I Am Tentacle

A Love Story

CHAPTER THREE

It was a delight to be traveling again. I'd enjoyed my old life in my lair, but it was such pleasure to be young and energetic and mobile. I should have done this years ago. Rolling easily through jungle that I had flailed my way through before, I marveled at what a change a few days made in my life. I felt bad for the old me, still mired down in one place. My previous self would have to stay in one place, waiting patiently for the return of My Friend and whatever prey stumbled across it. Meanwhile, I was free to go in search of My Friend.

I know, that is not what I'd had in mind back when I had spawned. I'd intended to learn what I could of the land of My Friend and the monsters. Then I was to roll all the way back to the jungle and tell the old me what I'd discovered so it could voyage there safely. Phaugh! That was minutes ago and I'd already changed my mind.

You never change your mind? You are never indecisive? I have the advantage that I actually am of two minds, and the plans and ideas of the old me now count for nothing. A plan that had seemed reasonable enough when I was the size of a tree and tangled in the jungle now seemed completely ridiculous.

No, I would go in search of My Friend myself; would find her and protect her. Perhaps then I would go back to the old me and bring him to My Friend. I remembered the strength and dexterity of the old me, the body I'd had until earlier this day. A companion of that strength would be useful in dealing with the monsters that were pursuing My Friend. Until then, my nimble new body would do quite well.

Spinning along beneath brush that my old body would have entangled itself in, I reveled in my freedom. My searching outer tendrils warned me of an obvious spider's trap left from the night before. I dodged it, following the faint trail left by a gemmet. Suddenly, I was knocked to the side and the jungle became a confused blur of leaves and fur and teeth.

The gemmet! Dropping from above it had landed on my back, attempting to roll me over and lock its jaws onto the core of me. Unfamiliar with me, it hadn't recognized that rolling was how I moved. I spun faster and struck out with my tendrils, throwing it clear.

It charged right back, but I easily leaped over it and came down on its back. One set of tendrils entangled the gemmet's front legs and tripped it to the ground. Other tendrils trapped the back legs and the gemmet was mine.

Now what to do with it? I certainly couldn't turn it loose; my defenses counted on my linking with hunters to render them harmless. That and my being much larger than any predators; I realized with embarrassment that I was going to have to rethink my defenses. My mind still thought of myself as far larger than any gemmet. That's why I had rolled so easily into its ambush; who worries about a gemmet?

Well, now I worried about it. How does one copulate a gemmet? I'd certainly never contemplated such a mating before. I'd just have to feel around and wait for reactions. I'd already swung the gemmet belly up on top of me; a cunning survival instinct that shielded me if anything dropped down on us during mating. Now I set my tendrils to play on its underside and waited to see what happened.

Sure enough, as soon as I probed between the gemmet's haunches it ceased struggling and opened its orifice. Ah, a female. I'd never encountered an animal so ready to breed. She had been locked in a struggle for her life, but at the slightest touch she opened itself, moistened and ready.

On the other hand, I have never received so little energy from mating a creature. Scarcely worth the trouble, if the gemmet hadn't attacked me first.

But I did find something interesting as I linked with the gemmet. I wished that the gemmet had attacked me under the cover of the bush for we were quite exposed as we mated. The gemmet obliging tried to roll toward cover and I let it do so. I considered her legs twitching spasmodically as I thrust into her. "Run," I thought and the animal's legs began churning.

I soon found that I had near-complete control of the simple-minded creature, as long as we remained linked. At my suggestion, the gemmet rose to her feet and waited as I climbed atop her. I scarcely had to tell her where to go; with me wrapped around her body the gemmet darted along wherever I wished.

Riding a gemmet! I never knew such a thing was possible, but then I'd never considered being as small as a gemmet. My journey just got a lot easier. Perhaps I should feel bad about riding this animal away from her nest, but she should probably feel bad about trying to eat me. Both of us were just doing what we needed, and in the end she would be alive and well. Though she may wait a long time before mating again.

I must say, the gemmet and I worked well together. Her sharp senses kept us from wandering into the jaws of several predators. My sharp mind twice warned of traps that others were preparing for us. After a time she tired, worn by the constant run rather than the dart- and-hide scurrying she was used to. As night fell, we found a nice abandoned burrow and I left her to her rest.

The gemmet was certainly tractable and nimble, but I wondered if other animals would prove equally controllable, other animals more accustomed to long running. I resolved to try a small spiker; perhaps even a young leaf fox. I recognized I was taking a fearful risk. An animal large enough to carry me for days may well prove too strong for my young tendrils to immobilize. If another species proved impossible to control then it could well tear me to pieces.

But in my mind I was still the size of a tree and untouchable. I really hadn't learned the fearful caution of a small forest dweller. What I did have was the freedom and exhilaration of being young and mobile for the first time in centuries. I was up for a risk.

But I wasn't so foolish as to charge through the jungle in darkness, waiting to see what creature was going to try and devour me this time. Of course, night and day were the same to me, who saw the world through my outspread tentacles. Nighttime though was when the jungle truly came alive, with predators and prey both stirring about in search of something to eat. No, this time I was determined to be the one to surprise my prey.

I started by questing about for a faint trail that the gemmet and I had crossed a short time before. On finding it, I carefully considered the tracks in the soft earth, left by a dozen different species. Yes, there was the path of a young brallie, small and fast. Old enough to breed? I hoped so, because if not it would be old enough to bite me into extinction.

Having figured out which way the animal was going, I went the other way. I had no intention of tracking and subduing a brallie that was on a hunt of its own. No, far better to backtrack to the brallie's burrow and wait there for my prey.

This took a terribly long part of the night, casting about for sign and picking my way through dense underbrush. I was beginning to lose confidence in my idea; hunting like this just wasn't in my experience. Finally, I succeeded, finding the brallie's neat burrow hidden in the tangled roots of a tree. Now all I had to do was go inside and find a good place to wait.

Fangs exploded out of the burrow, followed by claws and quills. I sprang back and rolled faster than I ever had before, with teeth snapping at my tendrils. A spiker? It certainly felt like one but I wasn't about to lose an arm or two finding out. I hurried to the nearest tree and went straight up the side of it.

Yes, it was a spiker and an angry one. I understood; the spiker'd had a good ambush in place, just waiting for its brallie to come home and be a meal. Instead it'd gotten a faceful of wiggling black tendrils, no fun to eat. I'd ruined its carefully set trap.

As it had ruined mine. The spiker retreated into the jungle, spitting its rage, unable to get at me. And what was I to do? By this time of the morning, my tired old gemmet would surely have crawled away from the hole I had left it in. My new plan of lurking in the brallie burrow was worthless; I doubted the brallie would ever enter its home again.

I dropped down from the tree and examined the abandoned burrow. Yes, the earth outside the burrow was a confusion of paw and tendril tracks. No brallie would never chance entering it again. Not that there was any reason to...a faint odor of brallie blood wafted up from the hole. The animal's young were dead and gone.

But all this gave me an idea.

Just before dawn, a subtle shifting of leaves heralded the return of the brallie. As I watched, a sharp nose extended from the bushes and tested the air. Then the nose gave a heart-rending jerk as it scented its dead kin. It froze, then gave a quiet little mewing cry, scarcely heard. None of its children responded.

Meanwhile, I had been creeping along a branch overhead. I'd been right; the brallie had approached its nest from downwind, watching for just the kind of ambush the spiker had planned.

But not the kind I planned. I cast off from the tree with a final thrust of my arms.

Crashing through the leaves, the force of me flattened the brallie to the ground, knocking the breath from it. Perfectly planned and executed; I had the animal bundled up before it could react.

Except the brallie had other intentions. It ripped its front paws loose with a strength much greater than the gemmet had shown and scrabbled its way across the ground. The back legs came free and then I was on the back of a brallie running for its life. Arching its body, it turned to snap at me and I tightened my grip across its torso. There were only moments before it would reach me or peel me off against a tree. In desperation I slid back and thrust in my appendage.

The brallie stumbled and went down in a heap. Stunned myself, I held on instinctively. When my senses cleared, I secured the animal's twitching legs. For aiming blindly, I'd done quite well, finding the brallie's genitals on first thrust. I was also pleased to find the brallie was another one that lapsed directly into mating behavior when penetrated. But I made sure to complete linking with her before trying to control her; I wanted to drive the grief and fear from the poor creature's mind.

The brallie was a more complex animal that the gemmet had been, and I was gratified to receive a stronger surge of energy from our mating. Compared to many in the jungle, she was quite intelligent. She also proved harder to control but usually responded to my suggestions. In many ways it was like two companions rather than master and mount. As full daylight fell upon the forest, we set forth.

I visualized going toward the sunrise and pictured a high set of hills where I knew My Friend had lived. She showed confusion, not ever having been near such hills. I repeated my picture of going sunward. She pictured her old burrow and then acquiesced, knowing her old life was gone.

We began running east. This was much easier than riding on the gemmet, easier for both of us, though she did indicate the awkwardness of running while penetrated. I adjusted my appendage.

For most of the day we traveled, though the brallie was tired from hunting the night before. I made sure to have her pause and feed whenever I spied a likely patch of forage. Unlike the gemmet, I hoped to be able to travel for days with this animal.

Another treat of travelling with a companion like this was being able to see through their senses. Dwelling in the depths of the jungle as I did I'd never had any need of eyes; my network of feelers and tendrils told me much more than could any sense of vision. But a new sense, seen through the brallie's excellent eyes, did give one a new perspective on the world.

Toward the middle of the night my companion's energy began to flag and I knew it was time to end our days journey. I let her own instincts pick out a proper resting place for her; sure enough, she quickly found another hollow under another tree root. With a last caress of her snout, I disengaged from her, rolled off and buried myself under a thick patch of ferns. Though she had served me well as a traveling companion, I was unwilling to force her to carry me time after time. The next day would bring whatever it held for me.

CHAPTER FOUR

Too much time had passed since I had rested to my meditations. The last time I had been able to fully contemplate the

world had been the day that My Friend had happened across me, and my world had certainly changed since that time.

For a moment I allowed myself to be distracted by memories of her writhing in passion, great waves of energy sheeting off her and flowing into me. I chided myself for self-indulgence and turned my mind to more serious thoughts.

During the journey here I had been sensing and savoring the environment I was passing through and now I added that information to my picture of the world. There had been a series of lifebands I had passed through during the last two days; places where animal spoor was plentiful and the vegetation grew even thicker than back in my old jungle lair. What caused it, I wondered? What seeding lifeform or subterranean feature caused life to explode in these areas? I would have to think on this.

I spread my tentacles out fully and examined my new environment. Yes, this was a place well suited for contemplation. As my body sagged into immobility, my brain began to speed up, ordering new information and observations into configurations, fitting them into my gestalt of the world. The pieces spun and twisted as my mind sought to encompass a new, expanded world view with this new knowledge.

Yes, that felt correct. The easy, indiscriminate breeding of gemmets and brallies held implications for the life of all rodents in this area. In turn, this hinted at easy hunting for predators that kept the populations in check. Large animal populations could imply a rich base soil that would let vegetation flourish, and all this may account for the explosion of life in this area.

Was it all this easy? Could a predilection for easy breeding lead to a burgeoning of all life in an area? Were these bands of rich life spreading or collapsing under their own weight? What did all this imply for my envisioning of the world?

My view spread outward, picturing and ordering spreading ripples of occurrence and influence. Momentarily I was distracted from my meditations by thoughts of My Friend but I stoutly pushed memories of her aside. However important she was to me, to the flow of the world she was insignificant. As was I. With their larger numbers, the dark men cast a slightly larger ripple through the world, but I was determined they would exist such a short time that they too could be disregarded.

I was brought from my contemplations by a stirring above me. I cautiously sent my tendrils out to explore and found the sun risen and the brallie crouched by my resting place. Her rump was up and her tail waved invitingly. Interesting.

Perhaps her behavior was driven by more than just mating instinct. Perhaps I'd formed more of a bond with my mount than I'd considered. I would have to think about this...and think more about this brallie as an individual, perhaps even as a type of friend. Well, I knew one way to learn more about this strange creature.

I came up out of my hole and mounted her. She gave a little anticipatory squeak and shivered as I wrapped myself very tight around her. I penetrated her gently, but firmly.

As I had feared, her memories of her dead children had come back and were consuming her. She rightly recognized that I was her escape from these thoughts; her only escape except for time and suffering. I linked quickly and drove the memories from her furred head, burying them as deep as I was able. Without my even bidding, she began running in the direction we had been traveling.

I let her take more of the lead this day, accepting a slower pace in exchange for more satisfying brallie travel. Yesterday, from time to time she would spy a likely place to make a burrow, and it would utterly frustrate her when I would push past without exploring. So today I let her pick her own path and occupied myself with my meditations. This time I held myself to more immediate concerns and plans. I had to admit, I labored under several disadvantages and I would do well to devote some thought to how to overcome them.

First, there was the question of how to dispose of whatever dark men I encountered. I wish now that I hadn't hurried off so quickly from my jungle lair and the old me, and instead had taken the time to entice a lotha or two to join in my travels. I would simply have to trust that my surroundings would provide some way of disposing of my enemies. I did not consider the world a dangerous place...but I resolved to make it so for dark men.

My other problem was size; I had to recognize that I was small and weak, though my enduring mental image may say otherwise. This truly restricted my ability to prey on animals as large as a human, and I knew my (quest) would require me to prey on many of them. I couldn't protect My Friend from the back of a brallie.

To grow quickly I was going to have to feed and as I had just found, humans were the best source of the energy I needed. But to prey on humans I was going to have to grow. It would be an amusing conundrum if not for the specter of danger to My Friend.

I could continue to prey on small animals that strayed into my reach, pouring all the energy I gathered into growth, taking successively larger mates until I reached sufficient size to capture and subdue a human. I idly calculated the amount of time this would take: 2.743 years. My mind jumped to the memory of the dark man searching for the trail of my lover. No, there simply was not enough time. I must find another way to help her.

Regardless of the centuries I had lived, my new body was still young and fresh and a little reckless. I decided on something bolder. Humans I needed and humans I would have, in spite of the dangers involved. I let the brallie run free, devoting all my attention to this problem.

My kind has always hunted by patience and guile, waiting for our prey to wander into our grasp. I had no experience with stealth and stalking as practiced by other predators. However, I knew much; I carried the accumulated knowledge of many animals gained from thousands of linkings. How much of it did I understand? I would find out. I would find out by succeeding or failing, by living or dying.

I had to admit that death was a real possibility for me in this undertaking, but that held no fear for me. For creatures like myself death is something that happens to others; certainly not something for me to fear. But that was the old me, burrowed deep in the jungle, hidden and powerful. That was all right; the huge and clumsy old me would never be able to attempt what I was going to try.

I turned my attention back to the brallie; we were moving along a game trail high above a river, or so my friend's senses reported. Was this good, was this bad? I just didn't know. I knew that humans tended to cluster, but where? We would just have to watch for signs and see where they led us.

For the rest of the day we continued along the ridge, getting occasional glimpses of the water below. I began to question myself; we passed other crisscrossing game trails, but no human roads or paths. Perhaps they feared the water, were unable to cross it and we should turn away from the river. Or perhaps what we sought lay just around the next bend? We continued on, full of doubt.

But before the sun disappeared behind the hills and the moons began their rise, we received an encouraging sign. A sound reached the brallie's sharp ears, coming from someplace out of sight upriver. The brallie turned away seeking cover, but I steered her back toward the water for a clearer view.