This is Why I Don't Like Seafood [Kait]

He wanted to communicate with one of them.

He had been studying human language for years now, and had started to comprehend it. Most of these creatures’ communications were carried through gaseous pressure waves, caused by passing air out through the throat and mouth. Nobody else believed him when he developed that theory; after all, how could these creatures communicate in a meaningful way without touching each other or using telepathic imprints? He remembered feeling their disbelief through his tendrils.

But now they all knew that he was right. Now he had collected enough data, had learned a few words, even came up with a way to project those words into the three-dimensional plane where these creatures existed. He was ready.

Now he just needed to find someone to make first contact with. Preferably someone isolated – he didn’t want to make a spectacle if he did a bad job of it. As if that would happen. He knew, from observing ‘hugs’ and ‘kisses’ and ‘handshakes’ that these creatures could engage in some sort of limited contact telepathy, so if words failed he would have something to fall back on.

He found one; it was sitting alone, in the middle of a forest. Judging by what it had observed of humanoids earlier, this one was… male? Yes. Definitely a male humanoid. A perfect subject for first contact.

He extended his tendrils into the creature’s world, so he could give the boy a hug. Thick, slimy, light-blue tentacles appeared behind the tree and wrapped around his arms and torso, completely immobilizing him and getting slime all over his clothes, skin and fur.

“GREETINGS, FRIEND,” Boomed a deep, wet voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

More slimy tentacles appeared from the ground to wrap around each of the boy’s legs. He knew this wasn’t standard for a humanoid hug; but he thought it would be even better. Humanoids only had two limbs to hug with. He, on the other hand, had so many limbs, meaning that he should be way better at hugging than any human. He had a theory that the quality of a hug was a direct function of the number of limbs involved, and he wanted to make a good first impression.

…This wasn’t going very well.

The telepathic connection he was expecting never completely formed. What little he could feel was an emotion, and that emotion was a combination of panic and confusion, if he was reading it right. To be honest, he had expected panic. He was prepared for panic – his form was probably incomprehensible to these three-dimensional creatures – but he believed that their telepathic connection would have formed by now, that he would be able to explain his intentions.

The creature was flailing around in the grasp of his appendages, making some noises which he understood to be some kind of interrogative. Probably. So the creature was definitely confused, but he couldn’t tell exactly why it was so confused or what it was asking. It had never tried communicating with language before. This was harder than he thought.

“HUG,” said the voice. “I HUG AM YOU GIVE. GREETING.”

Yes, this was much harder than he thought it would be. If he had more time, he might have been able to check whether that sentence followed the rules of ‘grammar.’ He hoped the creature would understand. He continued to restrain the creature; he didn't want it running away before he had secured a better first impression.

The monkey boy was speaking too fast, saying words he didn't understand. Words like "hentai." What did that word even mean? He needed to establish a better tactile telepathic connection so that they could communicate properly.

Hugging wasn't enough. He tried to think about all of the human interaction that he'd ever witnessed. What was that thing where they stuck their tongues in each other's mouths? Maybe that was the thing that they did to communicate properly? Tongues were kind of similar to the appendages he used to communicate with his species.

He panicked and shoved a tentacle in the monkey boy's mouth.

It didn't work.