Mikey grinned at what he'd produced. Karen made a beautiful fountain as a mermaid. Her clothes seemed to have vanished during the transformation, and her new larger breasts were clearly displayed. She was mounted on her pedestal in the middle of the fountain bowl lying on her stomach, her back arched to raise her torso up and her face looking slightly upwards. Her fish tail was curved up as well, the broad delicate fin at the end of the long scaled appendage frozen in the position it had been it when she had tried to wriggle away from him when he'd petrified her.
A strong stream of clear water spouted from between her lips, arching a foot into the air before splashing into the seven-foot diameter bowl surrounding her.
He admired his handiwork for a moment, thinking that she looked amazing. After a little while, though, he began to feel guilty and realised that he had to change her back. He did, after all, want her help.
Just as he was about to utter the words to restore her, he heard a siren. Looking down the road, he was in time to see a fire engine screech around the corner a couple of blocks away and roar towards him. It shot past, siren wailing, and disappeared in the direction of the middle of town. While he was staring after it, wondering where it was going, he heard his name called.
Looking around, he saw his friend Harry cycling rapidly towards him. As he passed, Harry shouted, "Mikey! The school's on fire!", and carried on, pedalling furiously.
Mikey stared after him in shock. The school? Wow. this was too good to miss. He ran and got his bicycle out of the garage, and took off down the driveway. As he passed the mermaid fountain, he realised he couldn't leave Karen like that, and shouted over his shoulder, "Be alive again." Not stopping to see the result, he followed Harry as fast as he could. Unfortunately, in his excitement, he hadn't thought the wording of his wish through very well.
Karen had heard everything, and had watched Mikey grab his bike andleave with despair. She didn't want to be stuck like this all day. From behind, she heard him shout back at her, and her heart leapt. He hadn't forgotten to restore her! She waited her re-transformation with eagerness, sufficiently glad to be turning back into a human to forgive him and not track him down and beat him senseless.
Her body tingled, and the grey stone color ebbed rapidly away. After a few seconds, though, she realised something was wrong, and recalled exactly what he'd said. "Oh, shit", she thought. Looking down at herself.
She was no longer made of stone, sure enough. Unfortunately, though, she was still a mermaid and still a fountain!
"God, I must look strange", she thought. That was true indeed.
Returned to flesh, her body was supple and toned. She still had no clothes, the transformation apparently having erased them. At the hips, her tanned skin merged into silver-blue scales, and instead of legs she had a long flowing fishtail, ending in a large translucent fin the best part of a yard across.
However, she wasn't JUST a mermaid. She was a mermaid fountain. Running her hands down her sides, she could feel that in the region of her lower belly and groin, a fleshy pedestal grew from her (or possibly she was growing from it), extending down a couple of feet before spreading out into a huge bowl shape. This bowl, 18 inches deep in water, was covered in skin and was evidently part of her body, since she could feel it.
The bowl was presumably fixed to the ground in some way, since when she wriggled around in horror it didn't tip over or even rock. She had a shrewd feeling it was in fact rooted to the ground like some weird kind of plant.
She realised even speaking was going to be a little difficult, since she had, in addition to all the other bizarre changes, a strong stream of water shooting from her mouth. She didn't seem to have any control over it, and guessed that there was some sort of biological pump sucking it from her bowl and pushing it up through her body.
Attempting to close her mouth merely made the water spout in two streams from her nose, and when in desperation she held that with one hand, the water shot out of her ears. "Oh, for God's sake, this is just silly!", she bubbled through her stream.
Fixed to the ground, she had no way of getting help. She fumed, and slapped her tail on the surface of her enclosing water in anger. The resulting splash giving her an idea, she turned her head to look back at her new appendage and began trying to use it to splash as much water out of her bowl as possible. Perhaps, if she could empty it, at least she wouldn't be streaming water out her mouth and could call for some sort of help.
Ten minutes of frantic tail-splashing later, she had successfully lowered the level of water in her bowl to only a couple of inches, and found that the stream from her mough had reducet to only a trickle, with lots of bubbles mixed in. "Better than nothing", she said through a mouthful of foam. However, looking down at a strange sensation from somewhere underneath her, she realised with a sinking heard that her bowl was sloly filling up again. Her guess of roots was undoubtedly correct, and they were sucking water from deep in the ground and into her bowl.
Within minutes she was spouting full-force once more.
"Fuck. What am I going to do now?", she mumbled.
