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In the downstairs study of 12 Barnslow Drive, Raine and I were doing schoolwork together. Side by side, that is, not some group project borne of an extremely unlikely chance crossing of our degree programs. She was reading, I was writing out notes, by hand and on paper, for an essay. It was a scene so amazingly mundane that it was a bit dizzying to really step back and think about, though made much less mundane by the half dozen tentacles spread out from my flanks, lazing about us, smooth and still with their rainbow light cycling very gently. More than a year after meeting Raine the fact that college life goes on had become the weirdest part of my life to our, me and the other Heathers', mind, but no matter how unlikely it had started to seem that I'd use a degree for anything I still couldn't imagine abandoning my education. And really I hadn't started it with an honest expectation that I'd have enough of a life to care about a career, I'd picked the school and the program because it was what I loved, and that hadn't changed.
Though that didn't mean the coursework was always easy, and my focus was divided by other things that day.
My academic train of thought derailed on a moment's distraction and I paused to mentally backtrack, find my place. I felt a touch of anxiety, formless and undirected, and purely on impulse I reached over to touch Raine's side for comfort. My hand lingered, moving in a gentle back and forth, just relishing her presence.
My eyes were down on my notepad, but through the expanded awareness afforded by each tentacle I saw Raine's head tilt a little. She looked to me and put on one of her many smiles, one of the gentle and caring ones. "You doing alright, Heather?" She asked, voice light but entirely earnest, supportive without pressure.
I nodded on reflex, then shrugged after a second thought and lifted my head to look at her. My extra vision was a lot better than normal peripheral vision, but not quite a match for binocular vision unless I put several tentacles to the task of focusing on something. And anyway twenty years of habit and a desire to acknowledge Raine both told me to point my face at the object of my attention, so I did.
"Yes, my mind is just wandering a bit. Thinking about... everything." I said, then shook my head at myself. "This time last year we were fighting for our lives all the time, always looking over our shoulder. Now, it feels silly, but there's so much, school and planning and friends-" I caught a smirk on Raine's face and cut her off "-and yes, girlfriends, Maisie's recovery, the roof repairs..."
Raine nodded, accepting each, then added "And you're always waiting for the next egomaniac to pop out of the woodwork and start the next round of life-or-death danger. You know you've got me keeping an eye out for all that, if it helps."
I shrugged.
"I think that's normal though. To feel overwhelmed by a full life and anxious about what comes next. Nothing strange about feeling that way." Raine said, soothing me, moving a gentle hand over my arm.
There was still something in her eyes that got my attention, a seriousness and focus that told me she was thinking about something important to her. I decided to be direct.
"Enough about me, Raine, what's on your mind?" I asked.
"You." she replied with a laugh and a very satisfied smirk.
"Raine!" I scolded. She only laughed more.
"For real!" She protested, then let that seriousness resurface. "I just noticed something is all, nothing big."
"Well, what?"
She patted my hand where it still rested on her side. "You touch me like this, right here, when you're anxious. But usually with a tentacle, at least, ever since you started keeping them. Before that, of course you used your hand, but not much since." The idea that she'd paid attention to this little act made my cheeks flush, and she saw that. "Hey, it's a cute thing, no shame."
"Right. Okay. So, what?"
She shrugged disarmingly. "Today you're using your hand, even when the rest of you is here. Caught my attention is all." She paused, as if unsure about saying what came next. "Makes me wonder if a different Heather is in the lead right now, maybe."
That put a frown on my face. "Don't be silly. I'm, we, I mean, it's just me, Raine." I said, the words rushing out before I could notice my frosty tone and the tension of my body. My fellow Heathers stirred from their rests, the cascades of colors moving a bit faster than before. Raine had touched a nerve that I didn't even know was tender before then.
Raine reacted smoothly, without judgement, the impossibly patient side of her shining through. "Hey, no, Heather it's not that. I've told you before, I love you all. All nine of my beautiful squiddy ladies, told you and I hope shown you." She said, those strong hands turning me to fully face her, touching my shoulders and arms in a show of intimacy. "You're all Heather, hundred percent, no question. So if I've got it wrong, then I want to understand. Please?"
I swallowed my defensive urges, told myself and was told by a half dozen of myself that I was all safe with Raine, and tried to face the question. I wasn't even sure why I was reacting like this, she was right, she'd been very convincingly accepting time and again, so why was this different?
"Um, well, because my tentacles, they're just more of me, right? They don't have different personalities or whatever." I said, squirming a little in my seat.
Raine nodded, paused, then cocked her head. "More of which you, though? And in that dream world, the undersea badass yous definitely did their- or your- own things separate from the other two, and then the big one..." She trailed off, then shrugged. "I don't want to push, but I want to understand. I want to understand all of you."
I frowned harder, but now in concentration. "It's... hard. She- I- those three-" I knew as soon as they left my lips that the words put lies to my denial moments earlier, but Raine didn't jump on that, didn't cram words inside that gap in the shell to pry it open, instead just waiting. "We share decisions, memories... we're in agreement almost all of the time, so there's not a different set of memories for each tentacle, right? It's not like one remembers what it did yesterday time, we all do as if we did it ourselves. When we disagree, we remember collectively."
Raine nodded along. "Alright, with you so far. What about the dream world?" She asked
The prompt conjured many memories of the mixed up Cygnet hospital, from nine different perspectives. "Well, that too. Once we made peace with ourselves, we shared all that too. But..." I nearly halted there, but the attentive face of Raine gently urged me forward. I found my memories focused not on the scramble to bring all my friends back together or the one-woman effort to build an army and kill the eye by myself, but on waking in a prison of water and glass, breaking out, wreaking havoc with a sleek and deadly abyssal body. "...oh. Maybe you're right. Huh."
Raine's face lit with a sort of satisfaction. "If there's one thing I'm an expert on, it's Heathers!" She crowed, but then moderated her celebration. "You're sure? I didn't power of suggestion you into anything did I?"
"No, no." I said, shaking my head. A quick mental inventory found the duo of Calm and Anxious, or perhaps Passive and Pragmatic, or Connected and Lonely. Their interplay normally defined our human interactions, led the pack in a sense, but now they seemed to be taking turns between relative quiescence and inhabiting our mid-left tentacle, each experiencing an ineffable novelty. Our leviathan-self slumbered, uncaring for all of this, and the rest of us were starting to wander the room in physical expression of anxious curiosity. "You just, made us examine it. But when... How...?"
"If it helps, I noticed it first this morning, when we got to-"
"The fitting! Oh!" I said. Evelyn had insisted on funding the full expensive dress experience, and while we intended to alter the result with slits for my tentacles, the dressmaker was not In The Know, so I'd had to be as human-shaped as possible for the appointment. "I, uh, we didn't want to risk the temptation to touch things so- so she put us all the way away-" I said, suddenly finding a thread of perspective in our memories and following it. "-but she was really nervous and I, uh, I didn't want to let go of you." I finished, flushing.
"You stepped forward, took the lead? Something like that?" Raine asked. I nodded. "Oh Heather, that's sweet." She said, smiled warmly, then hugged us. We hugged her back, seven Heathers reaching out to hold our infinitely accepting lover, nine Heathers all basking in the skinship. One of Raine's hands found the root of my upper-right tentacle. "So, normally, which-"
I cut her off with a shake of my head. "We switch around. I do anyway, maybe others have got preferences..."
Raine pulled back enough to look into my eyes, then grinned. "I suppose you're Grabby Heather, then?"
I made a face. "Please no. I'm not as distinct enough for that sort of name, and I'm not defining myself with that anyway, thank you very much. "
Raine laughed. "I'd have no complaints, but, fair's fair. Let's see, traits are out, position's out, number'd be weird. Implied hierarchy and all that."
"Yes, quite. Do I really need a label? I'm just Heather..." I said, hunching up a little. My five fellow tentacle-selves gently wound around me in support, sharing a blanket of acceptance as one of them. The other three within me didn't know what to make of all this, or rather two, with the leviathan still uninterested, leaving the final physical tentacle to join the embrace late, belated and awkward, but still a comfort.
Raine fell back into her gentle probing tone. "I won't force a name on you. But I want to learn everything about you, every one of you, and that's a lot easier if I have names to put my observations to, yeah?" I nodded, but I couldn't quite meet her eyes. "This is upsetting you. It scares you, I think? Can you tell me why, or do I need to leave it alone?"
"Oh Raine, you're okay. Just, let me think a moment." I said, and the multitude within me gently wound thought around our collective raw emotions, one by one teasing out insecurities to be examined. I took a deep breath before trying to explain, as much to myself as to her. "There's, um, something comfortable about just being 'one of the tentacles'... just one squid in the shoal..."
When I paused this time, Raine supplied "Safety in anonymity? Freedom from responsibility, maybe?" neither accusatory or conclusive, just helping.
I shrugged. "I... a little both, I think. Which, now that we've put words to it, of course it's better to be known and loved than hidden away." I said, but that wasn't all. The remaining part that the six of us had found together, our Pragmatic self scoffed at. Hadn't we all learned this already, in the mutual acceptance between her and her counterpart? Evidently not, not completely. Not in the way we six needed to.
"I... we, the six of us rather than the nine of me, I suppose we let uniformity become important to us." I had to re-wet our lips. "To be different might invite disharmony. No, more than that. If I am anything but just Heather, might I stop being myself at all? Will we six stop recognizing each other as 'the tentacles' if we allow ourselves to be anything else? That's... important to us, to me, now. More than we realized."
Raine said soothing things, but for once she wasn't my focus. Those five tentacles squeezed around our human core a little tighter, a gesture of comfort and inclusion that was mirrored within our shared emotions. Let her love you, they urged, promising I would still belong. I touched them each gently with our hands, tears threatening to spill forth as I caressed them and promised back that I'd never forget that fellowship either. We could step forward, be seen, without forgetting how we'd first emerged.
Raine had gone quiet, attentive. She let me focus on myselves for what felt like minutes of silence before intruding, softly. "Those look like happy tears, I hope? You girls are being nice to each other?"
I nodded, swallowing to clear my throat. "Yes, yes we are." I said, then made sure to grab the sixth of my beautiful limbs and hug it close too, in thanks to the other two for the responsibilities they'd shouldered for so long and their respect of our little subset-collective. "I can be my own Heather. But I still don't know what I'd call myself. I don't have any distinctive... anything." I said with a shrug.
Raine ran her eyes along one of my tentacles, eyes perhaps following the bands of color slowly traveling down them, then brought her eyes back to mine. "How about color?" She said.
I blinked, then frowned. Raine grinned, projecting confidence, perhaps coming to the conclusion that this idea was a winner.
"Doesn't have to be a favorite color or anything, just... pick a color? One part of the rainbow whole, yeah?"
I swallowed, anxious about this moment of definition but warmed by the symbolism. I expected, half wanted, to have a hard time choosing, but a choice emerged quite quickly. Before I got the courage to give it voice my fellows acted, their rainbow surfaces settling on a deep-ocean blue in a wave spreading from base to tip. I found the effect deeply beautiful touching to me, and it left me choked up again.
"Blue, I take it? Or something more specific, turquoise or lapis or..."
I shook my head. "Blue is enough. For now, anyway." I said, nearly croaking through the emotions.
She nodded, face very serious as she took in this new side of us. Then my fellow Heathers changed again, each adopting their own colors.
Raine's face lit up with joy. "Oh, oh hello girls. Orange, red, white... cyan?" I nodded in relayed acceptance. "And uh, lime?" Another nod. "No lemon? No yellow?" She asked, that cheeky grin flashing.
I shook my head. "That would feel presumptuous..." I explained. "The yellow we carry is for all of us."
Raine understood, probably before even asking. Then she patted my middle left tentacle, which had gone back to the rainbow pattern instead of adopting a color. "Someone abstaining?" she asked.
A frown creased my forehead. "Yes. Out of respect, but... they deserve to be seen too." I said, a reflection of the debate playing out inside us. The duo of non-tentacle Heathers didn't want to intrude on this moment for the rest of us, but we insisted. Letting us go first was more than enough recognition, and we appreciated it, but we didn't want to be set apart from them in this way. To Raine, yes, and to others of our closest loved ones we would share those details, but they didn't have to be so clearly on display to casual deduction.
Finally the internal debate passed, and mid-left resolved into an alternating pattern of pink and a rich purple verging on red.
Raine's eyebrows rose. "Let me guess. The lead singer and lone wolf? Your two human faces in the dream?"
I nodded. "Yes. The last one of us is, um, currently uninterested."
"Her choice, I suppose" Raine said, then was back to the grin. "Thanks for letting me in, my lovely brides-to-be."
I flushed hard, making Raine laugh. The intensity of the moment broke pleasantly, and we faded back towards a kind of normalcy. Our tentacles resumed their rainbow patterns but now each experimented with variations to subtly, or not so subtly show themselves. Two bands of their color per cycle, or a double-width band, or thin extra stripes or speckles. None were locked in yet, each experimenting.
"Beautiful..." Raine said, taking in the variations in rapt fascination. Eventually her eyes met mine again. "No obligation, though. You understand that, right? If you, any of you, any time, need to just be Heather to me, that's your choice."
I flushed again at the gentle protectiveness and warmth, but nodded. "Yes, Raine. Thank you, that's very sweet of you."
With a sigh I finally turned my attention back to my notepad "I suppose we should get back to work, shouldn't we?"
"Nah, we could take a break if you want. Want to drop in on Maisie and Tenny? Or do you need some Outside time, flex your spikes a bit?"
A moment of inner debate slid quickly in favor of a break and some time with our big, delightfully strange family. As it did I was aware of a sort of mental nudge from Connected Heather, Community Building Heather, Pink Heather. By mutual agreement I let her take my place, let her become our voice again, and let my own focus sink down into the neural lace woven through my body and tentacles. Did my thoughts actually physically move, some identifiable process stopping in human grey matter and starting again in abyssal cephalopod tissues, or was that merely a useful metaphor? Perhaps it didn't really matter.
Still fully aware of our conversation with Raine, which my other self had smoothly picked up, but not needing to take an active role in it, I instead focused on a single long coil of intricately wound muscle wrapped in pale, luminous chromatophore laden skin. I joined my fellows in pulsing pink once, then showed Raine myself, blue woven within a rainbow. She flashed me a quick smile, and then loving touches when we wound our middle-left limb around her shoulders.
I gave her a squeeze, then relaxed again in the feeling of being exactly where I wanted to be.