Page 72 of An Invocation of Monsters

Kiraxis twitched an ear, and loped towards the door in the forest.

“So… what kind of fish were you going to feed me?” she asked, sliding her finger under one of the tentacles on her arm until it had wrapped around her pinky. “I don’t think I’ve seen a fish in this lake yet.”

Ah, let me show you. They are quite a sight.

I reached out to the water, the element that responded to my every command. I let my consciousness slide down the lake bed, into cool, dark depths where the light was only a myth.

I felt the living creatures of the lake like tiny blots of luminescence in my mind. There was an impressive one; Elle would find it amazing.

With a twitch of my fingers, I created a current in the water, calling the fish towards us.

I soothed its mind as it traveled upwards into waters unseen; it did not like where it was going. There was panic in its small brain.

When the milky eyes that had never seen the stars breached the surface near us, Elle went rigid, gazing at it in horror. She scrambled off me, splashing towards the shore. “What the hell is that?”

It is... I examined it. Globulous, blind eyes; serrated fins; a transparent body with its organs pulsing in vital colors. Its mouth gaped open and shut. It is most certainly a fish.

Elle rubbed her face. “If that’s what the fish here look like, I can say with one hundred percent confidence that I’ll never be eating one.”

I released the current and the fish’s tiny mind, and it darted off, wriggling back towards the depths.

She seemed disturbed by it.

Perhaps on Earth, fish did not have humanoid faces.

There were many things I had not considered when choosing a human for a mate. It occurred to me, in tiny increments, that humans did not have the same perception we monsters did.

What I would consider ‘usual’ was amazing to her.

What I considered amazing, she may consider disturbing.

I will choose a prettier fish next time, I told her, and she smiled, even though she was still rubbing her temples like she had a headache.

Kiraxis rescued me from the mistake of the terrible fish by returning with a massive plate of human food.

“I frightened him,” he said proudly. “He has made a delightful feast in supplication.”

Elle groaned, but her stomach rumbled when she took in the oversized plate and its contents.

Kiraxis laid the plate on the shore, sitting across from her. “You must eat as much as you can,” he ordered her.

“No problem there,” Elle said, picking up meat still on the bone and biting into it. “Feel free to share, though, I’m not finishing this all by myself.”

I drifted closer, until my stomach scraped the pebbles. Human food did not look enticing. Her meat was dripping with sauce. There were what appeared to be vegetables that had been applied to fire.

I shuddered.

“What do you eat, Drazan?” Elle asked, holding a bone she’d completely cleaned.

Tiny sea animals, too small for your eye to see. They are cool and salty and nourishing.

“Not… blood?” she asked, now blushing.

My tentacles writhed with distress at the mere thought. To eat landwalker flesh is abhorrent to a Klee.

“His kind do not consume blood or meat,” Kiraxis informed her.

“Are fish not considered meat here?”

---