The cinematic thing to say would be that it was a dark and stormy night.
It wasn't, no matter how much Ame might want it to be so her garden could finally get some water she didn't have to provide herself in this dry summer. No, it wasn't even night time. It was late afternoon, just before dinner.
Hikes are routine for her. The forest outside her town isn't a park or anything, and it's perfectly legal to pick flowers and plants in it. This is quite beneficial for her, as it means she can snag any interesting plant she sees to add to her garden and her growing assortment of wildflowers and herbs, and she has another test subject for her grafting experiments.
That's all she intends to pick up on her hikes. Plants. Just plants. Just plants. Not a box full of little purple blobs with faces.
(It's been two hours and nothing came for them. Surely they need to eat?)
Herding the blobs into the box was tricky in itself. They're tiny and not very cooperative. Her only saving grace is that they constantly huddle together and try to crawl back to each other when separated, so she doesn't think she's lost any of them.
She counts a dozen of them, though she spends another twenty minutes carefully scouring the bush she found them hiding under to see if she missed one, but eventually has to resign herself to taking the ones she did manage to find.
The box she's using isn't large at all. It's literally just a plastic pot, barely larger than your average cup, but the blobs all manage to huddle in there with room to spare. Individually they're the size of a coin, though they somehow weigh far less. If it weren't for the fact they keep squirming she could probably balance one on her pinky finger without too much issue.
She hurries them home as quickly as possible and transfers the blobs to a bigger box (a proper cardboard box this time with paper towel laid across the bottom). The blobs do not make use of their space, and instead huddle in a corner while Amelia rushes to find something to feed them.
The internet does not have much to tell her here. They do not have a suggestion for feeding 'little purple blogs things' or 'small purple land octopuses'.
(She gets a result for the 'Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus', but those don't look anything like the blobs.)
With no good idea of what she should be feeding them, she improvises. She has to try something. A run to the local pet store for some puppy formula and a feeding syringe is the best solution she can come up with short of trying something more risky like solid food or plain water.
She's on edge the entire time she's out, having left the blobs at home so as to not jostle them more during her rush, but that only makes her worry more until she returns home with (hopefully) enough formula to feed them for a week.
Her home is eerily silent when she steps back inside. The box is still there on the table, and Ame rushes over to it while setting down the formula just to make sure the blobs are okay.
The blobs are still there; huddled in the far corner of the box, closed eyes all turned towards her, watching in obvious fear. They're practically frozen, and Ame can't help but feel bad. Maybe she shouldn't have rushed back inside, she probably scared them more than they already were.
Sheepishly, she prepares the puppy formula and funnels it into a bottle, which she then withdraws from with the syringe.
Now comes the tricky part.
With coaxing fingers, she attempts to extract just one of the blobs from the rest of them. This proves to be difficult, as the other blobs are not eager to see one of their siblings go and hold onto them with their little tentacles.
She feels even worse when, upon successfully extracting a blob, it starts to cry out. The noises it makes are soft and squeaky and plaintive, and it very slowly tries to crawl over her fingers back to its siblings only to realize it's behind held in the air and instead redouble its pitiful cries.
Getting a tiny crying blob to eat is not simple. It squirms away from the syringe and refuses to open its mouth, and just lining up the syringe with its mouth is hard enough in the first place. Its tentacles push against the syringe (to no real effect) and the little flaps on its head are pinned down in (what she assumes must be) a fearful motion.
"Come on little thing…" Ame mumbles. She nudges the coin-sized blob with her thumb in an attempt to keep it still while pokings its mouth with the syringe, hoping it will smell or taste the food and allow her to feed it. "Open up."
It does not. It raises its head (though she might call its whole body its head) uncooperatively and makes a whining noise. A few cries from the box reach her ears as its siblings call back to it.
"Just eat and you can go back to them." She pleads. "Please?"
The blob reacts to her tone of voice, hesitating for just a moment and allowing her to poke the tip of the syringe in its mouth. Not risking her only chance she carefully presses the syringe down, and upon tasting the formula the blob goes still. The flaps on its head stop pressing into its head so much, and its tentacles tentatively hold the syringe.
She keeps feeding the blob until it stops eating which, given its size, doesn't actually take that long. It drinks a mere two milliliters of formula before wiggling its mouth free of the syringe, and Ame carefully deposits it back into the box in the opposite corner so she can keep track of which blobs she's fed or not.
Most of them are similarly uncooperative, though none quite so much as the first. The blobs full with formula act noticeably different than the unfed ones. They still huddle, but not so frantically, and if she's not seeing things wrong she thinks some of them have actually fallen asleep; using their siblings as pillows. They move lazily when they do move, almost like they're drunk.
It takes a stressful half an hour before she manages to get them all fed, and the blobs are largely asleep by the time she's done cleaning and putting things away.
(They look far more peaceful as they sleep, clinging to each other much more softly and nuzzling into their neighbors. Their little flaps twitch in accordance with unknown dreams and the small movements of their siblings.)
With an exhausted sigh, Ame fits a towel over half the box to give the blobs some shade, then promptly grabs her laptop for some more desperate research to find out what these little things could possibly be and what they might need.
The only answers she finds are a few sparse newspaper articles with mentions of a cult, but those papers at least give her a name for these little things: takodachis, often shortened to 'takos'
That's not much to work with, but at least she doesn't have to call them 'blobs' anymore.
(Searching 'takodachi' only nets her the same newspaper articles and some weird website rambling on about an eldritch god.)
Amelia resigns herself to trying to feed these little things herself. There's no resources on how to care for them, so she'll have to do careful experiments.
"Thank Baelz I work from home." She thinks, rubbing her forehead, already trying to figure out what she's going to need and how much time will have to be dedicated to the baby takos (at least, she assumes they're babies based on how they act). "I'm going to need more formula… I'm going to need a whole nursery at that."
Despite the massive hassle this is no doubt to be, the thought of not caring for the takos never crosses her mind.
###
The alarm isn't all that loud, but it pains her nonetheless. Her eyes crack open and she forces herself to sit up, head swimming.
Every two hours. That's the standard. Babies need to be fed every two hours, no exceptions. No matter how exhausting it is.
It hasn't even been two full days, but it's a routine Amelia is used to. Get up off the couch, prepare the formula, try to clean herself as it heats (usually meaning a bathroom break or changing clothes) and then feed the babies.
They're still uncooperative, but not as much as they were the first time. They still shuffle away from her and cling to their siblings around her, but don't fight so much when she manages to get them in her hand and the syringe in front of their mouths. Combine that with needing to maintain her garden and make a living (even if her expenses are lower than most others'), and that doesn't leave her with any free time.
The takos' living space has been changed around a bit. She's moved them to a smaller box (a shoe box actually) for easier transport because they frankly don't seem to need a lot of space, and the addition of a lid is useful for keeping them in the shade or safe when she takes them outside with her, as well as generally giving them privacy. The shoebox is in turn layered with a towel that she's made sure to glue to the walls as well so they don't have to feel the rough cardboard, and a small stuffed animal (a rat) in case they start needing something to play with or teeth on. So far that hasn't been an issue, but she'd rather take pre-emptive steps than reactionary ones.
She's largely kept them on the living room table so far while she tries to decide what the heck she's supposed to do with them. They likely need a larger living space (a wild guess, but most creatures need more space than you'd expect), but she doesn't have a convenient place to keep them contained and also safe at the same time, and it's right next to the couch where she's sleeping until further notice to keep close to the babies.
Ame takes a second to make herself look less horrible. She needs the takos to trust her, and she can't do that if she looks like death itself. She needs to be able to smile at them and not growl because she's exhausted and just wants to go back to sleep.
With a syringe of formula ready, she cautiously opens the top of the box to find a dozen pairs of (closed) eyes staring up at her. No longer are the takos huddled in the corner, instead crowding near the stuffed rat in the middle.
At least they don't cry out when she takes one of them anymore. The tako in question squirms and tries to get away, but settles once she has the syringe in front of its mouth.
Feeding has miraculously cut down from half an hour to only about ten minutes. The takos' resistance feels more token than anything. They're too eager for food to fight her for long.
One, two, three, four…
She already has it down to muscle memory, which she's glad for because she's too tired to think about this.
Five, six, seven, eight…
Tako number eight has twitchy flaps on its head as it eats. The flaps are standing on end like a rabbit's ears when on alert; vibrating with every little mouthful of formula it swallows.
Nine, ten, eleven, and… twelve.
The last tako falls over when she removes the syringe from its mouth; laying face-down in her hand. It squirms to its feet (tentacles?) a moment later, but is wobbly in doing so.
"Milk drunk." Ame thinks to herself while carefully depositing number twelve into the box. She gently herds the loopy takos into a group (because a few of them have flopped away from the others) before closing the lid again.
With the babies fed for now, Ame sets the timer on her phone again and rushes to get something done. She has a garden to tend and a nursery to buy supplies for.
(Granted she still has no idea what sort of supplies she's going to need, but that's aside from the point.)
For now, she deals with the garden. She's started working in segments because she simply doesn't have time to do the whole garden at once when she has to feed the babies every two hours.
Weeding in the name of the game today. A tedious task for any gardener, but a familiar one. It's worst the first time around, and as long as you keep on top of it after that it's not too bad. Her vegetables and fruits take priority because they actually feed her, but she should reasonably be able to address everything in a day with very careful scheduling.
The sun stings her eyes and makes her slight headache all the worse, but she pushes through it to get her work done. It's not a choice. This is her livelihood.
Apple tree first, then the carrot patch, then cucumbers. Those are the main ones; the most numerous. She has a few other smaller patches for variety, but carrots and cucumbers are her mainstays.
No accounting for taste, but that's what the apples are for.
(She wonders if the takos will enjoy veggies…)
Her alarm goes off before she's done, so she leaves her tools where they are. She set this for alarm half an hour before the babies' next meal for a reason. There's something important she realizes she really should have done beforehand, but was too panicked to consider.
The babies need to be washed. They were huddled in the dirt underneath twigs when she found them, and they're probably still messy. The only problem is how to wash them. They're tiny and she doesn't know if they can actually breathe underwater, so she's taking precautions.
Preparations are rather simple: a towel, a shallow bowl, a cup of warm water, an eyedropper, and the softest washcloth she could find.
With a sigh, she readies herself, sets out her materials next to the shoe box, and then carefully pries open the lid.
She must have interrupted in the middle of something, because the takos are not all huddled together like they usually are. Half of them are dozing against the stuffed rat, two are trying to climb it (to no success), and three are in the corner of the box in a little triangle facing each other.
Maybe they're already used to the two hour schedule and specifically huddle up for it?
The intrusion of light into their shelter, as well as her presence, has all the takos freezing in place and turning their heads towards her.
"Sorry to interrupt." Ame says as softly as she can while taking a quick count of the takos she can see: eleven. There should be twelve. Where is it hiding?
A quick nudge of the rat reveals the last tako curled up beneath it. It looks more like a marble than an octopus, though with her disturbing its sleep it slowly unfurls and lets out a yawn… that promptly sets off all the other takos, making them yawn too.
"Sorry." Ame repeats sheepishly. "But you all need a bath."
A few of the takos tilt their heads. Most of them are still waking up, and are rubbing their eyes with their little tentacles.
Amelia opts to start with the takos that are more awake. She carefully extracts one that is trying to climb the rat and places it in the middle of the bowl. It leans forward, looking down at the bowl's surface and poking at its reflection while inspecting this new surface.
It doesn't notice the eyedropper until she's deposited a dollop of water on its head. The tako immediately tries to shake it off, shuddering its whole body and causing the water droplet to break apart and speckle the bottom of the bowl with water. Still, at least it got the tako wet.
The washcloth is met with a squeak of indignation as Ame very carefully rubs the tako's head, then flaps, then back, then face. That might sound simple, but it's much more difficult than it might seem when you have to handle a squirming baby alongside it. Getting the underside of the tako is the most difficult part, as Ame doesn't exactly feel comfortable flipping them onto their head. Instead, she has to gently coax the tako onto its back and keep it there while cleaning around its protesting tentacles.
With all that done, she moves the tako onto the towel which she has arranged into a little nest-like shape so the babies don't crawl away and can nestle into the sides for warmth and to dry themselves.
The next few takos are much the same, and protest the water in various ways. One of them tries to wipe the water off its head with its tentacles, and another one of them freezes and (accidentally?) balances the water droplet perfectly between their flaps like a little hat. They also squirm when she uses the washcloth, though they don't squeak as much.
Tako number six offers a slightly different reaction. Rather than shudder or freeze it pancakes itself against the bottom of the bowl when the water droplet hits.
Amelia panics. The water is now covering the tako, and she doesn't know if it can breathe underwater! With shaky fingers she snatches the washcloth and dabs the water off the baby, and a moment later the tako un-flattens itself and shakes off the rest of the water.
"Don't scare me like that." She whispers to the baby.
The baby was rubbing their eyes with their flaps, but stills at the sound of her voice. They turn to look up at her, flaps pressing against their head.
They don't fuss as she cleans them with the cloth, and Amelia can't help but feel a bit bad that their flaps are still pressed to their head like a frightened puppy. She doesn't know if the flaps mean anything, but she assumes they must.
"It's okay, just be careful next time." She whispers when placing it in the towel with its siblings.
The tako squeaks, and its flaps perk up a little bit.
It's the tenth tako that has a totally different reaction to the others. Rather than squirm and squeak and fuss it merely raises its head when water drops onto it, and when Ame starts using the washcloth it fully cooperates, even leaning into the cloth a bit. Its little flaps wiggle as she cleans it, and she finds herself smiling.
"You enjoy this, don't you little one?"
The tako makes a soft cooing noise and has her heart doing somersault. With hesitance, without the washcloth in hand, she strokes its head with a finger between the flaps, and the flaps redouble their wiggling to the point it looks like the baby is trying to fly with them.
(They feel like silk to the touch. Smooth, soft, and squishy.)
When she deposits tako number ten (she really can't tell them apart; she's absolutely not going to be able to tell which tako this is in a few minutes, and that hurts a bit. It feels like a failure on her part), the other takos in the towel are staring at her.
"You…" She taps number ten on the head, ignoring the others for just a moment. "Your name is Droplet from now on, okay?"
Droplet squeaks. The other takos seem agitated by this, and also start squeaking at her.
"I'll put you back in the box in a few minutes, be patient…" Ame mumbles, moving on to eleven and twelve.
Eleven and Twelve go by without much issue, though they're even more vocal than the rest. Ame puts away her various bath items… and then goes about preparing more formula, because it's time for the takos to eat again.
While the formula heats, Ame takes another quick check on the takos inside the towel. She's already lost track of Droplet because all the takos have gathered near the edge of the towel and look up at her in unison as she peeks over the edge.
"Are you all dry?" She asks, despite knowing they can't understand her.
A chorus of squeaks are her answer.
After a moment of consideration and hesitation, Ame says. "...Droplet?"
A single squeak from a tako near the back of the ground. The relief that she feels is perhaps a bit extreme, but Ame can't help herself. The baby recognizes its name. She has a way to tell them apart now.
Feeding goes fine. She takes the babies one by one, checking that they're dry, and then feeds them and deposits the full and sleepy takos back into their box.
One of the takos stubbornly keeps its mouth latched onto the syringe, and she has to physically pry it off while trying to explain that it's not healthy to eat that much at once.
"Behave." She scolds the tako. It squeaks indignantly while she places it down in the box. "Don't argue with me!"
The tako squeaks again. Amelia fake-scowls and reaches down to poke the offending tako.
"You're a troublemaker."
With the takos fed, Amelia once more has time. Weeding. She needs to finish weeding.
The sun is already uncomfortably low in the sky by the time she finishes. Half the day felt like it was spent feeding the babies and napping. She got so much less gardening done than she would have on a normal day. She might not be able to sustain her garden if she keeps this up too long… but that's a problem to figure out later. The babies come first.
Half an hour before they need to be fed again. She can do that. She'll just take this half hour to rest before giving them another meal, then preparing for the night (where she'll have to wake up every two hours to feed them).
But right now, just rest her eyes for a moment. Just a moment…
###
"Wa!"
Ame has a splitting headache as she wakes up. She knows why. Dehydration. She hasn't been drinking as much as she should. Too busy weeding and feeding the babies. She's so tired…
"Wa! Wa! Wa!"
She needs to keep feeding them. She- OVERSLEPT!
Amelia abruptly sits up, which turns out to be a very bad idea as it makes her head swim more than it was already. The lightheadedness takes nearly a minute to pass, and her vision isn't clear until it passes.
"Waaa!"
The sounds of little cries fill her ears long before she can see; and when her vision clears she can see the baby takos have somehow escaped their box and gathered at the edge of the table, squeaking at her insistently.
"Sorry little ones." She mumbles, wincing at how her own efforts to speak make her head throb.
A chorus of 'wa's are her answer.
"I-I'll have your food in a moment." She says, squinting at her phone and powering through the pain its light causes her. "How long was I asleep?"
…
Ten Hours.
The babies have gone ten hours without feeding. Fuck. They need food now.
Standing up is a challenge, but she doesn't have much of a choice. She stumbles to the kitchen and manages to get roughly the right amount of formula in the bottle and that bottle in the microwave, and then she finds a cup and drinks one, two, then three glasses of water before it finishes heating, and then fumbles the feeding syringe out of the sink where she washed it before and fills it up while walking back.
The babies are not interested in food. When she reaches down to pick one up, they all latch onto her hand, using suction she didn't know they had to stick there and refusing to be coaxed off.
She's forced to put the syringe down as they start crawling up her arm. Trying to pick them off is useless, as they just stick to the fingers trying to pry them away and start climbing up her other arm instead.
There's nothing she can do to stop them. They crawl up her arm like extremely slow, adorable spiders until they reach her collarbone… at which point she can't actually see them, but she can feel them pressing against her neck, and feel little tickles as their flaps and tentacles rub against her, and when she eventually remembers she has a phone with a camera she can finally see how the takos have all nestled into the dip of here collarbone and are nuzzling against her neck.
It's with shaky hands that she runs her fingers over their heads and hears their chorus of chirps and coos. They're not dying. They're okay. They trust her. The babies- her babies, are safe.
"Only took two days for them to be mine, huh?" Ame thinks a bit deliriously. Her head still hurts, but it's helped by the purr of little takos against her neck giving her something to focus on. "They should still probably eat. Maybe don't need to as often."
It takes a great amount of reassurances and coaxing for her babies to allow themselves to be removed from her neck. The hungry one goes first, once more trying to get more food than it needs, stubbornly clinging to the syringe until Ame physically pulls it off.
"I'm calling you Nom." Ame grumbles, squinting at the baby she's holding in her hand. It's trying to jump and reach the syringe hovering over its head. "Because that's the sound-effect you'd have every time you eat, greedy little one."
Nom squeaks, still demanding more food.
"No."
"Waaa!"
"You can wait until…" Amelia checks the time again. "Lunch."
Nom pouts and stomps their little tentacles. Ame mollifies them with a gentle head rub with her thumb. Only then do they allow Ame to put them back in the box (which Ame realizes might not be enough to hold the takos anymore now that they figured out they can climb; oh Baelz that's going to be a nightmare in a few days…).
The rest of her babies cooperate with feeding entirely. There's no fussing or complaining beyond Nom except to insist they all get a rub on the head as well, which she provides.
After feeding her babies and getting them back into their box (She leaves the top open; closing it didn't stop them from escaping before, and this way she can actually see them) she finds some headache medicine… and promptly goes back to lying on the couch, because she feels terrible and at least wants to wait for the medicine to kick in before doing anything today.
Thankfully meals still make the babies sleepy, so Ame doesn't instantly have to deal with any takos climbing out of the box again just yet. It takes around five minutes for the medicine to properly kick in, but with her headache reduced to a dull throb instead of active pain she can finally sit up without her head swimming.
Gardening still has to be done, but she takes a water bottle with her this time, complete with ice cubes to keep it cool.
She's still forced to take more breaks than she'd like, but without the need to feed her babies every two hours (though she does check in routinely and start swapping out plushies to give them something new to do) she gets far more done, if not as much as she could usually manage.
Her babies do not seem concerned about climbing out of their box again; at least not yet. Though with their newfound mobility they have started to climb on top of whatever she puts in their box. One of them (Nom she suspects) constantly tries to eat whatever plushy she gives them for a few minutes before eventually deciding it isn't very edible.
"If you keep trying to eat the plushies I'm going to have to get things that are less fluffy." Amelia mumbles. She doesn't want them to accidentally eat some fluff and get it caught in their stomach.
That gets the tako to stop. They make a whining noise.
"...I'll buy you a chew toy, how about that?"
The tako perks up. "Wa!"
She can already tell she's going to spend way too much money on her babies.