Sweeping my gaze across the expanse of the dirt-filled land, I estimated I would arrive by the time the fog blanketed the ground. The desolation was as it had always been before our land shifted and trembled, upturning the environment. The alteration was slight but distinctive, and the primary change being we were no longer awash in darkness, and light blazed across our sky. If it were only that, then there would be no issue, but with the snap of the portal, sentience had washed across our land.
Self-awareness.
Thought.
Civilization.
Brought on by the merging oftheirenvironment leaking into ours.
There were many who thrived and experimented in this new society attached to our world, but I never cared to dwell away from the cave I lived in—my territory. Time held no meaning before the Rift, as humans called it, but now it dragged. I wanted it as it used to be: hunting, surviving, devouring.
No desire for thought existed before the Rift, but the day the worlds collided, everything changed. In the decades since we had merged, their languages spilled into our world and it was simple to absorb a version of human speech after devouring the one I’d encountered. The language called English.
The knowledge came without my agreement—I rebuked everything they stood for, having no desire to be domesticated.
“Be careful!”
She shouted and slammed into my side. I frowned at the female. The tip of her nose hardly reached my chest and she thought she could move me?
Her fear smelled sweet as she ogled me and my reproductive member that protruded from my body. I frowned at the lifted sexual organ.
It usually hung in its rested state and did not become aroused unless ... ah, it thought she was a meal. Those were the only two things that made him rise. Her chest rose and fell, forcing my attention to her soft torso. My tentacles twitched.
I stiffened, narrowing my gaze at the appendage until it settled. Madness. They had never moved.
It could not be because of this human squinting at me.
To procreate, the tentacles must unfurl for entrance into the depths of the female’s reproductive channel, but that did not happen to me.
It must be some mistake.
I shook off her grip, sneering as I moved away from her.
After a few steps forward, I didn’t hear her steps crunching after me.
There was no need for me to turn around to check if she followed—yet I slowed.Human issues did not concern me.
I hesitated at the shuddering gasp but then turned around.
The sand pulled her down, reaching her knees.
What had she done?
“Help!” she shouted, wiggling harder, her eyes wide on mine. I’d heard pleas at an insurmountable sum, yet none caused me to pause until now. I shook the disconcerting pull and continued forward. “I tried to warn you about this shit, and this is how you repay me!”
My steps stuttered, but I kept my forward momentum.
She had tried towarnme about the sinking sand?
What a strange little thing.
She’d tried to warnme, the thing she feared.
The female cursed, yelped, and grunted; her struggles clamorous and irritating. If she died, I would not experience her bones crunching between my teeth . . .
Curiosity was the only reason I turned back toward the struggling fleshy human as her shoulders were sucked into the hole.
FOUR
