Suckers for Solstice (Tinsel and Tentacles 3.0 #2)

Chapter 1

Gillian

Ugh. I shrink further into my hiding place as little hands splash into the shallow water close to the plaster rock formation.

The suckers along all eight of my arms help me to stay anchored snug in the crevice while I take a break.

This part of the shallow tank was quiet until a school of rays made a game of swimming the gauntlet of reaching kids without getting touched.

Now, instead of clumping around the more stationary exhibits of sea animal shifters like urchins and anemones, the kids have moved to line the entire edge of the interactive exhibit.

I liked it better when they were swarming the docent guarding the more delicate echinoderms and the big dopey dogfish wriggling back and forth, seeming to enjoy all the attention.

The aquarium touch tank is a little more than hip high for the adults, but it hits just above center mass for most of the kids.

There’s not much risk of falling in, even when one of the older boys leans over the thick, clear acrylic edge to brush his fingers over a passing ray's fin.

Still, I resist my octopus's grumpy impulse to hide from the nonsense so I can keep an eye on the visiting kids, just in case.

I thought picking up a few extra shifts in the touch tank over the holidays would be a great plan to save up for my big move.

Not so much. I mean, the money is great, as promised.

The hours don't suck, and it's convenient since the aquarium is the public facing part of Piney Point Coastal Research Station, the marine ecology lab where my sister and her husband work.

Trudy helped me get the job when she was signing up the kids for the month of holiday care and, on paper, it’s a perfect plan. I’m making extra cash over the extended holiday break, and with all of us going to the same place, carpooling with my family is super simple.

The job itself isn't bad. My boss is a shifter like all of the touch tank workers, so the work conditions take our needs and wellbeing into account. Sure, the entire point is to let strangers touch our animal forms, but all the touch tank animals are shifters who consent to the attention. And it’s for a good cause.

People who visit and interact with us are more likely to support ocean conservation, and the aquarium helps fund specific shifter focused initiatives, so it's worthwhile.

Mostly though, I want to earn enough to finally expunge the last of the interest on my medical debt, get my credit back on track, and put a deposit on an apartment so I can finally move out of my sister's basement.

I mean, it's a really nice basement, and I moved in to work as her live-in nanny while I got my teaching degree, but I've got my first grown up job and feeling like I'm still dependent on her chafes.

It doesn't help that my octopus craves her own territory.

I just didn't expect to hate working with the general public so much. I mean, I love teaching kids at school, but this is different. Here, I have no control over the chaos, I guess. My classroom is chaos I can control, mostly.

I'm not sure which is worse, the noise or the job itself, my ocotopus is twitchy with the thought of being touched by strangers and it’s hard to hold onto the reasons I agreed to do this when I’m ready to turn the next prodding fingers to brush my mantle into a snack.

Or it might be the music for a holiday I don’t celebrate blaring over the sound system.

Tinny renditions of the same handful of hits play on a loop, the sound filtered and distorted by the water and blending with dozens of chattering kids with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads.

Far too many of their minders seem to view this room as a chance to mentally check out as they let the kids run wild and explore instead of keeping a close eye.

I wedge myself more firmly into the hidey-hole between two large grey-green rocks and let my octopus side’s awareness take the lead.

The plaster decor is enough like my octopus side's natural habitat that it's easy to blend into the scenery as I force myself to relax.

My colorful chromatophores let me adapt my appearance, but I have to focus if I want to exert conscious control over what they show, or try to hide them.

The tip of one arm must not have been hidden well enough, and it recoils, wrapping around me as chubby fingers tickle my sensitive suckers unexpectedly. I briefly consider bolting from my hidey-hole to the central part of the large touch tank where touching is off limits and out of reach.

Mostly, I can't complain about the aquarium's policies.

Sure, it's awkward to let a bunch of strangers manhandle my octopus form, but the job pays triple what I make in the classroom. And the rules are clearly posted and enforced. Guests have to wash up before and after they touch anyone, they’re only allowed to touch with two fingertips, and they can only feel our backs or the tops of our heads unless we communicate otherwise to one of the attendants.

I went with the trend of also allowing kids to pet fins, or in my case, arms. No grabbing, lifting, or chasing us into hiding spots.

Except sometimes the littler guests are fast and those pudgy prodding fingers poke my arm again as it drifts within reach.

Ugh. Well, the brat is lucky I like kids.

My octopus nudges the more human side of my awareness to the fore, she’s still considering the merits of children fingers as a hit new snack.

I mentally roll my eyes at her. ‘No eating the children.’

‘Just a nibble? A finger will grow back.’

‘No, and static kids don’t regrow missing limbs, they don’t have an octopus side to show them how.’

‘That’s a pity.’ My inner octopus sulks as I reach one arm out to poke the cute little hand right back. The kid gasps and I decide to play a little, wrapping gentle suckers around the limb in a hand-shake.

"Tentacles!" They squeal delightedly. That’s the last straw for my octopus side, she huffs at me and I’m fully in the driver’s seat of our aquatic form while she grumbles about how the only sensible option here is hiding from overzealous land-dwellers.

The tiny tyrant’s glee is charming, even though my octopus is extra sulky over the comment ‘I have arms--not tentacles--in both my forms thank you very much.’

‘Uh huh.’ I snort. She’s not wrong, but she’s clearly in a mood. My octopus is looking for reasons to be grumpy with the kid at this point. She normally considers the distinction pedantic when Trudy lectures the kids about proper anatomical terms.

Good thing Trudy avoids working with the general public, preferring to stick to her experiments.

I can picture the peeved shade of rusty red Trudy turns when she lectures the unsuspecting on the difference.

We aren't squids, with our suckers inefficiently lumped at the tip of an appendage.

She usually has at least two sucker-lined tentacle-arms waving in emphasis by the end of the spiel.

I'm careful to call my aquatic limbs arms around her, but it doesn't bother me. I relax a bit more at the child’s delighted tone, cautiously emerging from the rocks to peek up through the ripples of water at the grinning face of a child the same age as my nephews and students.

Except I can taste through our contact that this child is a static, not a shifter like me.

From the short fringe of his hair, likely a boy.

"Daddy, look! I'm gonna release da kwaken!" He lifts both arms theatrically.

"Very cool, bud." His dad nods absently.

Amused lavender curls along my arms and melds with vestiges of neutral gray-green browns to tint my skin a lovely mauve.

No sense trying to hide anything when one side of my nature is built to wear my emotional state painted over my entire body.

Sometimes I think it's a real shame baby octopus shifters naturally grow out of the phase where we can't control our chromatophores in human form.

Metachrosis would save static humans a lot of fuss and nonsense.

I usually have my octopus side close enough to the surface that my chromatophores bleed through to my land form, particularly showing my emotions around my eyes.

I’m an outlier that way though. Unlike full shifts in a heightened emotional state, involuntary partial shifts are rare for most adults, but I’ve just never gotten to the point where partial shifts stopped feeling as natural as fully taking one form or the other.

The kid continues to babble excitedly about how krakens are his favorite sea monster, which, rude, I'm neither a kraken nor a monster.

Good thing he's young enough that the enthusiastic wrongness is endearing.

His dad apparently doesn't find it half so cute as his bland responses become increasingly generic the more he tunes his son out to focus on his phone, until he gets a call and turns his back to the kid to take it.

I should probably let go of the kid currently prodding at my suckers and do a spin around the tank, but I can't bring myself to pull away after seeing his excitement ignored.

I'm a sucker for making kids smile, so I let myself drift closer for a while and bask in his delight at getting to touch a real kraken.

By the time he realizes he's lost sight of his dad and starts to search the room for him, several of the other visitors have gathered around to get a closer look at me too. I don't love being the center of that much gawking attention, and the kid is starting to get panicky.

“Dad?”he yells, his eyes wide as he frantically tries to find his adult through the press of strangers.

Fear green chases away my happy purple color as another hand splashes into the water far too close to my mantle. I want to guide him away from the press of people, or leave so the crowd around us will dissipate and let him find his dad, but more hands are reaching for me and it’s overwhelming.