Chapter 5 #3
Ms. Too Perfect for You: This is Winny by the way. If you haven't saved my number yet, do it now, I'll be texting you often ;)
My pulse flutters at the promise that she's going to keep caring like this.
I squirm at how intensely seen it makes me feel.
My octopus side wants to curl into the tightest corner of the tub to hide from that kind of exposure.
Too vulnerable, too soft and dangerous. This is just asking for trouble.
I can't handle how much I want her interest to be real and lasting, so I turn it into a joke.
Gillian: Oh really? What if I said 'True's phone who this?'
Shit. Did my human limbs grow brains of their own when I wasn't paying attention? Why the hell did I change the subject to my sister of all things? I drop the sex toy I’m still poised to use, and bury my face in a loop of the octopus arm that was holding it to hide from my own magnificently bone-headed move.
I wouldn't blame Winny for not replying after that. By some miracle, a new message arrives with a buzz and I nerve myself up enough to uncoil the tangled octopus limbs I'm hiding behind to peek at the screen.
Ms. Too Perfect for You: Huh? True? Oh, is that your sister's nickname? Why are you using her phone to flirt with me in the middle of the night Gillian?
I'm not sure if the sound that burbles out of my chest is a sob or a laugh, but I know it's a release of relieved tension that I haven't scared Winny away yet.
And she can read into and mimic my tone almost as well as an octopus hatchling playing hide and hunt.
Still, I don't want there to be confusion.
And I want her to keep on caring and checking on me and.
..well, I'll take as much or as little as she's offering.
Gillian: It's my phone.
Ms. Too Perfect for You: hmm… so say now, but how can I be sure?
I squirm, imagining her training that sharp raven gaze on me in the ensuing pause. Under her scrutiny at the pool, it had felt like she could read every little detail I can't hide from my face, even without a full understanding of the swirling colors I can't always control.
She lets the silence drag until I wonder if maybe I should try to fill it with apologies.
Except I'm not really sorry for joking around and getting her to stop focusing on my wellbeing.
Who does that? It's weird. And a flavor of wonderful I don't know how to savor.
Thankfully, Winny sends another message before I can spiral over how to broach the silence.
Ms. Too Perfect for You: No answer? So, you see that now we've got a dilemma. How can I be sure I'm talking to the right sister? I'd hate to tell a happily mated shifter exactly where she's going to put her delicious suckers the next time I get my hands on her luscious limbs.
I snort at the convoluted wording about my octopus arms. It's not like it bothers me when people call them tentacles.
I mean, arms are clearly superior since having suckers along the entire limb is much more useful, but it seems pointless to worry about anatomical nuances that don't make any difference to most people.
Trudy cares enough for us both. So I've gotten in the habit of correcting people around her kids to avoid conflict.
Correcting Winny's language is another matter entirely. If the sexy shifter wants my tentacles on her body, I don't care what she calls them.
Gillian: LOL. That sounds weird. You can call them tentacles as long as True and the kids aren’t around, which to be clear, would be always for sex talk. Which is proof that I'm not True, BTW.
Ms. Too Perfect for You: Oh really? Why is that?
I laugh at the question since no one who has met Trudy and seen her in her octopus form would have to ask it. She always finds a way to bring up her biggest pet peeve when it comes to people talking about our species.
Gillian: True is a marine biologist, she'd rather cook and eat her own arm than call it something infuriatingly anatomically incorrect.
She'll tell you as much if you call them tentacles in front of her.
She's got the entire rant down to an artform, so much so, they stopped trying to get her to do public relations talks at the aquarium attached to her lab.
Ms. Too Perfect for You: Wow. Um, wouldn't that hurt? And have implications for her human form too?
Gillian: Yeah, but True claims she has seven other arms, so she'd barely miss one while it regrows.
If she did it while she's mostly in human form to be sure all the joints can form properly or if she stays fully octopus until it regenerates, it probably wouldn't have too much impact on her human side.
But you never know with life-altering injuries moving between forms like that, you know?
Ms. Too Perfect for You: I know better than most how that works.
Oh shit, that sounds like I stepped into some personal trauma. I start to type an apology for bringing it up, or maybe ask what she means. She seemed fine at the pool. But we're hardly close enough for me to pry into her potentially painful medical history. She beats me to apologizing.
Ms. Too Perfect for You: Ignore how bitter that came out, sorry.
Since I brought it up, I'll save you agonizing over a polite way to ask.
I hurt my shoulder in avian form, shifted back to human for the ambulance, it was a policy thing, but I had a few accidental shifts from the pain along the way, and when they set the bone in my human form it fucked up my wing so I can't fly anymore in raven form.
Don't apologize, you didn't knock me out of the sky and you couldn't have known about my bad shoulder. It was ages ago.
Gillian: I can still be sad it happened and that I made light about something similar.
Ms. Too Perfect for You: *shrug* You can, but what good does that do? Won't unfuck my wing, and anyway, it's just as well you know I can't fly. It will come up if we're spending time together. Raven shifters are notorious gossips. Your True sounds hard core, lol. Bet she'll get along with Bram.
My pulse pounds harder than ever at the implication that Winny wants to pursue the sort of relationship that gives her relatives gossip fodder and includes our families mingling.
It's one thing for her to send me horny texts about her tentacle sex fantasies.
Predictions about ousiblings getting along is the sort of thing you say to someone you see as a whole person and not just a potentially fun fuck.
Ms. Too Perfect for You: Now you've got me wondering though. Can octopi really regrow their limbs? You’re not teasing me?
I snort, she's stepped in her own bitter pieces of my past now. But I'm not ready to talk about that with her or anyone. Suffice to say it’s not cheap to find a surgeon with enough experience working with shifters with advanced regenerative abilities to give me the results I needed.
Ms. Too Perfect for You: Wait, is it octopi or octopuses?
Gillian: Normally I’m all for pie, but I prefer a nice meringue.
It’s octopuses. And we can regrow lost limbs.
Good as new even. But it still hurts. Sure, Trudy could probably block off sensation from the limb in question if she did it right.
She'd bore you with scientist jargon, but each arm has its own mini brain that can control the limb independent of the rest of our body.
Like, I can tickle myself with my arms when I let them have their own head. ..
Ms. Too Perfect for You: Oh can you? So it feels like someone else is touching you? I have so many delightful ideas for that little trick, Gillian. I want to tease your octopussy so bad,
Gillian: huh?
My stomach sinks at the sudden shift to innuendo.
It feels like she's taking the personal information that skirts the edges of what I'm comfortable discussing with anyone and making those first tentative scraps of trust tawdry.
Like this entire conversation is set dressing for a video chat booty call.
Ms. Too Perfect for You: Nevermind, we can loop back to that in a minute. First, I haven't forgotten that you still haven't answered my question.
Gillian: What question?
Ms. Too Perfect for You: How are you?
And I'm back on cloud nine. Damn bird is giving me whiplash.
My tentacles curl at the mental image of Winny watching me as intently as she did earlier, in the pool when she had every reason to leave me floundering.
She stayed until the tidal wave of panic swept past and I could find enough of a calm to function.
I shudder in pleasure at the reminder of her steady presence, here for me again when I need it most.
Gillian: I'll live. True and Lincoln were upset, and the kids had a rough night getting to bed, but they'll be fine. We took Marina to see a specialist at the lab where Trudy and Linc work, but she doesn’t have a scratch on her. How about you?
Ms. Too Perfect for You: Oh, pretty much the same.
Bram lost his absolute shit about his precious babies being hurt and insisted on taking the kids to the shifter specialist at the zoo, so more proof our siblings will get along…
maybe even too well ;) Ty and Bram both work there, so poor Leighton's been very thoroughly poked and prodded and had every test in the book run.
But the kicker is that they noticed a benign cystic something that can cause problems with growth later on, and since they caught it so early, they can treat it now.
So actually, between the incident and Bram's paranoia, today might've been the best bad luck the kid could have had.
Gillian: Oh. Wow. So, emotional tilt-a-whirl, huh?
Ms. Too Perfect for You: Pretty much? I got banned from taking the kids anywhere solo, then heralded as a hero?
Gillian: Oh no.