When the tide slipped away that morning, it forgot one small thing on the mossy rock: Pip.
Pip was an octopus about the size of a plum, orange as a sunrise and freckled with tiny white spots. She had enormous dark eyes with long lashes, and eight curly arms that never quite uncurled, no matter how hard she tried.
“Oh,” said Pip, looking around. “Oh dear.”
The sea was a silver line far below. Beside her, the blossom tree swayed, its little orange flowers nodding as if they’d seen this happen before.
Pip did what any sensible octopus would do. She worried. She worried about the sun, which was climbing. She worried about the gulls, which were not yet awake but surely would be. Most of all she worried about drying out, because an octopus without water is like a song without a tune.
Then something cold and round landed on her head. Plip.
Another landed on her arm. Plip, plip.
Mist was rolling in off the water, and it beaded on everything: on the moss, on the blossoms, and on Pip, until she sparkled like a jar of marbles. The drops slid down her arms and gathered in a hollow of the rock just beneath her, a puddle no bigger than a teacup.
Pip peered into it. A small orange face peered back, eyes wide.
“Hello,” said Pip.
The reflection said nothing, but it smiled when she did, and that was good enough.
All morning the mist kept coming, and all morning Pip kept the puddle company. She counted the drops on her own head (forty-one, and then she lost count). She taught her reflection to wave with all eight arms at once. She told it about the reef, about the crab who still owed her a shell, and about the time she’d hidden inside a teacup someone dropped overboard.
The moss listened too. The blossom tree leaned a little closer.
By afternoon the sea came back, the way it always does, creeping up the rocks in soft white ruffles. When the first wave washed over the rock, Pip let it lift her. She looked back once at the puddle, now just a part of the ocean again.
“Thank you,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure to whom: the mist, the moss, or the small orange friend who had looked so brave all day.
Then she curled her arms, the way she always did, and drifted home.
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