[GTS] To devour is to survive, that is the way of life for all those who transcend the confines of the Insignificant things called planets, who break the laws of mortality and go beyond the sanity of reason, that is the way of a Devourer of worlds...
The rest of the afternoon passed in a strange haze of firsts.
Conrad had no idea how he'd ended up being a personal tour guide for a planet-devouring alien woman, but here he was—standing beside her as she peered curiously into the front window of a frozen yogurt shop, her face pressed way too close to the glass.
She gasped. "Is that... swirled milk? Frozen?"
"That's Froyo," Conrad said with a grin. "And yes. It is both swirled and frozen."
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The Devourer looked at him like he'd just handed her the key to the universe.
They'd already visited the shopping mall—twice. The first time she mistook the escalator for a moving stairway of judgment and refused to step on it until a toddler showed her how. She'd been enamored by the food court, terrified of mannequins ("Why do they have no eyes, Conrad? Are they dead?"), and deeply confused by a Build-A-Bear kiosk.
But it wasn't just the mall. The Devourer wanted to see everything.
The gas station slushie machine? A "colorful elemental altar of icy juices." A dollar store? "A shrine of many small treasures for the weak-of-pocket." She cried—genuinely cried—when she tried her first churro.
And Conrad... he couldn't stop smiling.
He hadn't noticed how much he'd needed this. To laugh. To forget, just for a little while, the fact that she was a cosmic giantess who could digest his entire species if she hiccuped too hard. She was just... curious. And that curiosity was kind of infectious.
They ended up walking through the town together, arm's length apart, past familiar places Conrad had stopped paying attention to years ago. The fountain at Liberty Square, the bakery with the crooked sign, the movie theater that still hadn't replaced the burned-out "R" in "The G-reat E-ape Returns."
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But every time she looked at something with those wide, glowing eyes—like it mattered—he saw it differently too.
At one point, while she was trying to figure out how the handle on a soda vending machine worked (she'd crouched in front of it like she was deciphering an ancient relic), Conrad found himself just... staring.
