dedicated to Skipper_019

Bang! The noise sounded outside, coming from the garden. Bang! I sit up, looking about me, as I slink out of my bed. My tentacles all dragged on the floor. I lifted one tentacle to my one eye and opened the door to the outside. I saw what I've heard humans call a "dog" outside. The Dog friend was hitting my fence, although I wasn't sure why. Confused, I walked up to he dog, deciding that I should introduce myself before I start interrogating the Dog friend.

"Hello Dog friend. What might your name be?" I asked in my professional English. I was at the top of my class for learning English. The Dog friend, however did not speak to me. He did something rather strange, though. He barked at me. I stared bewildered. I could not speak this language. I ran back inside my house and used, what humans call, a "house phone" even though we all know it's a strange way of saying Knowf Swe'oh. I picked up my "house phone" and tried my hardest to dial the number that my friend had. It was quite difficult because the suction cups on the bottom of tentacles tended to slide around. That's why back on our home planet Diwks Thru our Knowfe Swe'ohe are just one slightly curved screen that fits our suction cups perfectly and all we have to do is press down wherever the Diwksneme name appears. It's a lot more simple than you think because we enter the names of all the Diwksneme we know. Because we are far more social than humans. Actually, we've learned that some humans, get this, PREFER solitude? Like, how man?

Anyway, back to Dog friend, I struggled, but somehow managed to dial his number. I would write it down in my native tongue, but I am not sure if you all have translators or if ish-Diwks-an is available on your "internet" everywhere on your "websites". I will also use the closest translation of his name into Human English. I don't need to because my parents wanted me to fit in more when we finally moved to Earth.

"Good morning, Fred. I have a problem. There is an Earth Creature that I believe is called a Dog and it will not speak English at me." I told him.

"Good morning Stephanie-Elizabeth. You mean a Xsr. Dog? Gosh, Stephanie-Elizabeth, do not you know that speak to a Earth Creature without a proper formality is considered to be rudeful of a being?" Fred told me. His English was not nearly as good as mine, but I could still understand him.

"Fred, it isn't that big of a deal. The Dog friend is not speaking English. I need to know how to interact with a non-English speaking Earth Creature." I said, growing more impatient. I heard him sigh.

"If not for Xsr. Dog, can not you at least be politeful to me?" He said. I made the sound of exasperation which I am unsure that you humans call. It's like breathing out sharply, but it sounds more like noise. Like "ugk" almost.

"Do not you dare get dispoliteful at me. I asked a request for politeful attitude at me." He said sounding angry.

"Ugk, alright. Xsr. Dog speaks in a tongue I am not familar with. It sounds like the noise an Eegod makes. You know? The frohb sound? Like 'frohb frohb'?" I said.

"Ah yes, I am unsureful at how to address the situation. Per happenings, you could asks the request for explaining at you?" He said.

"I shall do the that thing. Thank you, Fred." I said, hanging up the phone. I went out to the back and I saw the Dog friend had made a dent in my fence.

"Xsr. Dog! Please come with me at once so I may find a proper way to communicate with you." I said as politley as possible. I was unsure of this dog's gender, so I used as much gender-neutral language as possible. Humans on this Earth planet can become extremely offended if you "miss-gender" them. I was unaware that calling a male or female human any form of female name was offensive. I was under the impression that they felt no hatred towards females. I walked and expected the Dog friend to follow me.

"What is wrong Xsr. Dog?" I asked. The Dog friend looked at me and made the noise again. I tried to grab one of its Hairy Feet because maybe this Dog friend was a child. As I did, however, the Dog friend leaped into my arms! I was so taken aback. Perhaps these creatures are royalty used to being carried around.

"Oh, I am terribly sorry Xsr. Dog-d'rol, I was unaware of your status within the Earth Creature hierarchy." I said. I carried the Dog Friend out to the street and walked onto my neighbor's porch.

"Good Morning, Neighbor Human!" I said as I knocked on the door. I heard someone walk to the door. A Human Male with a black mustache and short messy hair answered the door, looking very sleepy.

"Oh hello. Mr...?" He said.

"Thims." I said. We had such a generic last name.

"Mr. Thims," he said thoughtfully, like he was tasting it for the first time, "Mr. Thims, it's not even eight in the morning. Why did you wake me up?" I presented the dog.

"Xsr. Dog-d'rol came into my back yard and I do not know how to communicate with it, also  I am unsure, but is this dog royalty?" I said.

"No, dogs are not royalty. Dogs are pets. If you want, I'll drive you to the vet and you can get him checked out. Maybe we can find a shelter or a family to adopt him. Unless you want to." He said. I realized I hadn't asked his name.

"What is you name? And what is adoption?" I asked.

"My name is Edgar Jefferson. Adoption is when you decide to buy the rights of owning a pet or to become a parent of a child without parents." Edgar said. He had been standing in his pajamas the whole time and had finally started to wake up.

"Mr. Thims, why don't you come inside?" He said. I walked into his house holding the dog. Edgar went upstairs and I heard a lot of shuffling before he came back downstairs. He came down fully dressed, in a nice black suit that seemed very formal and old for human customs. He looked like he belonged in a piece of artwork.

"Mr. Thims, are you going to adopt this puppy or not?" He said. He went into his kitchen and brewed some coffee in a Keurig. Yes, I know what a Keurig is, we had them on our planets far longer than humans. He sat down beside me on the love-seat. Humans looked so strange to me. They had ears and hands and only two legs because the other two legs they had they called arms. I felt that Edgar would be a very handsome Diwksnem. He had very pretty eyes, they looked rather tired and sad, but nonetheless pretty. He had what humans called "stubble" that made him look old and worn out, but other than that his face was free of wrinkles and blemishes. He would probably have more of a dark purple-ish hue if he were a Diwksnem. I remembered that he had asked me a question and I was mostly just sat there with a sleeping Dog friend on my lap staring at him. I performed the ian-Diwks-ese equivalent of "blushing".

"I may adopt this puppy. The Dog friend is quite cute." I said, moving one of my eight tentacles to pet the Dog friend. The Dog friend seemed okay, but unused to being pet by a tentacle.

"Well, we should go, come on." He said, passing me a cup of coffee made to go and told me to get into the backseat so I could have more room. After he put a key in the car, which I was very used to seeing and doing, he did something I was unfamiliar with. He pulled out a flat, disk-shaped shiny on the bottom side object that had strange white and red words on the top and put it into a small slot in the car. Suddenly, music started playing. It sounded like a human man with what I recognized as Human Guitars playing. I can't quite remember how it went, but I remember the words of, what you humans call, the "Chorus". It went something like "What's a worst think I can say, thins are better if I stake" or something. Very very strange. It also had a lot of emotion, but made me really sad for some reason.

"Excuse me Mr. Jefferson-"

"You can just call me Ed, no need to be so formal." He cut me off. He didn't intend to be rude, but I could see through the little middle mirror on the from ceiling of the car that he was on the verge of tears.

"Ed, what is this music?" I asked.

"It's from a band called 'My Chemical Romance' and they are greatest band to walk the Earth... or at least they were..." He said. I felt so bad.

"'Your Chemistry Romans'? Your Romans who study science sound very wonderful, I can see why you are so proud of them. They make wonderful music." I said.

"No, they're not mine and they don't study chemicals and they aren't Romans. They were a wonderful band and then they broke up and I'm very sad because I love their music." He said, sounding very sad. I sat in silence as the tracks went on. The songs sounded either really angry or really sad. It wasn't bad, but it was very emotional.

When we finally got to the vet, he turned off the car and walked inside. He said that he had called and made an appointment for later in the afternoon, but there was a music store and a fro-yo place right by the vet.

"What is this 'fro-yo' you speak of? And do music stores sell music? How do you sell sounds?" I asked.

"Fro-yo is frozen yogurt and it is delicious and more expensive than regular yogurt, but I just want to be able to buy music and also get delicious desserts instead of trying to find a Dairy Queen or a Cold Stone or something for 5 hours when I can get everything I need done here. The car ride was a good 40 minutes or so. Basically, we listened to all the songs and then another one started. It sounded like different people, but still sounded kind of sad. He said it was by a band with 21 people in it and apparently they all flew planes for a living! I felt that at least that one was more straightforward than 'My Chemical Romance'. We got out of the car and since it was almost nine o'clock, a lot of businesses were opening up, already opened, or about to open. He walked into the music store first, and a bell rang when he walked in. I walked in, still holding the puppy. A man in a uniform with a name-tag and a very tired look on his face stopped me.

"You can't bring animals in here." He said.

"Oh, I am terribly sorry." I walked outside and sat on one of the benches outside the Frozen Yogurt store. I held the dog in my lap and I saw that he had been very patient, but now that he was back outside, he was desperate to run free. I had known the dangers of the road after almost getting run over once, but I refused to let the puppy deal with that sort of trauma. I tried to reason with Dog friend, but he just wouldn't listen! I decided that I'd have to come up with a way to let him run around some without running into the street. Suddenly, I was struck by an ingenious plan. I could just do what we did on our planet when he had a similar creature! I would use my tentacle as a make-shift collar and leash. I stretched out one of my legs and gently wrapped it around the dog's neck. He ran around, and if he got too close to the street, I would tug him back, but as gently as possible. Ed came back outside carrying a bag of what I assumed were more of those disks.

"Ed! Hello!" I said. I picked up the puppy and began holding him again.

"Hello Mr. Thims. By the way, what's your first name?" He asked. I was shocked, but I made sure not to let it show on my face. Were we really close enough for both of us to drop all the formality? I guessed so if he seemed so comfortable with it.

"Stephanie-Elizabeth..." I said, trying to keep calm. This was my first human friend who I had gotten this close to!

"Wait, I've been calling you Mr... are you a man or a woman?" He asked.

"I am a man. My parents thought that if I had a human name that I might fit in better." I said.

"Stephanie and Elizabeth are usually girl names..." He said, "also, can I call you something shorter? Like, why not Stephan?" He said.

"If you want to, go ahead, Best-Friend Ed!" I said excitedly. I flailed my remaining tentacles in excitement as we walked away. He smiled and his eyes lit up. We walked inside to get the Frozen Yogurt when I was stopped again.

"No animals allowed." The woman told me. I acknowledged that I'd heard her and went outside and did what I was doing before. Someone walked out of the vet's office and came up to me horrified.

"You... How DARE you strangle a little puppy, especially out in the open!" The woman said.

"What...?" I asked, confused.

"You Squidman!" She yelled out. I felt rather offended by what she had said. I looked very similar to  a cephalopod, but people ate squids or they wrote horror movies about squids. As far as I had known, I had nothing in common with them except that I had tentacles, but even then my tentacles are closer to an octopus.

"Please don't call me a Squidman, ma'am." I said politely.

"Well, Squidman," She said maliciously, "Maybe you shouldn't go around torturing animals, especially not in broad daylight, you Squidman." I looked down, my one eye generating one large tear. By this time, all my tentacles had flattened into me. The dog was running around wildly. I felt the tears drip down my face, down my body and drip onto the floor, one after the other, after the other. The puppy ran into the street. My eye glanced over, then I stood up on all eight tentacles. I saw a car coming. I stepped around the woman and went as fast as I could on all eight tentacles. I reached out for the dog and pushed it out of the way. I, however, did not evade the car. I felt my soft body and all my organs get crushed under all the weight of the car. I saw Ed get out with two bowls of frozen yogurt and I saw him drop them. He pulled out a strange metal rectangle and I saw him run up to and stop the car that had hit me.

I woke up in a small hospital made by Diwksneme. I was in a full body cast with an artificial heart pumping blood through my veins. I woke up and I looked at Ed with my one big eye.

"Oh, hello..." I said quietly, which was unusual for me.

"I'm so sorry Stephan. I should've been with you the whole time." He said, tears in his eyes. If I hadn't heard the music he was listening to, I would've been confused by all of the emotion. He held one of my tentacles.

"Actually, can you please not hold my tentacle? My whole body hurts..." I said quietly. He let go of my tentacle and he kept going on about how sorry he was.

"None of that matters, is the dog okay?" I asked. He nodded his head and he said that he took it to the vet and had it registered under my name.

"Thank you... What did you name it?" I asked.

"Uh... I couldn't think of anything so I panicked and named it Dog Friend." He said sheepishly. I laughed softly. He came and visited me every day for all the months I was in the hospital. He said that the dog was living with him until I was better. I was always so happy when he visited. Of course Fred and my family visited, but he was the only human that would visit me. He always told me about how he wasn't sure what music I liked so he bought me an "iPod" and bought me a lot of songs. I liked this one band who's name I couldn't pronounce, but they made really cool music. We became closer and closer and after about 3 months, I could leave the hospital. I had a hard time walking and getting around on my own, but I was helped by Ed. Ed became my absolute best friend. I was on a human "computer" because eventually, I needed one. I discovered a wonderful website called "YouTube" and I had become familiar with and enjoyed watching YouTubers such as Dan and Phil, The Game Grumps, and a variety of art channels. I had stumbled across Ed's channel, however. It seemed as though he made random little videos of him singing along to that My Chemical Romance, but he looked younger in those ones. The more recent videos were of him making "vlogs" as I'd heard they were called. I watched them and he seemed to have started the day after I had gotten hit by the car. He was still a really small channel, but I went over to his house and told him how I liked his videos. He smiled at me sheepishly and offered if I'd wanted to be in one. Of course I said yes and I brought over Dog Friend and we made a video. It became very popular because, for some reason, some humans thought that Diwksnem and Humans should never interact or be with each other, whether as friends or romantically. We started making more videos together and we eventually started being able to make money off of it. We both got so happy and decided to move in together. We both felt like the strange, human/alien version of Dan and Phil, who I still watched almost religiously just like with the Game Grumps and all the art channels. I eventually discovered that we had a small fanbase and I would go through all the fan art and leave supporting comments. I felt so thrilled that so many people liked me. It felt like home, where everyone kind of just got along and were always together and loving each other. I did see a lot of hate, but I just responded with kindness and wished them a nice day. Dog Friend grew up with us and we'd been all living together for almost two years then. Ed and I were closer than ever, like we were beyond best friends. Eventually the fan base started to "ship" us as I'd seen been done with other people. It felt strange to be shipped with someone so close to me, but I didn't really care. Eventually, Dog Friend died. We were devastated, and so was everyone else who watched our videos. It took us so long to get over his death. We eventually did accept it as part of our lives and the sudden tragedy brought us closer. Eventually, we did fall in love. We kept it secret from the internet for a while. Not our families, though. After about a month of dating, we told the internet. Our fanbase just about exploded. People constantly screaming about how their OTP became canon and whatnot. We felt so happy to be accepted. After two years of dating, Ed proposed to me in the summer. I was so happy. We got married in the winter and we were so happy. We adopted another dog, and we named this one "Jonathon". It's been almost 8 years total since the first day we officially met. We've been so happy ever since.