How to Get a Girlfriend (When You're a Terrifying Monster) by Marie Cardno

Author:Marie Cardno [Marie Cardno]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Marie Cardno
Published: 2023-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

Trillin knew what shape she had to make. The problem was, there wasn’t enough of her to make it with. The last time, the part of the Endless that was now a part of her had been massive, a devourer and destroyer even before it broke through to Earth and new hunting grounds. Its form had shadowed the land below, blocking out the sun.

It would have eaten her without even noticing. She shivered.

But perhaps she could make herself bigger, here. She couldn’t remember ever doing it before, but…

She stretched out a hopeful tentacle towards one of the solid Earth-fragments. It stayed obstinately itself, the same way the hissing-flowing water had stayed itself, even when she covered herself in it.

And she was worried the edges she had spent so much time refining would dissolve if she changed her shape too much. Not being able to absorb new mass didn’t mean she couldn’t lose what she already had.

What would happen then? In her world, the lost parts of her body would become part of the Endless again, but here nothing would soak them up. Would they become their own things? Little fragments of her, here in the not-Endless?

What if she became smaller and smaller, fragments of her flaking off until there was nothing of her left?

The hunger of the Endless for the pieces of it that got loose suddenly made a lot more sense.

Armed with that unsettling knowledge, Trillin drew herself together and out. Her arms flattened, pulling mass from her ribs and flanks to form long, ribbon-like wings; her head and neck stretched out and her body followed, trunk collapsing, legs thinning out until she was a series of ripples.

The wind caught her. With her body this thin, the air felt solid and permeable at the same time. Almost familiar. Almost like home. She flowed into it, letting its currents waft her into the void that covered this world’s impenetrable surface.

Below her, Sian turned around.

“Trillin?”

Trillin opened a new mouth on her underside, then rethought. To make a voice loud enough to reach Sian would risk being overheard by other humans, and she didn’t want to give anyone a reason to look up. She stretched out a tendril, fingerbone-thin, and wrapped it around Sian’s wrist, carefully out of the human woman’s sight.

Sian froze. The only part of her that moved was the steady tick-tick of her pulse against Trillin’s tendril. Then:

“There you are,” she whispered.

A tremor that had nothing to do with the wind pulsed through Trillin’s new body.

Sian wrapped her tendril more firmly around her wrist, and held it close against her, all without looking at it or up into the sky where Trillin was helplessly caught. “I’ll show you the way,” she murmured.

Trillin did everything she could. She changed the colour of her tendril to match the shades of Sian’s wrist and shirt and the crackly growths – trees? – that lined the path. She stayed high up in the wind’s caress, billowing her shape so thin it was almost transparent whenever she saw another human.

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