Curious, she thought, I wonder who left this here. I guess it is meant for me.
She looked left and right down the hallway of her apartment building. She didn't see anyone.
Must be some kind of joke, she thought. Mary took the box inside her home, a small apartment in a nondescript apartment complex on the edge of the City. She set the box on her counter. Mary wondered who had left the box for her. She really didn't believe in anything as silly as magic - but her life was boring, and she thought that at the very least it might make another humdrum Friday night a little more interesting.
Friday nights were often dull for Mary - she lived alone, and had few friends, so Friday nights were often spent quietly reading or watching a movie at home. In fact, it wasn't just Friday nights that were boring - Mary's whole life was very mundane. She had a nice comfortable 9 to 5 office job, just another small redundant cog in a vast machine. She didn't know her co-workers well, and she doubted anyone would even notice if she did not show up for work. There was no special person in her life; she had dated, but it never quite seemed to work out. Mary knew she not a bombshell, but she wasn't ugly either. She suspected the problem was that she was just too average. She rarely took a risk, and often chose the safer path.
She examined the outside of the box. It was very large, but otherwise appeared as ordinary as Mary. It was made of a light brown wood, and bore no distinctive markings other than the small red button on the lid. Mary pushed the button and the lid of the box popped open. She was surprised to see a very large collection of vials, each filled with a clear fluid. The vials had labels etched into the glass, marked with what appeared to be black ink. She removed a random vial, and opened it. She wafted her hand over the vial, but she could not smell any odor. She quickly closed the vials, remembering what the instructions had said about how to use them.
What to try, she thought. She scanned some of the labels. Most of the labels were pictures of different animals, with the name of the animal below. Lions, tigers, bears ....... oh my, she thought with laugh. Some of the vials had a crude picture of a human, and listed different characteristics, such as "Size", "Hair", "Weight", and "Muscle". The labels of two of the vials simply showed the symbols for the male and female genders. Oddly, some of the labels had pictures of what appeared to be mythical animals, but had no animal name was written below the picture. She saw one vial with a picture that looked like a Unicorn, and another that had a picture that was eerily similar to a Dragon. If these really work, that one might cause some trouble, she thought with a shudder.
Surely these things are just a joke, she thought as she walked to the window in her living room, looking to the dense forest outside her apartment building. But if they aren't, I should probably be careful. She wanted to be more adventurous, but not too adventurous. Am I really going to try this? she thought, and if so, Which one should I try first?