Octopod
Octopods can be made of both cotton and acrylic yarn. Octopod eyes can be either safety eyes or sew-on. Octopods can be made of a solid color, or can be made as a stashbuster; one octopod made of several different colors.
Your public school cafeteria is probably the last place you’d expect to find something unnatural and strange. Something other than the food, anyway. There were other reasons Sahar didn’t like the cafeteria, but that was the main one. It was so boring, and normal, and not strange. The exact opposite of her life.
If there was one thing everyone agreed about Sahar, it was that she was strange. Not necessarily bad strange, but strange. Able to look at a complex math equation and know the answer in as short a time as it took someone to read it aloud. She assumed, anyway. She’d never flinch if her siblings jumped out and tried to scare her. Although, that particular aspect might come from the fact that Sahar was mostly deaf. Which made it even more strange that she knew when her mom was turning the last corner to get home from work before even her older brother that had the best ears in the family.
Everyone agreed that Sahar was strange, and it was a comfort to her to find other strange things in the course of the day. Little reminders that she wasn’t the only thing in this big, wide world that wasn’t “normal.” But the only strange thing she’d ever found in the school cafeteria was the food, and she couldn’t imagine that was a comfort to anyone. Unfortunately, another strange thing about Sahar White was that she was the only one in her class not absolutely deafened by the old machines in the janitor’s closet off the cafeteria.
Sahar wraps her fingers around the handle of the vacuum and is turning to leave when a movement in her periphery catches her attention. It was small–probably a mouse. She turns to look, but sees nothing. Another movement from her other side. This time, she catches a flash of color that is most certainly not a color a mouse should be.
She lets go of the vacuum, and grabs a broom near the bristles. It isn’t the best weapon, but it’s the best makeshift defense strategy Sahar has. She creeps toward the spot she saw the movement, trying to quiet her footsteps. She nudges a bottle of window cleaner aside with the edge of the broom to reveal a small, light blue… something.
A something that blinks at her. The vibration of a surprised shout occurs in Sahar’s throat as she stumbles backward, running into the vacuum and falling to the floor on her butt.
The blue thing blinks at her, again. She feels a tickle in her mind, as though her temporal lobe had to sneeze. Just like she knows the answer to a math problem when she looks at it, she knows the tickle was a laugh, and knows the laugh came from the blue thing. Another puff of something across her mind, and the thing is asking her if she’s okay–that sounded like it hurt.
“What… what are you?”
The thing blinks at her again, and there’s another puff. She’s ready for it, this time, and can even pick out the tone of the words behind the puff. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. I see your mouth moving but I don’t have a way to–why am I explaining this? It’s not like you can understand me.”
Sahar’s fingers fly, explaining that she can, and does, understand.
The eyes on the little thing can’t change, but she can somehow see its surprise. “You can?!”
She nods, and her fingers repeat her earlier question.
“Oh. I’m an octopod.”
“An octopus?”
“No; octopod. We’re small–clearly–and not made like octopi.”
Sahar picks herself up off the floor and creeps closer. “Can I…” her fingers hesitate, “…pick you up?”
Again, the octopod seems to brighten, even though she can’t see anything really change.
“Please! And can you take us out of here?”
“…us?”
“Oh, yeah. There are several of us down here. We… aren’t tall enough to reach the doorknob.”
A laugh bubbles up in Sahar’s chest as she holds her hand out for the octopod to hop onto. “Right. I can understand that. How many is ‘several’?”
The blue octopod hops onto her hand, and this puff in her head is much stronger than the others–probably the equivalent of speaking louder. “Come on out! She’s nice!”
The light blue octopod hadn’t been lying; there are A LOT of octopods, in every color of the rainbow, and colors that aren’t in the rainbow but should be.
Sahar looks around at the group of octopods, suddenly glad they’re made of yarn and stuffing, because if they were made of anything else, she’s not at all sure how she’d carry all of them out of here.
Sahar sets the light blue octopod down, uncertainty leaking through her fingers. “I can’t take you all out, right now. But I can probably take one of you right now and sneak the rest of you all out in my backpack after school.” She’s pretty sure her mother would know what to do with them, at least.
The puff across her brain is excited and agreeable, so she slips the light blue octopod into her pocket and takes the vacuum out of the janitor’s closet, making sure to leave something in the door to keep it from closing and locking and rendering her a liar to a metric ton of tiny octopods.
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