dicot.moe

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“What does be­ing a mon­ster mean to you?”

Aster twirls a pen­cil be­tween their fin­gers, notepad at the ready. Their star­ry eyes are alive with the thirst for Jour­nal­ism. The ques­tion’s a chal­lenge: Tell me some­thing re­al.

Their sub­ject slacks against the bar-counter in amused dis­en­gage­ment. She’s not ex­act­ly blow­ing the ques­tion off, but she’s giv­ing Aster a look. Like she’s in­dulged a cu­ri­ous child with one too many plain-spo­ken an­swers, and now she’s weigh­ing whether to cut them off be­fore she’s sat here all af­ter­noon.

This is fine. Aster has that ef­fect on peo­ple. Maybe it would be go­ing too far to say that it’s all part of the plan — Aster doesn’t have one and nev­er has. But look: when you’re af­ter the deets, you can’t help but be a lit­tle an­noy­ing. So if Aster can at least pull off cute­ly an­noy­ing, then all the bet­ter for their re­search.

Here’s what they’ve got so far:

Se­lené Seren­i­ty, age 30, she/her. Own­er and head chef of Se­lené’s, a pop­u­lar burg­er-and-fries din­er on the cor­ner of Board­walk and Shady, not too far from the red light dis­trict. A hard work­er; world-wise, sharp as a ra­zor, but soft-spo­ken in con­ver­sa­tion.

Height: 321 cen­time­ters. (Just over ten and a half feet.)

Stand­ing at over twice Aster’s height, Se­lené’s firm­ly in “gi­ant­ess” ter­ri­to­ry, and that’s to say noth­ing of her hor­i­zon­tal di­men­sions. From across the bar she blan­kets Aster’s field of view from pole to pole: a snow-capped moun­tain of an oth­er­wise hu­man wom­an.

To Aster, it’s that “oth­er­wise hu­man” part that stands out the most. There’s an au­ra of charm­ing mun­dan­i­ty about her — an ef­fect that her huge­ness on­ly serves to en­hance. She peers cheer­ful­ly through wiry full-moon spec­ta­cles, her hair tied in a neat bun; her apron is light­ly dap­pled with cof­fee stains. From a dis­tance, you’d prob­a­bly peg her for a Norhaven­er, or maybe a Ly­di­an if you knew your ac­cents.

Yet here she is, in the City of Mon­sters it­self — run­ning a din­er, no less. How could Aster re­sist?

The in­ter­view ques­tion hangs in the air unan­swered for quite a while. Se­lené picks her dish tow­el back up; the cof­fee cup she’s dry­ing looks like a toy in her hands.

Fi­nal­ly, she says: “You’re ask­ing me why I don’t have ten­ta­cles.”

Aster al­most chokes on a mouth­ful of cof­fee. “Wh—ghuh?”