He’s alive, good God, he isn’t dead!

My mind focuses, all eyes drawn to this one man whose body is not rigid but merely limp. Not warm, but not cold. His suit is whole and his helmet is not destroyed. His eyes are closed, but when I gently hold his upper body, I can feel his chest rise and fall in tandem with the misty breaths hitting the inside of his helmet.

A man! A living man, alive!

All the others have drifted past, dead and gone, but this man, he lives! A live human, a person, a friend!!

The shudder in my body turns to an excited tremble that is dampened only when the man in my grip makes a movement.

Oh-, oh! Sorry, I-, I thought you were sleeping, are you alright? I’m sorry, I’ll let go of you-,

The man’s eyes flare wide and he throws his mouth open and for a moment or two, it remains wide open. Is-, is he screaming?...

-And then his eyes roll back and his mouth closes.

Uh-, um. Is that-, are you okay?...

I poke his chest. No response. Is he-? Did he-?!

Oh God oh fuck oh sh it-!!

Hay, cool it, me! Deep breaths. Take it easy. He’s still breathing, right? Then he can’t be dead, can he?

Well, yeah, but… It’s not like he has tons of air in that little thing! Even if he’s alive now, he’ll surely die soon! Which is-, which would be… Terrible. Just horrible. And I’m not sure if there is anything I can do about that, anywhere I could bring him that would-,

A memory hits me like a home-run bat.

Ilsa. The only place I know of in this whole dastardly asteroid belt with any oxygen.

I swivel my body about. Ilsa isn’t actually too far away. The hard bit will be actually getting there. Though, for now, I’ll need to make sure I keep this guy safe, namely by enveloping him in a cocoon of tentacles. I sure hope he won’t mind or things might get complicated.

I start moving. Unlike before, I have now found a way to move, which is by mimicking a jellyfish. It has to look weird, but it’s effective.

All I can say is that I’m-, I’m just a little shocked. Until now, now that I’m really holding a human, it never really hit me how large I’ve gotten. I’ve got eyes larger than this man, several times, in fact, and that thought scares me. My smallest tentacles are the same thickness as his arm, but over five times as long. I don’t even want to try to hazard a guess at how our sizes compare. He’s minuscule, after all.

Panic builds in my chest as Ilsa approaches, growing larger and larger until I can feel myself being grabbed by the gravitational field surrounding it.

It’s tougher now though, I can feel it struggling to fully drag me along, but I help by moving alongside it, letting myself spin around the planet.

In the meantime, I use a full three of my grabby tentacles to reinforce the protective bubble around him. If he gets hurt, I’m not sure what I’d do.

My body soon enters the atmosphere and as soon as it does, I flare out as many tentacles as I can afford to in order to slow and direct my descent towards the pillar of light. It’s a fair ways away, but it’s close enough. The fall itself takes around five minutes and when I start truly gaining speed, truly approaching, I wrap almost all my tentacles around him and brace the others from the impact, using myself to cushion the fall.

We crash into the side of the mountain beside the temple and although I know instantly that there has been no damage to myself, I can’t know the same for him.

I anxiously peel away my tentacles. Is-, is he okay, is he alive?! Did he make it alright??

He’s just lying there, right atop one of my many tentacles.

Breathing softly.

Th-, thank God… Th-, that was close! Man, I was just about to-,

A little light inside his helmet starts slowly flashing red.

Wh-, what? What does that mean? Does that mean that-,,

It starts flashing slightly faster.

Okay, yeah, shit, let’s get him inside!

I wrap several of my tertiary tentacles around his limp body and use the rest of my body to tear open the heavy gates of the temple. Then, while keeping most of my body outside, I shove him in there, forcing him and my too-thick arm through door underneath the stairs and into the hallway and through the door and into the cave and even though I’m sure that this is technically enough I keep going, my tentacles pushing further and further inside, beyond the ice and beyond the stalactites until I see the warm glow in the distance and when I find it and I turn that corner and come upon that mall oasis of green that makes my heart swell, I finally release my stressed grip on him, gently laying him down on the soft vines and grass.

His helmet is still flashing, even quicker now.

I-, what else is there to do!? I’ve brought you to this oxygen-rich place, you should have plenty to breathe here! Please, helmet, why won’t you just work??

The helmet flashes faster and faster, the moisture from his breaths growing denser and more condensed inside his helmet, forming beads of condensate that tell me he’s strained, his eyebrows pinching together, breath growing quicker, the helmet doing nothing to alleviate his pain.

-Grargh, fine! So be it!

If you won’t help him, then I will!

I rip off his helmet, tossing it aside. It bounces a few times and then stills.

The man draws a few ragged breaths, face straining, chest heaving, until…

He takes a deep breath. Eyes relaxing. Face slipping into calmness. Deep, collected breaths.

My full body that squeezed through that all now stretches out as much as it can, taking up large parts of the space, all eyes present turned on him. I watch him. Closely. His every move. A human. A man. A person. A friend. Look. He’s really here. Someone to talk to. Someone to exist next to. Right here. With me.

He sleeps for a few hours, the full duration of which I spend hunched over him.

Observing his every move, not that there are much of any. He breathes shallowly, in and out, quickly, with great control. I don’t think he’s snoring since his mouth is completely closed, but I can’t tell since I’m currently deaf. I should probably invest in ears one of these days, huh? Anyhoo, at this degree of closeness, I can make out details of his face and body.

He’s dressed in this thin, dark green space suit that’s probably really high tech.

More than that, his whole body is pretty thin, I think? I’m not entirely sure since his spacesuit is pretty baggy, but his face is both pale and thin, his cheekbones eerily high and pronounced. Black eyebrows, slicked-back hair of the same colour. Weirdly long ears. Maybe he’s an elf? Or an alien?? But he looks almost human!

I’ll make sure to ask when he wakes up.

But, man, he looks really stern. Even when he’s supposedly relaxed I feel a sudden need to just… grovel before him like he was a particularly sharp-eyed professor. Scary.

But he’s all I got!

The first person I’ve seen in so long. Seeing a human face after so long is genuinely calming. Like being in the presence of an old friend. Even though I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me.

But it’s fine! As long as he’s a nice guy, I’m sure everything will be alright.

I continue gazing at his still form. He sure doesn’t move much, huh?

(https://imgur.com/gallery/Wd9odZy)

Just looking at his statue-like complexion makes me want to poke him to make sure he isn’t dead or something. But his chest is still rising, so he must be alive, despite his resemblance to an ice sculpture. I’m not sure how long time has passed and I’m not sure how long he’ll keep sleeping, and right now I’m starting to wonder if I should try to shake him awa-,

His face twitches. Eyes squishing together. Face scrunching up.

-Sh-, shit, it’s happening!!

The one tertiary tentacle that had been hovering close to his body now shrinks back a little, but just a little. I need to see him.

He turns over, arms moving, mouth opening and closing…

His eyes flutter awake. They’re muddy and blue, just like when he saw me in space, and just like then, once his eyes focus on my body, clinging to the viny roof and extending away into the dark caves, they spread wide and his mouth widens in pure, abject fear.

-Shit, I knew he’d-, fuck!

In a matter of moments, I retract my entire body out of the cave room he’s within and into the cave passage and away from his gaze. Did he pass out again? Is he okay?

One of my eyes takes a meek peek around the corner. Yeah, he’s just sitting there, chest heaving, eyes still wide. Is he-, man, I hope he’s okay, I didn’t mean to frighten him or anything, I really didn’t!

For a few seconds, his eyes are focused on the dark passage I’m hiding within. I know he can’t see me since his eyes are flickering here and there slightly, unsure where exactly to place his fear.

And then, when that moment passes, his breathing calms. Eyebrows falling into a simply perplexed look instead of purely afraid. Oh, he’s standing up! Sure, his legs are shaky and his breath still seems a bit ragged, but he’s standing alright! No, wait, I think he’s saying something. Shaking his fist? That’s pretty weird. Hrm.

...I don’t think I can approach him too easily.

It’s forbidden. I’m a big tentacle man, he’s a small space man. We can’t possibly coexist.

All and all, if I tried approaching him now, as I am, he will likely just scream and pass out again, which is almost the exact opposite of what I want here. Then-, then what am I supposed to do? I kind of accepted a while back that I’ll look alien no matter what I do, but… Still.

The only real way to talk to this man would be to get down on his level. Assume a form he’ll be able to understand and not fear.

Some kind of humanoid form.

-But, see, my main body is already massive, and I think if I tried to squish my tentacles into a humanoid form I’d just come off as a spaghetti giant and not a friendly face. Hrm.

Then, a form his own size?

...Tentacles are just like limbs, right?

Jesus. I can’t believe I’m genuinely considering this, but-,

I shift my consciousness to my primary form, still standing outside the temple. I lift one of my grabby tentacles, holding it up to one of my many eyes. Right now it’s been compressed into what looks like a single thick tentacle, but if I relax it, it branches out into several smaller ones. The very smallest being about the size of that guy inside. Okay. Alright. Man. This is a terrible idea.

First up… The body. I guess I’ll just add this whole form right onto this smallest tentacle? Right. One tentacle, the base, the torso.

78 994 -> 78 993

Right, there it is. And now five more, two on the bottom, two on the sides of the top, and then another one between those two like a neck/head.

78 993 -> 78 988

There it is. Like four limbs and a head. Now, hands. I’ll need opposable thumbs, of course, and… I’m honestly not sure if I can have tentacles small enough to act as individual fingers, so I’ll just have two non-thumb fingers.

78 988 -> 78 982

As for feet… Just two tentacles on each end will be enough, right? Toes aren’t actually that necessary, right? Right?

78 982 -> 78 980

...Okay, yeah. So far, I’ve got a body with arms and legs and a head and-, well, it’s stuck to my grabby tentacle by the ass, so it kind of looks like it has a tail as well. Not very human, but it’ll have to do. Now, for the head. Two eyes and a mouth.

78 980 -> 78 969

Eye-Mouth formations discovered. Add separate consciousness? Cost: 10 (you have 78 969)

Yes, I would like that, thank you.

78 969 -> 78 959

...Now that I think about it, it would probably be a good idea to have two separate consciousnesses in this thing. Like both a heart and a head? A sort of reassurance. Though, I’m not sure how to do that without putting eyes and a mouth on my chest. -That is, unless I was able to hide them, somehow.

Perhaps using smaller tentacles? Oho. Ohohohoho. Why, ain’t I clever! I’ll just have five tentacles on each side hiding it like a zipper!

...Let’s take a lookie.

78 959 -> 78 938

Eye-Mouth formations discovered. Add separate consciousness? Cost: 10 (you have 78 958)

That too, yes.

78 938 -> 78 928

It works! Heck, you can’t even tell it’s there at all! Heheh, fantastic!

(https://imgur.com/gallery/wf1k6rK)

And now, I’m… Still not quite done. Sure, the body’s got a mouth and eyes, but nothing else. What I would like to buy are the kind of things that make it looks human, such as-,

Buy Nasal Pathway? Cost: 5 (you have 78 928)

Buy Ear? Cost: 5 (you have 78 928)

Right. That. Two of each, in the proper places.

78 928 -> 78 908

And there it is. Sure, it’s less of a nose and more like the nostrils of a snake, but-,

But I can smell. The crisp cold air and the fresh scent of clean air and snow and everything. It’s there. I had almost forgotten how it felt to smell things, and here-, here it is. It’s great. Fantastic. A sense I had forgotten to miss, bringing me the most basic human sense and allowing me to fully appreciate it.

And then there’s hearing. Sure, the ears are large and pointed and thin and more like those of a bat than a man, but do I care? No! I can hear! The friendly whistle of the wind. The crunching of snow far below beneath my tentacles. White noise. Static. My own faint noises. Not just the thoom of moving my tentacles, not just the wind roaring as it's forced out of the way or air whistling as it curls around my body. No, there’s some sort of innate noise that I make, coming from my primary core, from me.

Like a silent roaring engine, beating and thumping like a massive dead heart beneath the floorboards. Filling my ears with sounds I hadn’t even considered before. Something about that thundering, invisible sound alarms me and I don’t know why.

...Looking at my almost-human body, I can’t help but feel like I’m not quite done yet. The bald, bulbous head feels wrong. Empty.

If I add a tentacle on top it’ll look somewhat like hair, right? Probably. Sure.

78 908 -> 78 907

(https://imgur.com/gallery/8Umf2uc)

...Good enough.

And now, it’s almost done. There’s just one thing left. One sense I’ve missed. A single thing I’ve denied myself all this time for fear of what I might taste.

Buy Tongue? Cost: 7 (you have 78 907)

...There it is. Yeah, buy it. The final touch.

78 907 -> 78 900

My mouth suddenly feels cramped, like I’m keeping a frog captured within it. But when I open my mouth, all I see is a regular, maybe a little too-pink, tongue. Neither forked nor especially long. I can’t taste anything, but that’s just because I’m not eating anything right now. Though that might soon change.

-It’s time, then?

Yeah. My body is complete, and I’m anxious to put it to use.