"Alright is that- where did Nom go?"
"Wa!" Say at least three of her babies at once while Droplet and Sunny play tug-of-war with a hand-towel that Pillow is napping underneath.
Amelia quickly glances around the table to find him, and as her hair swings around she notices a tiny shape holding onto the end of a few strands.
"N- wait, you're not Nom."
"Wuh!" The tako says, mouth still firmly attached to her hair. Their flaps wiggle happily at being found.
"Hair isn't to eat, little one." She admonishes, and gently squishes them between her fingers to get them to let go (a trick she's had to use more and more frequently as time goes on) before depositing them with their siblings. Some of them chirp at the tako that was just found, who chirps back excitedly. Maybe they're telling the others about their adventure, or what hair tastes like?
She ends up finding Nom on the underside of the table, taking advantage of their newly-found ability to stick to basically anything in order to try and eat one of the screws in the corner. As always, he whines when she pries him off his newest choice of chew toy.
"This is why you have actual toys, Nom." She scolds him, and puts him in the box with the others.
"Wa!" Nom protests.
"Don't argue with me. You can't eat everything."
"Waaa!" Nom insists, though this is cut short by one of their siblings- the tako that was eating her hair actually- promptly latching onto one of his flaps with their mouth and sparking a wrestling match.
"No biting your siblings." Amelia sighs, pushing the two of them apart with her fingers. This, of course, is taken as an opportunity by the other takos to latch onto her hands and try to join the 'game'. "Oi, stoppit."
Her babies do not, in fact, stoppit. It's only after she allows her hands to be 'defeated' and sit on the table unmoving for a bit that they make squeaks of victory and finally allow themselves to be coaxed off.
"Now, if you'll all cooperate." She says in a huff, pulling out the new item and setting it before them. "I need to weigh all of you. I probably should have been doing this before, but, well… I forgot."
"Wa." Sunny responds matter-of-factly in a muffled voice, as he is mostly covered in the towel he successfully won in his tug-of-war.
She starts with Pillow, doing her best not to disturb him too much as she coops him up and gently deposits him on the scale.
The scale then cheerfully informs her that Pillow's weight is… 500 milligrams. That's half a gram. She's not quite sure what she was expecting, but her babies weighing less than a paper clip was not it.
The result is mostly the same for the others, with maybe fifty milligrams of variance at most… except for one little baby that comes in at a paltry 250 milligrams. Even to the naked eye, Amelia can see they're just a little bit smaller than everyone else.
They otherwise seem fine. They're energetic and she doesn't remember them having a problem eating, so she tries not to worry too much.
"You're Marble." She tells the little one, who tries their best to jump at her finger to latch on but can't close the mere five centimeter gap. "Because you're small, round, and tough."
"Wa!" They protest, making another tiny jump. "Waaa!"
To her amusement, the others quickly rally behind marble and make a pyramid out of their bodies to help them get close enough to her finger to jump and stick on it, prompting all of them to cheer as Marble puffs up proudly.
"And you-" She says, picking out the tako that was nibbling on her hair, and then Nom, and now another of his siblings. "-are Nib, short for Nibble, you troublemaker."
"Wu." Nib responds, mouth firmly closed around Pillow's flap. Pillow, based on the fact he's still sleeping, hasn't noticed.
"Pillow is not food." She scolds, again prying Nib off and putting them down. "Behave."
"Wa…" Nib sulks, his flaps drooping. His unhappiness is quickly forgotten when Sunny starts another tug-of-war and he rushes to their side to help.
It's a good thing they have the attention spans of goldfish or she might have trouble keeping them occupied sometimes.
###
She finds them all huddled underneath their plushie. Even Pillow is awake despite how late it is.
Another flash of lightning illuminates the room, and her babies cower as the thunder cracks a moment later, eyes wide in obvious terror.
To be fair, the thunder was so loud it woke her up. She doesn't actually mind it all that much. She quite likes storms herself; she finds them soothing, and it saves her the trouble of watering her garden. She inherited the tendency of her uncle to sit near the window when it's storming just to watch it.
Tonight, however, she has other priorities.
"Come here little ones." She coaxes, sticking a hand in their box for them to gather on. They do so frantically; falling over each other to huddle in her hand.
She does a quick headcount to check they're all there before lifting her hand out of the box and making her way to the closet. With one hand she fishes out a towel, and then takes a seat near the window on a comfy chair with thick cushions and makes a little nest out of the towel in her lap, where she deposits her babies. She keeps one hand resting in the nest for them to huddle against if they're still feeling scared.
"I guess it's your first storm, huh?" She says, using her thumb to brush over their heads reassuringly. Their little faces are all pointed up at her even as they huddle, paying rapt attention in the dim light of the table lamp. "They're not as scary as they look, at least if you're inside."
Another flash of lightning brightens the room and her babies cower once more. Amelia makes a point of looking unaffected by the thunder that follows.
"Lightning can't do anything to you inside a house." She says calmly, gesturing to the window with her free hand. "And thunder is just a loud noise."
Her babies don't say anything. They're too petrified to speak.
"Lightning is actually the same thing that makes the lights work." She continues. "It's electricity. There's a bunch of fancy science reasons it happens during thunderstorms, but that doesn't really matter. Lightning is attracted to metal and tall things, so normally it hits trees and telephone poles or tall buildings."
One of her babies nods to show they're listening, which is just… so cute. She doesn't remember teaching them that.
"My uncle loves storms." She recounts, still running her thumb over their little heads. "When I was younger and the thunder woke me up, I would find him awake late in the night watching the rain fall. He wouldn't get up until noon the next day, but he always told me it was the best sleep he'd had in a long time."
Something flicks against her palm. Probably one of their flaps.
"I would sleep in his lap on those nights, kind of like you're doing now." She says, tracing the path of one single water droplet on the window with her eyes. "I was… four, I think, the first time that happened. Stopped doing it eventually when I was ten I think. Not because anything happened, I just thought I was too old for it. Was in too much of a rush to grow up."
Not that she can reasonably expect her babies to understand the concept of growing up too fast. Children never do, unless it happens.
"Maybe I should take you all to visit him at some point, or he might drop by." Amelia muses. "I should ask him. It's been a while."
She glances back down at the nest only to see that all of her babies are soundly asleep, curled against her hand.
"...goodnight little ones."
She sits and enjoys the rain until she too falls asleep.
###
Takos can swim.
She learns it by accident, when Droplet manages to latch onto her shirt before she steps out to garden and she eventually turns around at the sound of squeaking to find them playing in the puddles left over by yesterday's storm.
Droplet is easily light enough to bob on the surface of the water, or even skate on the surface tension like a water spider.
It might be adorable if it didn't inspire such panic in her to see one of her babies where she didn't expect them to be. She drops her trowel without even thinking about it while throwing off her gloves and scooping Droplet out of the puddle in a hurry.
"What are you doing here?!" She asks, eyes wide, breathing heavy.
"W-Wa?" Droplet responds, flaps sticking straight up in alarm and their body slightly scrunched in on itself.
"It's- You-" Amelia takes a breath. Droplet is fine. She needs to calm down. "You can't be out here without me knowing, Droplet."
"Wa?" Their flaps droop as they tilt their eyes up at her pitifully.
"There are animals out here." She says in a hard whisper as she quickly moves back inside. "You could get lost, or stuck, or hurt."
"Wa…?" Droplet curls in on themselves, voice barely audible. They've started shaking.
"You can't do that." She presses. "Okay?"
Droplet quivers.
"OKAY?" She repeats a bit more forcefully than she'd like.
With a frightened flinch, Droplet nods. She deposits them back with their siblings (who are staring up at her in alarm) and Droplet instantly folds their tentacles up over their face and curls into a ball.
Her throat goes dry as she realizes what she's done and she reaches out on impulse to comfort them… only for her other babies to nervously squish themselves low, avoiding her.
She wrenches her hand back and marches her way outside, fighting the burning in her eyes. She had a reason, and she knows her babies will be fine. This is just part of teaching them what's okay and not… but that doesn't make it any more pleasant and she definitely overreacted.
Amelia grimaces while sliding her gloves back on. Was it right to leave? She doesn't want to loom over them if they're scared. Maybe giving them space was the right move?
Her trowel finds the root of a stubborn weed and she yanks it out with unnecessary force. She throws it in her weed bin and moves on to the next one.
How can she keep her babies safe outside without needing the insect cage? They're too small to defend themselves, and she doesn't know if they'll ever be big enough, but they clearly want to explore. They must go outside in their natural environment.
Maybe she needs a greenhouse? Or bird netting? An enclosed 'outdoor' space for them to explore…
She rests her head on her trowel. She's not ready for this. She's not ready for any of this, but she has to figure something out. It's not like they're going to stop growing or get less curious any time soon.
Amelia forces herself to wait half an hour before going back in so her babies have some time away from her and so she can actually get composed before she speaks with them again.
With a deep breath, she steels herself and opens their little box to look tentatively over the edge.
A dozen pairs of eyes- closed of course- are already fixed on her when her vision crests the edge of the box enough to see them.
She stares at them, and them at her. No one makes a sound. After a minute of silence they start crawling up the side of the box towards her and she pulls back, lowering her head until it's resting on the table and her babies are peering down at her from the ridge of the box.
"Wa." Pillow says, extending a tentacle curiously. "Waaa?"
"Wa. Wa-a." Nom adds, tilting his head. "Wa? Wa."
"Wa wa wa…" Nib mumbles, flaps twisting in confusion.
"Wa!" Marble chirps, determinedly climbing on top of Pillow to get a better view and squeaking for attention. Pillow doesn't even react to it. "Waaa!"
Sunny doesn't say anything, instead wiggling their flaps happily as if nothing is wrong.
There's also her other babies that she doesn't have good names for yet. The ones that squished himself to the ground when she put water on him, another baby that likes to sit on tall things like her head all the time, and a few others whose quirks she hasn't quite figured out.
The last baby to show themself is Droplet, who nervously peeks around Nom to watch her. "...wa."
"Wah." Amelia responds, looking pitifully up at them. She doesn't quite know what she's doing. Begging forgiveness maybe? She certainly feels like she should. "Wah…"
Nib is the first to take initiative, crawling down the side of the box and falling halfway and landing upside-down, causing him to flail his tentacles for a moment until he can right himself.
"Waaa?" Nib asks, crawling up to her face. He pokes her chin and, after she doesn't react, crawls up her face until he gets to her nose. "Waaa!"
He then promptly tries to eat her nose, causing her to snort in amusement. "Nib…"
"Wu!" Nib says, mouth still stuck on her nose, his tentacles patting her face and his flaps wiggling slowly. "Wuuu!"
It's at this point that it clicks in her head what Nib's 'biting' actually is. He's not trying to bite at all. "You're not supposed to clamp down little one. You're supposed to pucker your mouth."
"Wu?"
"Like this." Amelia gently pinches him off and demonstrates. She brushes her lips over his little body, showing him how to properly give a kiss, because that is what he's been trying to do. "Gentle."
"Waaa…" Nib whispers, and carefully presses his mouth to her nose. "Awa?"
"Yes, like that."
Her other babies have crawled their way down in the time she was teaching Nib. Her eyes quickly move to Droplet, who shuffles nervously and looks down when their eyes meet.
With a sigh and brings a hand down… and pokes Droplet's head, getting a yelp out of them and an angry baby tako puff.
"I love you Droplet." She whispers, causing Droplet to deflate. "I was just worried. Are you okay?"
"Wa…" Droplet says, rubbing the table with one of their tentacles. They nod.
"Good." She strokes their head with her finger, which they lean into after a moment. "Just tell me next time you want to go out, okay?"
"Wa."
"WAAA!" Her other babies cry out, not happy with Nib and Droplet getting all the attention. With a sigh and smile she turns to them. She wouldn't want to leave anyone out.
She has to spend until lunch time playing with them until they're satisfied, but she wouldn't have it any other way.