Halfway down the results page was the fox-girl picture he had seen last night. It was eerie looking at it now, and though Mark was wearing different clothes than the fox-girl in the picture, he could still look from the picture to him and realize that they were, physically, exactly alike. The picture was a drawing, and he was a real flesh-and-blood creature, but still - there were no real differences. None at all.
Something was picking at the back of his mind, but he couldn't get at what it was. Intrigued that the fox-girl picture should come up in his search for the medallion, though, he clicked on it. The website's programming would put up a full-size version of the picture on the screen, and would put a red square around any part of it that matched one of the pictures Mark was searching for. He waited patiently for it to process.
Finally it was done, and he gasped. Hanging around the fox-girl's neck, nestled between the rises of her breasts, was the amulet.
Mark stared at that for a long time, as dark shadows of suspicion filled his mind. This was too much to be coincidence. This picture had come up to him by accident anyway, and only a day before he found the amulet it pictured in his house and tried it on - and was transformed into a COPY of the picture. Something was doing this on the web . . .
. . .and in his house.
Mark was suddenly very afraid for himself. But after a few moments, he realized that it would do no good to run around irrationally without even knowing what he was afraid of, or where it might be (not to mention what it might do, or be CAPABLE of doing). To get his mind off it, he took to examining the medallion in the picture and comparing it to the one he was holding. He zoomed in on it's image, and held the two up side-by-side.
It was a pretty close match. The artist had managed the colors, the design of the cat paw (the dog paw was against the fox's chest, as if she too had been transformed), and even the decorative swirls along the edges. Of course, whoever it had been hadn't possessed the tools to draw the hundreds of fine golden time markers, but he or she had given it a golden haze where the markers should have been. Other than the cartoony colors, it was a perfect match.
Sighing, he sat back in my chair. Yes, the connection was there, and it meant that something probably quite large was going on, which he had no clue about. And there was nothing Mark could do about it. Ugghh . . . well, at least this was only for one day. But now he didn't have anything to do.
For fun, he hung the medallion back around his neck - making sure that everything was the same as it had been - to see if he would look like the Fox-Girl in the picture. The note had said nothing about putting the medallion on twice being a danger, so Mark felt reasonably safe - and, to be honest, beyond caring at this point. He arranged it between his breasts on the shirt, then looked at himself in the mirror.
Hmm. Not nearly as cute as the Internet Fox-Girl - but then, she had clothes that fit her frame. Mark was stuck with these old man-clothes that would continue to be far too big for him until he changed back-
Suddenly, his mind opened up and thoughts flooded in.