"Maybe she's in the bathroom?" said Sarah.
"I don't think so," replied Jon. "There's a window in the bathroom." She moved through the room, looking around at various things. One caught her eye--a piece of paper in a narrow ray of multicolored sunlight shining through the window. Jon recalled that Zoe had been weighing the risks and benefits of going in the sun, and from what he saw the paper was Zoe's last message in case it didn't work.
"To Mom, Dad, Jon, Mikey, and anyone else:I'm going to try it. Going into the sun could be very bad, but it could also be harmless or even helpful, and it could mean not having to restrict my movements to nighttime. Despite what any of you guys think, being a Goth is a way to have fun, and never going out in the day is not fun. It's 7:15 and the sun is going to be shining through the window. Wish me luck...."
"She was here," said Jon. "I don't know what she turned into, but she was here, and she deliberately let the sun shine on her. Whatever she is now, it must be small. Can you scan for her. Mikey?"
"I don't think I'm that kind of robot. I don't see anything anyway."
"It could be anything. Pixie, mouse, bug... but it seems like most changes are big. I'm a lot bigger than a real slug."
"Maybe she's in the bathroom," said Sarah. "She could have turned into something that needs water."
"I don't know..." Jon's only other choice, really, was to keep searching Zoe's room, and pick up things and listen carefully in case Zoe had turned into a mouse or a flea and became the size of a real one like the guy who became a pixie, instead of keeping her mass like Jon did. "Oh, all right."
Jon slithered out, followed by Mikey and Sarah, and opened the bathroom door. There was a coating of bright orange translucent slime on the floor--nothing like Jon's slime trails--and a strange smell that was some kind of plant, or maybe a weird chemical. The bathtub was full of slime, a chunk of which was more opaque than the rest. Jon reached down to touch it and it felt drier than it looked. It also rapidly moved away from her hand. It was alive.
"Zoe?" she said. Could Zoe have had the bad luck to become a tub full of slime? Compared to that, Sarah was doing great. She considered having to scoop up the remains of her sister and burn it until she could wish Zoe back after six months. "Please, let this not be Zoe. Centaurs and pixies are one thing, but this. Totally helpless... does she even know what's going on?"
Sarah gestured with one of her wings. "Jon. Look." Jon followed her motion and saw the slime in the tub begin to quiver. The opaque area was growing and moving. It was piling up into a pinkish pillar and the rest of the slime was gathering into the tub, leaving the floor nearly clean.
"Let me guess," said Sarah. "Shapeshifter?"
"I don't think so," said Jon. But the slime was still gathering together and the pillar was growing taller. "I don't know what this is doing."
The three of them watched until it became very clear that the pillar was forming into a rough likeness of Zoe. "That's a shapeshifter," said Sarah. The form resembled a girl, legs gradually leading into slime. The hair on her head was a similar orange color to the slime.
The mouth opened and the figure--now clearly Zoe--turned to Sarah and said "I'm not a freaking shapeshifter."
"I'm glad you're okay," said Jon and tried to hug Zoe using her upper body. It mostly worked, but Zoe felt a little squishy.
"I wouldn't call it okay," replied Zoe. She looked almost normal, except for the hair color, a strange texture to her skin, and the fact that her feet were pools of orange slime. And her body seemed slightly unfinished; it had its normal shape, but she was like a Barbie doll between the legs and had no fingernails. And her breath was filled with wisps of orange smoke. "But I figured out what I turned into."
"Well, what is it?" asked Sarah.
"Instead of half slug, I'm half slime mold." All three of the others looked puzzled; they had no idea whatsoever what that was.
"Oh, geez, I guess I need to give the science lesson. A slime mold is a little bit like a fungus, but it's neither plant nor animal, and nobody's sure exactly how to classify it. It grows from spores and becomes a group of microscopic amoebas. Eventually they gather together into a patch of slime which can move, but very slowly. Fortunately that isn't true for me, just like you're not moving at the speed of a real slug. The slime gathers together and grows into a fungus. The fungus has parts like a stalk and a top, it's not featureless slime. It releases spores and dies. The spores land somewhere and grow into slime molds again."
"So you're a fungus?" asked Jon.
"Are you a slug? I looked up slugs. Slugs don't come in male and female and they certainly don't feed their young using breasts. So I'm a slime mold that instead of growing into a fungus, grows into a girl. And is human sized, just like you and not like real slugs or slime molds. At least I can move, if I was a fungus, I couldn't." She picked her clothes out of the tub and began to put them on.
"And at some point you die and release spores?"
"I doubt I'll be really dead. With all the transformations the sun does I never heard of anyone dying because they became something with a five day lifespan. I mean, what's a slug's lifespan? I would guess that at some point my body either disintegrates or breaks up and releases spores. A spore lands somewhere and grows into slime and into me again."
"But how long does that take? Does it happen right away or does it take a while for the slime to grow? How long does your body even last before it happens? What happens if it grows in two places or if it grows too big in one place, do you grow two bodies?"
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm hoping that my body lasts for a while and I don't have to be slime for too long, but we all know that these transformations don't go like people hope. It probably depends on the food, too. Slime molds usually grow on dead plant masses like logs or forest debris. So I'll need your help."
"Help?"
"Yeah. You have to stay with me until I turn into spores. Then we'll know how long that takes. If my body leaves a husk behind, get rid of it. Then you need to try to find me when one of my spores grows, assuming there aren't two. Maybe bring me clothes. I can try crawling home as a patch of slime but I'd probably get eaten or run over or something."
"Sure, I'll help you. Mikey?"
"I don't know if I understand," replied the robot. "She's mostly asking us to wait, right?"
"Yeah," said Jon.
"Thanks..." said Zoe. "And I guess that that's it for dyeing my hair black...."
