The puddle shrinks further and further back, only revealing a solid blue mass underneath. It’s like your torso just keeps extending until it disappears into the green goo that holds you. You cast aside your initial shock as your fight or flight response regains control. Something primal is crying out deep within you, urging you to fight off this alien predator that threatens to consume you no matter how it hurts. You’re acutely aware of every inch of your body, the cold latex that entraps it, and the peculiar edge of nothingness where they meet. Pushed on by adrenaline alone, you continue your slow struggle to freedom.
As your legs, or at least what used to be your legs, are freed, feeling begins to come back to your lower body. You strain and thrash muscles that return to your control, not even knowing what you’re doing with the unfamiliar appendage. It seems to work as you feel your progress gain speed. In fact, you feel a strange vigor returning to you. As you wrench and flail your lower half, it gets even easier and you feel more revitalized. Encouraged, you throw your whole body into your fight, even using your long neck to push your beak and chin against the cold earth for more leverage.
You lose track of how far you’ve crawled. The slow inching to freedom and the waning tug from the puddle are all you can focus on. Vaguely, you can hear Tex yelling encouragement as you advance. With a final heave, you feel something give in the puddle, and it suddenly releases you. You scramble a few feet further, hoping it’s far enough to be clear of the puddle’s reach. Then, you collapse to the ground, gasping in as much air as your lungs allow.
“That was incredible!” Tex exclaims as she flies down into view. You’re too exhausted to interact with her right now, so you just watch as she flits back and forth in excitement.
“When I saw how much of you the puddle had already taken in, I though I was going to have to find a new Human, but no!” She continues to cheer. “I knew you were a fighter, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human fight so well against one of us. Are you sure you’ve never done this before? Your ancestors aren’t secretly sorcerers or something, are they?”
She grins as if she’s just said a great joke.
“Thanks, but I’m having trouble celebrating just yet,” you reply breathlessly. You knew what you’d seen emerging from the puddle as you escaped. It wasn’t human.
Once you’ve gathered yourself a bit, you roll over and look down to inspect the damage. Just below your navel, your skin shifts from flesh to blue latex. There’s a hint of a scale pattern to it, though when you rub your hands over the latex flesh, it’s far smoother than you expected. Your eyes follow the latex, and you’re surprised by how far it extends. As you realize the full length of it, it’s immediately apparent what your legs have been turned into.
Stretching and curving what must be at least twelve feet from your waist, you now have a long, snake-like tail. You stare aghast at it for a few moments, struggling to take in how much of… you that there is. From head to tip, you’re easily two and half if not three times as long as your previous height when you were fully human. You try to move your serpentine half and watch as the tail twists and coils in response, overwhelming you with sensation at first as it slides across itself in several places.
Looking past the tip of your new tail, you realize with alarm what you aren’t seeing.
“Hold on, where did the puddle go?” you ask Tex in a panic.
“What are you talking about? You absorbed it, remember?” she says in confusion.
“Wait, what?! What do you mean?” you can’t help but shout.
“What do you mean ‘what do you mean’?” Tex retorts. “I thought we’d already been over this. It’s like with the elephant. You resisted while it was feeding on you, but this time you didn’t stop once it started letting go.”
Stunned, you think back over your struggle to escape. There was a sudden turning point as your tail was freed and you changed the way you thrashed back against your captor. You thought you were just kicking at it, or at least the closest thing to it that you could with a foreign limb attached to you, but was it possible that you were doing something more?
Suddenly, you realize something else.
“Hey Tex, if the latex didn’t take my leg essence or whatever, then what happened to it?” you ask.
She smiles. “I’m glad you’re starting to pick this stuff up. As for your essence, I guess you have it now, along with whatever else the latex creature had before. It’s pretty rare for humans to ever end up with more essence than they started with, so I don’t really know this works. Maybe it’s all in here,” she says, patting your tail.
You’re a bit dismayed.
“Can I retrieve it somehow?” you ask, somewhat dismayed. “I can’t imagine having to slither around everywhere won’t hurt my chances of sneaking around anything quickly or making it out of here.”
Tex shrugs. “This is uncharted territory for me too. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. You tell me.”
Her response is unexpected, but you consider what she said. You look at your new tail again, moving it idly. Judging by your control, it seems like you’re adapting faster to these changes. Is there more about you that’s changing than just what you can see?
You shudder at the thought and pack it away for now. You return to focusing on your tail. You concentrate on that part of your body, searching for any new sensation or thread of insight you could trace to try to do something that intuitively seems impossible. You focus harder, remembering how your body used to feel...