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“Please do not fear me,” it said.
She felt it’s thousands of eyes on her, weighty and alive, crawling over her skin. She tried to look at it, but it folded and flowed in ways that did not fit the dimensions she existed in. She shut her eyes.
“I don’t,” she lied.
She felt it surrounding her, wings and feathers and scales and slime, slithering and stretching around and behind her, not out of malice or threat, no, simply too big to be confined to one direction, no matter it’s efforts.
“You’re lying,” it said, and she shuddered.
The sound of the ocean depths, creatures and darkness, the sound of stars screaming their light through empty void, it’s voice echoed around her.
“How could I not be afraid?” She said, her voice shaking, so tiny and confined in comparison. “Wouldn’t you be?”
“I am trying not to be frightful,” it said.
The worst part? She could tell it was. It loomed over her, not out of threat, but because it could do nothing but loom. She could feel it condensing itself down, trying to make itself smaller and smaller, trying to make itself still, trying to fit it’s many dimensions into the few she knows to keep from scaring her, and failing for all it’s efforts. Though it surrounded her, nearly embracing her, it did not touch her, it did not approach her, it took great care to give her space. It was trying so hard to make her comfortable.
It was trying so hard.
“Why?” She asked.
It paused. She swallowed hard, feeling her throat click, hearing unearthly rustling as it shifted in place. Instincts screamed for her to open her eyes and look, to watch the danger, but she refused to gaze upon it again.
“I wish for company,” it said, finally, terrible in it’s honesty. Echoes of dawn and of waves crashing over her, shaking her bones beneath her skin.
“What use does a creature such as you have for company?” She snapped, sharper than she meant to, fear turning her words harsh.
It flinched and she wanted to vomit from the ripples, reality bending around it in waves.
Hesitantly, it replied, “...Do you not feel loneliness?”
Isolation, lightyears upon lightyears of empty abyss between lonely stars, all crashed down upon her. The desolate desperation of abandoned cities, an endless expanse of time alone she can barely begin to comprehend ringing through her heart and lungs. She couldn’t breathe through the weight, she collapsed to her knees gasping for air through infinite expanses of void, planets and galaxies and universes, all devoid of life. She started to shake.
"Why-" She choked on the words, “Why me? Why not another like you?”
“Is there another like me,” it said. It did not ask. She knew the answer, it hung in the air like a gentle breeze, sound as flat as the drop of a pencil.
No. There wasn’t. There couldn’t be.
It was matter-of-fact. There were no others like it, there would be no others like it. It hadn’t even spoken, hadn’t given the words presence, power, but the idea sank into her bones anyway. The idea of being the only one of your kind, eternally damned to be alone and lost in a way unequal to any other. The more she thought about it, the less she could even fathom it, and the more it hurt. She was left reeling, unable to respond, a rosewater noose sweetly strangling her and stabs from her own heart stealing her voice.
“I simply wish to talk,” it said into the quiet, as softly as it could manage, “just for a little while.”
It was trying to sound kind, it was trying to sound welcoming, sweet petals brushing over her skin, but she could hear the plea. Desperate loneliness and sorrowed loss rippled underneath the honey and petals like thorns and bees. It was begging.
It fell silent, waiting for her response, it’s anxiety buzzing around her for all it tried not to let it. Surrounded on all sides, trembling on her knees before a being incomprehensible to her on a fundamental level, she tried to collect herself. She took a deep breath, then she lifted her head.
And she looked into it’s face.
It’s face was that of a thousand’s faces, each unique and distinct and ever-changing. Haloed by shadows made solid, crowned by bands of cosmos orbiting, glowing and lit with the light of uncountable festival candles, she looked up at it and, finally, began to cry. Thousands of wings of all colors blinded her, and she could not find the courage to look behind her, to look at the entirety of it. It was beautiful; horribly, terribly beautiful.
And it was terrified.
It’s many eyes were torn between being glued open and tightly shut, it’s wings rustled and shook in naked fear. Feathers fluffed, fur on end, scales pressed flat, it looked at her, so tiny, so dense, so contained, so utterly incomprehensible to a being like it. It was terrified, and it hurt to look upon, but she refused to close her eyes again.
It was just as scared as she was and, somehow, impossibly, that gave her courage.
Tears rolling down her cheeks, she looked up into it’s face and forced a smile.
She asked, “What would you like to talk about?”