As soon as the words left my mouth, I heard a deafening sound of rock scraping against rock, like the door of an ancient tomb was being slowly dragged open. And before my very eyes, the statue of Molly was sitting up, her stony face looking just as distraught as I was. “W-what’s going on?”, she said to me, panicked.
“Molly,” I said slowly, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I think you’re a gargoyle. And now that it’s daytime, that means your body has to turn into-” I couldn’t get the last word out, but I didn’t have to. She’d brought her hands up to her face with another loud scraping sound, and was inspecting her new arms. The single unbroken gray color that had overtaken them, and the monstrous claws that were still attached, looked just like something that should be sticking off the wall of a cathedral. Her lips, despite being made of solid rock, wobbled in despair at the sight. I could tell that she was about to start crying, but the tears didn’t come. She probably didn’t have any water left in her body anymore.
I leaned forward to try to comfort her. Molly saw my gesture and immediately wrapped me tightly in her arms before I could react. “How can this be happening!?”, she cried into my ear, her voice still sobbing even if her eyes couldn’t. “What are we gonna do?!”
Me, I felt like I’d just been hit by a truck. The hard stone slammed against my front and back at the same time, leaving me trapped in her incredibly heavy embrace. And the intense strength she had now in whatever force had replaced her muscles - I felt my soft, vulnerable, human skin smarting underneath her arms. I knew that hug was going to leave some bruises. And as I struggled to free myself from her grasp, I realized that her body was just as immovable and unforgiving as any other statue. I couldn’t budge her arms an inch if I put all my strength into it, exactly as if someone had poured a ring of concrete around my shoulders and let it harden. The only way I could get out of this was for her to move her arms and let me out.
“Molly,” I croaked out as loudly as I could, my lungs gasping for air through a compressed windpipe, “I can’t breathe...”
She backed away, and I collapsed on the bed, feeling weak. I could see on her downcast face, which looked like it had been chiseled by the most talented of sculptors, that she was hurt. Maybe not hurt in the same way that I was, my whole upper body still aching from the collision. But probably feeling even worse than I was. I had to show her that I still loved her. That I wasn’t afraid of her.
I shakily sat up again and returned the hug the best that I could. My arms fell on the upper ridges of her outstretched wings. I stroked her shoulders, trying to feel any sign of the life underneath. But even when she was moving a little bit, it just felt like I was caressing a statue. There was no warmth, except the lingering traces of heat that I had left on her stone surface with my own touch. If I hadn’t seen her sit up and talk to me, I wouldn’t believe there was any life in there. It seemed impossible.
I noticed that Molly held perfectly still as I hugged her. Either she was making sure she wouldn’t hurt me again, or her changed body made it hard to move naturally when she wasn’t consciously thinking about it. Maybe both. But somehow I put those thoughts aside and treated her the same way I always would. My lips gravitated toward hers, and soon I was kissing her. Her face was just as hard and unyielding as the rest of her, and she didn’t open her mouth for a full-on makeout session or anything like that. Which was probably for the best - even if she still had a tongue, I didn’t really want it lurching forward into my mouth right now. I settled for a quick peck on the cheek and pulled away.
For the first time since we escaped that twisted carnival, I saw a smile on Molly’s face. “... Thank you,” she said softly.
But that was only the beginning. We soon started to ask ourselves, and each other... what now? Going back to the carnival that had done this to her... didn’t exactly seem like a great idea. But if anyone knew how to undo Molly’s transformation, it was probably them. And maybe, with her newfound strength, she could easily toss some bad guys around until they gave her the cure she wanted. On the other hand, we could be walking straight into a trap, and then both of us would be forced onto display in that sick menagerie. A part of me wanted to be stuck in the same boat with her, come what may - and to get myself the sort of tough, hardened skin that could safely cuddle with a gargoyle. But I doubted either of us were willing to accept that fate.
And if we didn’t go back there... well, then Molly would have to stay right here for the foreseeable future. If there was a way to turn her back into a normal human, we certainly weren’t going to find it here in our house, but there was no guarantee we’d find it anywhere else, either. And I knew Molly wouldn’t be willing to go outside and try to lead a normal life when she was a 2,000-pound statue of a winged reptilian creature.
I helped her hash out the possibilities, the pros and cons of each choice, but I left it up to Molly to decide what we should do next. It was her life hanging in the balance, after all. Stay on house arrest, or run right back into the jaws of danger? She thought about it for a while, and then announced her decision.