🙡 Chapter 4.3 🙣

Running away

A famous general once said “No plan survives the first contact with reality*” Actual quote said “contact with the enemy”, but is there any enemy worse than the world itself? My goals were very simple:

1. Save the girl from certain death, like a knight in shining black armor
2. Have her recognise my cute, non threatening form
3. Be praised and pampered for the rest of my life as a reward for the gallant rescue…   Or at least help me go outside the forest.

How could I have known that bumping into someone with the momentum of a tentacled canon ball might make them fall on the ground. Face first. Now, okay, I might have laughed a bit at the small medusa, but how can anyone blame me? It’s not that bad, it happened to me multiple times today, is it really so wrong of me to just enjoy someone's else's suffering?

So, instead of being looked at with awe and amazement, an army of snakes is angrily slithering at me, and preparing to strike. At least those that are not worried looking at the snot and tears covered face of their host. 

*Hic Hic Hic*

“???? ?? ???? ??? ?? !” she shouted, more to herself than to me while trying to clear her tears with her sleeves… except they are dirtier than her face, so the only thing she is achieving is making her eyes hurt even more.

Jeez kid, there is no need to cry, is there? Like a responsible adult, I came closer to her face and tried to clean up a few tears under her eyes with my hand…

Except I don’t have a hand. I have a tentacle. And this is not a normal child, it’s a medusa. And this is not my evolved tentacle. It’s an angry white snake biting into my flesh! 

I immediately tried to fly backwards but the stupid thing was keeping its mouth shut! It took all I had to not try retaliating immediately. It was nearly as hard as hearing your boss bad mouthing you for something they did wrong. Instead I tried not moving, while looking without fear back at the snake. I have to assert my dominance. I’m the alpha here! 

...Please please don’t notice I’m about to start crying myself!

Ouch! It bit me harder instead! Not only that, a few others snakes surrounded me, while preparing to strike

“??? ??!” The girl said something and they moved back. Even the one biting me slowly opened it’s jaw and retreated, though it did hiss at me while doing that, showing its teeth. The crying girl looked at me again, with a surprised face. 

“??? ???” .. it seems it wanted to ask me something. You really expect an answer from a floating octopus?

“Awoo wooo” I answered, trying to sound as cute as possible. First impressions matter! Even if it’s technically no longer the first impression, as I’ve heard you only have a fraction of a second for that.

“??? ???...” she murmured, seemingly disappointed. Now that I was closer, I could see her face more clearly. There were some subtle differences between her and a human child. Her skin seemed more scaly, her eyes were slightly bigger and nose was flatter… not to mention I’m pretty sure human irises don’t come in red. A small fang, like that of a venomous snake, was sticking out of her lip. And it was impossible not to notice the swelling under her eyes, most likely from a lot of crying, the mud, and scratches. That’s not how children should look!

I noticed a bit of dirt next to her mouth, so once again, this time slowly observing the reaction from both the snakes and herself moved one of my tentacles closer to her face. She looked, slightly worried but also curious at my movement, until the moment I touched her, judging from her reaction a weird and slightly tickling sensation, and I cleaned up the few sticking out pieces of dirt. 

She responded by giggling a bit, and poking my tentacle. I didn’t mind it, until she poked the same spot that was being bitten a moment ago. My appendage twirled in pain in reaction.

“???!” She raised her voice, obviously apologising, and then petting the hurt tentacle.

We were soon interrupted by a thunderous creak of breaking wood, and rumble of moving earth, another blind shot by the Treant reminding us of the death-and-life situation we find ourselves in. 

Yeah! It’s no time for playing with kids! We’ve gotta get out of here! Not only that, I’m now floating just around the kids' waist, the altitude exhausted during my gallant rescue... and there are no safe climbing spots. Danger levels are up, but that’s completely fine. Really.  

Looking back at mini-dusa, she was once again about to cry. Columns of wood floating around the perimeter seemingly blocking any way out, what can one do but cower in fear?

Or at least that would be the case for someone without my power, power to see markers! Yeah, once again, If I know someone is there, and they have a marker above them I can “see” their outline as part of the marker! Such an amazing cheat!

Thanks to that I can see the pattern of roots and their movements underground, set up in a spider-web pattern, just waiting for unsuspecting prey to fall on them. My guess is that these treants can’t move most of their body, and only few of their parts can actually move. They also seem to avoid moving close to certain other trees… some form of rivalry?

Either way, there are holes in the net of roots and branches! I just have to convince her to follow me… I mean I could.. But to do that to a child! Really?! But… Damn it! I’m going to be the calamity that conquers this world, it’s a perfect first step towards being a being of pure evil!

So I floated to her, while looking like an innocent neighbourly tentacle monster… I “borrowed” her cape pin. And ran towards the first part of the path.

“???! ???? ???!” she screamed at me—really you should not scream in the forest, who taught you manners young lady!—And gave chase.

Left right, left, right, here we have to go around this tree… I could hear wind whistling in my ears. No! Don’t step on this, damn.. I dived under her boot to block the situation. And now RUN AGAIN! I guess I should wait until the last moment before dodging, the way is very narrow. 

And very soon, we were outside of the range of the creature. It was still raging, unaware that its meal was out, but I was not planning on informing it of that. Still, I didn’t take the small medusa directly to the pebble path, as I decided to avoid all trees that had multiple markers above them, suggesting they might be more dangerous than others..

I didn't even have enough altitude in reserve to reach the path, plopping just next to it instead. Hopefully we were relatively safe here! And just behind me was the girl. She caught me and raised me in her arms, quickly taking back the “borrowed” brooch. 

Her eyes were suggesting to me that I might have made a mistake. Yes, I might have saved her from the tree, but who will save me?!

Reisinling

There is a vintage meme that would have fit here so well… but I just had to stop. It’s too old! And so overused!

The original quote was actually “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” but I preferred reality here. You can find more about that quote here:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/05/04/no-plan/