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The first time Marina realizes that Pearl is growing her hair out, she doesn’t say anything. The ring is fresh on her finger, not even a few weeks old, and Marina is all jitters and excitement. She’s new to all this—wedding planning, wedding customs—but Pearl is helping guide her as best she can.
Marina is sitting at her desk, tapping away at her computer, answering emails to producers, sound guys, their agent, when she realizes. Pearl is sitting across from her with headphones on, listening to a track that Marina slapped together a few weeks ago (and then promptly forgot about because of the proposal and all), and she has one hand against the earpiece, pressing it into her ear. That’s what makes Marina realize. She stares at Pearl in that familiar listening position and realizes that her hair is just a touch longer. It brushes just there, further down her arm, and Marina stares at it.
Pearl’s always been diligent about keeping her hair at the exact same length for the past two years, which is the only reason that Marina notices. Without fail, Pearl will reign her tentacles in when they get even an inch too long, and that’s been one of the only constants in their ever-changing lives. Pearl’s hair stays the same.
Marina stares and Pearl doesn’t notice because she has her eyes closed while she listens. She leans into the music and sways with it, causing her tentacles to move. They brush her shoulders and Marina watches, entranced, confused, curious.
She doesn’t say anything though, because Pearl opens her eyes, pulls one headphone off, and immediately starts jabbering about the track. “It’s sick, Rina. I have an idea for the bridge though...” Marina is pulled into brainstorming and she forgets all about it.
A month later and Pearl’s hair is at least three inches longer. Marina officially can’t ignore it now, but she also feels like it’d be rude to ask. It’s a silly thing to think because they’re open with each other and don’t keep any secrets, but Marina feels like it’s not her place to question Pearl’s hair choices. After all, Pearl has never once commented on Marina’s decisions with her own tentacles, even during the massive growth period after they first met. She’s always respectfully expressed her admiration, so Marina wants to do the same.
One night, late, in the dark, when Pearl is half asleep in Marina’s arms, Marina buries her face in Pearl’s hair just to smell her, just to help ground herself after the whirlwind month they’ve had of wedding planning and work and concerts, and Pearl chuckles and mutters, “Do you like it?”
Marina pulls back just enough, so she can see Pearl’s face. “Like what?”
Pearl’s eyes are clearly too heavy for her to open, so she must be talking from the space between dreams and wakefulness. “My hair. I’m doing it for you.”
Marina can’t make sense of that. She stares at Pearl’s face, trying to derive some kind of meaning out of her smooth, relaxed features, but then Pearl snuggles into the pillow and Marina sees the exact moment when she falls all the way into sleep. Marina follows not long after.
In the morning, she forgets all about it and doesn’t ask.
Six inches later and Marina officially feels like she’s being played. Pearl parades around the house and throws it over her shoulder, stands in their bathroom mirror with an elastic band between her teeth and tugs it up into a ponytail, drawing her arms so high above her head that her shirt rides up and exposes the milk white expanse of her stomach, and when she hugs Marina over the back of the couch, wrapping her arms lightly around Marina’s neck, Marina is veiled in hair, curtained by it, surrounded.
“I can’t wait until it reaches my knees,” Pearl says one day, happily, staring at herself in the mirror. “It should be long enough then.”
Marina, with her own long hair knotted up on top of her head, doesn’t know what to say because she’s just so confused. She makes a small noise, neither positive or negative, a gentle mm that’s more of an acknowledgement of hearing than anything, and Pearl squints at her in the mirror.
“What’s up, Rina? You don’t like it?”
There’s something there, just behind her voice, an edge that could be upset or impatience or anger, and Marina quickly waves her hands to diffuse it.
“No! It’s just different! I’ve never seen it this long before.”
Pearl smiles then, a small thing that lifts Marina’s hearts just to see. “Well, you’ve got such a head start on me! I’ve gotta catch up!”
Marina still doesn’t know what that means, but at this point she’s too nervous to ask.
On the street, people don’t need to see Marina’s ring to know. Of course, this isn’t surprising, considering how all-over social media and gossip mags they are right now. What is surprising is how often people approach just to express admiration for Pearl’s hair.
“It’s growing out nicely,” one shopkeep says while they’re waiting for their lunch order. Marina, preoccupied with messages on her phone, doesn’t initially compute that statement, but then Pearl replies.
“Mm! It’s going a lot faster than I thought. This was the only thing I was dreading about the whole process, but I’m actually enjoying it!”
Marina can’t express her confusion in words anymore. Instead, she just feels like her brain is frozen, or trying to function while submerged in the thickest ink imaginable. She can only watch, wide eyed, as the woman behind the register looks at Pearl’s tentacles with open, happy glee. “I was the same way. It’s the most satisfying feeling in the world when they reach past your lower back. Just wait.”
Marina feels like she’s being shaken around, boggled, gob smacked. She can’t think as Pearl hands over her card to pay and she definitely can’t get her mouth under control when the shopkeep turns to her and asks, “Are you growing yours any longer? They’re already plenty long, but I know quite a few people who wanted them all the way to the floor.”
“Uh... Hmmm... I... Uuuuuhhh?” is all Marina can manage, and Pearl looks at her with a critical, narrowed expression. She must see something on Marina’s face, something desperate that screams help me! because she chuckles and grabs Marina’s hand.
“She’s leaving them. She’s ready!”
The shopkeep grins at them, huge and delighted. “Well, congratulations to you both. I know it’s going to be lovely!”
Marina accepts her sandwich with numb hands and feels slightly sick, like she’s missing some cultural context that she desperately needs. She looks at Pearl and Pearl, with her hair piled up on her head, grins up at her, happy as she’s ever been.
Eventually, Pearl catches on. It takes a while, but one evening, as they’re watching a dumb rom-com over takeout, something clicks in her and she throws her chopsticks down.
“Oh!” she cries. “You’re an octoling!”
Marina, tense because of the sudden loud sound, feels her face screw up into a shocked, incredulous expression. “Yeah...” she says slowly. “I am... You knew that. Pearlie, are you okay—”
“I’m fine! You don’t get it! You don’t get why I’m growing my tentacles out!”
Marina trusts Pearl with her life, with her secrets, with her past, and with her future, but something about that makes her feel red hot with shame, as if Pearl is judging her. She looks down at her food and digs around, looking for something she can’t find.
Pearl must see her embarrassment because she lays a hand on Marina’s arm. “Hey,” she says, quiet, like she’s talking to a startled bird, “it’s okay. I’m sorry. I should’ve realized earlier.”
Marina shrugs and pokes at a piece of chicken with her chopsticks. “I just figured it was something you wanted to do.”
“Rina...” Pearl lets out a small chuckle. “I thought you knew... After all the crappy rom-coms we’ve watched and yelled at together...”
Marina looks up, squints at Pearl, and then to the movie that’s still going, quietly, on her laptop. On screen, the girl, betrothed to a boy she’s realizing she’s not in love with, has tentacles down to her mid-thigh. The boy, sitting across the table from her, looks almost the same, except his are pulled back and away from his face. Marina stares, frustrated, as they begin to argue, and she loses all meaning as their speech speeds up; all she can focus on is their hair.
“It’s like this.” Pearl reaches over and smacks the spacebar to pause the movie. On screen, the two are glaring at each other. Pearl points at the girl’s hair. “We grow our tentacles out when we’re engaged... It’s so that during the ceremony we can wrap them around our partner, especially during the vows. It creates this connection and you cradle each other close and... It’s a way to show that we’re a unit and we’ve been doing it since forever... I suck at explaining but trust me—it’s huge.”
Marina looks away from the movie and at Pearl’s face. She’s blushing hard, avoiding Marina’s eyes, and her tentacles have fallen forward so that they’re hiding part of her face. Marina feels her brain pick back up, chugging like a train, as she computes all this new information. That’s... That’s so much sweeter than she expected. That’s... She knows that inklings, on the whole, are an emotive, expressive species who are often overcome with grand waves of affection, but this is something else entirely. This is something ancient, traditional, an expression of an all-consuming love that everyone can read and understand.
And Pearl threw herself into it immediately. The second Marina said yes, she gave up on her careful tentacle maintenance and fell, headfirst, into tradition, into this performative, ancient ritual, just to ensure that their marriage was perfect and so that everyone could see how much she was dedicated to Marina and to getting this right.
“Oh,” Marina breathes. She feels her face split in two in a small, dawning smile. Pearl has never been this dedicated to tradition; in fact, she usually scoffs at anything that remotely looks like it’s been passed down for generations, because, to her, rules and customs are always meant to be broken, to be challenged.
“So... Yeah,” Pearl mutters. Now she’s the embarrassed one. “That’s why. I... I know it might seem silly but it’s... I wanted to show you how much you mean to me. I wanted to surround you with my tentacles because I love it when you do that to me and—”
“Pearlie...” Marina grabs her hand, squeezes once, just to reassure her. “That’s... so sweet!” She pulls Pearl’s hand up and lays a small kiss across the back of it. “I... I don’t know what to say.”
Pearl sniffles once, like she’s trying not to cry, and that strikes Marina right between the eyes. “Ain’t gotta say nothin’. I’m just sorry you didn’t know until now! All this work and you just thought I was jerkin’ you around!”
Marina laughs and leans over so she can plant a small kiss on Pearl’s lips. “You’re so soft sometimes. I love it.”
Pearl grins then. “I’ll show you soft!” She wraps her arms around Marina’s neck and drags her down again, deepens the kiss. Her tentacles surround them, brush against Marina’s own in places where they’ve never touched before, and it sends a little thrill through her body.
“Besides,” Pearl mutters against Marina’s lips. The vibrations of it make Marina hum. “I want everyone to know. I want them all to know that we’re getting married!”
Marina laughs. “Oh, I think they know.”
In the end, Pearl’s tentacles end up huge and near the floor. Never one to back down from a challenge, she only starts to manage them when they begin to hinder her dancing. Marina lets her own grow out a foot just to join in the fun and to make her own intentions quite clear to anyone who’s watching them. It brings Pearl immense joy when she finally realizes, rather belatedly, and she tackles Marina into a hug when she finally puts it together.
Pearl smiles more as they get closer to the day, never complains of headaches or heavy hair, and she accepts compliments with absolutely zero grace. She’s perfectly aware that she looks like a girl on the verge of marriage and it lights her up from the inside, puffs her up like a bird, and she preens whenever anyone tells her that she’s glowing and that her hair is beautiful. She loves being in love and she loves how obvious it is on her when she’s got her hair like this. She loves Marina and she loves being able to telegraph that without saying it.
Marina, for her part, stands tall next to Pearl and wears her hair down all the time. Usually, when they’re out casually, she pulls it back, but in the run up to the wedding, she wears it, long and curling, down her back or over her shoulder, so that she and Pearl are a matched set. It brings Pearl so much joy and she beams up at Marina every chance she gets, squeezes her hand hard, and, eventually, kisses her when she thinks no one’s watching. (There’s always someone watching.)
The night before, they cuddle up in bed together and their tentacles wrap around each other. It’s still an exciting and new sensation for Marina, because Pearl’s short hair didn’t have enough surface area to pull it off well, and she thinks she’s going to miss it.
“Miss what?” Pearl asks, sleepy. She’s got her head on Marina’s chest, listening to her hearts, and one hand is drawing small shapes and letters into the skin of Marina’s stomach just under her shirt.
Marina, who didn’t realize she spoke aloud, feels her face heat up. “Nothing...” She sighs and looks down, looks at Pearl’s hair, so long, like a cape. One of the tentacles is wrapped lightly around Marina’s leg, while another is currently caught up in a dance with Marina’s longest.
“I’m not gonna cut it for a while,” Pearl says, as if she can read Marina’s mind. She looks up in time to see Marina’s brow furrow. “Don’t get me wrong, I love it short, but it’s nice to... Y’know. Do stuff like this. And everyone stares at us and it just makes me feel so good...”
Marina chuckles. “You like attention.”
“No! Well yes... But I like it when everyone knows in an instant that we’re together. I love you and I want everyone to know I love you!”
Marina’s been smiling so much lately that she thinks the muscles in her face are getting stronger, but the grin that conjures itself is so big it makes her cheeks hurt. “It’s a good thing we’re getting married tomorrow, huh?”
Pearl sits up, almost bonking her head into Marina’s chin. “We are! Rina! We’re getting married tomorrow!”
Marina throws her head back and laughs. “Yeah, we are. Did you forget?”
“No! I just! Wow! I can’t fuckin’ believe it!”
Marina hugs her close, throws her arms around Pearl’s body with its heavy curtain of hair, and squeezes her as tight as she can. Pearl lets out a little high-pitched squeak and Marina feels one of her tentacles loop itself around one of Pearl’s. “I can’t wait,” Marina mutters.
“Me either.” Pearl cranes up and plants a kiss on Marina’s jaw, because that’s all she can reach. “I can’t wait to wrap you up completely.”
Marina laughs again and buries her face in the top of Pearl’s head. She really, truly, can’t wait to experience that tradition, to feel so encompassed by Pearl that nothing else will matter, nothing else will exist.
“I can’t wait,” Marina repeats, and she desperately means it.