Chapter Two

"I hope you understand that he is a rather private person, and that his affairs must be carried out without disruption."

As It began to approach the strange, shiny structures, It started to notice just how much attention the Upright Things were paying It. A small crowd of them had gathered in the distance, exiting their metal creatures, holding odd little rectangles in front of their faces. As It squelched Its way past the black stone, It noticed a forest and took that opportunity to squeeze Its way out of sight. The crowd didn’t follow as It squirmed through the tight-knit trees, tearing some down with It as It went.

No, this wouldn’t do. This wouldn’t do at all. Those Upright Things were everywhere down here! And while It might have considered just up and leaving the planet and finding a better rest spot, It figured most planets would present the same problem.

So, It worked those eighteen brains as hard as It could until It discovered a loophole!

Yes. Yes. If those Upright Things were everywhere, then It could play along! It summoned up Its Will, concentrating on the form of one of those Upright Things—It had the benefit of absolute memory, of course, same as any respectable cosmic entity—and forced Itself into a facsimile of that form.

As It shrank Its mass, It wondered if this was all worth the trouble. But then again, It was a tad bored from the trip over, and It hadn’t gotten much of a break since the incident with the Angry Things, so why not splurge on a little exploration?

With Its transformation complete, It scanned Its new body, disappointed at how few tentacles the body had. Only four, with five mini-tentacles on the ends of each. It figured the other Upright Things might find it odd if It had more of the big tentacles, but It figured none of them would look too hard at the miniature ones, so It added a few thousand on the ends. Just enough for utility’s sake, obviously.

It marched out of the forest, copying the Upright Things’ gait, and then came across the crowd. It waved Its upper-left tentacle at them, then mimicked the screeching sound one of the ones on the beach made, just to fit in.

The crowd didn’t seem pleased. In fact, they started running even harder than the ones on the beach had. Frowning, It realized that they must have had strict requirements for how many mini-tentacles they were allowed to have. Prudes. Also, It didn’t seem to be wearing any of the strange cloths that the other Upright Things had on their bodies, so perhaps that was an element of it, too.

Removing all but twenty of Its mini-tentacles, It started marching up the black stone, toward the structures ahead.

Hello, friends! If you're enjoying Little Comforts, consider supporting me on Patreon! If you'd like more stories, I post new chapters to my mainline series every Monday and Friday, and I upload a new short story every other Wednesday! Below are some of my other stories.

The Old Brand-New: Lena lives in a lonely mansion, but one snowy night, a vengeful clone of herself comes to make her pay for the life she never got to live.
Little Comforts: The world ends, and two men, Dan and Andrew, must rush to the shore for safety, pursued by a vengeful soldier and the remains of her family.