Kalith #2
Tammy’s answering smile lit a fire inside me that had nothing to do with bioluminescence and everything to do with the strange, wonderful creature who had welcomed three aliens into her life with open arms and a water fight.
“Well,” she said, pushing her soaked hair back from her face, “I’ve always believed in the therapeutic properties of acting like a complete idiot once in a while.”
I gazed at her—this tiny, fierce human female with droplets clinging to her eyelashes like miniature stars—and found myself hoping that our ship would take a very, very long time to repair.
We remained in the water long after our dehydration had been remedied, our alien physiologies now functioning at optimal levels while our minds remained pleasantly clouded by the lingering effects of Earth alcohol.
Tammy floated on her back, her red hair spreading around her head like fiery tentacles of a sea anemone, her face tilted toward the star-speckled Kansas sky.
The moonlight carved silver paths across her mostly exposed form, highlighting the gentle rise and fall of her chest with each breath.
The simple perfection of human respiratory systems—no specialized chambers or filtration mechanisms, just the elegant exchange of gases through those delicate, vulnerable lungs—was an engineering marvel.
“I have an idea,” Tammy announced suddenly, splashing upright with such force that water cascaded over the trough’s edge. Her eyes sparkled with mischief and the determination that I’d come to recognize as her “about to do something impulsive” expression.
“Another recreational water activity?” Cyro inquired, his pastel-hued tentacles lazily creating miniature whirlpools beneath the surface.
“Better.” She turned to me, focusing those remarkable blue eyes on my face with an intensity that sent color sparking erratically across my skin. “Kalith, I need you to lift me over your head.”
I blinked my tertiary eyelids in confusion. “For what purpose?”
“So, I can be Baby at her family’s summer retreat learning how to dance!
” She said this as if it explained everything, her excitement building visibly as she splashed toward me.
Registering our triple confusion, she laughed.
“We have soooo many Earth movies to watch. Dirty Dancing was only my absolute favorite movie in the world growing up. Swayze was a serious heartthrob. Drop dead gorgeous.”
My language processor frantically searched for meaning in this string of seemingly disconnected references.
Dirty... dancing? And being a heartthrob sounded like a medical condition, especially if it caused someone to “drop dead”.
Earth entertainment often involved the strangest combinations of words.
“Come on,” she pressed, “I want to do the classic water lift. Please?”
“I am unfamiliar with this cultural reference,” I admitted, “but I am capable of lifting you if that is your desire.”
“It’s the most iconic moment in the film,” she explained with a pout, already positioning herself in front of me.
“Swayze lifts Baby over his head in a lake… or was it a river?” She scrunched up her face, thinking.
“Anyways, it goes badly at first. Baby falls a bunch of times. They try over and over again to make it work. Finally, in the epic finale, the lift is flawless. Everyone knows the scene.”
“Everyone on Earth, perhaps,” Vantor observed dryly from his corner of the trough.
“Well, you’re on Earth now,” Tammy pointed out. “What was it you said the other day? When in Neptune Land, do as the Neptunians? Come on, Kalith. Lift me up!”
“There is no such thing as Neptune Land,” I shook my head, a small grin sprouting across my human face at her absurdity. “I assume you are referencing my mention of Netpox 7 and the Netpoxians.”
“Neptune. Netpox. Tomato, tomato. Besides, Do you know for sure there’s no Neptune Land?” She quirked an eyebrow. “Have you been to Neptune? There could be a theme park.” She shrugged.
“I can assure you that Neptune does not have anything called a Neptune Land,” Cyro answered before I could. “In fact, it is a most unlikeable planet. Low visibility, incredible stench, odious lifeforms. I have been there once. Never again.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Tammy said with a laugh. “Now, lift!” She reached her arms out to me, eyes sparkling.
I assessed the physics of her request. My tentacles were certainly strong enough—on my home world, I regularly manipulated equipment weighing three times Tammy’s mass.
The water would provide additional buoyancy, reducing the effective weight I needed to support.
My smaller tentacle would be a liability, but my other seven primary appendages could compensate.
“Very well,” I agreed, extending four of my strongest tentacles above the water’s surface. “I will require your cooperation to achieve optimal positioning.”
“Just get a good grip on my waist,” she instructed, placing her hands on my shoulders. The contact of her warm palms against my slightly cooler skin sent pleasant current sparking along every nerve.
I complied, wrapping two tentacles securely around her waist, feeling the fascinating contrast between the firm muscle beneath and the softer layer above. Human bodies were remarkable in their variegation of textures—so different from our uniformly smooth exteriors.
“On the count of three,” she said, her eyes bright with anticipation. “One... two... three!”
I lifted her smoothly, using my tentacles’ natural hydraulic strength to raise her above my head.
For a moment, she hung suspended in the moonlight, water droplets cascading from her body like liquid stars, her arms outstretched in what I presumed was the “iconic pose” she had referenced.
Her face reflected pure joy, a mixture of triumph and exhilaration that made my central processor stutter briefly.
“I’m flying, Jack!” she cried out, another reference that meant nothing to me but clearly delighted her.
Then physics reasserted itself. The water’s movement beneath us, the slight wobble in my stance due to the trough’s uneven bottom, and Tammy’s excited wiggling combined to create an instability in our carefully balanced arrangement.
She began to tip backward, her expression shifting from joy to surprise as her center of gravity shifted beyond my tentacles’ grip.
“Oh shi—” she began.
My reaction was instantaneous. All eight tentacles deployed in protective formation, reaching to intercept her falling body.
Four primary tentacles caught her shoulders and lower back, while three more curled protectively around her head to prevent impact.
My smaller tentacle—often the least coordinated—shot out in a trajectory of its own devising, wrapping around her midsection and sliding upward across her bare stomach.
Time seemed to slow as the sensitive suction cups on my shortest appendage mapped the contours of her abdomen—the slight dip of her navel, the nearly imperceptible ridges of muscle beneath soft skin, the tiny bumps that rose in the tentacle’s wake.
My touch receptors transmitted every minute detail directly to my central nervous system, overwhelming me with sensory input.
A small sound escaped Tammy’s throat. It wasn’t uttered from fear. Nor discomfort. This was from pleasure. Her vocalization sent deep emerald flashing across my visible skin.
I held her suspended just above the water’s surface, our eyes locked in a moment of mutual discovery.
Her pupils dilated visibly, the black centers expanding to eclipse the blue, and her breathing pattern shifted to short, shallow inhalations that made her chest rise and fall rapidly against my supporting tentacles.
“That wasn’t exactly the lift I had in mind,” she whispered, her voice husky in a way I hadn’t heard before. “But I’m not complaining.”
My smallest tentacle, emboldened by her response, continued its exploration, sliding higher until it brushed the underside of her fabric-covered breast. The contact sent a jolt through both of us—I felt her sharp intake of breath as clearly as my own surge of pleasure from the touch-sensitive appendage.
"Your skin sends a current straight through every one of my receptors," I explained, though my words could not capture the overwhelming intimacy of the moment. “It’s... extraordinary.”
“Is that alien-speak for ‘you feel good’?” she asked, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth even as her eyes remained intense, focused.
“You feel... exquisite,” I clarified, allowing my tentacles to adjust their grip, bringing her closer to my face.
Movement in the water reminded me that we weren’t alone.
Cyro and Vantor had closed the distance between us, drawn by a primal instinct that transcended species barriers.
They circled us like satellites caught in our gravitational pull, their own tentacles breaking the water’s surface to reach toward Tammy.
Cyro’s iridescent appendages found her legs, wrapping gently around her calves and thighs, their bioluminescent patches creating underwater patterns that danced across her skin. Vantor’s more powerful tentacles encircled her arms with careful precision, his touch firm yet reverent.
“This is getting interesting,” Tammy breathed, her gaze flickering between the three of us as tentacles from three different alien beings caressed her suspended body from all directions. “Very interesting.”