John and Mary both began to struggle. Their natural inclination was to try and kick with their feet or paddle with their hands; they had neither. Their eye-stalks swayed rhythmically in time with the waves in the pool. Had Mary not been able to read John's mind, his eyes would have adequately conveyed his fear and frustration. She was racked with guilt for ever using the vials and causing John to knock them into the pool.
"Wait," thought Mary, "the vials mixed with our bodies while we were in the pool. You grew and elephant ear when you were trying to regain your hearing, and I had a bird beak when I screamed. If we want to get out of the pool, all we have to do is concentrate on forming the body parts that will let us climb out!"
Mary shut her snail-like eyes and concentrated. She tried to feel the edges of the pink goo that constituted her body. She tried to bring herself together into a smaller, denser blob. When she broke contact with John's blue goo, their mental connection vanished. He watched in mute amazement as Mary continued willing herself together.
"I need to be able to swim to the edge of the pool and pull myself out of the water," she thought. In her mind, Mary pictured a mermaid's tail. Slowly, her blob body began to lengthen, like a child rolling a pink piece of play-doh. The tube flattened out into the classic Disney mermaid shape, just as Mary imagined. She tentatively flexed the alien appendage and inched her way to the edge of the pool. Once there, she grew some long, octopus-like tentacles, complete with powerful suckers. Mary flung her "arms" onto the pool deck and hoisted her still gelatinous body out of the pool. The effort had taken a toll on her concentration and she slowly dissolved into a puddle on the concrete surface. Her eye-stalks receded and her bulbous eyes floated on the surface of her body like ice-cubes in a pitcher of tea.