Gabriel decided to go up. She wasn't sure what she was going to do yet, but she needed to know where she was. Her squiddy instincts were helping out with getting use to the aquatic terrain around her, but her earlier panic and transformation did nothing to tell her where she was at, not even an overall slope to guess nearby land from.
She made the motions to go straight up, glad her bodily movements were 1st nature at this point. Her instincts were warning herself not to go out of the water, but her human self wanted to at least get her eyes above surface, and did the equivalent of holding her fishy breathe since her gills were above where her human-side felt her "head" and eyes were at. She breached the surface, but not even her bodily knowledge could keep her body above water enough for her eyes to see anything, so she tried laying back into the water, and it worked. It wasn't a superb view of what was around her, her eyes still very close to the water, but having her new range and improved vision more than helped with trying to adjust all the time. That and being laid back in the water meant she could keep her gills in the water.
Well, she was color blind. She wasn't sure when she was down in the water, but up here she was pretty sure while look at the sky, cloud, and the boat drifting away. A cargo ship for sure now that she saw it from this angle. She thought about following it, but her squiddy knowledge knew enough a big predator...err boat like that would outpace her at the best of speeds. She had no idea where it was really going either. So she looked to the sun.
Well avoided turning an eye straight towards it. She knew about the sun setting to the west enough to tell direction, but it was around noon when she transformed, and based on its position and her lack of sun knowledge on both sides of her knowledge base, she would have to wait to see where it ended up setting to really know where to go, which was East she knew, opposite of where it would set. So she would need to wait. She didn't want to take the chance of going in a totally wrong direction.
So what now? She let her fall immerse fully in the water and let herself fall slowly while she thought. She reasoned to go hunt as she was hungry. Her squiddy side once again pushed her to looking for the deeps to go into an environment she was more use to, but her human side, her true side, overrode it to make due with what was around instead, reminding that she needed to be near the surface to keep track of the sun. Plus, the exercise would really let her get use to her body, even if the nature of the transformation meant she didn't really need to. She changed the direction of the top of her head and went down.
She got closer to the ocean floor, seeing coral, plants, and fishes of various sizes around her. Her squiddy knowledge couldn't really help her with any details, but at least it didn't feel totally alien. She absolutely dwarfed anything she came across. She really wanted to just stop and look at herself, but she pushed herself to take care of the hunger and selected a sizable, vertically oriented fish that her human side decided was silly looking, but both sides decided as a possible prey.
It wasn't silly enough to realize it was being hunted and tried to dart away, but she was far faster than it. Her squiddy side knew how she usually hunted, but this fish was too small for its usual tactics, luckily her human ingenuity came in for an idea. She did a quick flip to bring her tentacles to bear, but instead of going with her usual hunting tactic of using her 2 limbs to hook onto it like her squid side, she instead used her speed and all 10 of her limbs to get closer and just envelope it with the limbs and the main part of her body. There was no where to go, and it was an easy enough the motion to swallow it whole in her beak-mouth thing.
She crunched it, digested, and picked at her own mouth to make sure nothing got out. Her squid part wasn't thoughtful enough to really think how its own body worked, but it was confident to not care about eating it, bones, struggling, and all. Not that where was much struggling after the first crunch. Gabriel's human side though, found it delicious. Her squiddy side didn't care, but being happier about doing a normal part of her life helped her mentally. Finished up after a few minutes, she felt confidently sated despite how small the meal was.
The rest of her day was drifting around the general coral reef she was at, taking some opportunities to eat more and take in her body while she waited for the sun to fall. The hunting, drifting, and going to the surface reinforced how comfortable she was with her body. Every once in awhile she would do decidedly un-squiddy things to take in her body. She would feel up her own body with her tentacles, and even rubbers her own tentacles against each other, experienced and careful enough to avoid hooking on to herself. She even touched what her squiddy-side knew to be a sexual organ at the top of her head, feeling pleasure but not feeling safe enough to continue down that route, not to mention the squiddy side finding it completely alien. All males did was deposit sperm in it as far as it was concerned.
She could see well, and although she was color blind, she wasn't really seeing the world like some black-and-white television show. Her human side couldn't explain it, but her squiddy side could tell more differences on how everything looked around her, even finding out she could change her own skin colors a bit as a natural camoflage mechanism, but she did have a comfortable default and rarely did she have to camoflage outside of sensing the whales or when she did the equivalent of sleeping. She wondered what color she truly was.
She had hearing. It was similar to hearing muffled sounds across the wall of a house or environment. It really wasn't deafness, just more simple way of hearing, her human side figured. Neither side could really explain how the ocean water factored into it either.
Her touch was superb, feeling more details in the in the water flowing around that here squid-side was more than happy to help explain, if not through actual conversation. It wasn't helpful enough to eclipse her sense of sight, but where her hearing was lacking, her "feeling" the environment around more than helped, especially with her making adjustments with her movements.
She really couldn't really tell if she had a sense of smell, and her squiddy side was no help in helping with that scientific detail, as always. Maybe she had more going on with it with her sense of touch and taste then she thought. It was a sort of a vibe between being closer to the coral and plants, and when blood filtered out into the water if she was particularly messy with her kills.
Growing more bored, and not feeling comfortable enough with the position of the sun, she grew more experimentive. Having fun doing spins and other maneuvers like a dancer. Herding fish around. Even "catching" some fish, although avoiding using her hooks, and letting them go. Moving some rocks around and watching the flora and fauna go on with its life. Her two lives, even if the Squid's life was obviously fake, intertwined more and more that even when she came to having thoughts and decisions, it was within split seconds.
So time passed, and eventually the time came where she saw above surface, the sun dipping into the horizon. Although her humanside wasn't known for having a great sense of direction, her squiddy side more than made up for that aspect and kept a good straight path for this alien "east" direction her humanside cared so much about.
Eventually, Gabriel the really big female squid encountered...