How sweet or sullen are your dreams?
Come from a place near paradise
Your tranquil face betrays no screams
Such were the words that came to Agent 8 upon arriving at the Cuttlefish Cabin just outside Octo Canyon. There, she found Agent 3 sat on a cushion under the veranda, back against the wall and apparently asleep. The paper lanterns hanging above her swayed gently in the breeze coming past Tentakeel Outpost.
Eight maintained her distance, staying near the grate covering the pipe back to Inkopolis. She was still wary of Three, despite the inkling having shown her no hostility since her arrival on the surface. Clad in her uniform with the black jacket and reflective vest, she almost gave off the aura of a sleeping predator.
Yet, despite that wariness, a part of Eight couldn't take the eyes off her. It was so surreal, seeing the most hated enemy of Octokind, someone she had fought personally, at the centre of a scene she couldn't describe as anything less than picturesque. She wondered what someone like Three might be dreaming about.
Without realizing it, Eight walked several steps closer to the cabin, beckoned by something unseen. She heard Pearl's voice in her head telling her she was being silly and she should just relax and be normal. Three wasn't an enemy anymore and she had no reason to fear her. Quietly and cautiously, Eight sat on the cushion next to the dozing inkling and stared straight ahead, kicking her feet idly.
For a while, she watched the nearby birds and fly around and clean themselves in a small puddle in the shade of one of the nearby trees. She listened to their songs, beautiful in their own right and she wondered if bird songs had lyrics. Eventually, however, she lost interest in the birds and her mind kept going back to Three.
Curiosity prodded her, like a finger being jabbed and twisted into her side. She had never had a chance to get a good close look at an inkling before and compare their two species. Of course, there had been Captain Cuttlefish, but he was old, and next to her right now was a healthy young female the same age as her and the closest thing to an inkling soldier. What better comparison could there be?
Eight gave in to curiosity's temptations and visually examined Three. She couldn't see much of her body underneath her uniform but that was not what fascinated her most anyway. Her eyes were drawn to Three's mantle and tentacles. This close up she could see the subtle shifts in its surface, almost like it was breathing on its own. That wouldn't happen with any octoling. They had to be able to maintain their camouflage even in sleep. Something as subtle as what Three was doing now could give one away, especially when hiding in an artificial environment.
Like some octoling's tentacles and those of many other inklings it seemed, Three's tentacles darkened near the ends. In Three's case, they blended from her natural leafy green to black at the tips, the colour gradient broken up by round spots of varying green shades. Three's tentacles were much longer and flatter as well, with a large bulb at the end of each.
A notion gently touched Eight's mind and she looked at Three's face. No sign of her looking any more awake than before. Licking her lips nervously, she extended her hand towards the bulb resting on the floor next to her. For several perilously long seconds, it hovered over the bulb, afraid to do what she wanted so badly to. Finally, she summoned her courage and with the gentleness of a falling feather, placed her hand atop it.
She looked up at Three's face again and denoted no change of expression. She looked as asleep as she had been before. Eight let out a small sigh of relief and gently glided her hand over the bulb's surface.
It was colder than she expected; perhaps because it was so far away from the core of her body. Did inklings use long tentacles as a means of keeping themselves cool? Perhaps that was one reason Three kept her tentacles so long, as opposed to Four's much shorter more manageable ones.
Eight gingerly picked up the bulb and placed it in her lap. Another check to make sure Three was still asleep, then she began to trace the outline of one of the spots with her finger and marvelled at the subtle rippling effect the action stimulated among the local chromatophores.
She had known from her education that inklings could communicate simply by changing the colour and patterns in their mantle but not until she had witnessed Three and Pearl have an entire conversation this way did she appreciate the spectacle. Since then, she had learned it was Three's preferred method of communication. She couldn't recall the inkling ever speaking, even once.
Eight carefully flipped the bulb over, exposing its white underside and the huge sucker in the centre. It was much larger than any of eight's suckers and it looked quite strong. She recalled something about inklings that their suckers were serrated or had hooks, but as she ran her thumb around the rim of Three's sucker, it felt perfectly smooth, guaranteed to make a good seal.
Eight turned the bulb rightways up again and rested her hand on top of it as she looked back at Three. Again, the inkling gave no indication of being disturbed. Three was either very tired or just a deep sleeper.
A wave of purple rippled through Three's mantle and Eight flinched. Then there was another one. It was only when Eight looked back down in her lap that she realized had been absentmindedly stroking Three's bulb as if it were a small animal. Was that what was causing this reaction? Eight tried stroking more slowly and the purple ripples turned light orange once and then mellowed to blue for a while before it became a subtle hue shift.
That was another thing that had utterly fascinated Eight about inklings. She had learned that inklings sometimes changed colour depending on their mood. She had yet to understand which colour meant what and she also wondered how inklings communicated their real mood if their natural colour was the same colour and hue as the colour of an emotion they didn't want to convey. This was the first time she had been able to observe it in any kind of close detail. The ripples seemed to spread from Three's head and then ripple outwards through her tentacles. Unfortunately, she couldn't figure out if Three was enjoying Eight's stroking in her unconscious state or not.
There was a noise and Eight looked up just in time to see Agent 4 switch from squid form atop the grate. Eight's whole body jerked in surprise and then she quickly but gently placed Three's bulb back on the floor and made herself look as innocent as possible.
Four took a second to stretch and then started walking towards the cabin. She met Eight's eyes and smiled. "Hey, Octogirl. You're here too, eh?" Eight swallowed once and managed a small smile back, then nodded. "Sweet."
Four looked at Three and then raised her Hero Shot. "Hey, Agent Three. Ready to practice with Sheldon's fancy new gun?" Three's eyes snapped open and the colour drained from Eight's face.
Three hadn't been asleep at all. Everything Eight had been doing, Three had been fully aware of and Eight's supposedly clandestine exploration of inkling anatomy had been blown wide open.
Three stood and Eight flinched, hiding her eyes behind her tentacles, waiting to receive some kind of strong reprimand about how things were done on the surface of how what she had done was some kind of crime. She waited and waited, but nothing happened. She furtively curled one tentacle out of the way and saw that Three had joined Four as she walked towards the target range, carrying her older model Hero Shot with her.
Eight collapsed against the cabin wall in relief. She didn't pretend to know Three but what she did know about her suggested that if she wanted to hurt her or felt she needed to teach her a lesson, she wouldn't leave it.
Still, even if Three wouldn't hurt her, she might have committed some kind of cultural faux-pas she was unaware of, and Three always struck her as a private individual so maybe she had violated her personally.
Eight hung her head and curled into a ball as her face burned blue with embarrassment. This, even as Three and Four began popping targets without a care, even as her body changed colour to try and blend in with the cabin. She stayed that way for a long time until someone tapped her gently on the shoulder.
"Hey, you okay there, Eight?" Eight looked up into Four's sunset orange eyes and relaxed a little. Had it been Three, it was possible she would have run for her life. "You looked like somethin' was botherin' ya'."
Eight was a fluent speaker of the inkling language but Four's dialect could be a bit tricky to understand at times. She looked out towards the target range where Three was busy shooting with Four's Hero Shot. Feeling safe for now, Eight uncurled herself and let out a sigh while Four sat beside her on the cushion Three had used earlier.
"What does blue mean?" She asked quietly.
"Blue?" Four looked at her, puzzled. "Oh, for our mantles?" She tapped her own head and her mantle turned from yellow-orange to the same blue as the sky.
Eight nodded. "Before you came, Three was making blue ripples. What does that mean?" Four hummed and tugged at her bangs in thought.
"Well… what kinda' blue?" Eight frowned, trying to think of how best to describe it and then tried her best to mimic the colour with her own tentacles, turning them as close to the same shade of blue as she could manage.
"Oh, that blue." Four shrugged. "Well, I'm not exactly sure what word really explains it but I always felt the same way after I got tired after a mission and Marie let me lay my head in her lap. She'd even stroke my head and it felt real good. Do you know what I'm saying?"
"You liked it?"
"Well, sure It felt good and Marie's a really nice person once you get past the snark, but I like that part about her too I guess."
Eight blinked. "So, Three… liked it…."
"Liked what?" Eight shook her head and Four shrugged.
"Look, Eight, I know you wanna try and be friends with Three, and I think you can, but that's gonna take time, ya' know? You have a past after all." She nodded at Three. "It's not easy for that girl. It feels like half of all octolings wanna kiss her, half wanna kill her, but all of 'em are afraid of her."
Eight nodded. "I want to be friends but I think I need to understand inklings better first."
Four chuckled. "Might be easier if you become friends with a couple of simpler inklings first." She grasped Eight's hand tightly. "I'll be your friend, Eight. Only way to understand us is to hang out with us. Don't worry about not understanding Three. She's hard even for me to read. I think only Callie and Marie really get her, but it's pretty obvious she's not a bad person, just the strong, silent type, ya' know?"
"I… think so?"
Four patted Eight on the back. "Just try not to rush it. Why don't us two go out after this and eat some food from Crusty Sean's? Something to wrap your jaws around might be just what you need."
Eight smiled. She didn't know about Four any more than she did Three, maybe even less, but at least she would get to know at least one inkling better by the end of the day. Maybe someday, that inkling would be Three. Someday...
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Just a quick rough story I felt like putting up. I know it's nothing grand but I hope you enjoyed reading it.
