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We are lying in a pool when the creature comes for us. Its tentacles are rigid, split and splintered into shivering stalks. Beneath the wet puddle of their fat there is nothing but bone, a glistening-gristle gauze tempting our teeth. Bone. What a peculiar name for the teeth-that-is-inside. The wet slap of flesh on stone pricks our feelers. False-skin rustling as it beckons to us. We don’t know what it aches for, but we know our own. Selves.
We are hungry.
Our sinews caress his skin, licking over his precious pale meat. Savory, he is, with the stench of sweat and salt on him. His eyes are wide and wet, like baby jellyfish. Sludging to slime as we gather them away. He loves us so, so much, crying in high tones like he’s wailing out a mating song. He stumbles forward, stiff-tentacles scrabbling, to embrace us. The creatures beyond him rejoice as well, fire-claws flaring. They love us all. We love them.
But we are hungry, and we must feed. Chitter-chatter squalls through a flashing square. Fire-claws spit stones, then cease. The creature we loved first melds with us so easily, meat dribbling into our maws, butter-soft fat dripping down our sinews. Ichor and the lovely sharp crunch of the teeth-that-is-inside snapping. Other creatures sing to us as well, urging us forth. Our body grows as we gorge, and there is room for all of you. Their music is pretty, shrill like our own song. Come forth! they pray. What else can we do, but let them?
We soon discover how to echo them. One tentacle plunging into their still-meat forms, making them dance. Then we leave half of ourself in the pool, letting other-us root, and we wriggle into their skins. We are so happy. We do not spill ourselves on the stone when we control this strange new body. The creature’s body, really, but they have given themselves to us willingly. Delving into our domain, soft and wet and yummy. Storing other-us (for we know there must be more of us, we feel it like a torn tendril), in hard-air shells. We can hear them/us wailing. Not the mating song of the teeth-inside creatures, but the shrill wail of sorrow. Why would they deny us, us?
They have so many nests. There are many, but those cracks and corners house teeth-insides, and they are moist with myriad scents. Fear and yellow-damp, sour and acrid, but we cannot object. Some of us like meals sour.
In some nests we greet our lost selves, slinging silk and shell-sheltering from fire-burst claws. They pour into us like a lost spring to a river, crackling with knowledge real-us were denied. If we weave half of ourself into a nest, then depart and perish, we forget. It is like that, you see.
Some of their nests are fun. Pull-stones and slithering by teeth-insides, veiled by bouncing light. Caressing a fallen insider, huddled down deep in their guts, then flooding from their holes. All the holes, every hole, full and fat and ourself again. Clicking, chittering til they’re muddled, then dropping down from a hidden tunnel. With every rooting, we grow stronger. Hungrier. Lovelier. We grow to like the tart meats and the sharpness of their tears, gathering words from the insides like plucking fruit. (We found a “vending machine” once, and dwelled there for many a beloved hour).
The insiders are not very smart, we learn, as we crawl further. They cry and they fall down ladders they craft themselves. When we grab and bite them, they just go to sleep. No one suspects us if we echo them. They are nothing without their false shells and fire-claws. We learn to peel the shells off, like they’re crabs. We snatch their sticks/claws/guns away. We dribble ichor on them and they faint. What must it be like to be so frail, so fragile and delectable? How can they not bite their own meat?
But the insiders have tricks too. Stones without eyes that beep when we snuggle into their skins, biting lights pricking our flesh. Tree-tentacles warped into barriers we can’t budge, not at first. They learn, we discover, as we learn. It is an “arms race”, a tentacles race, a dance between predator and prey. And oh, it does feel nice to trick them back. Teeth and tongues-tentacles lashing, laughing, as we rear from their unraveling skins. Squeezing into hard-air jars and waiting for the air to burst, absorbing new senses from nothing, seemingly nothing. Fooling the stones-without-eyes as we snare our last host, slipping/skipping/running out. Pitifully few tentacles slapping on a rock called concrete. Tendrils waving goodbye, goodbye, we never missed you. You hurt us first, we know now. And hurt people hurt people.