I am Tentacle Pt. 01

I faintly remembered the last time I spawned, and as for moving; well, I had been in this comfortable nest longer than many of the trees around me. I could do it, I remembered that. But not easily or quietly.

Picture a tree, if you will, rolling through the jungle with both branches and roots flailing away. I could do it but I was going to create a stir, perhaps even make some enemies. I shuddered at the thought; my life was one of quiet contemplation and of stealth, of waiting to see what prey wandered within my reach. All that was going to change.

Was it worth it? For the safety of My Friend, it was never even a question. Even now my tendrils were all busy digging at my burrow, unearthing the buried bulk of me. They'd begun the moment I had made my decision. Within minutes they would be finished and my journey would begin. I noticed one set of my tendrils weren't digging; they'd snagged a passing mula and were teasing it into a mating frenzy. Good; I was going to need all the energy I could gather for what lay ahead.

I was famished. Another experience I had not had in many, many years: true, root- deep hunger. The work of moving my bulk through the jungle had been even greater than I had expected. Trees had the most frustrating way of entangling themselves in my tendrils...oh, all right; my tendrils had a talent for twisting themselves up with nearby trees. As my inner and middle tendrils pulled and rolled me along, my stupid outer arms would wind themselves into branches, brush, boulders, anything new and I would have to stop time and again to disentangle them. Water seemed to have a special fascination for them. Every time I crossed a stream or pool they would splash and flail in the water, leaving me blind until I'd rolled beyond the water's reach.

Late in the night I'd reached my new resting place, though so exhausted that my tendrils hung lifeless and a distressing amount of me lay exposed and vulnerable on the jungle floor. This place didn't have the reassuringly dense growth of my old lair, but a wide trail was within reach of even my middle tendrils. This place would do...as long as I could get buried before some of the hungrier inhabitants of the wilderness tried to eat parts of me.

Just before dawn I took a votra and felt a bit better. It had been nibbling at the end of one of my outer arms and instead I made a meal of it. By the time it wandered off, dazed and drained, I had two other animals in my grasp. I set to work digging my new burrow.

By midday I was comfortably set in my lair; the earth a bit drier than I was used to and with an annoying number of rocks, but it would serve.

Already I had seen a human pass along this new path. It bode well for me that humans liked this route, for I had great need of them. I needed both their unique energy and the knowledge of other humans that they carried. Besides, I had become quite fond of their flavor.

A short time later I took my first human in this new place and it almost was a disaster. I set my trap in the usual way, though I was not able to throw my tangle of feelers across this well traveled road. Instead, I was forced to feel for a human's distinctive two-footed plodding through the ground. Easy enough, but I was having to attack my prey without knowing anything about how they might react. Rather unfair, I thought, having to attack without advantage, but that was the desperate position I found myself in.

When I sensed the time was right I threw out two of my middle tendrils out across the road. The first wrapped successfully around the prey's middle and began pulling it toward the edge of the road. My other tendril flailed in the air trying to find an arm to wrap, but before it could there was the metallic rasp of a sword being drawn and my tendril was cut from about the human's middle!

My truncated arm retreated back into the undergrowth, but I threw it back out at the creature to distract it. The other tendril found a leg and wound around it; I immediately sent three more arms out to help. I lost another tendril that way, but then they located and immobilized its weapon. Another arm wrapped its legs together and dragged it off the road.

Would that it were so easy! Unlike other creatures of the jungle, humans have hands that end in tendrils of their own and when they get hold of something it can be hard to pry them loose. This one got hold of a tree branch and held on, yelling all the while. Even after I tore it loose and got it subdued, it still bellowed. I now knew that this was a male human, but more difficult to deal with than any I had hunted before.

Suddenly, another human pushed through the brush, drawn by the cries of the first one. This I could deal with; away from the road and surrounded by my feelers and tendrils, it was an easy matter to bundle him up and drag both of them deep into the trees.

Weak though I was, I decided to try something daring and mate them both at the same time. I wanted to finish with them and turn them loose before another traveler happened by and interfered with our linking.

I'd mated with more than one creature at a time, but never one so complex and unpredictable as a human. This was going to take all my concentration. Based on hints I gotten from humans over the years, I moved the males apart and began stimulating them. After an initial struggle they relaxed and responded in the manner of other humans.

I'd been right to isolate them; these males resisted sexual pleasure in the presence of each other, but relaxed to it when alone. Waves of primal energy began to flow into me. The mating and the response was good, but I felt a little disappointed. The mating just didn't have the taste, the essence of My Friend. Had she spoiled me for mating with other humans?

After the first two joinings, I felt the humans were comfortable enough to bring back together. I also was linked with them to where I could understand their speech, to a point.

"Gar!" one of them exclaimed. "What's this crazy thing doing to us?"

"I don't know..." the other responded, "...but it's damn good at it. Uh oh, here we go again!"

For the first time, I penetrated them in their other orifice and linked with them completely. Stimulation flowed out of me and their energy flowed in return, building and building in surges. I realized their pleasure was feeding off each other and when they reached their peak, the energy was amazing. I'd never experienced such power before, even with My Friend. I realized that taking humans in pairs could produce results I had never expected.

I'd already known that humans were full of surprises, but these recent days had befuddled me. As my captives fell into a drained stupor, I considered this latest revelation. Taking humans together could give me enough strength to do...well, anything I wanted. Even now I felt a quickening of life inside me as my body reacted to the energy and began the work of spawning.

Really, it wasn't too strange that I was just discovering all this now. Why would I ever have taken two humans at the same time? My kind existed by quiet guile; if two humans had stumbled across me, I would have let them go by for safer, easier prey.

But now that I had discovered this quirk of humans, it couldn't have come at a better time. Now I did need strength to move, to grow...and to reproduce. Perhaps even to reproduce more than once.

Now there was a thought that just days ago would have filled me with horror. I existed in a delicate balance with the jungle around me. To disrupt that symbiosis with irresponsible breeding; well, just thinking it made me shudder...which made one of the men I was holding moan.

But my love for My Friend changed everything. If I had to move out of my lair and closer to the lair of humans, then so be it. If subduing My Friend's enemies meant sending my spawn out in numbers enough to disrupt the land, then so be that too. The land and all its denizens had better beware because there was one more important than all of them, and that one now had a friend on her side.

I finished with the two travelers and set them loose, bearing new knowledge of the jungle and some strange memories. In spite of their experiences together, they chose not to journey together. I could still understand some of their speech.

"I appreciate you'n commin' in after me and all, when that beastie first nabbed me. Sorry it didn't work out better."

"Oh, that weren't all that bad, though I shout I'da never had a weirder morning."

"You'n said it right. If you'n weren't here to talk to, I'da thought it all were just a weird someone'd cast on me."

"A weird indeed. Well, best be on our way. I'da don't know if yon beastie is satisfied, but I've had about all I can stand."

"Said it right again. Ta' now." With no more farewell that a nod the two humans headed separate ways. Like all my recent encounters with humans, this one had given me a lot to think about.

First thing I decided to do was to move as far as possible from this road, keeping just barely in reach of it. I had a surfeit of energy, so I started the regrowth of my severed tentacles and set a few new ones to budding. A few days should do for my injured arms, though it would be longer before my new tentacles would be grown and trained to usefulness.

By evening I was safely buried in a spot that happily had fewer rocks than my last burrow. I set out my net of feelers, then turned my attention to considering humans.

What an astounding set of contradictions they were! They were weak and vulnerable, yet they moved about in a most arrogant manner. I'd already noted that they tended to travel by daylight rather than in the safety of darkness. And now I knew that they preferred their roads and open clearings to the concealment of the jungle, though I didn't understand why. It was as though they were confident of overcoming any predator, as long as they could only see them coming.

This amused me; I knew creatures in the jungle that could chase them down in moments and devour them at their leisure, heedless of their sticks of wood and steel. I wondered how humans had survived so long with such conceits.

Perhaps they were originally animals of the grasslands, accustomed to seeing threats in the distance and fending them off with the puny weapons they carried.

Or perhaps humans had an unpleasant taste that gave them some protection? I certainly never devoured the flesh of my prey, though many others here in the jungle had no such inhibitions.

No matter. Humans acted as they did and I had to deal with this reality. My flawed capture of the two humans had set me to thinking. Rather than snatching humans off the road like the first prey I had taken, I needed to lure them into my trap in the trees. How to do that? I had some ideas, and so I set to practicing.

By morning, I had found by stripping sticks of their bark and rubbing them together in a certain way, I could make a credible imitation of a young human crying. Would it be good enough to entice an actual human? There was only one way to find out.

I saved my first attempt for a pair of males riding on the backs of animals; humans thus mounted appeared even less wary than others. They pulled up sharply at my lure and swung their sticks toward the sound.

"Gar!" shouted one. "Neva heard a noise like that before. What manner of beastie...?"

"Don't know an' don't find out! Let's clear an' let another be et up!" They rode off quickly.

I was disappointed that my call still needed work, but pleased to see that I could still understand much of what the humans were saying. I'd never been able to remember human speech before, but I'd never had frequent contact with them either. I got back to work on my lure.

As the sun was lowering, I made my next attempt. This time it was a pair of females on foot, and they stopped immediately on hearing my call.

"Janece!" one called to the other. "A babe! What's a babe doing out here?"

"Don't know!" said the other. She drew the weapon at her waist. "Does it sound hurt- like?"

"Don't know." She also drew her weapon and stepped off the road.

"Janece, wait...!" cautioned the female as her companion disappeared into the jungle. Then seeing it was useless to argue, she moved to support her friend. I waited until they were well into the trees before I struck, with no other travelers within earshot. Within minutes I had them bundled up, stripped and ready for penetration.

Interesting. Each human I met was unique and a puzzle. The elder of the two, the one who had shown more caution, had evidently never been mated. I could read her fear of my tendril as it approached her unbreached opening.

No matter; as I'd said, my mating organ was wonderfully dexterous and sensitive. It was a simple matter to swell it to its full size once it was within her genital opening. With care, I could even produce a thrusting movement without discomfort to her, though her mind was in turmoil. I comforted her and achieved a very satisfactory linking.

The taste of the other female was quite different. More accustomed to mating, her reactions were much rawer, receptive, even eager. I took a moment as their energies built to admire the tableau of the two bodies together, shaking and twisting in throes of ecstasy.

There was a just a hint of something in the elder female; a whiff, a taint deeply hidden even from herself. Something about the younger...I brought the two toward each other. Closer than I had brought the males; close enough that their lips almost touched and their gasps and cries blew in each other's faces.

Their eyes snapped open and the elder gave a despairing cry as her friend looked into her contorted face. Then they exploded into an even deeper paroxysm of feeling and I knew with satisfaction that when this was over they would become lovers.

I hummed to myself as the two rested, tangled in each other's arms and cradled by my loving tendrils. It was not just that the energy from these two was greater than others, but that it was deeply satisfying. There was a warmth and...affection to it that was new to me. At the same time, I realized that I missed My Friend more that ever.

Now I saw why the elder female had been reluctant to face her love for her younger friend. With love inevitably came loss; with warmth came loneliness. But I also saw that a creature like myself, in my eager hunger, was wiser than she. It was far healthier to love and face the coming loss than to wall yourself off from affection and connection. Even an odd species such as myself saw that. Of course, I had an advantage over humans; for me connection was the way I survived.

While my two lovers dozed, lost in happy dreams, I completed the birth of my spawn. It tumbled out onto the ground, a mass of writhing tendrils the size of a small wallit.

So tiny! Though truly a smaller version of myself, it would be many days before it could feed on anything larger than a bird or mouse. It may share all my knowledge, guile and wiles, but years would pass before it would have the strength to take a human.

I corrected myself: an unwilling human. My tendrils writhed in pleasure as I recalled My Friend giving herself to me, willing and eager. Perhaps I would find a prey in the future that would share with my spawn, giving herself or himself to help it grow? That could do much to help my plans. I'd thought of my spawn as a guide, going first into the area of the monsters to learn about them before I ventured into their lair. But if my offspring found the strength to grow from the abundant energy of humans, then it could well take a more active role.

But now it was time for it to start its journey. I raised it up and examined my first offspring in many years. In spite of all the knowledge and experience it carried, there was still a bubbling eagerness about it. It twisted tendrils with me and said, "I am Tentacle."

"So you are," I agreed. "So am I. On your way now."

With that my spawn rolled off into the jungle, a tiny ball of whipping tendrils. There was no more farewell than that and no more needed. Do you bid goodbye to the hair you leave on a resting place? Do you clasp hands with yourself before you sleep? No. A piece of me was over there and a piece of me was here. There was no more to the matter than that. Still, I quietly wished that part of me an easy journey. I felt it was fated to a more difficult existence than I had enjoyed.