Sylph was a very inhuman shade of green.  Made so by Cairn's joy of inflicting chili induced pain upon those they love.  Cairn and Lilly had both obviously noticed and were still processing what they’d seen.  I was stuck between my alien girlfriend, oblivious to her predicament, and my best friends, confused and concerned by her unexpected pallor. 

    "Sylph dear, are you okay?"  Lilly was rising up out of her chair to move to Sylph's side.

     “It’s really okay.  I am very adaptable.”  Sylph took a swig of water and closed her eyes.  I connected with her over our link to check in and she shared back how she was adapting her taste buds and digestive system to accommodate the massive amount of capsaicin. 

    'Clever girl!  Not quite addressing the problem though.'  I shared back at her what we were all seeing and the context of Cairn and Lilly never having seen her green skin.

    Her skin flushed even more green.  "Well I guess now is as good a time as any to bring up the other thing we wanted to talk to you about."  She looked at me and shrugged, sharing across our connection that maybe I should start.

    I took a deep breath.  Cairn and Lilly turned two very confused faces to me.  "Okay, so… uh…"  I sputtered out, struggling with where to even start.  "So… uh, one of the first small talk questions the triad asked Sylph when we were over at the library for dinner, was where is her family from.  Sylph isn't exactly from here… here being Earth."  The confused faces became even more confused.  Sylph shared waves of encouragement with me, powering me forward.  "I didn't exactly tell you the whole truth about how we met.  I wasn't physically injured outside Sylph's home, and it wasn't actually Badger's fault I fell."  I squeezed the dog's head to me for some more confidence.  "Sylph, maybe show them how you looked when I first saw you?"  Sylph nodded, and I turned to my two non-seated friends.  "Cairn, Lilly… you may want to sit down."  They both sat very quickly and I giggled to myself at how much implied command I had over them in this situation.

    Unlike other times I'd seen her do this, for this occasion, Sylph's transformation was slow and deliberate.  She started with her skin, becoming more the bark textured, purple tinted, green of her dryad form.  Her hair changed next, strands merging, thickening, and bristling out into their normal feathered texture.  Her nose widened, gaining extra nostrils.  Her eyes grew larger and began glowing softly golden.  Her antlers sprouted and grew up into their fullness.  She was as beautiful as ever.  I was in awe and I loved her.

    Both Lilly and Cairn's jaws had steadily dropped further towards the floor slightly, even further than my own.  "Sylph is kinda an alien… from a population of shapeshifters.  Um… they don't all look like this by the way, this is just the form she had taken when she was wandering around the aspen grove alone.  Seeing her like this is a small part of why I had blacked out and she brought me to her home to care for me."

    "Part of the reason?  There's more?"  Cairn looked completely flabbergasted.

    "Umm… we can get to the more part after we can move through the whole 'Marin made first contact with an alien intelligence and now they're dating' thing."  I giggled half-heartedly, still very nervous at how my friends were processing this revelation.  "Uh, I guess I'll pause for questions?..."

    "Well I suppose it makes sense, you are something of a monster fucker."  Lilly smiled at me, but then flushed bright red.  "Oh crap, Sylph… I mean monster in the most positive of ways."

    Sylph giggled and smiled warmly at Lilly.  "No offense taken.  Through talking with Marin and my own studies I've learned much of how monsters are queer culture."  This was followed by one of her smirks aimed directly at Lilly, and Lilly blushed further.

    "Hah!  I knew you couldn't be completely immune to her smirks."  I crossed my arms and puffed out my chest with pride in my girlfriend's powers.  This got the whole table giggling and dislodged a massive weight of anxiety within the room and one directly pressed onto my own heart.  This was actually going well!

    "I'll have to admit Sylph.  You are quite breathtaking like this."  Lilly turned to me. "And yes Marin, it is an extremely potent smile," and back to Sylph, "made all the more powerful by glowing eyes and antlers."

    "So wait, why are you even here?"  Cairn then pointed at me.  "Aside from helping this depressed weirdo not be so depressed that is."

    "I think Marin told you some of the truth on this one.  I'm a biologist studying the grove.  There's a small piece of my people that landed in this valley millennia ago.  It's similar to a fungus, and has a connection to… communication with my people.  Its connection was growing faint over the past thousand years.  I came here to study and renew that connection.  Marin just happened to stumble into the clearing I've made a temporary home, and I guess you could say we really hit it off…  After causing em to black out and later have a panic attack…"  Sylph blushed and hung her head down.

    “Shit Marin, you are dating an extraterrestrial!”  Cairn popped up off their seat.  “That’s fuckin’ amazing!”  After a pause their face lit up with shock.  “Wait!  Is that space blob behind the moon you?”

    “Well not me, but my people, yes.”

    “And there’s more of you?”  Cairn’s shocked face continued.

    “Yes, many more managing our biosphere.  I was the one best fit to come study things first hand.”

    “Are y’all gonna invade?”

    Sylph laughed.  “Oh dear, no.  All the contact that is being attempted by humans has us leaning towards just leaving.  My people really aren’t ones to meddle in the affairs of other lifeforms if we can help it.”

    “Just meddling all up in the affairs of Marin’s insides.”  This was followed by a swift whap to the chest by Lilly, and Cairn’s giggling.

    "In unfortunately more ways than just the fun ways."  Sylph hung her head down again.  

    Cairn had unintentionally touched on the guilt that Sylph still felt over infecting me with Fungie and I could see shame spread over her features.  I needed to help this spiral.  No way was I letting how well this was going take a turn to depression and shame.  "You wouldn't call being able to do this fun?!"  I waved my hand in a big arc over my head and released a rainbow twinkling trail of luminescent spores into the air.  A while back I found that Fungie could change the color that they glowed and I'd finally found a good use for that information.

    "Marin… you can do magic now?"  Lilly had managed to maintain the modicum amount of composure required to speak, but Cairn's expression was back to their shocked face.

    "Any sufficiently advanced biotechnology is indistinguishable from magic."  I waggled my eyebrows at everyone.  "Sylph's people have tech based on engineered lifeforms.  These are modified spores from a fungus similar to what's in the grove.  It now lives in my brain too."  I delighted slightly in my friend's jaws dropping at the brain fungus reveal.  "I call it Fungie because its a very fun guy."  I gave my best bad pun smile as Sylph rolled her eyes.  Cairn and Lilly were still in too much of a state of shock to properly groan at my humor.  I mentally thanked my brain buddy for being awesome.

    "What was the scientific name you called the spores?"    

    "Zooballistoconidia, basically means they are fungal spores, air dispersed, and can move on their own."

    "Thank you Sylph."  I pulled her close and kissed her temple.  "Also, now I can communicate my thoughts with Sylph and her people now through quantum entanglement."  More eyebrow waggling and jaw dropping ensued.

    “Poor aliens all being subjected to the things going on in your head.”  Cairn had regained the ability to snark.

    "So Marin, you are now… infected I guess, with an alien brain fungus?"  It was very odd, the brief glimpses I've caught of Lilly being completely out of her element.  Her normal weight of confidence and command had faltered, replaced by confusion and concern.  

    "Sylph doesn't like it when I call it a brain fungus."

    "Oh, I apologize…"  Lilly trailed off and I felt bad for breaking her train of thought.  "I'm sorry Sylph, this is all a lot to take in, but I also need to ask.  Marin, is there any manipulation going on?  Are you even still yourself?"  Lilly looked at me with a massive weight of concern.

    "As for manipulation, no."  I took a deep calming breath as I prepared to launch into the full story of our first meeting. "When this first happened, Sylph was just using her spores to examine Badger and I as we stumbled into her clearing.  Through them she can see, feel, and taste many more things and with a lot more sensitivity than human senses.  Badger and I were unexpected guests and we startled her… but it seems mom ate some weird mutated mushroom from the grove before I was born and passed a mutation on to me that made me a compatible host for Fungie."  I giggled a bit and powered on.

    "Sylph's spores found a home in me and started to work for me in the same way they work for her.  It was a blast of sensory overload and my brain fizzled.  She brought me into her cave… yes she lives in a cave… and turned off the fungus, and she gave me the chance to have agency over my own body.  I mean like everything about my own body."  On a whim, I turned within myself and asked Fungie to make my nose turn green like Sylph's.  After a few seconds it was green and I crossed my eyes to look at it.  Thankfully this merited a few giggles from my friends.  

    "I even fixed my hormones by building myself some biohacked ovary type things…  So uh, I guess it isn't at all out of the realm of possibility one of us could get preggers."  I laughed and nodded at Cairn, then blushed at the thought of thinking about children with her after only knowing her for a week.  The possibility for cursed humor brought me back though.  "Sylph could impregnate me with her alien spawn."  Everyone groaned at me and I beamed with pride.

    "You also asked if I was still myself?"  Lilly nodded.  "I'm not the same Marin I was for the past three years that's for sure.  I have actual will to move forward with my life for the first time in a very long time.  I have agency over my body and the changes I have made over the past week physically and mentally are wonderful.  Probably more so than even the last six years since coming out to myself.  I'm a different person than I was…"  I reached across the table and took hold of Lilly and Cairn's hands.  "But I'm still a person who loves and cares for you both so much it hurts my poor queer heart."

    This was going so well.  I smiled at them both warmly and I saw that warmth and love returned as they looked back at me.  It gave me the confidence I needed to make them the offer.  "Sylph's people and I, we worked out how to safely generate the same mutation that made me compatible with their organism.  I want to offer the opportunity to join with us if you'd like…"  I broke eye contact and stared off into space.  "Oh crap.  That really does sound like I'm giving you the pitch to join a weird alien cult.  It's not, I swear!"

    I was starting to feel self conscious again.  Cairn and Lilly were both obviously processing a lot right now.  "I've been talking for a while.  I'm gonna be quiet now."

    I watched the wheels turn as my two dearest friends worked through all we had unloaded upon them.  I was happy with how this had gone, even unplanned as it was that spicy food would be the catalyst for this discussion. I felt confident I could rest easy in the knowledge that I was no longer lying to them, and that the truth wouldn't scare them away.  I could trust them both with this situation, but there was still anxiety remaining.  I had just asked my friends to become a little bit alien with me using the best words I could think of, and my brain still couldn't help but provide me with all the worst possible interpretations for what I was asking of them.

    Lilly was the first to speak.  "Joining you, what would this entail?"

    I nodded to Sylph to take this.  "We have an engineered virus that does nothing but work its way through your body and implant the genes for a protein that will mark your cells as those of a compatible host for the fungal colony.  After several hours of a very low grade fever, the spores that deposited the virus will start to form a network within your brain allowing you to interact with the colony and direct how it functions.

    "By default, it will allow connection to my people's network and direct communication of thought with both myself and Marin.  Beyond that, there isn't much of any limit as to what changes you could choose to make or not make from there.  It will be all completely reversible, and any invasive changes beyond what I've just explained will all be under your control and no one else's."

    "Marin, you do make it sound like a cult."  Cairn poked me in the shoulder.  "Sylph is much better at this." 

    "You think I'm cute and endearing when I'm bad at people.  It gives you something to playfully make fun of."  I stuck out my tongue at the other enby.

They got up and went back to the kitchen and brought back a plate.  "Now y'all eat up.  No decisions allowed on empty stomachs."  

    Everyone chuckled a bit and dove back into the slightly cold, but still wonderful dinner they had prepared for us.  Conversation was happy and very pleasant, but more subdued than I would have expected given this group if not for the bomb we dropped on them.

    * * *

    After dinner, Sylph offered to do the dishes as the rest of us migrated to the big couch in the living room.  I wound up sandwiched between Lilly and Cairn, an extremely happy place for me.  The back of my head resting on the former's chest while the latter purred as I idly scratched their back.  "I've missed you two so much, and just… this.  It’s been so long since I’ve been able to admit to myself how much I’ve missed this."  I felt my head rise and fall with Lilly's breathing and wiggle slightly with each steady beat of her heart.  "That's the major reason I have offered all this to the two of you."  I took a deep relaxing breath, snuggled back further into Lilly while also pulling Cairn to rest their head in my lap.

    "It's quite selfish really.  The thought of you only being here for a few days, right as I was finally allowing myself to feel the want of having you both around…  It scared me that I’d just regress into depression.  I look at how close I've grown to Sylph in ways I could never dream of being possible.  You both are still finishing school, and Sylph has to stay here.  I want that level of connection to be possible with the two of you as well, regardless of the distance."

    Lilly began to stroke my hair causing goosebumps to raise all down my sides.  "I see what you mean.  Cairn and I have missed you too."  Cairn nodded in my lap as Lilly continued speaking.  "We… I care about you, and I want to stay in connection with you as well.  If there’s more connection to be found with this…"  She took a deep breath.  "I'm scared about all the unknowns here, I’m still processing all the implications of… aliens, but I can't see anything bad about what you've offered us.  It honestly sounds amazing.  Too good to be true even.  It's as if this was all tailor made for me, a dysphoric trans woman, isolated from the amazing people she wishes could fill bigger places within her life.  You Marin, I wish you were a bigger part of my life."

   "Ditto!"  Cairn wiggled a bit in my lap.

   I couldn't help but wiggle myself and hug Cairn tighter with all the warm feelings filling me.

    "Just… this was a lot to think about, and it's a lot of change to go through, but I think I'm willing to try."

    "Yeah, me too."  Cairn patted my hands which were resting on their shoulders.

    "I love you two so much.  Just let either of us know when you'd like to do the thing."

    Cairn looked up at me.  "Heck with it, can you do me now?"

    "Um…  I think so?  One second."  I turned inward to check in with Fungie on that question.  It told me that I could alter some spores to produce and disperse a bunch of the engineered virus, and then have Cairn breath them in and the process would start in their sinuses.  I let Fungie know to go ahead and get that ready and shared with Sylph they were going to try things out.  "Yeah.  Should only take a few minutes to get enough of the virus created.  You'll just have to huff some of my spores."  

    Cairn giggled and Sylph shared back that she would stay in the kitchen cleaning until I was ready.  She was giving us space so it didn't feel like she was the alien wanting to spread her seed in my friends.

    I sent to her my endeared amusement at her sense of humor, and that Lilly might be interested in that some other time with all the flirtation she was laying on Sylph.  Less likely on Cairn's part, them being asexual.

    "Will it hurt?"  Cairn looked concerned, yet excited in my lap.

    "When Sylph blasted me, it was kinda tingly and warm… and was actually pleasant in a strange way.  Like how a little bit of weed makes your lungs feel more open after the coughing and whatnot.  Except for the part about having no clue what was going on and the sudden overwhelming sensory burnout, but those things won't happen to you."

    "Okay, then I'm ready.  Spore me cutie!"

    "I'd like Sylph here with us in case anything weird happens… if that's okay."

    Cairn started shouting.  "Sylph get in here!"

    Lilly and I both jerked, startled by their volume.  Knowing Cairn, we shouldn't have been surprised.  I flicked them on the top of the head several times and we were giggling and slap fighting at each other when Sylph walked in.

    She stopped a second to take in the scene.  "I hope you are all aware of how adorable you are together.  Marin, your smile is resplendent."

    I smiled even harder at her.

    Lilly patted my head.  "We have been made aware of this several times by many who have witnessed us together whenever ey visit.  Also Marin’s triangle of parental figures have gushed profusely over pictures that have been shared."

    "Cairn's ready to do the thing and I wanted you to be here when I tried this."  Sylph found room on the other end of the couch as I turned to Cairn.  "Okay, just breath in as you see the glowing spores."  They nodded and I released a small puff from my hand that I guided into their nose through my connection to Fungie.  I turned inward to ask my other self to keep a mental eye on the process.

 

---

    'Okay there it goes.  Can you watch over them?'

    *Of course.  I think I've been pretty much synchronized with you ever since Cairn nearly hugged you into the fountain at the airport, so I had the same thought.  I'm more than happy to have something other to do than just basking in the glow of our friends.*  I made sure the sarcasm was dripping off my words, but in a wholesome way.

    'Thank you💋  Back up I go to do more basking.'

    We really were very cute at each other, myself and I.  In addition to having the same thought, I went a step further and asked Fungie to add some sensory capabilities to the spores we used for this so I could watch.  I hadn't gone as far as working with Fungie to be able to watch the biochemistry of what was going on in Cairn's cells, but it's not like I'd been doing nothing these past few days whilst other me did all the physical body stuff.  Fungie and I had been working closely with the rest of The Consensus on the design of this virus so we knew it well.  We tagged the viral envelope with fluorescent quantum dots that flared brightly (in a nanoscopic sense) in response to a pulse of light.  My spores could wander Cairn's body, twinkling all the while, and the virus would twinkle back like a very tiny and sparkly game of Marco Polo.  With this, I could follow the virus as it spread.

    I turned my awareness to focus on the spores planting themselves in Cairn's nasal cavities.  I could "see" and "feel" the inside of their nose through the spores.  I watched as they released small virus particles that twinkled off to embed themselves in mucus and worked their way inside the cell walls of the tissues there.  

    I was aware through extensive simulations that at this point, the virus would be hijacking intracellular transport to pull itself into the nucleus, and the cell's own genetic replication machinery to splice its genes into Cairn's.  One of those genes was to code for the alien compatibility protein to display on the cell membrane, enabling the fungal colony to develop.  The other genes were to make millions of copies of the virus to send off to other parts of their body.

     In many types of retroviruses, this massive replication would cause problems like cancer or immunodeficiency in the host.  The Consensus and I had designed this virus to be benign.  We encoded a second surface protein that would grab and destroy any of the virus that attempted to enter an already altered cell.  Each time this happened, they would release a molecular message, addressed to the nucleus, that would downregulate the production of more virus.  If a certain threshold were hit, another gene would activate, coding for the production of restriction enzymes that would cut out all the viral DNA (but not the fungal compatibility marker, we needed that).  It really was amazing all the things the aliens could do with their biotechnology.  This was on the extremely tame end of the spectrum of their capabilities.

   Back within Cairn, I watched as a localized inflammation reaction began in response to the viral invasion.  We hadn’t found an easy or noninvasive way to bypass that standard part of immune response, so Cairn was probably starting to feel a bit sick.  Thankfully, this sick would run its course over the next 12 or so hours and unlike other viral infections this virus would kill itself off with only a little help from their immune system to clean up the remains.  

    I watched as the inflammation spread, so did the compatibility marker.  These were also tagged with quantum dots causing prepared cells to light up like tiny littlemicroscopic homes decorated for Christmas.  Now my spores got to work.  They landed in the mucus on the cell surface, shedding their protective husk and flagella, to begin their transition into the hyphae that would make up the initial mycelial network within Cairn's sinuses.  Once a sufficient net was formed, differentiation began.  At network crossroads, nodes formed, producing fruiting bodies which began producing more spores in turn.  They were no longer my spores, they were Cairn's, I was merely borrowing their senses.

    These new spores were specialized for living within the body rather than without.  They squeezed between cells to enter the bloodstream, and my view of Cairn's insides blossomed.  I watched as blinking spores chased blinking virus through Cairn's circulatory system.  The first major goal was a quick loop through the heart, lungs, and heart again before making their way to the brain.  Both the spores and the virus were specifically equipped to cause transport proteins in the blood brain barrier to think them cool and, like slipping the bouncer at a club a twenty, get them a pass inside.  

    In the brain the real work began.  The virus led the way spreading the compatibility marker.  The spores then created a new mycelial network, weaving their way through the brain, wrapping around neural soma and axon, connecting hyphae to synapse.  As this network spread through Cairn's brain, it gained the ability to communicate with them.  After about three hours of subjective time back out in meatspace, it was ready for cairn to test their connection.  I nudged my other self.

    *Hey bitch, Cairn's brain fungus is ready.*

    'If I'm bitch, so are you as you're also me😜'

    *It true, am bitch!  Tell them to be ready though.  We'll do the brain reboot thing Sylph did to us again so they can wander their mental void.*

    My other self sent the mental impression of a salute and a kissy face and ducked back out to reality.

---

 

   To pass the time while we waited on Cairn's colony to develop, I had put on some cartoons just to have background while we all zoned out enjoying each other's company.  My couch was thankfully big enough for all 4 of us to easily fit.  Lilly on one end with me still reclined against her chest.  Sylph on the other end, her arm draped across the back of the couch, her hand holding my own.  Cairn was sprawled across both Sylph and I with their head in my lap and legs in Sylph's.  

    Cairn had been alternating between blowing their nose and complaining about feeling gross and sick for the past hour.  I thankfully now had the message we were going to need to power cycle their consciousness so they could learn how to talk to their very own fungal brain buddy, providing a needed respite from their whining for the rest of us.

    "Cairn…" I tickled their ear a bit and they swatted at me.  "It looks like your brain is ready to talk to the colony, but to get it started we will have to give you something of a reboot."

    "Huh?"  They looked up at me quizzically.

    "If it's anything like when I first connected to things, it's a little bit of a different skill to learn.  Talking to the fungal colony, or looking around the inside of your body and across the alien's network is kinda weird.  Also when you first contact the colony it'll share with you how to work with it and wait for your consent to move forward, so it's kinda the nicest and least legally worded E-U-L-A ever."

    "But you said reboot, what does that mean?"

    "Oh that.  You'll black out for a bit, but still be conscious.  Just sorta up in your own head with nothing external to bother you for a bit."

    Sylph patted Cairn's legs.  "If things seem to be going badly or you get stuck, we can easily pull you back."

    The head in my lap nodded and they gave Sylph's hand a squeeze.  "Okey dokey, ready as I'll ever be."

    Both Lilly and I placed our hands on their head, lightly massaging their scalp.  I gave my copied headmate a mental nod to go ahead with it.  Cairn closed their eyes and I could feel their body fall slack.  

    "So now I get to watch this from the other side."  I smiled at Sylph.  "Were you scared when this was me?"

    She nodded.  "I was.  The harm that I'd caused with our first meeting… it still felt fresh and I was still worried I was pressuring you into this."

    Lilly, who'd been quietly caressing my arm for the past hour, giggled slightly.  "Sylph, after a day of getting to know you… you seem like the least pressuring or forceful person… person?"

    I twisted my head to look at Lilly.  "Yes person, don't other my girlfriend."  Sylph giggled at my gallant defense of her personhood.

    "What?  Cairn likes to be called a thing or it/its pronouns sometimes.  And Marin, you identify as an abomination in most setting.  Likely even more so now that your part space alien."  She kissed my forehead and all I could do was shrug and acknowledge her point as Sylph continued giggling.  "I continue.  Least forceful entity I've ever met.  You should try being a little more forceful with Marin sometimes, ey'd like that."

    I scoffed at her completely true remark.

    "It's only been a week, but yes I've already found that out.  Don't worry, I have plans for our cute little abomination here."  Sylph looked directly into my eyes, hers glowing gold with a fire I'd yet to see of this magnitude, and she smirked.  

    Ohh fuck, she'd been secretly practicing Lilly's look.  My mind blanked and my body shivered involuntarily.  

    Lilly chuckled and gave me another kiss on the forehead.  "I see you are learning young padawan."

    I was still temporarily stunned, like a deer in smirking golden headlights, when I felt Cairn stretch a bit in my lap.  Looking down, it was also at that moment I noticed they were growing facial hair and what looked like ram's horns.  

    Lilly followed my gaze down to her partner's face.  "Looks like Cairn worked out how to do things.