changing

Content Notes: none

Deep underwater, in the aphotic zone, there lived an octopus. It was small for its kind and translucent like glass - not that it knew what that was. Its eight arms and web, adorned with small luminescent spots, drifted in the slow currents of its home. It ate when it was hungry, played when it was bored, slept when it was tired and sometimes, it even dreamed.

One day, it was riding a stream - life so far down could be boring and it had already explored all the nearby caves and crevices - reveling in the velocity and the feeling of water speeding by. Full of curiosity it stayed there, accelerating through the dark, hunting for new experiences and knowledge, even as it noticed the changes in pressure and temperature. Even as it became… brighter. Too bright. That, finally, sent out alarm signals through its nervous system but it was too late. Its arms were too weak to pierce the barrier between the rushing stream and the outside, no matter how desperately it reached out. There was no one around to see the way it signaled for help: not its flailing arms, its blinking lights or its subtle changing color patterns. It felt alone and stuck, at the mercy of the water that was normally its home.

Thrown from side to side, tossed around like a ball, it completely lost its orientation and when the current finally spit it out, it had no idea where it was. Just that everything was wrong. The water was too warm, too light - the decreased pressure threatening to burst its organs and rapture its skin. Pain flashed through its body, lighting up every neuron throughout its arms and brain. It was the worst sensation the octopus had ever experienced. It wanted to flee, to dive back into the deep darkness but it was unable to move. Gradually, the pain lifted as its body adapted: its skin became tougher, the internal pressure lighter and its eyes opened wide. Everything was bathed in twilight - the surface still far away but close enough for dim sunlight to reach down - the seafloor studded with bright corals and interesting rocks, the water alive with fish, shrimp and other creatures. This was so far away from home, it made the octopus dizzy, even before the world erupted into chaos. A solid wall of fish flew towards it, who tried to swim away, in vain. It was pressed against the writhing bodies, its arms tangled between scales and a strange, webbed structure. Again it felt itself adapt, but much more radical. It changed its form and copied the bodies that were around it. Its arms coiled together tightly, mimicking the form of a fish. Its skin resembled scales, slits opened up in its neck as its head elongated. It became one with the mass of fish, hoisted towards the light and through the sky.

The fisherboat lifted the net out of the ocean and dumped the writhing sea creatures into a waiting basin of salt water. The octopus, confused and terrified, watched as some of the fish around itself were sorted out, so it changed again and again to look like the ones left. It was a survival mechanism. To copy. To adapt. To pretend. It was instinctual and subconscious. Something it had no control over, because if it did, it wouldn't be fast enough. On some level, it knew all that but it still hated the feeling. To be pressed into a form that wasn’t its own, that it didn't choose, that it was forced to inhibit until the danger passed. Until it could go home.

It might have been safer, but it pained and confused the octopus deeply. Caught in a never-ending loop of metamorphosis - tissue tearing apart and coming together, connecting differently, forming something foreign - it drifted further and further away from any feeling of self. The shapes it took grew bigger and more complex, finally arriving at something that had no trace of its former body. So when the boat sailed into port and the fishermen started to unload the crates of fresh fish, one of the men made a surprising discovery. Behind one of the boxes lay a child, with big dark eyes and a bluish tint to its almost translucent skin. It didn't say a word as the men took off his jacket and carefully laid it over its shoulders. He tried to speak to it, but it gave no response. He called the others, but no one knew where the child came from, so after some discussion he decided to take it home, to his family.

The octopus didn't know what to do as it was picked up and carried away from the water. It wondered if the danger would ever pass or if it would be stuck in the body of a child forever.