"Come on Skylar!" Benti yelled. The clock was ticking and when Benti stretched their eye to peek around the corner, they could see the gathering of Qwortarians waiting outside their juice bar.
Benti's eue snapped back into place, the jostling of the optic nerve showing sparkles floating in the air. At least, Benti hoped it was an illusion and not glitter coming from somewhere. Skylar had mentioned glitter, and how it was impossible to cleanup. A bad idea for a food establishment.
"If I had known you were going to be such a putz on opening night, I would have sent you back here to get ready earlier!"
The door to the staff door creaked open. "Rude." Skykar mumbled, shadows hiding their form. "You try wrangling all these extra tentacles into the smock with not enough holes."
"That's what happens when you draw the discolored leaf." Benti tapped their two walking tentacles. "But you did manage it right? Or we could drop the matching smock idea, since that's more of an Earth..." Skylar opened the door wider reaching that yes, they got their six arms through the two holes, managed to tie it into place, and arrange their purple hair into a braid wrapped around their head like the picture Skylar had showed Benti. "Thing." Benti finished as they looked Skylar up and down. "Wow. Remind me not to go against you in a changing competition.”
“I’d be pretty bad at those competitions now. My speed is long gone from staying in one form for so long.”
“Maybe, but given you had a long time, you look amazing.”
“Are you flattering me to make up for being rude?” Skylar crossed all three pairs of arms across their chest.
“I’ll tell you after we get this grand opening over with.” Benti looped three of their arms through Skylar’s and started dragging them to the front. “If we don’t start now, we’ll be late.”
“Okay okay.” Skylar adjusted their smock one last time before holding one of the keys to the front door. Benti held out the other one. With a final nod to each other the new business owners welcomed customers for the first time.
Word count: 364
