Kimi clutched the hood to her shoulders as she walked through the forest. It was getting dark out...she supposed it was getting late in the year, and of course it was darker in the woods than out on the prairie. But it felt...disquieting. Thoughts kept springing into her mind...fairy tales she'd been told as a child. Not the sappy, sugary things she'd overheard them reading in a school once. No, these were the scary-ass ones the old German lady her mother had used to have over would tell. Stories where a girl going into a dark forest all by herself might...
No! Enough of that! That was all nonsense. Those were only stories, and anyway she wasn't some scared little girl! She was a...she was...
She gritted her teeth, scowling. She couldn't really say she was a man, could she? Not after...she thought back on her encounter with the stripper and winced. She hated - hated - to admit it, but...she wasn't a little girl, but she was a young woman. Sort of. For the moment. She didn't think folk-tale monsters were all that choosy. And how could she say for certain that it was nonsense, anyway, when she'd met some kind of skunk-spirit-thing and been turned half-fairy or something? Maybe all of this was a lot truer than she'd thought. Maybe there would be something around the bend, waiting for her. Maybe she should turn back, before...
NO. She was going to get through this. She had to. She wrapped her arms around herself and trudged on, her steps still a little wobbly...damn this sickness!
Jon sat back and heaved a sigh, putting the book aside. This just kept getting stranger and stranger...it was getting a little overwhelming, frankly. Not that this stuff with a tower and a map and portals wasn't interesting, but...she needed a break. She felt a little bad for not devoting more effort to this, but...she just needed a break. She put the book carefully away and slid downstairs, curling up on top of her foot in front of the couch.
Her parents hadn't asked her not to use the couch, but she thought it would be better if she didn't get mucus on the cushions. (Zoe, on the other hand, didn't seem to leave any residue, even though her membrane "skin" was gelatinous and slightly sticky.) Anyway, the slug-girl didn't really mind; her foot was perfectly comfortable to sit on. She leaned forward and turned on the TV.
She didn't really have a preference at the moment; she just needed a distraction. It was the local affiliate of...she couldn't remember what network. Channel 7, that was all she really knew. Cripes, it was five o'clock already? It must be, here was the news. She had been surprised; for a while this station had been edging toward scare-tactics crap, but recently they'd done a dramatic shift back towards actual reporting. Enough so that even she, not exactly a news junkie, had noticed. Jon wondered idly what must have happened to prompt this, but she didn't really know.
In any case, it was that fox-girl again, doing a piece on some undersea-settlement project. Jon watched with interest; it didn't look like they had a whole lot at present, but it was certainly an interesting prospect. As much as she felt bad about being the cause of this, the whole adaptation process was fascinating to her. She wondered, if she were to fix this with a wish that only changed back people who wanted to, how many would? She was sure Karyn was happy enough with her new form to stay with it. Would Zoe change back? She wasn't exactly enthused by her new form, but she did seem more or less okay with it. What about Mikey? Or what about h-
No, that was ridiculous. Anyway, she wondered how many people a place like this "Atlantis" project would have, once she got things straightened out. Would people just gradually leave if the sun gave them the opportunity to change back? Or would they start not really wanting to because there was a place like this, designed to give them a home?
Who knew? That was the thing about wants, they could be fickle. Karyn had suggested phrasing it in less emotive terms (if they'd be better off changing back? Happier?) but even then so much would depend on variable human conditions...the slug-girl realized that even she, in trying to plan out what to do about this, had no idea where it would go. None whatsoever...maybe things would go pretty much back to normal, or...maybe...things would get even weirder...
She turned off the TV and went back up to her room, stretching out on the bed. She grabbed her phone off the nightstand and dialed Karyn.
"Hey, Karyn," she said, when her friend picked up. "Did you see the news thing about this 'Atlantis' project?"
"Uh, I didn't catch the news," Karyn said. "But I have been reading about it online...there's a forum for aquatic transformees, it's been making the rounds there."
Jon nodded. "Think you'll ever go there?"
Karyn laughed. "Maybe to visit, but I don't think I'd move there. I don't really have any trouble getting around on land, and everybody I know is up here. I dunno, maybe if I were a traditional mermaid or something, but my legs are probably even more useful out of the water than in it..." She smiled. "Don't worry, Jon-girl. I'm not bailing on you."
Jon chuckled. "Well, I didn't mean it quite like that, but...that's good to hear."
"So what about you?" Karyn asked. "How are you doing?"
Jon thought for a moment, tried to think of a polite conversation-filler, failed, and sighed. "I...I'm a little scared, actually," she said. She wished her voice weren't so high and quavery right now; it made her sound more girlish than usual.
There was a brief pause. "Karyn," she asked, "if...if you had the power to change the whole world...what if you found you didn't want to?"
Karyn frowned. "'If?' Aren't we kind of past that point already?"
Jon shook her head vigorously, wincing a little bit at the little whiplash motions of her antennae. "No, I'm not talking about the sun. It's...I dunno. Some of the stuff in that book...I mean, he says I'm going to have to decide the fate of the world, Karyn! Me! I got us into this mess, I can't even decide on lunch some days, I-"
"Woah! Calm down, there," Karyn said. "Who says what, now?"
Jon briefly explained. Karyn took a moment to digest it. "I'm kinda surprised, Jon," she said. "For someone who was so eager for 'something interesting' to happen, why the sudden change in attitude?"
The slug-girl sighed. "It's not...not a change in attitude, I don't think." She fiddled idly with a lock of her hair, then with one antenna. "Even after all this, I like these changes...in a global, general sense, mind you. That is, it is interesting to watch all this, and I do intend to let anybody who wants to persist in changed form, if we can figure out a good way to do it. And all this stuff about magic is exciting, too. But..."
She frowned. "I guess I'm kind of stuck with making some kind of decision about this. But I don't think I want everything to change. Or even a lot of things. I keep wondering...I dunno. Some of it just kind of reminds me of that 'singularity' stuff some kinds of nerds talk about, like it's an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it to usher in something else...it's probably just my imagination running away with me, I dunno."
"Whew," Karyn said. "So...I think what you're more worried about is how to keep the neat stuff without screwing around with what already works?"
"Sort of, yeah. It's just...I like this world, Karyn. It's not perfect, but it's pretty alright...I don't want to see it replaced with something unrecognizable. I only wanted something interesting to happen, not for everything mundane to go away...I'm just afraid that if I let magic stick around...I don't know. Is it something that can be integrated with everyday life and left at that? Or is it something where even just having it around changes everything, and a hundred years from now the whole world is completely unrecognizable and looks like the cover of a fantasy novel, or something? I dunno, I just don't know. This could enrich the world we know, or it could obliterate it, and I don't even know which."
"You'll figure it out," Karyn said.
"Will I?"
The cecaelia-girl snorted. "Of course you will! Criminy, Jon, you've spent more time thinking about this one problem than I have thinking about my whole change! If anything, you're probably getting too wrapped up in this."
Jon frowned. "I...what? Really? But this is..."
"Of course it's important!" Karyn said. "But it's like homework, or any other problem - you can't just approach it by banging your head on the wall for hours every time you hit a roadblock. You need to let go and just let yourself relax sometimes. A rested mind is a capable mind. Besides, you're a lot more fun to be around when you're not stressing out all the time."
Jon smiled, in spite of herself. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. ...thanks."
Karyn laughed. "Hey, part of being your friend is telling you what you need to hear sometimes."
