The thing defied all sense.
It did not move through the corridor as much as skip. A vibration. Another, further ahead, a bit to the right. Another directly ahead of the original. A shape that skimmed across reality, untethered from the ground, obviously, maddeningly, unreal, and yet drawing closer and closer still.
Another of ऐ's senses came into focus. Heat, shining directly above the vibrations, blazing hot enough to melt ice, to melt gallium. The shape vaguely suggested a cluster point - two appendages dangled to the sides, while two produced the ongoing vibrations.
It couldn't be real. Too top-heavy, too lanky. With each step, all of it rested on a single thin limb. Place a rock point-down, it falls over, and yet somehow, this thing did not. How could that be?
...Easily. Lightworlder gravity, lightworlder rules. It was uncanny, how quickly ऐ had forgotten the alien-ness of this place. How swiftly the agoraphobic sensation of being near-untethered from the ground had faded.
Yes. In conditions like this, life could pull itself upright. But why? As a form of stealth, it left much to be desired. And with such a meager ground surface, how did it listen for danger?
ऐ was astonished how dull this creature's senses seemed. Staying cold and motionless shouldn't work this well - and yet it approached still, to within three tentacle-lengths, two, one...
ऐ pumped conserved heat outwards. A whiplike tentacle lashed out, wrapped around the creature's strange thuddy appendage the moment it came down, and pulled. The creature toppled over, just like that. As it fell, slow-motion, its front appendages shifted to absorb the shock. Was that their whole purpose? Breaking falls? No matter. All would be known in time.
ऐ peristalsed forth, shifted a bulk of tentacles underneath the falling form. Still cautious, still ready to pinch off any limb whose integrity might be breached, but increasingly suspecting this being wasn't to be feared.
A cluster of senses flashed as the creature was caught by ऐ's mass. It was flush with the heat of startled prey, but everywhere, constantly. It had sticklike limbs, segmented and rigid with sharp hinged joints. And it was weak. Trivial to restrain with even a single tentacle, and even then the creature was so light that ऐ feared breaking it. The air vibrated in jarring, aimless bursts, but all of it was thin and harmless and made ऐ far more curious than scared.
The creature was covered in rough sheets of matter that shifted out of phase with the body underneath. A decoy skin, to wriggle out of when captured? The creature tried to squirm out, and ऐ's coils tightened - far more than necessary, it seemed. This thing was so fatally morphous. Everything about it the same shape, always. Why?
ऐ's sensory tentacles crept out, snaked into the gaps of the rough outer covering. There were layers covering layers covering layers, but what the tentacles couldn't navigate they could simply rip away. Everything of this world was frail.
All the while part of ऐ tensed, ready for poisons or barbs or for the whole creature to come apart into a horde of loose segments, but nothing happened. It was captive and harmless and stupidly weak.
Every part ऐ could reach got touched. Tentacles mapped the shape of the creature's dense armor, all of it somehow under its skin. Cartilaginous protrusions dotted the top of its body. Little follicles laid all over its outer surface.
And there was flesh. Soft membrane-less flesh that put up no resistance at all, so familiar to what ऐ knew and yet so different. Tentacles coiled and touched and explored and all of it was warm and new and vulnerable and oh First One, what was it with this being?
More. Further. Numberless tentacles extended, felt, and found-
Right at the place where its moving appendages joined there was a discontinuity. The tentacle exerted pressure and slickly surged inside. Why? Why this vulnerability? What could possibly justify being so easy to invade? ऐ didn't know and had to know and pushed further and further in.
The creature shuddered. That was a new response. ऐ tried again, moved out, then in, the motion alien at first but more familiar with the second, and the reaction was incredible.
Muscles flexed in desperation. Skin flushed and grew more conductive. Aimless pulses of air issued forth from the top of the creature's body, and ऐ cautiously probed there to determine what-
Another opening. This time ऐ didn't hesitate a second, pushed a tentacle in, and the creature's responses grew more intense yet. It pressed against the coils that held it in place. Inside, its tongue rubbed against the upper tentacle, while clenching down on the lower one. Almost like it wanted to feel ऐ as much as the reverse.
Something about that thought was intoxicating. ऐ flowed around the creature, encapsulated all of it, surrounded its appendages and the place where they clustered, held it tight, tight, as tightly as possible, kept forcing itself into and out of those holes-
The being spasmed violently, all of its body tight for one second, and then it collapsed into ऐ's embrace. It still struggled, but some essential fight had left it. The tentacles shifted to a light caress. Perhaps this being, however strange, would understand the gesture.
Like that, ऐ returned to the depths, new pet snugly carried along.
