Octavia and the Eight Pyjama Legs

Octavia was an octopus, which meant she had eight legs, which meant that getting ready for bed took her eight times as long as anyone else in the sea.

Tonight it was taking even longer, because tonight Octavia could not decide.

She had eight pairs of pyjamas. Her favourite was the stripy ones. But her favourite was also the spotty ones. And the ones with the little fish. And the yellow ones, and the soft lavender ones, and the ones with the moons, and the ones that had been her sister's, and the ones that were slightly too small but felt like a hug.

"Just pick one," said her dad, from the sea-cave doorway.

"I'm picking," said Octavia.

She put on the stripy ones. She looked in the mirror, which was a very shiny shell. She took them off. She put on the spotty ones. She took them off. She put on the stripy top and the spotty bottoms, and looked, and felt that the fish ones were being left out, and took everything off and sat in a heap on the sand.

"Octavia," said her dad. "The moon is already up."

"I know," said Octavia. "That's what makes it hard."

And then she had an idea. It was the kind of idea that only an octopus can have.

She picked up the stripy pyjamas and put one leg of them on one leg of her. Then the spotty ones, on the next leg. Then the fish ones. Then the yellow. Then the lavender, the moons, her sister's, and the too-small ones, which went on the eighth leg with a bit of a squeeze.

Octavia looked in the shell.

Eight legs. Eight pyjamas. Nobody left out.

"Perfect," she said.

Her dad looked at her for a long moment. Octavia was stripy and spotty and fishy and yellow and lavender and moony and sisterly and slightly squeezed, all at once, and she looked like a drawer that had been turned upside down and then taught to smile.

"You look," said her dad carefully, "very comfortable."

"I am," said Octavia. And she was.

She got into bed, which was a soft dip in the sand under a big flat rock, and tucked her legs in one at a time, which took a while, because every leg wanted to be on top. In the end they arranged themselves in a sort of pile, stripes on spots on fish on yellow, and the pile went still.

"Dad," said Octavia from somewhere in the middle of it, "which ones are your favourite?"

Her dad thought about it. He was a careful octopus and he knew a trick question when he heard one.

"The ones you're asleep in," he said.

Octavia tried to work out which ones those were, and while she was working it out, all eight of her legs went heavy, and the pile of pyjamas rose and fell, rose and fell, the way a pile of pyjamas does when the octopus inside it has stopped deciding anything at all.

Her dad switched off the glow of the little lamp-fish, and the sea-cave went dark, and the only sound was the sea, going in and out, in and out, like one very large person breathing.

In the morning, Octavia woke up and could not remember which pyjamas had been the right ones. So she decided that was the answer, and wore all eight again.