There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of water splattering on Emma's skin and cascading down into the drain; there might've also been some soft humming, but I couldn't tell through the door. Outside, the storm's fury had abated, and it was merely a heavy downpour; the muted drumming on the roof played a duet with the shower.

Then Tammy started looking around the room. "Hey, can you help me?" she asked. "I need something to prop this stupid tail up with. It was dragging all the way here, and it's gonna be a major pain in the ass if I have to keep it raised off the floor myself the whole time."

I nodded, glad to turn the conversation to anything else. "Uh, sure. Anything specific?"

She shook her head. "Anything long enough to lie across the footrests and chunky enough to support some weight. I think I have some smaller plastic bins in the other closet."

She continued looking while I opened up the closet. To my mild surprise, the first thing I found inside was a bass guitar, leaning against stacks of other stuff. I wouldn't have taken her for a musical type, and there weren't any band posters on the wall or anything; but then, I'd only known her for a couple months. "Uh, hey," I asked, "where should I put this?"

She looked a bit surprised herself. "Oh. Uh, just lay that on the bed there."

I did, and turned back to the closet. It was filled with bins of miscellany - old notebooks, assorted personal items, and medical supplies that I didn't immediately recognize - which were all too large for the purpose. After some digging, I found one of those cylindrical metal tins that you get bulk popcorn assortments in. It was about half the usual size, which seemed just right for a footrest - tail-rest? - to me.

"Hey," I said, turning to her, "what about this?"

She gave it a look. "S'pose that's about the right size," she said. "Dunno how it'll hold up, though."

"You could pack it with sand or something," I said. "I mean, not now, but depending on how long this all goes on..." I frowned, trying not think about what the future might hold for any of us. "Um, we should see how it fits first, though. Don't want you getting spinal issues trying to protect your fin."

Tammy stared at me. "That happens? Not gonna lie here, I have no idea how any of this" - she gestured at her tail - "works. I thought it was, y'know, basically just my legs, now."

I gave her a curious look. "And you're in the therapeutic side of the metamorphic studies program?"

She shrugged. "With an eye towards targeting changes directly and never having this be relevant in the first place, yeah."

I shook my head. "Huh. So...basically you can think of the tail as an extension of your spine and ribcage. It's got nothing to do with your legs - those fins under your, um, under your skirt...are what map to those for mermaids."

"Huh," she said, thinking about it. "Okay, that...explains a bit. It definitely didn't feel right, trying to move that way. Hell, I didn't even know these dumb things were part of the package." She tapped one of the ridges in her skirt that outlined a pectoral fin for emphasis.

I knelt down and tried to lift her tail; it was heavier than it looked. She got the hint and raised it up for me. "It's a common misconception," I said. "It's like the caudal fin - the one down at the end here. For aeons, art and popular culture had it oriented the other way. It's how you'd think a person playing at being a mermaid might look - with the knees together and the feet splayed out. It wasn't until merfolk were actually around for a while that that myth got busted in the popular consciousness."

Tammy stared at me in surprise. "You've really studied this stuff."

I gave her a sheepish look; I might've blushed, if I still could. "I, um...I read a lot. Here, like this," I said, helping her situate her tail with part of it behind the barrel, so that the weight pushed it up against the front guards on the footrests. "How does that feel? No discomfort? No cramping?"

She shifted around a bit, trying to get a feel for it. "I don't think so. Honestly, though, I don't know what I'm supposed to be feeling."

I shrugged. "Like I said, it's part of your spine now. A lot more flexible than the human parts, but still, if it's kinked too hard for too long, you can get cramps or strain in the muscles, or even actual spinal injury. This'll work for now, but if you are stuck like this for a while, you'll want a professional opinion - and we definitely need some duct tape to hold this in place. There's specialty outlets that cater to merfolk; they'll probably have better ideas."

She gave me another funny look. "Jesus, Stu, what are you doing in theoretical physics and not P.T.?"

"I...I don't know," I said, being completely honest. Why was I in any program, any place, doing any thing, and not another? I couldn't tell her any more than I could tell me.

Tammy shook her head slowly and started to say something, but didn't; then there was a long, awkward silence. Finally, I nodded over to the bass. I was more into listening to music than making it, but I recognized the look of the thing and the logo on the headstock - it was a Fender Precision, though I didn't know any more than that. "You, uh, you play?" I asked.

She shrugged. "A little; not all that well. And I've been way too busy ever since senior year in high school."

"Huh," I said. "Uh, cool." I thought about asking more, but then Emma stepped out of the bathroom, still undressed.

Okay, she was wrapped in a towel. (She also had her hair put up in a smaller towel.) But she was having trouble carrying her head in her hands while keeping her arms in to hold the towel in place; she kept just skirting around one wardrobe malfunction or another. I tried to focus on something else, and ended up on how I'd never seen her without her glasses before. It might've been a good look, if it weren't for the power-squint she had to do to see anything; at least she looked good in specs.

"God, that's better," she sighed. "Um, hate to ask this, but do you have anything I can borrow for the night? I don't think I can sneak past my roommate; she's always up way late."

Tammy shrugged. "Sure, knock yourself out; I dunno what I can even wear over...scales, anyway. I guess I'm stuck with pajama tops from now-uh, for the time being." She glanced awkwardly in my direction as she spoke.

"Great, thanks," Emma said, glancing through the closet before helping herself to a silky nightgown. I wondered whether Tammy wore it much; what if she had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night? How did that work with...? I stopped myself there; that was a little too weird, no matter the circumstances. It was one thing to consider what disabled people have to deal with in the abstract, and another to imagine a classmate's personal toilet process in detail.

Emma went back into the bathroom. She gave a little yelp; from her experiment earlier, I figured that was when she slipped the gown over her absent neck. I wondered if it was the "smoke" itself or just the neck area that was sensitive; either way, she'd probably be wearing a lot more button-up shirts in the future.

She reemerged dressed in the nightgown, with her head in one hand - not secure under her shoulder like before, but held in the crook of her arm, slightly in front of her. This didn't seem too safe to me, but her other arm was full of toiletries - brush, comb, hair dryer, hand mirror. She dumped these onto the dresser, which had a small mirror on top, then took her head in both hands and set it up there as well.

Standing behind herself, she unwrapped her hair, gently toweled it off, then plugged in the hair dryer and set to work, humming softly to herself, as if she were both stylist and client. It was kind of fascinating, in a surreal way. Tammy and I watched her for a while, just for the novelty.

"Well, guess I'll get a shower in, too," Tammy said after a minute or so. "Anything I should know?"

I thought about it. "Not much you're, uh, not already used to. Just mind how hard you bend your tail, and be gentle scrubbing the scales. They don't come off easy, but you do want to be careful with them." I noticed her worried expression. "Uh, from what I hear, you'll know if you're hurting them," I added hastily.

She smiled in relief. "Right, thanks," she said. "Em, you need anything more from the bathroom?"

Emma, busy with her hair, didn't actually pick up her head and shake it this time; she just gave a dismissive little wave over her shoulder. "Nope, should be all good here for now. Huh," she muttered, "I'm gonna have to keep it shorter..."

Tammy went into the bathroom and shut the door. I could hear the shower stall open; there was a slithering sound, a thud on the floor, and a heavy clunk as the handles on her chair slammed into the door. I cringed. "Um, you okay in there?" I called, cringing again at the strange, metallic musicality of my new voice, shimmering like a screen-door spring.

"I'm fine," she replied. "Just screwed up the dismount. This stupid tail is slipperier than it looks." I heard the shower door shut, and a moment later the water started running.

For a couple minutes, the only sounds were Emma's soft humming and the shower running...and the constant chatter of my new inner workings. Finally, Emma spoke up from atop the dresser. "Are they actually slippery?" she asked. "Like, slimy? She looked pretty normal to me."

I shook my head. "Not slimy, no. I mean, they need to keep moistened somewhat, but there's no goo or anything. But they are pretty smooth, and her chair just has like a nylon hammock thing for a seat." I remembered that much from being a total klutz earlier; I'd felt the heavy-duty nylon weave on my forehead, but all the resistance came from the part of Tammy that was pressed into the other side of it.

"Huh," said Emma, putting the finishing touches on her hair. She held the hand mirror behind her to get a look at the back, then turned her head this way and that, checking out the sides. "You know a lot about this stuff, apparently."

I shrugged. "I read a lot."

She chuckled. "Uh-huh, sure. There's nothing wrong with being interested in it, y'know. Heck, you're in the metamorphic studies program for a reason, aren't you?"

I shook my head. "Um, not...not really."

That got an outright laugh. "Stu, you're a terrible liar. Kinda shocked nobody's told you before."

I really didn't know what to say. Did everybody have some kind of insight into myself that I didn't have? "I, uh...look, it's complicated." It wasn't, but I was in no mood to talk about this right now. Or...ever, really.

Emma picked herself up off the dresser. "That's not the vibe I'm getting, but sure, whatever you say. For serious, though, there's nothing wrong with it; hell, it's even relevant for us now."

"Yeah, well right now I'm wishing pretty hard that it wasn't."

She gave me a sad smile, walked over, and pulled me into a half-hug, cradling her head in her other arm. Tactile sensation in this body was more detailed than I expected, but less than I was used to; I could feel the pressure of her touch fine, but not so much the texture of her skin. Her breasts squashed against mine, and I realized that my new feminine assets were just molded into the hollow shell of my torso, with the same fabric "skin" as the rest of me - more like a mannequin than a living creature. I wasn't even a person, I was a thing, an object...

It was too much. The whole thing was a crazy fever-dream nightmare made real, but this last realization - the thought of my self as an empty shell, nothing inside but a machine - tipped me over the edge. I would be sick to my stomach, but I had no stomach; I wanted to cry, but there were no tear ducts for my glass eyes. My internal tempo was climbing, and I started to shake. Things were getting off-kilter inside me again, and I felt my neck twitching slightly.