"Where...where am I, anyway?" Stacy asked, awkwardly clambering to her feet. "Where'd my clothes go?"
"It's a long story," Dawn sighed. "You're in the supply closet, and some of the others are getting a gown from the nurse's office for you."
"The others?" she asked. Dawn nodded. "You're not the only one to have an encounter with that book. Me and three other people have been changed by it over the past two days."
"But you've always been this way!" Stacy protested. "I remember when you coiled up your shed tail-skin the one time to make it look like one of the bathroom stalls was occupied, and that was years ago!"
Dawn nodded. "You remember it, everybody else remembers it, but...well, I dunno whether it never really happened, or whether I've somehow just been dropped into a reality where Dawn always existed and Daryn never did. At any rate, however it works, everybody changed so far has had this happen to them."
"Daryn?" Stacy said. "You mean...you used to be a guy?"
Dawn raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you?"
"No! Thank God, no!" Stacy shuddered at the thought. "Did anyone else have that happen to them?"
"All of us," Dawn replied. "That's why I was surprised you didn't. I wonder if the book only makes female mythics?"
Just then, the closet door opened up, and three other girls entered. There was a hind, a pixie, and a seemingly normal human. All three were wearing hospital gowns, as was Dawn, and the normal girl was carrying an extra. "Here," she said. "This is our only real clothes option for now, sorry."
"Uh, it's okay," Stacy said. She turned to Dawn. "Oh, you're Rachel Morgan, right? The mermaid who took second place at last year's swim meet?"
"Well, that's who she is in this reality," Dawn said. "Like I said, none of us are actually who you think we are. This is Tanya, who used to be Tony, Rachel, formerly Rick, and Katie, formerly Kalvin."
Stacy slipped on the gown and nodded. "Huh, this is confusing. Is everybody going to think I've always been a drider, too?"
"Yep." Dawn sighed. "Look, if you wouldn't mind, could you help us track down the book? Only the four of us and you know what it looks like, so it would be nice to have an extra pair of eyes."
"Uh, sure," Stacy replied. "What are you going to do with it?"
"We're going to destroy it," Tanya said. "Before it screws up anyone else's life."
"Oh," she murmured. "I guess that makes sense. I've always wanted to be a drider, I guess I hadn't thought about how you guys felt. Can't you use it to change back, maybe?"
Dawn shrugged. "We've tried already," she said. "We can't figure out how to do that, and we're kind of thinking it can't be used that way at all. We were hoping maybe there's some other magic out there that can change us back, but we have to destroy the book, regardless."
"And you can't just keep it away from people who don't want to change?" Stacy asked. "I mean, I'm sure there must be other people like me, who actually want this."
Katie shook her head. "Unfortunately, no," she said. "The book teleports around any time someone is changed by it, and it's always where some other victim will find it. We think it's trying to change as many people as possible; it might even be getting stronger."
"Oh. I guess you're right, then." Stacy sighed. "That's too bad, but I guess it is better to stop it before anybody else gets transformed into something they don't want to be."
Dawn nodded. "Right. Well, at least someone got something good out of this. Although Rachel was saying that she liked it, as well."
Rachel shrugged. "I like being a mer-person," she said. "Being a girl is kind of weird, but I figure I can get used to it. Now come on, we should get going."
"Before we go," Katie interrupted, "I think we should get those goggles off. An extra pair of eyes'll help, but an extra pair of eyes with unimpeded peripheral vision would be even better."
"But the light hurts her eyes," Dawn said. "You should have heard the scream when she tried to take them off earlier."
The pixie nodded. "That's why I brought this," she said, holding forth a little bottle. "Eye drops. They'll constrict her pupils so she doesn't get so much light coming in. It'll take a few minutes to work, but it should last for a couple hours."
Stacy smiled. "That'd be great. And with the goggles off, I can see in color, right? But how do we apply the drops without me taking them off?"
"Uh, I guess we do it in the dark," Katie said. "Dawn, you have a watch on, does it have a light?" Dawn nodded. "Great. That should let me see what I'm doing, but I doubt it's strong enough to hurt her."
They shut the closet light off, and Stacy removed her goggles. Surprisingly, she could see fairly well in what little light was filtering in through the cracks around the door, though not quite well enough to tell whether she could see color or not. Dawn pressed and held the backlight button on her watch; the glow was bright, to Stacy's eyes, but not enough to be painful.
In the light from the watch, Katie hovered above Stacy's head. "Lean back," she directed. Stacy complied, and Katie dropped to just above her face, pulling her legs up so she could get even lower. "Okay," she said. "Don't blink before it's actually in your eye." She gently tipped the bottle over and squeezed a drop, first onto the left eye, then onto the right. "Alright," she said. "Blink a bit; get it worked in."
Stacy did, fluttering her eyes open and closed. "Not comfortable," she said. "But I guess it's better than being stuck with the goggles."
Katie nodded. "I think there might be some kind of corrective surgery you can get, but for now, this'll have to do. We'll wait a while for your pupils to constrict, then we'll get going."
Stacy nodded. "Um...when you were hovering over me...I guess I'm not the only one wearing just a gown?"