like viscous oil onto the floor, only to shatter in a spray of glittering particles.

Shifting constantly like petrol on water, something spiralled up the inside of her legs and as she fumbled to unzip the top of her close-fitting suit, a pressure built at the back of her head. As though she were being held upright in water by strong hands, she floated and leaned into the pressure, finding that it filled her head until she thought she might burst. At that, the pressure eased, but the trippy tingling that went with it didn’t.

As the entity explored her, inside and out, she realised they weren’t actually trying to pleasure her — at least not in the way that a gentle lover might focus their attention on a partner. This entity was detached, enjoying the way they could push buttons to test reactions, forcing synapses to fire, noting reactions as they occurred.

Like the onset of a visual migraine, her vision warped, blanking out in some areas and twisting into impossible shapes and colours elsewhere.

“Is that you?” she gasped, arching as ecstasy washed through her, sloshing around and leaving her weak and shaking. She tried to reach out to touch the shifting sphere at the corner of her mind but something weighed her arm down and prickled like pins and needles along her nerves in a delicate warning. “Ok, don’t touch the entity,” she slurred as her thoughts drifted into one another. Words started to slide away from her grasp into pure sensation.

The entity was touching her physically too, but she couldn’t process how. Her geometry met only a fraction of theirs, and they were moving through her in ways she couldn’t possibly work out.

Soon she stopped trying.

This was beyond her.

It might even kill her.

If she was going to die like this though, at least it would be experiencing the greatest pleasure of her life.

Something tender, though cool and distant, chided her for that. They weren’t going to let her come to harm. They had memorised her, and like a clockmaker taking notes of all the inner workings of a watch they were going to put her back together again, every atom back where it had been before they ever encountered each other, so long as she let them finish this. A specimen on a table, all she could do was lie back and experience it all.

At that vague realisation, she gave in completely.  

The entity revelled in the feedback they received from her quivering, sweating body as they touched and pushed, probed and experienced. They tasted the sounds she made, heard the memories they sparked, laved a tongue across her mind and made her scream and twist as her insides turned to magma. She lost herself to it and became mere fragments. Atoms of carbon, molecules of water without thought or consciousness, lost and drifting, gasping and writhing. Full. So full. Wet and hot and alight.

A frenzied delirium overtook her as the loop of sensation, of query and reaction, went back and forth between them.

She began to come; an explosion of light and ecstasy that never ended. It rolled through her with the thunder of a thousand engines overhead, but the entity didn’t stop there. They pushed. She came again and again, screaming soundless and raw, her increasing sensitivity ignored by the entity until she was shaking and heaving, suspended in zero-gravity while the entity existed around her in a billion planes. On all of them, she experienced nothing but inarticulate pleasure.

Like a sheaf of paper folded into a complex shape, she knew the entity was taking her out of her known dimensions, and each time she lost herself in that hazy, spinning place, she got the impression the entity reached their own kind of climax. They were using her to reach their own peak. Somewhere, she smiled at that, and came again. It tasted sweet.

The nature of the ship around her shattered and rippled as the entity focused on not damaging her as they took and took from her, over and over. The ship was unimportant, a mere speck of sand on the shores of a planet in comparison to her. She was the centre of everything, everywhere all at once, and the entity took its pleasure from her physical sensations. Something filled her, leaving her wet and gasping as existence warped and the entity reached their final peak of ecstasy; this time it was a physical one too.

Suddenly everything stopped. All awareness, all sensation, light and sound stopped existing.

She had no idea how long she lay suspended there, in between.

In reality it had to be only a second or two, and when she started to come back to herself, she found herself breathing hard and trembling all over as she still floated there, insensate.

In a twisting pattern of fragments — a million jagged screens all showing a different view — an aspect of the entity hung beside her, exuding curiosity, a little worry, and feeling more satiated than they had been in a long time. All their emotions washed around her like a wave and she shivered, managing a dazed smile, and she discovered that she was wetter than she’d ever been in her life. She was also still dressed but the feeling of having been filled was unmistakable.

That rasping, unreal laugh jangled in her mind and she struggled to find thought behind the mire of primal sensation sloshing around inside her. Eventually, things crystallised again, and when she was able to talk, she murmured, “You learned something about humans then?”

The entity laughed again and she realised that the iridescent, shattered fragments were no longer there. She hadn’t noticed them go; they simply weren’t there anymore. That laugh hadn’t been patronising, but oddly affectionate.

“Thanks then,” she whispered, sensing that the entity was already moving on.

They had taken what they wanted to know about her and were preparing to shift elsewhere through some bridge she couldn’t comprehend, perhaps to learn something new; perhaps to report back on what had just happened. They felt like a scientist: curious and respectful, but more than willing to get personally involved with their research.

“Write me up in a flattering light, eh?” she snorted, her consonants soft, brain still sparking from time to time.

She twitched a little, her body working to remember how to behave in the familiar dimensions it had been born to, and she found herself sinking slowly back down as the creature’s ability to affect gravity dissipated.

Then they were simply absent.

The realisation came like the moment her ears popped on re-entry to a planet’s atmosphere, and she knew instinctively that she was completely alone on the ship once again.

Her perception felt distinctly flat after that day, as though she had had a glimpse of the eternal which now, in her humble human body, she would never grasp again.

She would carry flashes of that experience with her for the rest of her life.

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This is the last of my commissions now, but I’m thinking I might open up a few short ko-fi stories or a ‘sponsor a story continuation’ option to help me keep afloat financially now that I’m not taking commissions. If that’s something you might be interested in, please please let me know!

I really hope you enjoyed this one! If you did, please consider reblogging the story, since that’s the best way to help out creators whose work you enjoy on Tumblr!

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