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[PRESENTING]

[THE AMAZING LILLY]

[STARRING IN:]

~*A Frog is Born*~

ACT I: OVERTURE

Late! Late! Late! Late! Late!

Lilly's dollar store flip-flops pounded the dirt of the fairgrounds. She could already hear music in the distance, brassy horns springing forth from the big top like fresh blue water pouring from a fountain -- man, she was thirsty -- but no time to stop!

A newly won frog plush tucked under her arm, she dodged and weaved through the crowd with half a caramel apple bobbing out of her mouth. Well, maybe "dodged" was a strong word...

"Hey, lady!"

With a BOMF, she'd smacked face-first into a wonderfully rotund man, the stick of her apple poking him right in the boob.

Red flushed through her cheeks. "Sorry! Sorry!" Lilly squeaked as she squirreled past, squishing her thin frame in between him and another carnival-goer. If only she could just hop over them all.

Lilly was the kind of girl who danced at her own pace and banged her own drum, so this wasn't the first time she hastily stumbled through a crowd -- with more than a few people cursing her name as loose strands of brunette hair flew into their mouths. She seriously needed to get a watch, or at least remember to charge her phone the night before.

Fortunately, her bumbling footwork carried Lilly to the tent with moments to spare and only a few folks' slurpees staining her pink tank top blue. The orchestral fanfare climaxed as she breached the curtain -- she liked to imagine it was her own entrance music.

"Behold the wonder, the magic, the drama, of The Peters Family Circus of Fantasy!" A bellowing Hypeman roared over the speakers, and the audience of dozens cheered in response. Rainbows of floodlights drenched men, women, and children in revolving shades and hues. Blue banners swung overhead from the rafters to a classically red stage curtain poised at the back of the tent. Two towering trapeze poles of oak stood at mass in the ring, their height and dividing distance triumphant yet terrifying. It was a setup that put "The Greatest Showman" to shame.

Lilly had stars in her eyes.

Her excitement on the cusp of overflow, she gulped down the last chunk of her apple and tossed the stick before working her way up the grandstand. All around her, children cuddled plush lions and tigers while their parents clutched cocktails just as tightly. She could smell the gallons of buttered popcorn and corn dogs scattered across the tent, making her even hungrier. She should've bought three apples. In true Lilly fashion, she accidentally kneed a few people in the shin -- and head -- until she found an empty spot in the third row. The tent wasn't as packed as she expected, but that simply meant everyone could huddle up in the front. These were true believers who saw the timeless value of a circus show. Lilly was among her people.

A golden spotlight burst open on the back curtain like the sun parting a storm. The music quickly segued from triumphant trumpets to a dangerous pounding of Congo drums. Lilly could feel the air suddenly sizzle with tension. A distant roar echoed over the speakers, and everyone in the stands began to cheer as a stumpy man in a top hat rushed out into the ring, seemingly running for his life. He gripped his whip in one hand and turned one-eighty in his platform boots, his red coat dancing around his body like something out of an anime, and with a flick of his wrist, he snapped his black wire against the ground. A growl came muffled from behind the fabric wall.

The gallant man's voice echoed from the speakers overhead. Clearly, he was well mic'd. "Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, beware the Beastman! Its mother was a lion, its father...a murderer! It has the strength of ten lions and the blood of a killer!"

Everyone gasped on cue as a hulking behemoth pushed through the curtain with a bloodcurdling roar. Towering on two legs, the monster must have stood at 9 feet or more. Its face was an amalgam of man and animal, with a blunt snout in place of any normal nose and a crowning mane that encircled its head with strands of blonde fur. A loincloth covered its lower half, but no amount of fabric could hide the beast's bulging muscles or the lion-like tail that swung from its backside. Whether or not its origin story was believable, the "Beastman" was anything but human. Lilly found it as terrifying as it was thrilling.

The show carried on as the ringleader and Beastman circled each other in their choreographed dance. Lunge, whip, lunge, repeat. With every movement, people gasped with horror and anticipation. Lilly joined them on the edge of her seat. The monster clawed at the man, one hand-paw after the other, but never once did it tear at his bejeweled attire. Obviously, the master was just that nimble.

Soon, however, the beast had him cornered, his back pressed against the metal railing that fenced off the bleachers. Lilly could almost reach out and touch him. As the juggernaut stomped forward, snarling and snorting, the unseen Hypeman lamented on the sound system. "Oh no, no! Could this be the end for our dear ringmaster, R.J. Peters? Is there anything we can do to help?"

With the collective power of an angry mob, the crowd roared for Peters' safety, even matching the beast in voracious intensity. They cheered his name likes the Greeks for Heracles. As the support grew louder and louder, the stalking beast suddenly stopped in its tracks and covered its triangular ears, curling over in apparent agony.

"Yes, that's it!" the master shouted. "Keep making noise, his animal hearing is too much for him!" He turned to the crowd and gestured for them to rise. They did as they were told. The chanting and clapping soared with the triumphant background music.

"R.J.! R.J.! R.J.!" Lilly cried, falling just behind the crowd's rhythm.

With everyone on their feet, it wasn't long until the terrifying Beastman turned tail and scurried away back behind the curtain, never to be heard from again -- at least until the next show.

"The beast is slain!" Peters boasted, whipping the dusty ground in victory. His captive audience whirled into a frenzy, enamored by the charisma and showboating of the titular ringmaster. Equally empowered, Lilly clapped and whistled along for his bravery. The girl was fully swept away. Of course, she knew it was mostly staged, but the energy of the crowd and the dazzling display of lights and bravado made the whole event feel real. It was childlike. It was magical. That's why she still loved it.

She could only imagine being on the other side of the guardrail.

Master Peters fixed his whip to his belt-loop and dusted off his still-relatively-clean jacket. "Thank you, thank you for your help! If I might just take a moment to say, it is wonderful to be back here in your beautiful town. Of all the cities we travel to, there's no audience quite like you." He bowed to the stands as they ate up his words. "For our next event, I'd like to welcome a beloved member of the family...a founding member of our humble circus troupe...The Magnificent Mephistopho!"

A round of applause came as the rear curtain parted once more, this time allowing the stereotype of a magician to waltz though. His coat like that of a penguin, he wore a top hat just a hair smaller than the ringmaster's. He gestured back to the curtain, where a tall young man wheeled in an even taller black box that dwarfed them both in size. It was long like a coffin and deep as a grave, octagonal in shape and imposing in demeanor. You could almost fit the whole Beastman inside!

Though the box towered conspicuously in the ring, Lilly took more notice of the worker hauling it. His short black hair spiked in a messy shotgun of directions, and his dark blue overalls carried the matted stains of labor -- a stark contrast to the glamorous attire of his coworkers. What stood out the most, however, were his chocolate brown eyes that drooped down in a tired arc. He was the only person in the entire tent who looked unhappy to be there.

She felt sorry for him without explanation, but her attention snapped back to the show when he quietly slipped back behind the curtain. Mephistopho unbuckled the front of the casket-like instrument while his superior caressed the air around its obelisk form. Master Peters would certainly give Vanna White a run for her money, if he ever had the chance.

"We require one, and only one, volunteer from the audience to join us in this act. The box before you is a portal to...dare I even say it...the Underworld!" His dramatic pause earned its gasps, and he reveled in the sound. "All who enter shall vanish from this world and forever perish...but they will be reborn anew! They will walk on water! They will soar above us all! They will be...amazing! So, who dares to be amazing? Who among you...dares to be a star?"

Lilly literally hopped up of her seat, her plush companion falling to the floor. She waved her arms like a child at a parade. The world fell to the wayside and her singular goal became to win the master's favor. No matter how many times she's attended magic acts or live shows, she never got picked for anything in her life. This time would be different -- she could feel it! She stood up on her tiptoes and bounced on the balls of her feet. Luckily, she towered over the literal children in the front two rows.

Master Peters scanned the house with patient emphasis, searching for the perfect person for this trick. Someone excited, agreeable, and eager to please.

A clever thought came to mind as Lilly retrieved her stuffed toy from the ground and held it up like a green signal flare. There were so many little lions around her, but not a single fellow frog. She called the master's name as loud as she could, over and over. This had to get his attention!

"Over here! Please, R.J.! R.J.!"

When the two made eye contact, a deal was struck. Her wide smile met his even larger grin. That flash of green meant everything.

"You! The young woman with the frog, you're just what I'm looking for!"

Lilly's heart frolicked in her chest as she climbed down from the third row, practically scaling the kids in front of her before they could move out of her way. She left her squishy friend behind to keep her seat warm -- his dopey face beamed her a permanently encouraging smile. After surfing a crowd too small to carry her adult-sized weight, the chosen one managed to pull herself up onto the guardrail and swing a leg over before completely face-planting down into the dirt. The crowd erupted in laughter, and even the ringmaster couldn't help but chortle over the speakers. However, all this attention only pumped Lilly up more. She made them laugh! Maybe she should get into show business!

Back on her feet, the starstruck lass hurried to the center of the ring and shook Peters' hand with gusto. His glove subtly rubbed against the side of his pants once she moved to greet the magician. Time to get this show on the road.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please give a round of applause for our brave volunteer --"

"Lilly! Lilly Skylar!" she shouted, her eager voice distorting through his hidden lapel mic. The crowd cheered like she was a regular part of the crew.

"Yes, Lilly, so wonderful to have you. Are you truly steel of heart? Are you prepared to enter a dark dimension far beyond our own, within the bowels of the Earth itself?"

"I was born to go dimension hopping." She gave him a big thumbs, though it was angled more towards the audience. The pose earned her another round of applause.

"You heard the little lady, Mr. Mephistopho. Send her to...the Underworld!" The ringleader waved to his magic man, whose wordless nod made him look more like an assistant than a master of the arts.

The in-house illusionist pulled open his box to reveal an interior so dark Lilly couldn't even see the back of it. It was a black hole, swallowing even the brightest of the stage lights. The hair on the back of her neck stirred. Could this actually be a portal to the Underworld?

Regardless of her destination, she had a job to do, a role to play, and she trusted Master Peters to put on a good show. Everyone was watching. This could be her moment.

"Look out, Underworld! Lilly's coming through!" With her bravado hung from a flag pole, she stepped into the box and turned to face to the excited onlookers. She waved goodbye and received another round of applause for her mettle while Mephistopho pushed on the lid of the sarcophagus.

"My dear," Peters spoke as the light began to fade. "Thank you for your bravery."

When her vision blackened out, the brunette pressed her hand gently against the front and sides of the box. It was firm yet soft, perhaps wood covered in a special furry fabric. This container must've been custom-made for the show. She imagined a dark curtain would fall from above and cover her, or a false wall would spin around, creating the illusion that she vanished into an abyss. Lilly had seen many a magic act over the years, and they all seemed to have their own tricks of the trade.

Curiosity distracted her while the ringleader continued his rigmarole outside. She could hear him chatter over a whimsical tune, though the words were all muffled by the coffin's thick walls. An eager smile grew as she anticipated her "return" and imagined what stories she'd tell of her time in the "Underworld." Demons? Centaurs? Her meanest old teacher from the third grade? She had to think of something good to impress everyone! The possibilities were endless, and only one thing was certain.

Lilly and her smile would vanish when a cloth was forced against her mouth from behind. Bitterness enveloped her lips. Shadows clouded her mind. She had no time to scream as her dark world spun into pieces.

=====================================================================================

Chirp.

Chirp.

Chirp.

First came sound.

The noise of a single cricket twitched in Lilly's ear. Gone was the applause. The laughter. The joy.

Then there was feeling.

Cold metal flattened her cheek and the palm of her hand. It crushed her, bent her, trapped her, would it --

No. No. She was simply lying on cold steel. A hard and bare plate, nothing like the inside of the black box. The weight of her own body kept her down. Nothing could lift the pressure.

Everything.

Felt.

Disjointed.

Lilly's eyes flickered weakly. Her mind pushed her to act, but her body couldn't receive the signal. Everything sat blanketed in the dark. Was she still within the tent, or outside in the night? Hard to tell.

Her only light was an oil lamp just out of reach, perched atop a wooden stool. Both sat behind a metal fence. No. Metal bars. No. She was the one...behind bars, wasn't she? That made more sense. That was worse.

So much worse.

Panic flooded her system. She wanted to run, to scream, to punch and pounce, but instead she lay paralyzed. More than just fatigued, she could not move. Not her arms, nor her neck. Only her sense of sight could run across the room.

Click. Clink. Clank.

She heard metal ratcheting, like locks snapped into place.

Lilly's terrified eyes darted around the darkness. It was the most she could do. She kept following the sounds to the left, but it clearly was out of view of her peripheral. She felt isolated, defenseless. The powerlessness was damning.

If not for her frozen state, she would've jumped as a hand came into view and retrieved the lantern. Its master appeared within the low light, the stains of his navy overalls deep enough to be visible in the flicker.

"Um...you should go back to sleep. It's for the best."

The man from earlier -- the laborer who wheeled in the coffin. What did he want? What did he do to her? What was he going to do? Lily's mind raced to the worst of possibilities.

However, as if to ease her fears, the young man stepped back into the shadows without another word. His lantern waved back at her from afar. This image only terrified her more as a second light approached from the distant black. It came with thumping steps and heavy crunches of dirt. The steps moved out of rhythm. Two pairs. One did not sound human.

A hulking shadow crawled over Lilly, its form lumbering closer until a fur-covered claw emerged from the dark. The accompanying lamp cast orange specks onto the monster's mane. The Beastman was bigger in person.

Lilly couldn't see its whole face from this angle. That is, until it twisted down and sniffed at her like a starving dog. The giant's grizzly snout could almost poke though the bars. She imagined a chill running down her spine, even though she couldn't feel it.

"Easy now..." A smooth voice slithered out of the shadows. "The girl's not even ready yet."

From behind the behemoth came the true monster. The devil in a top hat. Lilly's fear swirled with anger as his red coat flickered in the fire's glow. R.J. Peters. Ringleader. Kidnapper.

The showman approached her cell bars with subdued excitement as his pet held the lantern high. In Peters' hands was some sort of pouch with a long, snake-like tail. Lilly couldn't make it out clearly, let alone what was inside, but she could see him strapping it to one of the iron bars...and attaching a needle to the rubber umbilical cord.

"You've answered our prayers, my dear. Truly an angel, heaven-sent." The master smiled with delight. A thoroughly shit-eating grin. "Welcome to the Underworld." Lilly couldn't feel the prick, but she knew what he had done before he stepped back into the darkness with his comrades.

As quickly as they came, both lanterns retreated into the night. The last sight Lilly caught before her vision blurred was that of the Beastman's tongue wetting its coal black jowls. The footsteps of her jailers faded beneath the cricket's whimper and Lilly's silent scream.

=====================================================================================

Boom! Boom! Twang!

Boom! Boom! Twang!

Lilly awoke to the familiar sounds of horns and drums and children's shrieking laughter. The cacophony drilled into her skull, worsening her likely-drug-induced migraine. Both of her temples felt like collapsing. However, her sense of consciousness rapidly rallied when daylight stung her eyes. It was morning already.

As soon as she could will her muscles to move, the captive girl rolled onto her knees and tried to stand despite her disorientation. Numbness jiggled her legs as she stumbled away from the cell bars, her face twitching as she accidentally tore the IV from her foot. Its placement struck her as odd, but this wasn't the time to fixate over some lunatic's lack of medical training. At least she was cognizant enough to feel again.

"Um...don't move so much. You'll make yourself sick," a soft voice piped up behind her. It lacked the charisma or condescension of the charlatan ringleader. It was one she barely recognized.

Lilly turned to face the young worker in overalls, his mouth pursed, a water bottle clutched in his hands like a cross. "H-Hey! Let me out r-right n-now!" She stuttered, not just from fear, but a distinct lack of motor control. She was desperately trying to stay upright and make out her surroundings. They were inside a red tent, one much smaller than the big top. It was crowded with cardboard boxes and show props -- bowling pins for juggling, blunt swords for swallowing, a table full of tie-dye Tees printed with the ringmaster's face. Were they really keeping her hostage next to their merch supplies? The vibrant overload made Lilly's head spin, and after a moment she resigned to leaning up against the metal bars. These bars...she looked at her cell more closely. She was in a lion cage, wasn't she? Like on the side of an animal cracker box? This was absurd!

"Look, you're dehydrated. Drink this, alright?" The raven-haired boy quickly slid the bottle between the bars and backed away as if Lilly herself was a lion ready to strike. She currently lacked the energy to do so, but the idea certainly wasn't off the table.

Frustrated, but too woozy to resist, she grabbed the water and chugged it, then promptly reached past the bars and tossed the bottle at his head. A bold act of rebellion! To which he had no reaction.

Before Lilly could argue further, the Hypeman rang out over the speakers in a boisterous baritone that now made Lily's skin crawl. "Ladies and gentlemen! Today we present to you, an old classic made anew! This act will dazzle your heart, deceive your eyes, and defy gravity itself!"

With a soft sigh, the overalls fellow moved to the front of her cage and retrieved the metal handle connected to its base. It just occurred to Lilly that, much like an animal cracker box, her prison had wheels.

"I'm sorry about this," he muttered before rolling her out.

The supply tent connected to the big top via a closed-in walkway, presumably for easy access to all the show props. As her cart scuttled along, Lilly gripped the bars like an innocent convict awaiting execution.

Passing through the hanging stage curtain, she was blinded by the flashing lights of the main tent. The same colors that dazzled her yesterday now proved horrifying and overwhelming. This was the last place she wanted to be after her kidnapper-induced slumber.

Lilly desperately reached through the bars and tried to address the crowd. "Help! Please, someone!" Her throat was still dry, unfortunately, and her voice never made it over the blaring brass horns or the cheers of the ravenous attendees. They were clearly primed for a feast.

Speaking of the devil, she looked around for the fiend who'd plotted her abduction, and yet he was nowhere in earshot. She had a few choice words to exchange with him, and a few choice kicks to the groin.

"Look to the sky!" The Hypeman called over the speaker. "It's an eagle! It's a rocket! No, wait, it's the amazing Master Peters!"

Lilly couldn't crane her neck up to see, but high above the ring were support rafters, a series of metal walkways designed for maintenance and lighting adjustments. However, today they would serve as Peters' jumping-off point. Literally.

"Welcome back, my friends!" the master laughed from on high. "And welcome home, Lilly! Returning from her otherworldly trek, against all odds, she has wonders to share with you, and you alone!"

In a wire act usually reserved for more...graceful...acrobats, Peters descended from the scaffolding like Lucifer from heaven. The applause soared to meet him halfway. With a spin of his cane, the other new addition to today's show, he landed in the ring with grace of a bejeweled potato. That's what Lilly thought anyway as he brushed off the dirt before making his way to her cage. The showman's overconfidence appeared less attractive from this side of the fence.

"Lilly! What was it like in the Underworld?"

"Help! They kidnapped me! Call the police!"

Peters rapped the bars with his cane.

"Oh my, the devil kidnapped you? What a monster! I'm sure you narrowly escaped his legion of bat people and little hooved goblins." He faked a look of horror before turning back to his equally captive audience. "And how did she survive, you may wonder? Why, she's harnessed a power so divine, so rare that you all have seen it only once before, right here under this very tent. And we are so blessed to witness it once more today!"

Peters sleekly handed the keys to his overalls-covered cohort. Head hung low, the lackey unlocked the cage while avoiding eye contact with either his boss or their prisoner.

The gate squealed open.

"Behold, the blood of Mother Nature runs through her veins! Watch as she takes flight from Hell to the Heavens! This girl is none other than the amazing, spellbinding, magnificent...The Flying Frog!"

Heavens? Flying frogs? Lilly looked utterly baffled by this nonsensical back-story -- and the mention of blood didn't sit well with her -- but this was no time to unscramble his word salad. The door was open. She was free. Every instinct boiled up inside of her, and they all ordered her to run.

Adrenaline shot Lilly from her cage. She kicked up dirt under her bare heels while her flip-flops stayed behind, their soles silently cheering her on from incarceration. She vaguely recalled where the exit was, on the far left side of the bleachers. Or was it the right? On her right, or --

CRACK!

Her right ankle gave out. Her face skidded into the dirt.

"Ah! Ahh!" Lilly cried, floundering about not twelve feet away from her jail cell. Ignoring the sting and scuffing on her chin, she cradled her leg in far worse agony. Had she twisted it while running? She barely made it away from the cage, from that monster of a ringleader. She had to keep going!

What the young woman failed to realize was that her ankle had twisted of its own accord. The little lumpy bone that everyone knows but never knows the name to had slyly un-fused itself and pushed out half an inch. It was barely noticeable. It was just the beginning. It didn't matter where the exit was.

She was never going to reach it.

"Let the show begin!" the master bellowed to clamorous applause.

Lilly looked back with fear in her eyes. What was he plotting? And why was it getting so hot all of a sudden? A humid miasma, she thought, wrapped around her in a crippling haze. The girl's breathing grew heavy, and she clutched her chest as if she could pull open her lungs for more space. The air pressure squeezed at her temples. Whirlwinds encircled her in a panicking spiral. Hot. Chilling. Suffocating. A storm was brewing on the horizon.

SNAP!

"Ow, shit!"

Like a branch in the wind, Lilly's other ankle cracked as well. The noise of crunching bone spun into the discord of circus music that screamed into her ears from on high. It thundered with rage, growing closer and louder by the second. The hairs on her neck reached skyward. Electric bolts arced through the air.

Lighting struck her to the core. The helpless girl gasped as her fever exploded, body set ablaze by the overwhelming shock. To combat the heat wave, sweat began to pour from every inch of her skin, in all the most embarrassing spots. Yet it did nothing to keep her cool. In fact, the waterworks were quickly becoming gratuitous. Her tank top and jean shorts started chafing from the wetness, driving Lilly mad.

She wiped her glistening forehead in disgust. When that wasn't enough, she used bottom of her shirt. Her brow crinkled as some salty droplets snuck into her eye and attacked. It was one problem after another. No matter how perspiration she dabbed away, infinite replacements came to surface. She was fighting a hurricane without an umbrella. Beads of sweat kept mounting on her skin with a visible sheen, and they were actually...starting to burn?

"Ow! Ow! What the hell?"

This was worse than just a fever. Her skin was on fire. No, it felt like acid rain. A continuously dribbling sizzle that ripped across her skin and grew worse by the second. Mortified, she wiped the hot fluid from her arms and legs as fast as she could, rubbing her hands on her shorts when she had to. Was this a bad reaction to that goddamn IV? Or worse, did it make her allergic to her own sweat? Her thoughts ran wild but took back seat to the sting on her flesh. She had to get this goop off!

Once again, the awkwardly drenched girl failed to grasp the situation, though who could blame her? The reality was an impossibility. It wasn't her sweat burning at all -- but the glands in her skin that produced it. They were swelling, reshaping, and being rewritten from the ground up. It was an act of God that so terribly plagued her. Or, more accurately, the work of the devil, who had rigged this game from the start.

He was going to enjoy every minute of it.

"Oh dear, Lilly! Do you need a towel? Perhaps a hair dryer? I think there's a tanning bed in the back."

The master's taunting words earned some laughs from the peanut gallery, but they were the least of Lilly's problems. In the act of rubbing and drying and repeating, she started to hear something worse, something strange. The most uncomfortable wet squelching sound she could possibly imagine. Like half-empty tubes of hot glue squirting into her ears -- like crude oil squeezed from a penguin's polluted feathers -- like a guy at Starbucks slurping just loud enough to make you want to kill him. The noise was thick and moist and coming directly from her hand. She pulled away from her forearm. Her stomach flipped. What the hell was that?

Instead of baby sweat drops clinging to her fingers, a long, thick strand of transparent ooze ran from her palm to her opposite wrist, the thread dangling freely like one of the banners overhead. She thought it looked like drool. Was she drooling? No, she moved her arm further away, and the residue didn't seem so thin. It was almost gelatinous and reminded her of the slime tutorials she used to watch on YouTube as a kid. And last week.

Lilly gagged with disdain and whipped her hand away to break the tether. The slimy intruder fell to the ground, but not before leaving a sloppy kiss on her skin. Cringing to high heaven, she spread her fingers apart and watched as the glistening goo congealed like webs between them. "What...what is this?" She groaned, now worried that her spontaneous illness was leading to hallucinations.

"Why it's mucus, my girl! Your own special brand, guaranteed to lock in moisture or your money back."

Did he say mucus? In disgust and disbelief, she looked away and shook the fluid mess off her hand. The drops took flight but were quickly replaced by identical syrupy globs. They formed as rapidly as her rampant sweat beads! No...wait...wait...this was her sweat, wasn't it? These viscous rivulets had sprung out of her own palm. She could almost feel them seeping from her pores. Turning her hands over and over, the poor girl sat in terror as the visible sheen of this thick, sticky, mucus steamrolled across every inch of bare skin, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

A puddle of it started forming beneath her legs.

Though stupefied by the slippery streams running down her arms, Lilly winced reflexively as a sharp jolt of pain shot through her thumb -- or rather, in between her thumb and pointer finger. The pinch confused her even more...what could possibly be happening in crook of her hand? Cautious or paranoid or both, she zeroed in on that tiny tab of skin hanging by her digits and almost went cross-eyed. There was nothing there! No bee stinger, no pin, no blow dart. The lack of evidence made her feel crazy.

Was it just a passing mosquito or a kicked up rock? She didn't put her hand in anything strange besides her goopy sweat. Yes, that's sweat_on her skin, she asserted. All she could tell was, maybe, did the little skin flap look...bigger than before? Maybe less opaque, somehow? She could see tiny veins running through it, but those were always there, probably. This had to be an optical illusion, a trick of the light, refractions from the mucus -- no, _sweat! Any of those explanations could be possible. That's what she so desperately wanted to believe.

POP!

"Shit! Shit!" she cursed in a whimper. Her stupid ankle went rouge again. Ignoring the maybe-larger hand-skin flap, Lilly pulled her left leg into those sopping wet fingers and rubbed at the joint screaming above her heel. It felt swollen to the touch, jutting out more than it should. When she tried moving her foot, even the slightest rotation proved too painful.

All these minute quirks left the young lady frightened and equally as frustrated. Something was seriously wrong, and no one was going to help her. The ringleader worked the crowd folk with each trauma she endured. If anything, they were probably jealous. She had a front row seat for today's event. No popcorn, no refunds, but the best view in the house.

And the real show was about to begin.

SNAP! CRACKLE! POP!

"Arghh! Aghhhhh!" Lilly screamed for mercy. The bones of her feet shattered with the force of a dozen broken dishes. What fragments remained under her skin began to crinkle and fizz like breakfast cereal drenched in milk, if the kitchen was on fire. Every sickening creak added fuel to the flames and rang in the oncoming fate cast down upon her. This time her bones weren't just twisting. They were growing.

Before the girl's eyes, against all reason, the entire middle of her foot began to elongate with violent, wet crunches of bone, the length stretching far beyond a human's shoe size, let alone that of a woman. She clenched both hands around it and could feel everything inside moving in impossible ways. Delicate muscles stuttered with pain. The tarsal bones fractured and distended past what a healthy dose of calcium could repair. Their accompanying tendons tore like power lines before fixing themselves at rapid speed, allowing her entire foot to grow far, far too long.

"Goodness, I've never seen such gargantuan feet! There must be a dashing sasquatch eager to sweep you off them. Let's give a round of applause for his lucky bride-to-be!"

Everybody laughed at his increasingly cruel commentary, sinking Lilly's hopes of rescue to the sea floor. They seriously still thought this was an act? The whole thing was a joke to them, something to guffaw at from their cheap seats. Peters had spun her pain into their pleasure, and there was nothing she could do or say that would break the illusion, or lack thereof. They really were true believers.

Spurred by their elongation, Lilly's soles erupted with thick, slimy sweat -- fine, mucus -- that fed the lake forming beneath her. The outpour sputtered as wild and unstable as rainfall from a broken gutter. It was hard to measure, but the secretions of her feet seemed even worse her palms, likely because of stupidly long her soles had become. Just gripping them proved difficult with the sloppy muck they exuded, and walking would've also been a major problem if she wasn't flat on her ass from the agonizing metamorphosis. One wave of pain after another made her toes curl into fists, as if shielding themselves from the storm. However, their participation in this unnatural disaster was, if nothing else, inevitable.

The girl's arches continued to warp and weep as a familiar stinging pain took center stage in-between her big toes and...whatever you call the second ones. Talk about déjà vu. Except this time, it definitely was not an illusion. Those little flaps of skin that connected the base of the toes were starting to look not so little. A cruel phantom hand pinched and pulled until the flesh stretched high, clinging tight to the insides of her toes with a wet schlock. The excess skin ran so thin that it became semi-translucent, with red veins spattered about if you looked close enough. The twin deformities reminded her of...oh God, she didn't want to say it.

"And there's the webbing, ladies and gentlemen!"

Lilly couldn't believe what he was saying. Webbing? No way. Not like a...that's impossible! Maybe the growth spurt in her feet had some explanation, but she couldn't be growing something so bizarre, so inhuman. Could she?

"She'll be a star swimmer in no time. Better watch out, Mr. Phelps!"

Jeeze, would he ever shut up?

Regardless of its reasoning, the newly grown webbing of her toes climbed higher along the digits like ivy. This comparison proved woefully apt when a strange shade of green started creeping up from the edges of her see-through skin. The hue looked faded at first, with the yellowing sheen of dead grass, but more pigment returned to life by the second. In mere moments, a thriving forest of spring swept over her skin, flowing out from her toes and quickly dyeing her ankles. Lilly tired swiping the color away as though it was spilt ink, but she only managed to flick off another jar's worth of mucus. The froggy tint was here to stay, just like the slime. And for better or worse, she'd stopped actively noticing how moist her skin had become. Oh great, she was adapting.

What she did grab her attention, however, were her second and third toes squeezing together with skull-splitting pressure and an equally sickening squelch. The sealing skin felt caustic and crushing, and Lilly cried out as the boiling anguish returned in spades. Unlike the membranes added to her feet, the flesh of her two toes congealed so tightly that their individual curves were fading from existence. She had once seen an image of someone with webbed toes during a risky Google search -- it was a worse, greener version of that. But people were born with that kind of thing, right? I didn't just grow, and it shouldn't hurt this much!

"Stop, stop, please stop!" she begged, eyes watering from the latest in a series of burning pains.

Respectfully, the transformation said "no." This nightmarish merging mutation wasn't even willing to stop at the surface of her skin! The heat drilled deeper into her digits, peeling away at muscle and bone before fusing them back in tighter accord. All the phalanges in her mashed up toes were starting to unite into one solid lump. Desperate to resist, Lilly tried to pry them apart again, but their forced magnetism proved too strong, and pulling at her toes only made them hurt worse.

"Don't worry, my dear. You no longer have any need for five toes...not that you really did in the first place. What were they even good for, besides stubbing into tables?" Peters mocked her as he hopped on one foot in pantomime. The audience found his bit incredibly relatable. If she wasn't so rocked by pain, Lilly would've put her feet to good use against him in a number of violent ways -- most involving his ass. That would surely entertain the crowd.

Instead, she sat powerless as her two pairs of toes welded together completely, each teal-painted nail popping off as the tips collided. Damn it. She really liked that color. Her four blue friends waved goodbye from their final resting place in the dirt, leaving the girl bereft with her eight remaining digits in mourning. No, wait. Six. Her two smallest toes followed suit out of spite.

"Ah, shit! Stop it! Stop growing together!"

Now sporting six toes, each interlocked by green webs of skin, she stared at her hideously deformed feet in abject terror. They weren't human anymore, more like an alien's paws, something out of a gory 80s film where the prosthetics looked just real enough to be horrifying. That's what today had devolved into, after all -- pure horror...torture, even. And it still wasn't over, as she and her tormentor both knew well. This was only the first act.

CRUNCH! SNAP! CREAK!

For their next miserable performance, Lilly's toes lurched forward in gruesome elongation, each following in the footsteps of her soles. She yelped in agony every step of the way. Centimeter after millimeter, the individual segments of her toes leaped up with flourishes of pain and eagerly yanked their new webbing along for the ride. Toe tips climbed further and further away from her feet in a desperate yet futile escape plan. Their not-so-little bones moaned and creaked like the floorboards of an abandoned house in a storm -- and with every added inch, they left her humanity behind.

"Oh my God, why are they still getting longer?" she yelled, clenching her feet for dear life. She squeezed them, massaged them, anything to ease the pain -- it wasn't every effective. Although Lilly's question was rhetorical, the schemer behind her mutation couldn't help but chime in for participation points.

"As our wonderful audience may remember, the Flying Frog is more at home in the water and, amazingly, in the air! You'll be better suited for swimming than walking, whether in the pool or through the clouds! Isn't that right, my friends?"

A rain of approval drowned out the brutal breaking of her bones, but Lilly's pain still languished under their rapturous wave. As her toes lengthened, their width dwindled in comparison, growing thin and gangly like icicles looming from a rooftop. Joints popped and swelled with every added inch -- yes, they were up to inches now -- while the tissues within twisted and burned with growing elasticity. Aching pressure seized control of her toe tips and puppeteered Lilly's spindly toes in twitchy, wet contortions. Each digit bent upwards as well as down thanks to her new, twisted ligaments. The sensation made her nauseous.

"Oooh, isn't she lovely, Lady Lilly of the Lake! Walking silly, what a thrill-y! " While Peters crooned off-key, the thunderous, pounding pain turned rhythmic. A picture of marching drums came to life in her head. When the tightness in her digits crescendoed, she was forced to watch in bullet-time as her tiptoes inflated like bagpipes on a battlefield. What were once her big toes now stood side-by-side with their comrades in equal length and bulbous measure. The grotesque swelling left them all full to bursting, and Lilly waited on an anxious edge for them to simply explode. However, the bombardment never came. All that burst apart were her last two toenails, the largest, as they fell from the air, their former pink beds sealing over like unmarked graves. In grief, mucus wept from Lilly's skin, drenching the contested marshlands that were her ever-changing feet.

"I hope you didn't pay much for that pedicure, my dear girl...because honestly it was not your color. Green, however..." He called more attention to the increasing discoloration of her skin, but Lilly ignored him. Her head was reeling, her mind too focused on her body's brutal rebellion. Claiming its territory, the leafy webbing inched closer up to the swollen nodules she now called toe tips. The mucus-covered membranes marched like a ceaseless army through the mud and trailed up along each finger -- the digits resembled fingers more than toes now, really -- and made their last stand half an inch from each spherical summit. Shots fired.

CRACK! CRACK!

With a sadistic crunch of finality, Lilly's toes snapped into their final length.

The terminus of their transformation.

Wait.

CRICK-CRACK!

Scratch that.

A second final _crack_forced her toes to spread eagle. Lilly's wail became a death rattle as the reformed joints reoriented, forcibly fanning her slimy toes and locking them into a new, splayed formations. Standing at attention, they towered above the rest of her feet, each toe nearly as long as her entire sole and spread far wider than the ball of it. No matter how she tried, she could bring them any closer together -- if anything, they wanted to bend the other way just to spite her more. Like flags in the wind, her green webbing pulled taut between each toe and waved with every wiggle. Lilly felt defeated.

In the fallout, Lilly's massive soles started to itch and swell. She flipped over one foot to find the bottom turning an increasingly familiar bright shade of emerald. A garden blooming in the aftermath of a violent storm. Every inch of sensitive flesh inflated like her toe tips. She couldn't count how many bee stings it would take to get this far. Her thumbs pressed into the skin, just to relieve some pressure, but it only revealed how squishy and inhuman her flesh had become. It didn't feel like skin -- more like wet, blubbery padding.

"You'll be grateful for those couch cushions soon enough! I've heard they really soften the landing."

Lilly didn't want to test that theory, but soon she'd have no choice in the matter. The volatile mutation of her feet was nearly complete. As mossy pigment washed away her human tones, only her outermost toe tips still clung to their gentle pink hue. The skin was soon conquered by a flash of royal jade.

She sat in the dirt, sullen at the sight of her feet. They resembled a tomato bush full of plump green fruit with webs connecting the gangly vines as if a spider had made its home there. Six fresh bulbs dangled from blossoming stems. Hot tears formed in eyes as reality started to set in. Or collapse, depending on perspective. She couldn't hold back the showers.

"They look like, like flippers..." she whimpered in disbelief.

"That's because they are, Lilly. Perfect flippers for the perfect act! Think of how much money you'll save on shoes."

Peters and company celebrated without remorse as Lilly's body continued its breakdown. Seeking its next target, the girl's change migrated north and punched Charlie horses into both thighs. She fell to her side with a pleading yelp that no one would acknowledge. The inhuman tint moved up as well, painting over her calf muscles and hiding into the crooks of her knees. She tried to stretch out her leg muscles to relive the grueling cramps, but no angle was the right one. Absolutely nothing in her legs felt right anymore.

The veins in her throbbing thighs surfaced like a net to ensnare her in transformation. That funny swelling feeling fermented in her legs as their growing berth chaffed against her denim shorts again. However, it wasn't just tissue and fat growing. This was pure muscle. Gains that would normally take years to make, or at least a healthy dose of steroids. The strength of her bulking hamstrings put so much pressure on her shorts that the leg seams tore at the stitches. Unlike the Hulk, her shorts were no match for this monstrous green growth -- such was the curse of women's clothes.

"Oh my, it looks like Lilly needs to go shopping for some new clothes! Wait, I think we have leotard in your size."

Sundered fabric rang out with the moist wrenching of leg muscle and the burn of her strengthening femurs. Even her hips and butt joined the overcrowded swelling party. Lilly felt more bloated than she had in her entire life -- more than the time she downed a whole pizza on a dare at Tiffany Mill's terrible slumber party. Speaking of nightmares that would haunt her forever, the expanding flesh of Lilly's rear pushed hard against her shorts until the button shot off like a bullet, unveiling the front of her pink cotton panties to the world. More than a few gasps came from the bleachers, along with some unwanted whistling. Gross.

Lilly's face flushed, and she wrenched away from the stands. Her slimy fingers fumbled to remove the shorts before they could do any more damage to her lower half, physically or emotionally. It was bad enough to bare her underwear for a fleet of men and children, but trying to pull her tattered shorts over the diver fins she once called feet was an embarrassment unto itself.

Tossing the rag aside, the flustered young lady steeled herself and prepared to give her escape plan another try. The last thing she needed was photos of her underwear ending up on "websites." Again. Thanks, Tiffany.

Lilly's legs, though visibly throbbing and greenifying, ached less as the seconds passed. This could be her chance! She braced her hands on the soiled dirt and planted her soles on the ground. Determination raced through her veins. She wasn't beaten yet.

THUD!

With a wet flop, she smacked down belly-first into the gooey grog below. The moment her giant foot took its first step, the damn thing slipped right out from under her. Turns out, she couldn't even coordinate her feet in the slimy muck. There was no traction to be found, and the freshly remolded tendons of her ankle and toes were too strained for precise movement. Walking out wasn't even an option anymore.

Fine. The hard way, then.

Undaunted, she rolled onto her hands and knees and resorted to crawling. Her gangly fin-like feet dragged behind her with a floppy sadness, but the will to carry on. Rocks and gravel poked jaggedly at her sensitive flesh, yet they were far from the worst torment she'd endured for the past several hours. No, wait. Minutes. The minutes merely dragged on for ages while they stole more of her identity. As the slogged-down girl scuttled along like a half-formed gecko, another groundswell of pain in her hips reminded Lilly that her time at the circus was far from over.

How long could this possibly go on for?

"No, no, no, not again!" She begged, digging her forehead into the ground and praying for the changes to yield. Sadly, there was no higher power to answer her prayers. The only response she received was an ungodly breaking of her pelvis.

Lilly screamed bloody murder as her hipbones divided and forced out in opposing directions. The joints shifted about with an awful ruckus as they became more elastic and loose. For just a moment, her legs twisted the wrong way -- backwards -- and made Lilly howl. A new range of motion had unlocked itself by force. At the same time, farther below, a sickening cramp tore through her groin like the worst period she'd ever known. Something inside her was twisting and rewiring, but she couldn't fathom what. She didn't care to imagine.

As her hips realigned and soldered themselves back together, a strange electric impulse made Lilly curl her legs up against her sides with disgusting flexibility and kick backwards like a bucking bronco. New nerves fired wildly and her mind wasn't used to the fresh connections. She tossed her legs out again and again, the reinforced muscles of her thighs twitching spastically against her will. She couldn't stop herself. She couldn't control it.

"Come now, Lilly. This is a circus, not a rodeo! Don't tell me we need a matador for our next show." With an unflattering duck face, he rustled his red coat in a teasing gesture.

One change led to another as heat boiled just above the girl's tailbone. No, wait. It was her tailbone doing the boiling. The evolutionary leftover awoke from its slumber and unfurled, clawing its way through layers of flesh until it could grow freely beneath her skin. Damn it, just when she got her legs to settle down! Bracing for the worst, Lilly curled her sweaty, increasingly golf-ball-sized fingertips into the dirt and reared her butt to the sky. She curled up and down in a twerking motion -- which was the last thing she wanted to do in her underpants, but the pain compelled her -- as she tried to force out whatever was building up in her lower back. She could guess what it was but maintained her sanity through the denial.

CRICK! SQUELCH!

"Arghh! Goddamn it!"

Just above the rim of her underwear, an ugly wet noise gave birth to a tiny stub on her skin. Her toes clenched in anguish as her legs writhed along the ground, dirt marring her otherwise verdant knees. It was incredible how something so small could cause so much pain. What started as a pimple swelled into bulb, which grew and grew until it was the width and length of a medium popcorn bucket. Bones and muscles and nerves willed themselves into existence to add mass to her behind -- her rear boiling like she'd sat in a broth. The hot fleshy nub grew thick with blubbery fat and squishy green skin until it looked perfectly at home on her visibly bouncier bottom. Compared to the rest of her changes, the new limb wasn't much in terms of size, but its broad base and tapered tip could be described as nothing short of --

"A freakin' tail?" she yelped in bewilderment. "Why did I just grow a tail? Frogs don't have tails!"

"Sorry, I don't make the rules! This is beyond even my control," Peters chuckled. Hmm...that was the first honest thing he'd ever said to her. Best not to make a habit of it, he thought.

The girl winced as she felt her new animal appendage wiggle in the air. She hated how it rubbed up against the edge of her rear cheeks, and the worst part was she could feel it! This thing was a part of her body! Despite its stumpy size, the tail had a noticeable weight to it. What was the point of it, really? Annoyed by the pointless growth, she reached back and tugged at it like a stray weed, but immediately regretted it when an unwelcomed warmth tingled up her spine. That wasn't what she expected to feel. That was way worse. She retracted her hand and anxiously looked away, a red blush overtaking her cheeks. Why was it so damn sensitive?

Of course, the change wasn't going to stop to answer questions. It was as rude as it was violent, much like the ringmaster who began it. The next target on its hit list was Lilly's entire back, heralded by the encroaching tint and increase in slime secretion -- as if the latter could possibly get any worse. Stabbing pain punctured up and down her spine as each vertebra swelled and toughened beneath her skin. The tightness left her stiff as a corpse. With a grunt, she arched her back upwards to fix the tension, but this only propelled the transformation forward and allowed her spine to realign with a sharp --

SNAP!

"Ah, my back! Shit!"

The topmost vertebrae forced up against her flesh in visible lumps and became a permanent deformity between her shoulder blades. It wasn't a large hunch, but someone was bound to notice it if she stood up straight. Not that she always stood up straight, but she still would've liked the option. In support of their boney brethren, her shoulder blades widened with crackling bursts, and the muscles of her back refined themselves for a life much lower to the ground. Together, they would provide excellent support as the froggy girl traded a life of running for hopping. She didn't see it so optimistically.

On the flipside of Lilly's body, a bundle of mutations pounded her with the speed of a boxer's barrage. Lean muscle enveloped her ribs in a hot embrace. Her lungs expanded, preparing for a life half underwater. Her waistline shrank while her guts compacted, and what little fat she had shaved away to reveal a hint of abs. This combination of changes, as expected, made Lilly curl over and gag. If she had eaten more than caramel apples that day, she totally would've lost her lunch in front of everyone. Finally, a scene they wouldn't get off on. Unlike, well, what was currently happening with her bust.

"You gotta be kidding me..." she groaned. The heat in her torso turned to swelling -- focused distinctly within her sensitive breasts. Lilly's face sank in disgust. She could see them growing like some teenaged boy's fantasy. Her bra and tank top constricted harder every second. They were too tight! Too tight! She had to get them off!

RIP!

A yip escaped Lilly as her inflating bosom tore open the front of her clothes. Both B-cups grew a full letter size, maybe one and half, as a lighter shade of lime swept over them and the rest of her abdomen. Her nipples color shifted to a dark forest green, two pine trees poking up from their own curvy hills. Cheeks burned hot as she clutched the remaining shreds of cotton against her bloated bust. The transformation had gone from horrifying to shameful. She was perfectly happy with her size before!

"Sorry everyone, bit of a wardrobe malfunction," said Peters with a hint of genuine alarm. For the first time, he blocked the audience's view with his husky body. "Mother Nature has clearly endowed Lilly with some...incredible gifts, and the Peters Family Circus promises to present its acts responsibly and appropriately for all ages."­­­

The befuddled master continued his spin, but Lilly had heard quite enough. Her unlicensed nudity broke the last straw. She would leave this tent if it killed her. The slight lull in pain gave the half-naked heroine just enough of a break to climb to her feet once again. Her tendons still wiggled like jelly, but they worked well enough to support her now. This time, she clenched the ground with her gangly webbed toes, providing the necessary grip to walk out of her homemade swamp.

"C'mon, what's wrong with you people? I need help! Please!"

Covering herself as best as she could, she lumbered towards the crowd like a gangling zombie, her free hand extended in a final attempt to break their hypnosis. She finally noticed how her fingertips had swollen completely, the lime color already coating her palms, but she tried to ignore it even when the webbing wasn't far behind. At least the digits didn't length half as much as her toes had, but the same clumsy tips and connected skin crippled her dexterity. Whatever offhanded dreams she had of becoming a concert pianist -- or learning the piano at all -- sat dead in the water.

"Oh no, it sounds like Lilly needs some help unleashing her powers. Can we give her a hand? Lil-ly! Lil-ly!"

When the tone-deaf audience started chanting her name, Lilly made peace with surviving on her own. They were clearly more invested in cheering on her slog than assisting in any real way. They must've been enjoying how much an ordeal simply walking had become. Not only did the beach-ball size of her thighs inhibit her pace, but the absurd size and shape of her feet made it impossible to move more than a few inches at a time. Every footfall sent pins and needles up her leg -- her nervous system was still adapting to the extra wide surface of her soles and toes. The swollen pads underfoot also made balancing difficult. She was reminded of those Moon Shoe toys she had as a kid and how they nearly broke her legs.

"Yes, ladies and gentlemen, keep cheering! Look at all the slime she's producing. Your words give her the strength to go on!"

Of course, how could she forget the worst offender preventing her escape -- the mucus. It dribbled down from her hands, her chest, her back, and even the tip of her tail now. When Lilly lifted her leg, it took twice the effort it used to -- the sticky liquid threatened to hold her soles down each time. The slimy girl could hear the slick ooze splat underfoot over and over, feeling it squish gingerly beneath her heels and rub up against the sensitive webbing between her toes. Every soggy noise, every sticky sensation was another attempt to bleed her hopes dry.

Still, she persisted. The exit was several yards away, but the lone security guard was busy doom scrolling on his phone. Maybe she had a shot after all. Her only other boon was, thankfully, keeping her ability to walk upright, slow and stilted as she was. She could've easily gone feral, hunched over and singularly hopping -- or worse, shrunk down to the size of a lab rat...lab frog. Instead, she was trapped in-between a strange state of frog and woman. Flippers on human legs. A tail hovering above her butt cheeks. Brown hair from the neck up. She had no idea what else might change, but she didn't want to stick around to find out.

"Gotta get h-help..." she grunted to her lonesome. "Help -- huckkkgh -- huckk!" Before another word could pass her lips, Lilly started to gag. The muscles of her neck boiled to the surface. Her throat clenched like a back alley chokehold. Blood vessels curled and expanded, most obviously under her chin, where a hot needle of pain lanced through the green flesh that'd come to roost. The sting grew vulgar as she struggled for air. It felt like a cigarette burning a hole in her neck.

Lilly fell to her knees. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. Both hands scraped at her throat with a desperate need to tear open her trachea. Even her thick, spongy fingertips could feel the skin vibrating, her throat warping within and reconfiguring to something absolutely amphibian. It felt like bubbling. Burning. Swelling. Growing! Oh crap, it was a --

CROAK!

A monstrous bray erupted from the frog girl's mouth, accompanied by the wet creaking of her throat as it inflated like a hot air balloon. Her head shot back from the force, which strained her neck and nearly sent her flying. Stars lit up her eyes from the shock. Her chest felt so full it hurt. As her throat shrank down to size, Lilly coughed violently from the sudden blast of oxygen. God, she hoped every breath wouldn't be so intense. While the sting still lingered, it was thankfully the least amount of pain she'd experienced so far -- perhaps because the bar was already up in the stratosphere.

"Behold, my friends! Like a baby's first cry, Lilly has welcomed the spirit of the frog into her with a magnanimous croak! Let's give her another round of applause." The smattering of claps was disgusting. After everything they witnessed, they were all still so blind. Were they in on the joke? Or just insane? She wanted to give them such a tongue-lashing that her organ ached in anticipation! Wait...her tongue actually did ache. That wasn't right. Ok, she took it back, she took it back!

"W-Water! I need..."

It was too late. Some trickster djinn took her wish, if it could even be called that, and warped it. The heat of a hundred jalapenos set her mouth alight. Her taste buds prickled and multiplied, becoming far more sensitive than a human should experience. She could suddenly taste the deep-fried Oreos and day-old butter in the air. Revolting.

The burn grew worse as it trailed down Lilly's mouth, as though her saliva turned to motor oil and she'd just swallowed a match. Frantic panting pulled her tongue from her mouth, spilling several tablespoons of drool onto the dirt. As she looked down cross-eyed, the slobbering girl saw her it flailing in the stale, hot dog-flavored wind. In fact, she could see more of her tongue than she ever had before -- definitely more than she wanted to. The length of it was stretching out of proportion, and its tip had inflated to the size of a boiled egg. Hopefully, this was the only egg she had to worry about.

Just the thought alone broke her gross-out meter into pieces. Lilly yanked her tongue back in and clenched her jaw shut. She'd seen enough body horror to last a lifetime. However, the change was too cruel to care about her feelings. Her face contorted as the overgrown organ kept swelling despite its capture, and she had to chipmunk her cheeks just to hold in the last inch. Its sloppy pink flesh managed to pack into every free corner until it ran out of space and, with nowhere else to go, eagerly snaked its way down her windpipe.

Lilly started to choke. Again.

Her coughing fit quickly turned into a croaking fit as the new sac in her neck ballooned up and down on loop, further constricting her throat. Every inch of her body had become a freaky mess of mismatched parts, and now they all conspired to strangle her. She felt more like Frankenstein than a frog! Before she could reach into her mouth and dislodge her own tongue, a hard slap against her back freed the appendage and fired it out like a cannonball. So casually cruel, the ringleader had saved her life.

"Now now, Lilly, don't let the cat get your tongue! I think the Beastman wants it first."

In the wake of this "rescue," the salmon-colored viper she called a tongue lashed out before her -- for six miserable feet. Lilly and her audience watched it whip about with opposing shades of surprise. Gone was the pointed blade of a human tongue, replaced completely by the golf-ball bulb of a frog's. The width had slimmed down to a stringy build that thinned the more it lengthened. Its elastic speed was unmatchable. Beyond Lilly's control, the slimy rope boomeranged back and smacked her in the face like an old rubber-hand toy...only this hurt worse on impact.

"Uh muh gawd, I fink I tasteh muhself..." she grumbled with a slur. When her tongue bounced back into form, it still protruded past her lips by a few good inches. This thing was far too big for a human mouth, but Lilly had grown too tired to hide it. In fact, she was too tired for anything now. All the pain, all the near suffocations. Exhaustion had finally sapped the last ounce of strength from her body.

Her vision blurred, and a dozen warbling exits taunted her with the false promise of freedom. She couldn't crawl any closer. Staying up on her hands and knees was hard enough, and even her drippy skin started to dry from dehydration. The spotlights transformed into heat lamps, and her own change had used up so much energy that her nerves and muscles started shutting down. How she stayed awake this long was an unsolved mystery.

"At long last, ladies and gentlemen, we've reached our grand finale! The moment you've all been waiting for. Do not look away. Don't even blink. You are all witness to a miracle!"

The master's words warbled in Lilly's ears. She struggled to stay conscious in spite of everything she'd endured. God knows what they'd do to her passed out in the ring. At least the torment was almost over, right? She could tell even without the hack's blatant telegraph. Somehow, the things wrong with her body seemed less out of place, and what remained of her previous body tilted on the edge of destruction. Maybe her brain adapted without her knowing. Or, she was just that worn out.

Either way, shades of lime curled around her face and painted over the last speck of peach. She could see the tip of her nose saturate and knew what was coming. Tension built up in her cheekbones. She groaned when the migraine kicked in. Her face pressed into her palms. Lilly started to scream.

Master Peters raised his hand to the weeping girl in a wholly patronizing salute. "Lilly, my dear? Godspeed!"

CRACK!

On the maestro's cue, the pressure in her skull accelerated with a deafening crash. Lilly's wailing pierced the air in harmony as her jaw dislocated from its proper spot and expanded in all directions -- though mostly forward. Her face twisted into a grimacing mess as it slowly molded into a blunt, curvy muzzle, a horrific fusion between a human head and the snout of an amphibian. Her mandible hung open as it jutted out bit by bit, the surrounding muscles straining just to keep up their growth. Dangling off to the side was her lanky tongue, swinging like a metronome as her heart beat a tempo. Every twitch of her jaw frightened her as she imagined biting into her gelatinous taster. She hated the sight of the thing, but she didn't want to lob it off!

CRUNCH!

Not to be left out of the show, her upper jaw caught up with its elongating partner, and the bone in her nose snapped downwards to fuse with her migrating muzzle. The distinct pink ridges of her parted lips faded into green flesh as spittle spilled over her jaw and landed with a cacophony of spattering taps into the gooey pit below.

"Argghh! Hap...hap meh!" she cried with an unresponsive, broken jaw. Despite the deluge on the ground, her skin felt dry and achy. The lights sapped more moisture from her pores every second. At this rate, she'd barely fill a kiddie pool.

To the bold Master Peters, the discordance of screams and breaking bones played counterpoint to the oohs and awws of the audience. It was music to his ears. It sounded like dollar signs.

All Lilly could hear was ringing.

As the former human's skull continued to broaden, her ears ached as the insides twisted and rearranged. The outer ridge of cartilage sank into her skin, and the hollering from the grandstands faded with the music as a layer of tinted skin formed over the holes. Lilly's own agonized groans muted to bassy vibrations. The thumping disoriented her. The world spun around her like a scratched-up record.

Within moments, her hearing returned tenfold. Everything sounded like static. Lilly pressed her webbed hands to where her ears once were and fell onto her side, whining in pain as her own whimpers became screeches in her skull. Her eyes clenched tight. They stung inside their sockets as the change improved her vision at the cost of her sanity. When they flickered open, the blackness turned white. Her brain reeled from sensory overload. It couldn't rewire fast enough to dim the exposure. All the noise. All the lights. All the pain. It was all too much.

There was no escape. No mercy. No one to help her. Lilly reached her breaking point. Through teary eyes, she watched in pained paralysis as the ringleader twirled his cane and trotted around her in his devilish red coat. No, not devilish. He was the devil. The box she stepped into was truly a gateway to Hell. And she was never going home.

SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

The frog girl ceased her screaming. A final barrage of little bony breaks locked Lilly's face into an elongated form. Her jawbone snapped back into new, wider joints and closed up with a wet smack. As the fiery pains of change sizzled away to ash, they left her maw spacious enough to encompass an entire tongue once more. Her enlarged chest heaved with each inhalation, and the strange new pouch on her neck inflated with every other breath.

Until it stopped.

Heat turned to cold and cold turned to numbness. Everything went blank. Disassociation.

At last, there was silence.

"Behold! The Flying Frog is reborn!"

Roars erupted from the stands, the power rivaling those of lions. Everyone loved the show. They wanted more. Victorious, the master marched his black boots towards his prize. His cane twirled happily with each peppy step. Once again, he'd made the impossible a reality, and he couldn't be more proud.

"Well then, how about we see The Flying Frog in action?" he asked and received a resounding yes. "Up on your feet, girl...your silly floppy feet."

The deformed shape of what was once Lilly lay quiet in the dirt. Despite the man's commandment, he received no response. He prodded her flipper with his cane.

"Oh Lilly, are you in there? You didn't croak did, you?" The congregation ate up his cheap pun like fast food, greasy and in poor taste, as Peters stared down at the seemingly lifeless frog. Still no response.

The background music finished its run and left a quiet hole in the momentum.

For a brief second, the crowd's euphoria waned. The ringleader felt his heart skip a beat. His eyes darted from Lilly to the audience and back, watching as seats stirred uncomfortably. People were starting to chatter. They were beginning to question what they just witnessed. They were questioning him.

This never happened before.

Maintaining his composure, he crouched down at her side to whisper.

"Get up. Get up."

No response -- save for a nervous rustling from behind the red curtain. The ringleader glared over his shoulder. It ceased immediately.

"Get. Up."

No response.

...

He tilted her head and found her eyes glossed over.

...

He subtly checked her pulse.

...

All that mattered was a pulse.

...

ba...bump

...

Faint. But present.

With a roll of his eyes, Peters rose up, wiped his slimy fingers off on his pants, and casually stepped over Lilly's motionless form. "Uh oh, looks like Lilly's had one too many drinks on her journey home from the underworld. I know the feeling!" He gestured as though he was chugging a beer, and just like that, the mob was back in his pocket. "We'll give her some time to recover, which means you'll all have to come back tomorrow! In the meantime, who wants to see for the Fire-Eater?"

While the attendees cheered at the promise of pyrotechnics, the young laborer emerged from behind the stage curtain and carefully scooped up Lilly in his arms. His touch burned her nerve endings, but her body could only twitch in response. He returned her to the prison on wheels then quietly locked the door.

Lilly finally lost consciousness as her cage slipped out of the tent.

=====================================================================================

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Metal on metal shocked Lilly awake. Her body still ached in waves, and the banging did nothing to help her repeated migraine.

"Wake up, you stupid freak!"

Her eyes peeled open, and she was greeted by two lanterns and two faces, one more hostile than the other. She tried to stand but found her wrists bound. Clearly, her opportunity to run had long passed.

Clang! Clang!

Peters rapped his cane against the cage again.

"How dare you embarrass me in the middle of a show! When I say jump, you goddamn better jump. We didn't give you those disgusting feet for nothing."

"Y-You're...crazy," Lilly whispered in a scratchy rasp. "I-I'm not...some...circus animal."

"Oh my girl, that is all you are now. And if you don't perform tomorrow and blow people out of their very expensive sets, I will personally dissect you in our closing act. Have I made myself clear?"

She wanted to retort, despite her obvious disadvantage, but arguing would waste what little energy she had. She forced herself to sit up and quickly took notice of a one-piece leotard now covering her modesty. To her displeasure, the shimmering red sequins matched those on Peters' boisterous coat. Did they seriously slip this on her while she slept? Gross.

Before Lilly could complain about their fashion sense, the man in overalls turned to his master and spoke. His voice was even quieter than before, as if it was seldom used in this manner. "Um...I think she was feeling unwell during the show. She's clearly of a...weak constitution. If we let her soak in the bathhouse, maybe she'll do better tomorrow. That always seemed to work for..."

His suggestion died as it met the master's glare. However, Peters soon resigned himself with a sigh and frustrated pinch of his nose.

"Fine, boy. Just don't let her get that slime everywhere. We might be able to sell it later. And no more stripping, you harlot!"

Lilly's disgust boiled over as her captor scuttled out of the supply tent. This was not what she paid $30 for at the ticket counter. Talk about a rip-off. Her eyes shifted to the other kidnapper, her glare reaching through the bars to throttle him. Their eyes met for a flash before his gaze quickly averted to the dirt floor, and he crossed cautiously to the front of her cage.

"Please don't try to run," he said softly. Was he part of a mind-reading act, or was Lilly's intention so obvious? Maybe he expected it given the situation. Still, as the overalls boy unlocked the cell, his words couldn't stop her from trying. While the gate was still creaking open, Lilly hopped to her feet and bolted. He scarcely had time to recoil as she charged him.

The frog girl didn't even make it out of her cage before tripping over her new gangly feet.

Lilly's eyes shut as she braced for impact, her restrained hands incapable of a saving throw. God, how many times was she going to fall around here? She knew she could be clumsy, but this was getting ridiculous. If Peters was looking for grace, he should have kidnapped someone else. Man, this was gonna sting!

But the impending thud never came. Or, at least it was softer than she expected. A few moments passed before Lilly opened her eyes. She had landed not on the hard metal of her confinement, but in the arms of her jailer. He'd leapt into the cage and braced her fall, lowering his body as well as her own to the metal floor.

"C'mon, don't make this hard," he muttered, more as a plea than an order. If the guy was trying to threaten her, he was doing a piss poor job at it. Lilly stared up at him with confusion. She wriggled out of his grasp, her slimy skin making it easy to pull away, and sat up against the cell bars.

Though she still wished to flee, her body wasn't making it easy for her. Not to mention the team of security guards that patrolled the fairgrounds. One whistle from this guy, and she'd be dogpiled like a receiver in the Super Bowl. Lilly had seen enough bad tackles on TV. She'd also seen enough action movies to know you had to be patient during a kidnapping. Her time would come, hopefully.

The raven-haired man got to his feet and hoisted her back up. Taking the lead, Lilly waddled out without a word, the only sound being her flippers' awkward splatting footfalls.

She really had to learn to run with these.

=====================================================================================

"Do you like strawberry or cucumber-mint?"

Both bottles whipped past his head.

The bathhouse felt oddly out of place amongst the carnival tents. Its exterior resembled a simple trailer you'd find in any small-town dirt field. There was a single door, guarded by one of several security meatheads that Peters had on retainer. However, the inside was ivory-tiled and unusually pristine. It housed two oval tubs with foaming jets and multiple showerhead shapes, not the kind of basins used for horses and lions. Gold trim highlighted the walls, where towels and buckets hung from balsa wood racks. The whole setup felt celebrity.

Lilly sank into the pink bubble bath that her overall'd attendant had put together. The warm water helped soothe her aching muscles, and the lotion in the shampoo felt immaculate on her moist skin. She did, in fact, like the scent of berries and roses. It would've been more pleasant if she didn't have one hand chained to the faucet.

The young laborer sat on the outside rim of the tub, his back to her as she bathed. She didn't see the point of his bashfulness -- he and a hundred other people already saw her stark naked and greenified -- but she appreciated the privacy.

"This should help your skin rehydrate. I hope you like strawberry. The cucumber one is nice too, but that's usually saved for...well..."

His words died in the silence.

"Um...we bought this trailer on our tour in Japan four years ago. They're very popular, sauna culture and everything."

Once again, no reply. Lilly didn't bother conversing with the enemy, no matter how much her bathhouse-related curiosity had been piqued.

"You said you're name was Lilly, right? I'm Everett."

That information made Lilly fidget. "Ok, usually kidnappers don't give away their names. Should I be worried or --"

"I'm not kidnapping you."

"Dude, I'm tied to a bathtub!" She yanked up her handcuffed wrist as a reminder. "And do remember the time you guys shoved me into a freakin' coffin and turned me into a toad?"

"I didn't want to, honest! It's just R.J. had this idea and....I don't have a choice. Really, I don't."

"History's not kind to folks who think like that, just saying."

Finally, the young man turned to face her, though he kept his eyes averted until she slipped deeper into the bubbles. "Look, Graham...my, um, friend...he was a frog too...because he wanted to be. He was the one everyone came to see. The closest thing we had to a star."

"Ok, and why isn't he the one you're threatening to shoot out of a cannon?"

"He's...um..."

Everett turned back around, burying the weight his words couldn't quite carry. As irritated as Lilly was, she didn't press further. She wasn't as cruel as his lunatic coconspirators.

The boy sighed as his eyes floated to the ceiling. "R.J. says we need a frog to survive. Otherwise, a lot of us won't have anywhere else to go. And if you gave it a chance, maybe you'd like it here too."

"Are you for real? I'm sleeping in a cage like a stray cat and, again, I'm tied to a very nice Japanese bathtub."

"I'm just saying, everyone really loved you today. If this works out and more people come to the show, I think R.J. would negotiate --"

"Why should I trust him?! He's a lying creep, and that furry thing's a serial killer, and you...well, the jury's still out."

The tanned man shrugged, seemingly run out of counterpoints to make. Lilly had won the non-argument.

As if to negotiate a deal of her own, Lilly moved to his side of the tub, the handcuffs jingling behind her. "Look, you know this is crazy, right? Please, let me go. Just say I overpowered you and, like, karate-chopped you or something." She gently chopped at his shoulder with her free hand.

Defeated, he turned to Lilly once again, his eyes more sullen than before. "Just...um...do what R.J. asks tomorrow. It's easier that way."

Lilly had no counter left to make.

=====================================================================================

The froggy girl dried off as best as she could in her new, consistently slimy form, and Everett quietly escorted her back to the supply tent for the evening. Reluctantly, she stepped into her cage without a fuss. At least she got to keep a towel to sleep on.

Before locking Lilly up for the night, the attendant grabbed a sack sitting by one of the cart wheels.

"Here. In case you get hungry." He retrieved a bagel and bottled water from within, then poured the water into a plastic bowl before setting it on the edge of the cage. Lilly's brow furrowed. She was really expected to lap at that like a dog? Not that she could open bottles anymore with her squishy fingers, but still. This was insulting.

Everett reached back into the bag. "And you left this in the bleachers yesterday."

Lilly's grimace softened at the sight. Like a rabbit pulled from a hat, a little green frog plush smiled back at her once more. It completely slipped her mind that he was keeping her seat warm. She thought she'd never see him again.

"Try to get some sleep, Lilly."

He set the plush down next to her concessions before locking the cage and departing. When she was finally alone in the tent, Lilly crawled over and bit into the bagel. Stale. Wonderful. To force down the brick of bread, she begrudgingly dipped down and lapped at the water bowl with her tongue. It was as embarrassing as she expected.

Wiping the droplets from her chin, she grabbed her plush friend and returned to her towel-made-bed in the corner. The moon peeked in from the tent top's frayed stitching, wistfully watching Lilly and her new cellmate. She clutched the frog tight against her chest as its dopey eyes and wide grin smiled at her in the dark. She never imagined seeing herself in it.

She never imagined the day would end like this.

=====================================================================================

ACT II: FANFARE

Boom! Tss! Boom! Tss!

The pounding bass drums assaulted her ears.

"Lilly, you're on!" Everett shouted as he wheeled her cart into the big top. Her eyes barely open, the soon-to-be starlet saw the entire ring set up like a dog-show obstacle course. Hoops, fences, and poles lined the dirt, eager to challenge her still-nonexistent agility.

"Jeeze, a little more warning next time." Rubbing sand from her eyes, she quickly marked the ringleader twirling his cane in the center of the ring.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is the dazzling show you've been waiting for! Finally." Peters tagged on that last part with his trademark impatience. "The one and only, the new Flying Frog...Amazon Lilly! Witness the frog resurrected from death!"

The "resurrected frog" wished he had chosen a different stage name. The last time she was called "Amazon Lilly" had been in high school, and it certainly wasn't a compliment -- not from Tiffany Mills. Actually, she doubted that Peters meant it as a compliment either.

Everett unlocked the cage and waved for her, a small smile coaxing her out into the ring. Anxiety rose in her throat, causing an inadvertent croak to leap from her mouth. Her hands flung to her face in embarrassment. She didn't notice the boy stifling a small chuckle. With nowhere to go but out, Lilly crawled to the edge of the cell and swung her legs down onto the dirt. The audience lauded her grand entrance.

"Good luck," he whispered, unlocking her cuffs with Peters' keys before heading back through the curtain. Good luck, huh? It was nice of him to offer since she was certainly going to need it. She barely had a grip on her new body, and she was never particularly athletic to begin with. Could she really do this? Did she have much of a choice?

When Lilly looked to the ringmaster, his wide smile had vile shine, his eyes deceptively encouraging. One hand hovered over the whip on his belt.

Fine. She'd play ball. This was just like a playground, right? How hard could it be?

What followed was nothing short of a Westminster Blooper Reel.

Lilly barely had her land legs back under control, and yet they asked her to run the Olympics. Not only did her longer legs alter the length of her stride -- leaving her cumbersome and off-balance -- her long, floppy feet proved impossible to manage. Her bulbous toes bent awkwardly with each step, the webbing forcing them to move in tandem when they shouldn't be. Each footfall left sloppy prints of mucus in their wake, squelching and _squeaking_and further offsetting her clumsy gait. It was worse than walking in diving flippers -- which she'd only ever done once drunkenly on spring break. Lilly had to lift her knees extra high in order to make any progress on the self-guided track. Here she was doing the Can-Can like a dance act, not an acrobat.

Lilly danced towards the first wooden hurdle, and naturally, she tried to vault over it like in P.E. class. Her mistake became brutally apparent when her lengthened foot caught on the bar and sent her tottering over it, the plank tumbling down on top of her. There was no one to break her fall this time.

The moist frog splat on the dirt with an "Ooph!" It didn't hurt quite as much as her past falls, perhaps due to her squishy, elastic body, but her pride certainly took a hit. Her cheeks flushed as she braced for an army of jeers. There were twice as many people in attendance today, which meant double the corndogs thrown at her. Worse still, the ringleader and his whip might follow through on their thinly veiled threat.

To her surprise, Lilly's follies were met with laughter. Raucous laughter. They were most likely laughing at her, but it still felt better than a barrage of booing and beer bottles.

"Lilly, my girl, you'll have to jump higher than that! Perhaps if you pretend you're a Jack-In-The-Box, instead of just eating there all the time." Peters and his followers cackled at the low-blow joke, which didn't even track given her lithe physique. Apparently, he was ready to spin anything she did, or ate, into a success story. Oh great, now she was hungry.

The starving artist pulled herself up with a sigh and untangled her legs from the fallen hurdle. It was time to retool her strategy. Running wasn't an option if she wanted to stay upright, and she didn't want to face-plant anymore, not in front of a crowd. She had to win them over. She had to think differently. She had to think like a frog.

Lilly took a chance on her new body and got down on to all fours, her limbs splayed out in a big H pattern. She began crawling on her hands and feet across the dirt, skittering at a pace that far exceeded her goofy high-kick routine. She climbed over the next horse and dived over the ones after. Even after a few poorly timed leaps and a fight with a see-saw, Lilly pushed on to the next set of obstacles.

"Ah, the beloved hoops, a classic tradition of the tent. Might I recommend a jumping start?"

Dangling overhead was a string of ruby circles begging to be hopped through. Disappointingly, they were clearly dollar-store bought and bejeweled after the fact. She could even see the barcode stickers stuck to the inside. Being up close really did ruin the magic.

The rings hung close together in the shape of a sparkling cylinder. Lilly knew she was supposed to clear them all at once, but her jumps kept falling flat, and she'd probably get wrapped up inside like a sushi roll. She had to come up with a better idea.

With a deep breath, she leapt up and slipped her arms through the first ring. Her slimy webbed hands had no chance at gripping the rims yet, but nobody said she couldn't use the crooks of her elbows. It wasn't the most comfortable maneuver, but she slowly clamored along the makeshift monkey bars from one hoop to the next before dismounting at the end of the path. Her landing wasn't particularly graceful, but at least she didn't fall on her face this time. The young woman's ingenuity earned her a few oohs from the stands.

After an hour of acrobatic escapades, Lilly's stamina finally waned, and she quickly learned how cool her new slimy skin could keep her. The frog girl hunched over, hands on her knees, and breathed heavy in the growing humidity of the tent. Ignoring his star's exhaustion, the ringleader jaunted over to the massive support beam on the left side of the ring.

"And now for the grand finale, our dear Lilly will ascend from Earth to the heights of Heaven! Like her predecessor, she will complete this double trapeze act alone in a daring, gravity-defying feat. She truly is...the Flying Frog!"

Lilly stared up at the towering twin poles and felt her stomach sink. She squinted just to see the tiny suspended platforms welded to their peaks. "You gotta be shitting me..."

Her head started spinning before she was even off the ground. This act wouldn't just be embarrassing if it went south. It'd be a death sentence. She couldn't do this. Turning to her metaphorical leash holder, she shook her head and mouthed rather clearly, "No freaking way."

Peters' eyes rolled in response. "Sounds like Lilly needs some encouragement! How about we give her a round?" The crowd went wild on command. It was as easy as pressing a button. Fueled by the roar, he sauntered over and covered the mic under his lapel. "I suggest you get climbing, or the Beastman will be having dinner early. Understood?"

She scowled in return, poised to argue further, but then the memory of the shadowy beast crept into her mind. As nerve-wracking as the climb appeared, the master's enforcer spelled certain death. She had no doubt that this creep would follow up on his threats, even in front of a live audience.

Especially in front of a live audience.

Everett was right -- she had to play along for now. Begrudgingly, Lilly made her way the first pole and wrapped her arms around its thick wooden base. If she could die either way, she'd rather jump then be torn limb from limb. Her eyes clenched tight as she began to shimmy up the beam, pretending it was the old tree in her childhood backyard -- just way, way taller. She'd fallen out of it more than once, and the sound of ambulance sirens came rushing back to her. Her gripped slipped for just a moment. She slid down a few feet with a slimy squelch.

Still, she kept climbing.

Reverberating laughs from the bleachers fast-forwarded her to high school gym class. She hated climbing the rope. Every time, she would glance down at Tiffany Mills and her "Plastics" whispering from below, their lips puckered while anticipating her demise. She never did make it beyond halfway.

Still, she kept climbing.

Without Lilly realizing it, her climb became far easier than it should have been thanks to her new adaptations. The sticky wet surface of her skin practically glued her to the wood, and the divoted tips of her fingers and toes eagerly grasped the surface. In fact, when she reached the jumping platform above, she had a harder time dismounting from the pole that she had starting the ascent. Her body knew how to react as she journeyed up the tower. All it took was her determination.

None of that, naturally, made the prospective leap any less mortifying.

The tips of her lengthy toes stood inches from the edge of abyss. "Don't look down, Lilly," she muttered to herself. Her own commandment fell on deaf ears, as Lilly peered down to the ground below and her sense of depth warped. This time, it really felt like she was staring into Hell. She swallowed nervously, triggering an accidental croak from her throat. Luckily, she thought, no one was around to hear that.

"Don't look down, Lilly!"

The voice startled her. She lost her footing. On reflex, the girl reached back and smacked her sticky fingers onto the pole. Jeeze. Way too close. Lilly followed the direction of the disturbance up and away from the ledge. There in the rafters, perched up by a load of sandbags, was the increasingly familiar overalls boy.

"What are you doing up here?" She asked, bewildered by his surprise appearance.

"This is where I work the lights."

"Oh, well thanks, I can see the ground just fine." Her hand clenched the wooden beam even harder. "What the hell am I supposed to do here?"

"You just have to jump. You can do it!"

Wow. Great advice, pal. She could barely make it through the earlier obstacles, let alone succeed in a literal trapeze act. Her palms would be sweating if they didn't already produce mucus. God, what if that's what did her in -- her own slime? She could slide right off the first bar and crash into the ground with an enormous SPLAT.

Ok, no. No time for a doom spiral. If she took too long, the master might just push her off. This was simple enough, right? There were three swinging bars that she'd use to cross the chasm -- just like in the movies. She could handle it! She took two full months of tumbling in the fifth grade...it was the same thing. Lilly moved up to the first trapeze bar, trying desperately to boost her self-confidence before she could talk herself out of the whole damn thing. Her slippery hands shook as they wrapped around the rod. She prayed that her sticky fingers would come through.

"Ah, ah, Lilly," Peters squawked over the speakers. "That bar is for human acrobats. You don't need such handicaps. You'll have jump to the middle rung, then swing over to the other tower. That is the way of the Flying Frog! Let's get those extra bars out of her way."

Talk about begging choosers. On command, the first and last trapeze rungs floated up out of reach, the clanking of gears laughing at her misfortune. Lilly's face fell as she watched them drift away, then noticed Everett at work by a metal spool in the rafters. He was cranking them up by hand.

"Dude!" She gestured wildly to the ascending bars.

"Sorry!"

A groan and a croak escaped her lips. The impossible challenge now seemed even more so, but the resulting applause made it clear that this is what the crowd wanted. Lilly imagined that she was still her standing in the bleachers, cheering on acrobats with the rest of the spectators. She could understand their enthusiasm.

Ok, so what was the plan here? The platform wasn't long enough for a running start -- not that running was in her skill set anymore -- but could she really jump the whole gorge on her own? Silently praying for her life, Lilly crouched down once more and set her sights on the lone trapeze bar. Maybe her body had a few more tricks to share? She could only hope.

As the young woman assumed the proper form of a frog, a strange burst of energy started swirling around in her thighs. It wasn't painful like her transformation, but it felt just as electric. Muscles curled and swelled visibly beneath her skin. Her toes gripped the edge of the support. The throbbing power built to a climax. It was now or never.

Lilly took off like a shooting star.

Her emerald skin glimmered in a radiant trail of light. Even from this height, she could hear a collective gasp from the stands. She hoped that wasn't a bad sign. Everything slowed around her. The bar approached at half-speed. Her hands reached out to grab it.

Success!

She latched on, and the crowd went wild. The music flourished in time. It was a solid confidence boost.

With both hands wrapped around the rung -- as wrapped as bulky, webbed fingers could be -- Lilly pulled her legs back and began to kick off in a swing. One more jump. Easy. Maybe she could even do a backflip mid-jump. That would look so cool, she thought. People would love it!

As Lilly dismounted from the bar, her weight carried her down.

The audience began to scream.

She fell further and further.

Her short life began to flash before her eyes.

Hell was incoming.

The devilish Peters would claim her soul as he did her body.

Lilly almost screamed.

Until something caught her eye.

There's a rope.

Swinging towards her was a literal lifeline, but it was too far to grab with her hands. What could she do? She couldn't kick off of anything. She couldn't grow wings, could she? Or those arm flaps that some frogs have? She's saw one of those at an aquarium once! Damn it, why didn't she have arm flaps!?

When she needed it most, Lilly's greatest superpower came to the rescue.

Like a rocket dismounting from its engine, her sticky pink tongue ejected from her snout and aimed for the incoming tether. The rough twine fabric felt awful against her sensitive flesh, and it tasted even worse, but that didn't stop Lilly from coiling around her organ around it like an extra hand. With a level of control she'd never possessed before, her tongue twisted and pulled her entire body up until safety was in reach.

The spectators cheered for her survival, even louder than when she had first transformed. Her faith in humanity was slightly restored. Lilly's tongue whipped back into her muzzle as she swung up to the lip of the second platform and dismounted. Not a moment later, she fell to her knees in shock. Her heart beat out of her chest, pounding in her skull and drowning out the applause from below. She couldn't believe she made it. She couldn't believe what her body was capable of. It was totally insane. It was almost...exciting.

"Lil-ly! Lil-ly!" Waves of praise faded in as the rookie acrobat got to her feet. The chanting was odd, but at least she was alive to hear it. She couldn't help but wave back with an awkward smile. Far below the action, to the side of the bustling stands, Peters smiled in tandem, finally satisfied with his gamble. She was the perfect choice after all.

As Lilly glanced back to the chasm, she saw her miracle rope ascending towards the rafters from whence it came. She followed it up to find Everett, who coiled the twine and reattached its loose end to the metal rails of the catwalk. He smiled softly to himself. She smiled back, even though he didn't see it.

At least someone was looking out for her.

=====================================================================================

Lilly sat against the bars of her cell and gnawed on some ground beef, which Peters was kind enough -- his words -- to gift her for the quality performance. Yay. At least it was better than stale bagels. Maybe if she actually learned to do a backflip, he'd put some buns around her meat.

That sounded bad as soon as she thought it.

While the triumphant frog girl swallowed her beige-flavored dinner, she heard a thwack from outside the supply tent. Not metal like the rattling of her cage. More like a dull thud. Fleshy.

"Stupid boy! If you ever interfere like that again, I'll leave you at the tracks! You'll have to walk home to your mama, do you want that?"

"No, R.J."

Another wet thud.

"Then stick to your own damn job."

An angry set of boots pounded away as Everett stepped into the tent. He approached Lilly's cage with a sad smile and one hand bracing his forearm. Their eyes met. He moved to unlock the gate.

"He's, uh, got quite a golf swing," the boy chuckled quietly.

She cocked a brow in concern. As much as the guy was a part of a whole carnival-kidnapping plot, Lilly's empathetic nature couldn't help but acknowledge his circumstance. He was a pawn in the ringmaster's game -- most of the workers seemed to be. In a way, he was as powerless as she was.

With little else to offer, Lilly grabbed her half-finished bowl of beef and held it up to the cell bars. It was a show of good faith. A peace offering. A shared bowl of beef among prisoners.

Everett looked at it for half a second, then forced another smile.

"Um...I'm okay. Thank you, though."

=====================================================================================

"He really did a number on you, huh?" Lilly grazed the purpling mark on her attendant's arm before he pressed a fresh icepack against the bruise.

"It doesn't happen often."

"It shouldn't happen at all."

Everett had no rebuttal. He sat on the edge of the tub, actually facing her this time, with his feet buried in the bubbling bath. She suggested soaking his arm in the tub, but he declined.

"Anyway...thank you. For saving my life and stuff." The green girl smiled half-heartedly. It was clear he paid the price for his kindness.

"R.J. wouldn't have let you fall during a show. I'm sure he had a plan. I didn't really need to --"

"But you did. So...thanks." She reclined in the tub and stretched out her legs. Her long webbed toes stuck out of the water like cattails in a pond. Everett glanced at them as she spoke. "Y'know, you're not such a bad guy, Overalls. I'm not sure why you hang out with this kidnapping cult of weirdos."

"They're like family."

"Jeeze. And I thought I had crazy relatives."

"I just mean, I grew up with most of them. The weirdness gets around."

Family, huh? Lilly thought about her own for a moment. How long would it take her parents to notice she was gone? They lived in the next city over, and she was a fully-grown, semi-responsible adult. It wasn't unusual to go without texting them for a few weeks. Not that she had her phone anyway, which was a lecture waiting to happen. Mom would certainly chew her ear off when she got out of here.

"So, the circus folk? They're, like, your only family?"

"Well, my Mom lives in Austin. They have the best hospital for her...and me working here helps pay the bills."

Lilly's heart warmed, at least in a Hallmark movie sort of way. "That's sweet, but maybe find another job? A zoo that doesn't turn people into animal freaks."

"You're not a freak."

"I'm the definition of freak, dude! Did you see how long my tongue is now? It's like a freakin' grappling hook." She lolled out her tongue to prove the point.

Everett's eyes flickered at the sight. He leaned forward intently, resting his elbows in his lap. "But it had to be...um, well, what was it like? Leaping off the edge, sailing through the air?"

"Crazy. Terrifying. Zero out of ten, would not recommend to anyone. I've never even wanted to go skydiving."

"But you looked amazing."

The frog girl snorted.

"I mean, it looked amazing. I've never done anything like that so...well, I wasn't even allowed to work in the rafters until I turned eighteen."

"You seriously want to be in this crazy show? Jumping off stuff and, like, swallowing bowling pins?"

"Of course! But I can't swallow swords...or bowling pins. I'm not limber enough for the trapeze."

"And I am? I nearly went splat today," Lilly scoffed as she squished her hands together. She had that exact thought standing on the tower -- becoming a puddle on the ground. It was so insane in hindsight. As much as she had enjoyed watching acrobats, she never imagined herself becoming one. She saw herself more as a stand-up comic. Maybe an actress.

"Wait, if you want to have an act, why didn't you just become, y'know, this?" Lilly gestured to her amphibious frame. She'd trade places with him if she could. Clearly, he was better suited for the role. He was taller, well-built, and he had plenty of lean muscle from his labor work. Honestly, he might look kind of nice in green.

"I asked!" Everett laughed, lifting his foot out of the water. "Imagine how sick I'd look with flippers. I'd have the greatest water act in the world."

Lilly rolled her eyes, pulling her own flipper up from below. "Well, I don't have to imagine." As she looked down at her three-toed foot, she noticed how the light peered through her translucent webbing. The membranes were practically glowing. It was incredibly weird, for sure, but it was more than just unique. Did it make her...special?

Dropping her leg back into the bath, she caught Everett staring at it as well. She chose not to say anything. "So, you really wanted the juice, Mr. Eager-to-be-a-Beaver?"

He blinked. "Oh, right. I did, but R.J. wouldn't let me. Guess I'm more valuable with opposable thumbs."

"Someone has to clean up after the elephants, right? And maybe give the freakin' Beastman a bath? He smells worse a Chipotle bathroom on Mardi Gras. Trust me."

"Um...no, I don't go near him. You shouldn't either." He clutched the legs of his overalls.

"I can't _go_anywhere in a cage. But every time he walks by, he always looks at me weird!"

"I mean, um, you do look kinda weird," he teased. "Objectively speaking."

"Excuse you!" Lilly sat up and smacked him playfully on the arm -- accidentally, right in his bruising bicep. "Shit, sorry! Sorry!"

Everett winced, though his mischievous laughter numbed the pain.

=====================================================================================

Over the next few days, Lilly's life became a series of hoops to jump through -- sometimes the hoops were on fire, and sometimes she'd managed to get away with just a few singed hairs. Whether she was combusting or not, the crowd couldn't get enough of her, just as Peters expected. Soon she was performing two shows a day.

Morning and evening, she'd step out of her cage and dance about the ring like a trained monkey. A big slimy monkey. At least they started feeding her meat on fresh bun, which was more than the elephants got. By the fourth day, she began performing with other acts -- dodging throwing knives or making incredibly poor attempts to juggle them. Those nights were spent with Everett putting band-aids over the nicks in her fingers.

Though the schedule was grueling, each performance made Lilly more confident in her strange new abilities. She could adhere to every surface now with confidence, and holding her breath underwater was an expected but exciting boon. Running was still beyond her and the floppy flippers hanging off her legs, but her hops had more precision with each successive leap. She felt like a certain 8-bit plumber as she jumped onto boxes and, believe it or not, stacks of tortoises. This circus had no shortage of creativity.

Speaking of creativity, the Friday night show finished with the strangest act Lilly had experienced thus far -- even weirder than that thing with the corncobs. Peters rolled out a contraption made of glass cubes and segmented like a Minecraft character -- at least, that's what she thought it looked like: a blocky suit of diamond. He was oh so polite enough to hold the hatch open as she stepped into the armor.

What looked like a prism of windows and mirrors was, in reality, was a bunch of interconnected boxes that could rotate and bend like the lines of Rubik's Cube. This became clear as Peters moved the squares to and fro, forcing the frog girl to contort her limbs at obtuse angles. Though the sudden contortions caught her off guard, it was far from the most terrifying thing she'd done all week -- this box wasn't filled with corncobs. In fact, Lilly surprised herself with how flexible she'd become.

She earned one cheer after another as her arms pulled back like bendy straws and her torso twisted with ease. Even her feet could bend in the complete opposite direction. By the end she was laying on her stomach, all four limbs folded flat against her spine, and she still hadn't reached her limit. For a normal human, this thing would be a torture device. For her, it was just another day at the circus.

"Lil-ly! Lil-ly!" her raucous fans cried. As the starlet stepped out of her diamond suit, she waved to the kids in the front row who held up amphibious plushies with suspiciously long, brown hair. Flattering, she thought, but kind of uncanny. She preferred her bald one. Nevertheless, it was nice to be appreciated for her efforts.

Each show packed the big top now, and a sea of smiling frog toys had replaced the previous scattering of old stuffed lions. Lilly shared their grin as she took a bow and made her way back through the stage curtain. No one bothered to wheel the cage in and out anymore. The chanting of "Lil-ly" was enough to bring her back. She just might miss that sound after she leaves.

Not quite as vocal, but just as admiring, Everett watched the little green showstopper from his nest up in the rafters. It wasn't the best spot in the house, but it certainly did the job -- like a nosebleed seat at the ballet. The view was incredibly far, but no less breathtaking.

=====================================================================================

"And they loved the weird box thing!" Lilly laughed, resting her head back in the tub. She angled her snout towards the bendy straw in a beer that Everett was nice enough to sneak in. Hopefully, frogs weren't allergic to Budweiser.

"They always do. You can see everything through the glass."

"Did you guys buy that in Japan too? Like from one of those wacky game shows?"

"Oh no, I had to make that one."

She nearly spit out her drink. "For real? Dude, you actually are insane. That thing's like straight out of a Saw movie."

"To be fair, Graham had a lot of ideas for his act. I just put it down on paper." Everett sipped his own bottle, thinking back to the night they first sketched that design together. "It's actually really safe...um...for a contortionist."

"Well, you're lucky I'm so flexible now, or I'd have been smushed into a pancake. I was even like..." As if she was jellyfish instead of a frog, Lilly flipped around and fully rotated her legs upward, pressing the soles of her feet against her lower back and scrubbing the bubbly water into her skin. "I'll never buy another loofah in my life."

When Lilly turned back, Everett may or may not have been staring with saucer eyes. She couldn't help but snicker.

He may or may not have noticed her noticing, so he quickly took a large gulp of his drink before setting it back down. "Hey, y'know, I can kind of put my foot behind my head."

"Oh, really? I'm gonna need to see some proof, Overalls."

Suddenly oozing confidence, Everett lifted his leg out of the water and angled it up past his elbow. It only reached his chest before he had to start to arching his back. The look on his face was desperate yet determined -- he didn't want to disappoint his audience of one, who was holding back laughter as hard as she could. However, before his foot was even at eyelevel, a cramp shot though his thigh. He yipped like a wounded fox and fell forward with a graceless thumping splash.

Lilly burst out in a cackling fit intermixed with uncontrollable croaking. "Encore, encore! Next time, you're getting in the diamond box." She clapped thunderously as he sat up in the water, his white shirt and trademark suspenders soaked with rosy foam. This spontaneous, brave buffoonery was certainly the highlight of her week. "You really should be in the show. We'll get you a frog costume, then you and me can hop around together in the Jell-O pool."

"Hop around together?" Everett's pupils unsubtly dilated. He soaked up water in silence.

A moment passed, and the froggy girl giggled at his hazy daze. She imagined he was picturing that very scenario in his head right now. With a wave of her hand, she finally got him to blink again.

"Do you look at all the girls like that?"

"Um, like what?"

"Like this." She opened her eyes wide and leaned in.

"Oh God, am I? I'm sorry."

For greater accuracy, her jaw fell open and let her long tongue dangle out like a cartoon wolf. He blushed even harder, swiftly looking away and downing another swig of courage. More than satisfied, Lilly sucked her tongue back in and took a sip from her straw. "I'm amazed you can look at me at all, Overalls. My skin is blinding. I'm greener than Shrek."

"No, I think you're darker...more like Fiona."

"Oh, you asshole!" The swamp woman splashed him in revenge. "They're the same color."

The man reached down and returned fire. "Which would you rather be? I thought I was being polite."

"Well, you're bad at it." She snorted, scooping up another torpedo in her hand. The webbed fingers gave her a major advantage in the water wars.

"I think what's on the inside matters most. That's the point of the movie, right?" Everett made a tidal wave with his palms. He was practically swimming. "That your outsides are as nice as your insides?"

"Oh, so I'm a frog on the inside too?" She shot back, now armed with both hands.

"Yes! Um, no..." The drowned boy suddenly surrendered. "I mean, technically yes, but not in a bad way, I just mean, you're pretty inside and out. Not that you weren't pretty before, but now you're, um, I just, I'm sorry, I'm not saying this right --"

Everett didn't get another word out. Lilly's lips pressed up against his own.

She knew it was impulsive. She knew it wasn't the time given the circumstances...but she was an impulsive person, and timing was never her strong suit. Plus, the beers didn't help. This week had been a roller coaster -- the rickety wooden kind that you knew was going to collapse one day with someone on it -- but Everett stayed with her at every turn, trying to keep the cart on track till the end. He was the kindest person she'd met in a very long time, with a good heart and a very poor choice of occupation. Like a kids' orthodontist. Maybe this was dumb and reckless, but so was leaping off a hundred-foot pillar and hoping someone saves your life. Clearly, life's too short. Lilly jumped at the opportunity.

Kissing with a snout could've easily been an awkward start. She knew that before she dived in. Luckily, her partner had angled his head just right to make it work. His tongue slipped in to greet her, the tip eagerly exploring all the broad, pulpy curves that made up her own lifesaving limb. He tasted of Budweiser, but the air of strawberry shampoo gave his lips an added sweetness -- like wild berry wine. With each impassioned kiss, Lilly's enhanced senses turned the fruity aroma into a fresh orchard ripe for picking.

The daring green girl wrapped her arms around Everett's neck, her slick fingers running through the back of his damp hair. She giggled as the soft, ebony fibers tickled her sensitive webbing. The tiny spikes were fun to play with. Following her lead, his fingers trailed down her auburn locks and landed delicately on her waist, sending sparks of white through her verdant skin. She felt like she was glowing. She even peeked briefly to see if that were true. Such luminance wouldn't be surprising -- who knows how her body might react to this sort of touch? It was her first time. Again. She'd have to roll with the punches.

Trading spaces in their kiss, Lilly glided past his lips with a pining breath. She was careful not to push in too far, lest the mood die in a coughing fit, and tried for small, subtle swirls. Fortunately, that's all it took to make Everett shudder. He whimpered softly when her squishy, swollen tongue teased the roof of his mouth. Success! God, did she relish the little noises that came to him so naturally. She knew he wasn't aware of his quirk, which made it all the more endearing. Her bulbous tip danced in the dark to the sound of his longing whines, and she came to appreciate how precise its movements could be.

She was ready for more.

Floating away from the labor boy's lips, Lilly glanced down at his waterlogged work attire. Even all the bubble bath couldn't wash out the deepest stains. She'd hate to leave another one.

"Your poor overalls are soaked, pal. Maybe you should dry them off." She pressed a hand against his chest. The frog girl lacked the dexterity to do this on her own, but she made her intentions abundantly clear. Without hesitation, Everett unsnapped the buttons of his suspenders. She watched the denim chest plate fall, revealing the indent of abs painted in watercolors on his white shirt. Just as expected, years of labor left him in quality shape.

Lilly placed her hands on top of his own, and together they peeled off his sopping garments and set them on the edge of the tub. With sparkling eyes, she scoured the lean muscle that curved around his body. He wasn't bulky, but his definition was handsomely chiseled. Deep tan lines encircled his biceps and collarbone and made her wonder if he'd ever worn anything else in his life. It wasn't a bad thing, though. It reminded her of the difference in shades on her stomach. The pattern was kind of cute.

Her fingers explored his chest and massaged deep into his subtle pecs, trying to memorize every inch of his frame. He was supple yet firm. Smooth yet rugged. Warm yet...slimy? Really slimy. She assumed the moisture she'd felt was normal, maybe worsened by suds, but as her palm glided along his skin, a clear trail of her mucus followed. A thick trail. Thicker than normal. Like melted cheese. Or a giant slug. Her heart stopped, and she pulled away in embarrassment. They both heard a messy --

SQUELCH

-- as a literal rope of mucus fell onto Everett's bare stomach. Her apple cheeks bubbled to pink rosé. Rushing to recover, she snatched up his t-shirt and wiped the wad off his skin before trying to dry her own.

"Shit, I'm so sorry. I'm, like, really slimy right now. More than usual, actually, and I don't know what's going on..." The froggy girl turned her hand over with confusion. Goo drops as thick as marbles congealed on her palm before dribbling down into the bath. Her brow warbled in frustration. Seriously? This was how her body chose to react to all the attention? Yeah, they definitely reached the awkward part.

Her eyes refocused on her overall-less partner...and now he wasn't saying anything. He just looked at her with those deep brown eyes, like the rings in an old tree cut down to make a kitchen table. She felt the momentum stall. She wouldn't blame him if he packed the trailer up then and there. Permanently.

Instead, Everett took his shirt back and dropped it outside of the tub. It left with a soggy plop, but he paid it no mind. Then, he took her hand and pressed it against his cheek, nuzzling into her moistened palm. His eyes closed. A delicate murmur poured out of him...almost like a purr.

"If you haven't noticed, Lilly...I really like that about you." Without another word, he pressed his lips tenderly against the front of her muzzle then trailed kisses down the side until he reached her mucus-layered neck. Her breath hitched. Blossoms of heat ran down her spine with each peck. She had no idea that the moisture of her skin tasted like raspberries and honey.

The brown-eyed boy ran his hand down her back and enjoyed every curve of her soft midsection. Her smooth, slippery skin was a delight to caress -- and devour. Blindsided by his daring, Lilly moaned in excitement as he nipped at her collar tenderly, but with enough grit to shock her back to life. Her slobbering hands gripped at his back, reveling in his defined shoulder blades and layers of muscle. She moved down to his waist before breaching the water, then with a SPLASH, shot down and squeezed the inside of his thigh. Her electric touch rippled through his lower body and made his toes curl. He released her from his bite with a startled breath.

He was ready for more.

Her own excitement fully on the rebound, Lilly untangled herself from her partner and ushered him up onto the edge of the tub. The man rose like a mountain from the sea as he took his seat, finally revealing the big top tent that had grown in his blue boxer-briefs. The sight alone made her swallow in anticipation and nearly triggered a croak from her throat. Still, she resisted the urge. Steadying her breathing, she attempted to wedge her fingers into the elastic of his waistband. It took a second. Their swollen tips and sloppy runoff did her no favors. When she finally managed to pull the fabric away, a gentle hand came to rest against her own. She tilted her head up, curious.

"You're sure?" Everett asked tenderly, his senses nearly lost in her chocolate eyes. He was guarding her one more time. Perhaps he also knew how impulsive this was. There was no going back. Things would change after tonight. Regardless, Lilly nodded with a wide grin. Change was something she'd grown accustomed to. Her brows bounced eagerly -- she knew what she wanted. Together, they slipped off his underwear.

The young man tossed his boxers aside. Standing at mass was six-and-a-half inches of a wonderfully peachy shaft. Maroon flushed his face as Lilly took in the view of his arousal. She could tell he was nervous -- this was as vulnerable as a guy could be, physically -- but he truly had nothing to worry about. He was cleanly cut and surprisingly well-groomed for a laborer. The head of his member glowed pink and plump, oddly reminiscent of her own tongue. As the green girl watched, a bead of pre fell from his tip into the ocean below, like a cliff diver trying to impress her with his form. Well, color her impressed.

Lilly reached for him eagerly. His entire length shivered with anticipation, and she would hate to disappoint a crowd...still, she paused halfway. Flipping over her palm again, she wiggled her blocky, webbed fingers with uncertainty. Dexterity was not her strong suit. Although it'd gotten better since she first changed, the recovery was slow, and she wanted this to be perfect. No more weird body stuff. Well, no weirder than normal.

"Y'know, I'm not really sure I can use my hands for this yet...but I might have a better idea?"

Her partner nodded. Whatever she was comfortable with, he thought.

Perfect.

Skipping the basics, Lilly slipped her tongue out of her snout and coiled it around Everett's shaft. A careless whimper escaped him, which she found beyond adorable. She learned how to control her muscle incredibly well this week, mostly from trying to knock down bottles in a quick-draw act. Performing this way, however, would be much more fun -- and probably easier on the neck, in all regards.

Her partner's head flew back as she let her "extra hand" move over him with a swirling, pumping action. She flicked and slid along his shaft with a firm grasp, tightening the curl when he responded to her motions. The squelching spiral she made whirled clockwise and counter like a washing machine on high, and she enjoyed feeling him vibrate all the while. His member had a richer taste of fruity tones from marinating in the bubble bath so long. Even his pre drizzled sweetly on her taste buds. She was more or less licking a lollipop, and she wasn't complaining.

"Lilly...can I..." he forced in-between breaths. "Can...um...can I touch your feet?"

Lilly couldn't help but chuckle at his request. It came as no surprise given how many times she'd caught him ogling her flippers. Despite her self-consciousness over the size and shape, his fondness for her floppy feet made the girl feel just an eensy bit better. Maybe she could learn to like them too.

Keeping her tongue attentive to his member, she lifted one foot out of the water and placed it on the rim of the tub. Everett wasted no time rubbing his thumb into her sole, the mixture of suds and her own slime coalescing in a wet solution on his fingertips.

"They're beautiful, y'know?" he muttered, tracing the webbing of her toes with a gentle finger. The glowing translucent skin shined like emerald panes -- delicate and rare. He couldn't help but kiss the top of her foot, the leftover bubble bath proving wonderfully sweet on his tongue.

Lilly never had someone tend to her feet that way before. The sensations of his fingers on her soft soles sent waves of pleasure through her body, and she hummed in response. Feeling inspired, she finally retrieved her tongue from Everett's shaft and pulled her other foot into his lap. Her hands weren't up to the task, but her flexible flippers were another story. She could see the man's face light up as her message became clear.

As he continued massaging one foot, Lilly curled the other around his arousal and began to pump. Her flipper was so long and flexible that she could easily wrap her three toes around him, which was a wonderful idea if his face was any indication. Although her enormous foot was wider than his length, the grip was so perfect that each little stroke sent shockwaves of pleasure through his shaft. She smiled confidently as Everett bit into his lip, the young man clearly enamored with the lubrication her mucus-layered skin could provide.

The pleasure was mutual. Lilly's sensitive sole tingled as she continued her clever footwork. The feeling of his member rubbing her skin felt like a gel massage roller caressing her foot bottom. Of course, this was only a fraction of the joy her partner felt from their activity. With enough attention, his tip began leaking pre, intermingling with the soap bubbles and her own organic slime.

He pressed one more kiss into her free flipper. "Lilly...I really like you. And I really want you right now."

His breathy words made her slit warm up beneath the water. She was as ready as he was. Carefully, she retrieved her legs and climbed up into his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck again for support. Everett placed a few more kisses around her muzzle and one on the tip for good luck. With a hand around her waist for care, the raven-haired boy slid his fingers down her supple, toned abdomen until they found their way into her slit -- or rather, her new cloaca -- and began to explore the uncharted. Unsurprisingly, it was as lubricated as the rest of her body.

Lilly gasped as his fingertips circled around inside of her. In what novice experience she had before, the sensations had never felt this good. She didn't know how her new privates worked in this capacity, but somehow he was hitting all the right buttons. A moan filled her snout as his index finger pushed right into her sweet spot. Thank God, the transformation didn't rob her of that.

"Wow, Overalls, you really know your way around in there. Have done this before?"

Everett replied by pressing another finger against the front of her walls, causing Lilly to moan once again. Meanwhile, this thumb traced the outside lips of her slit, enjoying the wetness seeping from within. The structure of her system had simplified from what a human would need, but that which remained became far more sensitive.

Feeling she was ready, he hoisted his froggy partner up and slid his leaking length into her slit. A fizzy warmth bubbled up in her abdomen as the firmness of his shaft pressed against every inch of her tender vaginal-cloaca space. He waited patiently as she adjusted to his presence before gently rocking his hips up and down on the edge of the tub. When his tip pressed against her pleasure spot, Lilly quickly buried her muzzle in his neck, muffling a pleasured moan that quickly transitioned into a croak.

"Oh my God," she laughed into his collar. "I have no control of this thing."

"I don't want you to hold back," Everett whispered, connecting his lips to the girl's cheek as he continued to push into her. He felt her throat sac press against him in a marvelous rhythm as she inadvertently croaked into his ear. It sounded like a concerto.

When her ribbiting settled, Lilly saw fit to retake control and pressed her chest up against his body. She began bouncing in his lap at a steady pace, putting the strength in her legs to good use. Everett rocked on the ledge in tandem, spilling water onto the tile floor. Bodies fully in synch, his hand took hold of her right breast and firmly massaged it, adding even more fire to her simmering form. In turn, Lilly reached down and cupped the left cheek of his plump behind, finally satisfied to feel what was lingering inside those overalls.

With each grinding motion, pressure built and built between the lovers. Hands ran through hair. Kisses befell skin. Eager to please, the young man ran his fingertips down her back, tracing the wonderful ridges and trenches of her vertebrae, until he reached her supple rear. There, just above her curving crevice, was an incredibly special appendage. It wasn't particularly large, but Everett knew it wasn't the size that mattered. Fully aware of the feedback he'd receive, he wrapped his fingers around Lilly's tail and began to stroke. The shockwave shot her into orbit.

Every touch on her tail brought the frog girl closer to Heaven. Her toes curled in immeasurable bliss as slimy bullets shot up from her skin in double time. Lilly knew she was smothering her partner in hot mucus, but she didn't care. From what she could tell, it only enhanced his experience. She let her tail wiggle wildly in her lover's grasp, the moisture on her skin providing the perfect lubricant. He stroked faster and faster and faster.

"Hah, hah, keep going! Keep --"

Croak! Croak! Croak!

Lilly couldn't contain her moans or her croaks, nor did she try. She'd never felt so feral. Somehow, she didn't mind. Ready to launch, her hips picked up bouncing speed as her walls contracted around the man's venerable shaft. The earthquake turned him to jelly.

The quivering boy held out as long as he could, wanting to experience every inch of Lilly's body, but at last her clenching proved too much to bear. A waterfall of heat erupted from their connection.

"Lilly, I'm gonna, uh -- "

"Hah, y-yeah, you better, Overalls!"

At the zenith of pleasure, Everett cried out into the night as a climax burst from his shaft, his shallow breath hitching whilst he filled his partner's abdomen. The heat of his release pooling inside of her made Lilly peak soon after. She released a deep moan as the rapturous flames overwhelmed her and set off another series of throaty croaks. Enamored with the sound, he took hold of her and kissed firmly on her snout, one hand on her hips and the other with a tender grip on her pulsating neck. He felt her breath move within him. Before their lips could separate, Lilly slipped into his mouth and met the man's tongue in another spinning waltz. The tempo was fluid, but her rhythmic ribbits kept common time.

That time felt endless.

When the lovers drifted apart, their eyes met and exchanged sweet words while they lacked the breath to speak. Everything floated weightlessly as gravity vanished with the rest of the world. There was nothing but Lilly and Everett. Their connection was magnetic.

Unstoppable.

Unbreakable.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

"Keep it down!" the disgruntled guard hollered from the other side of the door. "It's past eleven, and I'm trying to get some sleep here."

Their moment complete in many a way, the couple slid back down into the water, washing away any evidence of their taboo. The girl snuggled her head into his smooth chest. He wrapped an arm around her. The bath became a hot spring as their bodies wallowed in afterglow.

Everett peered down at his partner with a lingering warmth in his stomach...and tension building in his chest.

"Lilly?"

"Yeah?"

"What was your life like...before you came here?"

"Before I came here? Barren."

"C-Came to the circus! That's what I meant." Another red wave puffed in his cheeks.

"I know, I know," she snickered. Lilly never got tired of his flustered face. "Well, before I grew flippers, life was pretty normal. I worked at a gym, drove for Uber. I got to be in one of their car commercials once, so that was cool."

"Did you have a lot of friends?"

"If you're asking if I'm single, that's an obvious yes, dude."

"What I'm trying to say is...is it something you...want to go back to?"

Oh. Lilly looked up from her resting spot. His expression was soft and genuine. Sincere, but serious. "Are you...really asking if I want to stay here?"

"I can convince R.J. to let you out of the cage. You can move into the bunks with me. And, I mean, the rest of the troupe. No more restrictions. No handcuffs. You'd just be one of us."

She separated from him to take a sip of her beer, which had warmed up in the humidity of the bathhouse. Her thoughts ping-ponged between his words and the reality of what life could be.

"I'm not sure, Overalls. That sounds insane, right? What do they call it...Stocking Syndrome?"

"You've changed our lives. And you've made something really special here. I haven't seen the crowd this worked up in years. Every show is packed now, day and night. They love you, Lilly. We'd hate to lose you."

Lilly looked down to her reflection in the clarity of the water. Could she really do this for the rest of her life? How long did she have to live when her workplace contained knives and explosives? Sure, nothing had been quite as potentially fatal as the trapeze jump, and even that had become a regular part of her day. She felt stronger than ever before. And it was fun to watch people gawk at her antics. Still, was it worth her humanity?

Everett studied her face, then took a deep breath in. "And what if...um...what if you could be human again? Whenever you wanted, and the change...might not hurt?"

Lilly froze.

"Wait, are you serious?"

He nodded slowly, his confidence shaking as she started to frown. Maybe this wasn't the right time to --

"Why did you not mention this?"

"I just didn't want to get your hopes up."

"My hopes? Dude, I just wanted to leave here with my head still attached. And now you're saying I could walk out, no, run out, without a tail following me?"

"Well, it's not that simple --"

"I don't care if it's simple! Just spill it!"

Her curtness made him wince, but maybe it was deserved. No, it was definitely deserved.

"Um...so, Graham --"

"Yeah, your other frog friend. What about him?"

"He wasn't...just a frog. He could turn into all kinds of animals."

"So, like Beast Boy? Was he always green too?"

"N-no...but he made different serums for different animals. And he had a notebook with all of his formulas --"

"Oh my God," she groaned, putting the pieces together. "He had one that would make him human again."

"But I don't know where it is," he insisted. "The book, I mean. We haven't been able to find it since he...well, after a while, he didn't use it much. He stayed a frog most of the time."

"Yeah, I wouldn't want to transform much either if it felt like my bones got crushed in a trash compactor. Which it did, by the way."

"Actually," he confessed. "Graham never went through that while changing. I don't know why."

"Oh, that must've been so great for him!"

Her bite made Everett's eyes fall to the water. "It's not a guarantee, but if we find his notes, maybe you can be human again. And maybe, somehow, we can make it easier for you to change like he could? That's just a theory, though, and I'm not sure we could even --"

With a bitter sigh, Lilly crossed her arms and shook her head. "You really, really should've told me earlier."

"I know. I just..." He moved closer and took her hand. Despite a fermenting temper, she didn't pull back. "I wanted to find an answer first. What you went through was awful. And changing back could be just as bad. You might even...I didn't want you to go through anything like that again."

"That's my choice, Everett. Whether it hurts or not."

The young man let go, conceding his defense. "You're right. I'm really sorry, Lilly."

His apology languished in silence.

Lilly pursed her lips, bolting down her frustration. Saying something dumb out of anger wouldn't make her more human, no matter how justified she'd be. Her overall'd boy messed up, and he knew it. His blatant omission was selfish, but in some stupid way, she understood his intention. No one should have to experience pain like that, let alone a second time around. Plus, he made the expedition sound like a search for the lost Ark. Could they really find the formula without that nosey ringmaster/kidnapping-huckster finding out?

Well, it was worth a shot.

"Okay," she exhaled, finally. "Where do we find this book? Did he shove it in a cookie jar somewhere?"

"We still have a couple of Graham's things at our warehouse in St. Louis. There might be some clues. We should be heading up there for supplies soon."

A warehouse? Yeah, this was definitely The Lost Ark. As her temper cooled with the bath water, Lilly took a much-needed sip from her drink.

Shit. Empty.

Before she could curse aloud, Everett grabbed his own beer and stuck her straw in it, holding the bottle up as a peace offering. He smiled sadly. It was an often-worn look. With careful consideration, Lilly scrutinized his face and gauged his sorry-ness level -- hard to tell, but at least 90%. Better than the last guy she dated. Still, it was her call to make.

She took a breath, then leaned forward with a stern message scribbled in her eyes.

"No more secrets, dude. Got it?"

"Yeah. No more secrets."

Okay, then. The froggy girl trusted her intuition. It didn't steer her wrong. Often. Straw in mouth, she sipped loudly until there was nothing but air, then kept sucking because she thought the wet schlurp sound was funny. She wiped her snout with a spare towel. "Alright, let's say we find this magic cookbook, and I can be human again. Or, whatever I want to be. Would your boss really let me off the leash around here? He's not what I'd call, y'know, agreeable."

"R.J. will do anything if it's good for business," he urged with a bit of renewed confidence. "You could get whatever you want. Every time you whip your tongue around, the crowd goes wild."

"They're not the only ones." Lilly cocked her brow and stuck her tongue out in a taunt. She was going to dig into him for a while.

A dash of cherry red filled his cheeks. "Well, they definitely don't cheer that much for everyone else. You're just that amazing."

"Huh, Amazing Lilly. That's my other condition. Change my stage name. If I were to, hypothetically, stick around longer."

"It's a deal --"

Knock! Knock! Knock!

"Emergency meeting, Everett!" the guard hollered from behind the door. "Put your dick away and get to the main tent."

=====================================================================================

Towels in hand, Lilly and Everett joined a gaggle of performers in the ring, where Master Peters had pinned a continental map to an easel. The others had gathered in their sleepwear -- the Fire-Eater, Mr. Mephistopho, both of whom were visibly inebriated, and of course...the Beastman. Its snarl looked extra salty that evening, Lilly thought. Must've been woken up from a cat nap. She smirked.

Then his glare stabbed her through, and she sharply turned forward.

"Change of schedule, my dear troupe. Thanks to our little green goldmine, I'm pleased to announce...that we have been gifted a royal invitation...to perform in Jefferson City once again!"

The comatose crew sprung to life. Their sudden applause startled Lilly, who surveyed them all with quiet confusion. Even the Beastman perked up, his ropey tail wagging innocuously like a puppy's.

"Our first show is already on Sunday night. Therefore, we're moving up the itinerary and boarding the early train Saturday at 5 o'clock sharp. We'll head straight to Jefferson, then continue on the western route into Kansas."

As Peters traced the map with his finger, Lilly took notice of an explicit omission in their travel plan. She glanced up at Everett, who was still drying his hair.

"We're not stopping in St Louis," she muttered. "You said we were going for supplies?"

"I guess he's waiting until Jefferson to stock up. Maybe we can double back before --"

Lilly raised her hand. "Uh, hi, Petey? Mr. Petey? Change of plans again. We need to stop at your old warehouse."

Every head in the gallery turned back with sudden silence, three dozen eyes surprised that the "goldmine" was outside her cage, let alone speaking to the master in such a way. Peters' excitement drained from his face.

With the subtlest of gestures, he parted his subordinates like the Red Sea. The void gave him a direct line to the obnoxious olive girl and his sniveling laborer. His plucked brow furrowed. "Boy, what is she doing here, very much not tied up? And how exactly does she know about our supply house?"

"Um..." Everett fumbled around for a sufficient answer. Much like his cohort, he never expected her to interrupt the briefing. It was certainly brave.

"I get it, okay? I'm stuck here," she said with an exaggerated head roll. "But maybe if I wow your big crowd next week, you'll treat me like a human being again? Which I am, everyone, just FYI. So, I'll play along. I'll do your show. But I'm gonna need more than just a few cheap hoops this time."

"S-She's got a point, sirrrr." The slowly sobering Mephistopho burped out a response. "We s-should bring out the big guns for Jefferson. Alllllll of the cannons!"

"Yeah, and everyone loved that weird box thing I did today!" Lilly continued in her courtroom defense. "You gotta have some amazing toys locked up in your shed."

"Oh, like the ice wall," muttered Everett, her new co-counsel.

"The ice wall! And the --"

"The Buddha Blast."

"The Buddha Blast...which I'm sure is...totally not offensive to anyone."

"And the catapult..."

"And the cata --" She snapped to him in a hush. "Catapault??"

"Sorry, trebuchet."

"The, uh, trebuchet. Whatever that is."

The master squinted, considering her words and their correlation to his profit margin. He chewed on his cheek and turned back to his easel. His gloved finger followed the railway from there to St. Louis. His brilliant mind did the mental math. There wasn't much time. It was a tight schedule.

"My dear, you are full of it," he grunted. "But Jefferson would love the trebuchet."

"That was Everett's idea. You should listen to him more often. Give him a raise."

"Don't push it, floppy! Ok fine, we're going to St. Louis after all. But we're in and out, understand? There's no time to dillydally. Now everyone get to bed! It's a big day tomorrow, and I need my thirteen hours."

The group gave a collective nod before dispersing. There were props still to pack and drinks left to be had. This was news worth celebrating!

Everett led Lilly back towards the supply tent, but not before the towering Beastman shoulder-checked her, shoving the frog girl into the boy's side. The behemoth continued on with a nasty snort. Before she could chastise the beast, her friend's eyes pleaded for de-escalation. His hand clasped her own in support.

Huff. Fine. She was too tired to fight anyway. Burying her frustration, she continued by his side on the path back to her cage.

"So," he whispered, unaware that he was still holding Lilly's hand. "Have you really...um...changed your mind? About leaving?"

"No. I mean...maybe...look, I don't know what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life, but obviously we have a better chance of finding Graham's notes if we work together. This way, we'll stroll into the warehouse and dig around right under your boss' stupid nose. It'll be fun."

"Yeah, very Romeo-Juliet."

"Jeeze, I hope it ends better than that."

"Right. Well, it's more like an inside job, anyway."

"No, no, what we just did in the bathtub, was an inside job."

"Oh my god, Lilly." Everett blushed, rubbing the back of his neck. She always knew how to turn him red. He was going to miss that feeling.

At least they still had a few more days together.

=====================================================================================

ACT III: CODETTA

The next morning show passed by without much fanfare -- aside from the usual roaring from the bleachers. Lilly got the crowd to do one of those big waves, which had always been a dream of hers. It made her feel like a mascot at a football game! Maybe that could be her next job if the circus didn't work out. She felt incredibly qualified after her week with the carnival crew.

The evening's event, however, proved far more treacherous -- dodging flamethrowers, swallowing knives, recreating a game of Frogger with stampeding horses. Turns out horses eat frogs...or at least these ones tried to. Worst of all, the spotlights felt especially blinding. Lilly wiped the slime from her brow, more out of habit than necessity, but the heat was definitely starting to get to her.

Still, when she looked out into the grandstands, the sparkling smiles that reflected back made this performance rewarding in its own way.

"Thank you, my friends, for being such a lovely audience this week," Peters said with oozing gratitude. "I see so many familiar faces here tonight, and I'm not just talking about those adorable plushies in your hands!"

As she waved to her fans, Lilly could see the number of brown-haired frogs had doubled from the day before. Someone even printed her face on a knock-off T-shirt. Despite the lopsided smile, she kind of wanted one.

"For our grandest of grand finales, we have a special treat for you. An act so daring, so terrifying, that it has only ever been attempted once before. And it nearly proved fatal!"

The audience gasped. Whether in realization or suspense, it was unclear. Either way, the bouncy green star rolled her eyes dismissively. What could possibly be more daring than hopping through a guillotine or doing high dives into kiddie pools? Her arms were still sore from that belly flop she landed at the start of the show.

"For your eyes only, ladies and gentlemen, it's one on one...mono and mono...beast versus beast!"

A massive roar shook the tent like an earthquake. The curtain flew up as Lilly's jaw dropped.

With claws unsheathed and mane unkempt, the ravenous Beastman stormed into the ring on two legs before dropping down to four, eager to pounce on any pound of flesh within reach. Its golden eyes flared like a violent sun. Drool dripped from its jowls as they pulled back into a snarl. In spite of their carnal nature, its animalistic teeth curled into an anticipatory smile. Lilly swallowed the dry air. It waited all week for this moment.

"Amazon Lilly must tame the untamable Beastman, lest she be torn asunder and return to the afterlife! And this time, there will be no resurrection." The master's words were as haunting as they were performative, and the spectators gasped again. They weren't half as scared as she was.

Every act she'd seen with the Beastman involved Peters whipping the ground in a weird mockery of a tribal dance. It was clearly prepared and innocuous. The ringleader would never put himself in danger. Lilly, however...

"This isn't a circus act, it's a street fight," she protested quietly. Despite her incredibly justified reservations, no amount of reasoning would stop the ringleader and his beast from upping the stakes for their final show. She knew them both too well. If Lilly backed out now, she may very well become pet food anyway. This was a challenge she had to face head-on. Her arms and legs bent in a half-baked fighting stance, and she prepared herself for the worst.

This act, as she astutely observed, was anything but.

The Beastman charged like a falling thunderbolt. Its pounding paws moved faster than its bulk would suggest. Defenseless, the heroine hopped to the side in a dodge. She imagined herself as a matador facing a bull, except she was incredibly unarmed. With her quickness, she hoped to simply tire the thing out and maybe have it run into one of the tent poles like in the cartoons. The crowd would love that, at least.

Unfortunately, when Lilly tried to dodge again, the Beastman pivoted on its paws with agility unbecoming of its size. For once, she wasn't fast enough. A calloused claw took hold of her ankle and pulled the frog from the sky. Her back slammed against the dirt. An exasperated gag burst from her mouth. Someone in the stands screamed on her behalf.

Her shoulders aching from the impact, she lay frozen as the suffocating weight of the monster pressed down on her body, its paws taking hold of her wrists and stretching her out like a supine crucifixion. The pain wasn't the only thing holding her back in this fight. There was no choreography, no plan, no room to squirm or weasel away. She winced as the beast's hot breath whipped against her neck. Thick drool oozed onto her leotard. Its violent canines threatened to tear into her flesh at any moment.

A thumping sound gave Lilly pause as the beast buckled slightly. From atop its back, a yellow sandbag slid off and fell to the ground. She craned her neck in confusion and peered up past the monster's muzzle. High above in the rafters, her raven-haired friend was dropping sacks like ballistic payloads. Unfortunately, the target was hard to hit from such a distance, and the weight of the artillery wasn't enough to even stagger the juggernaut on top of her. She silently thanked him for the effort, but Everett couldn't save her this time around.

Only the subtle clearing of R.J. Peters' throat would stay her execution, as both beauty and beast looked back to see the ringleader tapping his cane on the ground.

The devil smirked at his pet and sent a silent directive through the air. Lilly could only imagine what was being said, but to her surprise, the beast slowly loosened its grip on her arms. It was just enough to wiggle free. With one swift arc, she pushed herself out from under its barreled ribcage, curled up her legs, and slammed her flippers into the cat's mangy chest. The force pushed the Beastman up onto its rear paws, and while it seemed to regain balance, the fiend suddenly fell backwards into the dirt and closed its eyes as if deceased.

The grandstands erupted in her honor.

"My dear Lilly! Against impossible odds, you've saved us all from a rabid beast! Thank you!" Peters bowed to her with a tip of his hat. It was the worst acting she'd ever seen from him.

Lilly got to her feet, keenly aware of her false victor. However, she wasn't going to look a gift lion in the mouth. She already got a clear enough whiff of its fangs and rancid body odor. In a final flourish, she put her foot down on the beast's stomach, with enough force to convey her frustration, and posed heroically for her fans. The bawling revelers tossed flowers and plushies into the ring to celebrate their favorite froggy femme fatale. Once again, Amazon Lilly had won the day. Kind of.

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for joining us this week for the historical return of the Flying Frog! We hope to see you again in Jefferson City. Goodnight and Godspeed!" The leader's words faded as a brassy tune piped up through the speakers. Lilly continued waving as her audience shuffled out, the ladies and gentlemen blissfully unaware of the near-death experience they had just witnessed. Not to be ignored, the beloved ringleader crossed to the seemingly slain beast and joined in the bow that he clearly worked so hard for.

Lilly bombastically side-eyed him from her still-smiling muzzle. "What the hell was that?"

"That was you remembering your place," Peters muttered, gesturing to her in celebration. "And at the same time, winning against impossible odds. You're welcome."

"All that, because I asked for a pit stop?"

"You're sticking your snout where it doesn't belong." He shook her hand vigorously in false gratitude. "Keep that tongue in your mouth, or I'll have the Beastman tear it out. I am not kidding."

Lilly continued waving in silence, wondering how one simple request could turn him so sour. Did he catch wind of their plan? No, he wouldn't be so indirect about that. Whatever. He needed her as much as she needed to get inside his warehouse. It was worth pushing the worry aside for now.

She survived, and the audience had a good time. That's what really mattered.

=====================================================================================

Lilly sat alone in her tub, nursing her wrists from the earlier bout. Unsurprisingly, the beast had the grip of ten men, or ten lions if they could grip things. She figured its bite strength was far worse.

"You promised you weren't going to do that to her!" Everett's voice erupted outside, strong enough to be heard through the door. She didn't know he could yell that loud.

"I said she would survive every show, and she obviously has. Nobody wants to see her dead as much as they don't want to see her win an easy game. Remember who said that?"

"And what if it was just a repeat of last time --"

"Then you would do your job and clean it up, boy! Perhaps with fewer theatrics this time around."

The conversation ended with Everett tearing open the door and slamming it behind him. His fists clenched, looking for a punching bag that was already out of reach.

"Wow, way to tell off your boss!" She gleamed as he took a seat on the tub. "I didn't think you had it in ya, Overalls."

"I'm so sorry, Lilly. You were never supposed to be in the ring with Victor tonight."

"Victor?"

"Ugh, the Beastman."

Lilly nearly hopped out of the water. "It has a name?"

"He has a temper."

"Yea, no shit! _He_totally wanted to tear out my throat. I can tell those kinds of things."

"I think you remind him of Graham, and he just..." His fiery temper froze. His brown eyes fell to the foam in the water. A memory came bubbling to the surface.

Lilly rested her hand on his shoulder. "You don't have to talk about it, Everett."

She didn't need all the details. Reliving trauma wouldn't help either of them. However, the black-haired boy shook his head. "Maybe you should know now, since you're in the same spot."

Knock! Knock! Knock!

"Yo Everett, Mephistopho needs help breaking down the guillotine." The order came from a familiar grumbling guard just outside the door. With a tired sigh, the laborer got to his feet and stretched his arms high. He was kind of grateful for the distraction. It gave him more time to process everything -- and how to even explain it all.

"Guillotines are part of your job too?"

"Mephistopho doesn't like touching the blades. He's squeamish."

"They're real?" her voice squeaked. "Dude, I was jumping under that thing!"

"Well, you're lucky I'm such a good craftsman."

Everett flashed a cocky smile before strutting to the door, making sure to close it on his way out. Kicking her flippers up on the rim, Lilly laughed to herself. Hearing him speak with confidence gave her butterflies. It was a rare treat.

A moment later, the door reopened.

"That was fast," she called out to her favorite handyman. "You didn't lose an arm, did you?"

The room became claustrophobic.

Either Everett just grew several feet and fur in the last ten seconds, or the Beastman was standing before her like the reaper come to collect. Lilly quickly covered her chest and sank further into the water. She wished she could swim away through the drain.

"Stay back!" she yelled defensively, reaching for a bristled brush from the towel rack. A fight-and-fight reaction rushed through her veins. She wouldn't face the beast unarmed this time around. If frog was going to be on the menu tonight, she would at least be the toughest meat to chew. She flung her weapon around in the tub like an amateur martial artist and waited for the raging assault.

No blitzkrieg came down. The Beastman's only response to her antics was a throaty chuckle, like an amused mafia don who just watched The Godfather. Despite the girl's violent expectations, he floated into the room like a conjured phantom. Maybe Everett said his real name one too many times -- Victor, the killer cat-man. Had he come to finish her off? Was he just looking for a midnight snack, and she was the closest meal? His irises held a cold and faded yellow, nothing like the wild amber she'd seen death in earlier that evening. These calicos were harder to read. Somehow, they were more terrifying.

The beast crossed to the second tub, which was already too close for her comfort, and stepped into the basin. The handle down wrenched down with a shrill squeak, dwarfed by the size of his bulky paw-like hand. Lilly squirmed awkwardly as the water glugged out with an uncomfortable sluggishness.

"What do you want?" she muttered. Her legs were shaking with anxiety, but she kept them hidden underwater and maintained a poker face. If he could smell her fear, she would bury it under the strawberry bubble bath.

Victor ran his hairy fingers under the tap flow and adjusted the temperature to his liking.

"You are not the only one who enjoys taking a bath, Miss Lilly." Of all the things that could've dripped out of the beast's muzzle, an articulate Russian accent was the last thing she expected. It was almost too refined for the behemoth -- still gutturally placed, but sharp in tongue. In an even more off-putting move, the beast bent down and lapped at the water like a house cat. Lilly felt like she shouldn't be watching this.

Perfectly hydrated, Victor finally took his seat in the tub and made direct eye contact with the amphibious girl. The wind chill rattled her spine.

"Would you kindly hand me the bubbling bath? The cumber-mint," he inquired.

The nerve of this guy! Lilly certainly wasn't going to approach the beast. It could be a trap. It was definitely a trap. Ever cautious, she grabbed the beryl bottle off the rack and intentionally flung it at his head.

"?? ????? ?????," he said, catching it with ease. Lilly wondered if that was a thank you or a threat. Somehow, it felt like both. With the tip of his claw, he flipped open the plastic lid. His thick paws nearly squeezed the bottle dry.

Squelch...Slurp...Squelch...

Lilly grew tired of his endless squirting. "Ok, you're a lot less murder-happy than I anticipated. What the hell, dude?"

"I am off of the clock. I have no orders to fight with you outside of the ring. We will save it for the show." He set the shampoo down and began stirring in the gel. "You were a good dance partner today, Miss Lilly. If only we were not interrupted."

"Blame your boss for that, I guess." She shrugged in annoyance -- as if anything about today's attempted murder was choreographed.

"Yes, he always gets his way, does he not?" As the water level rose to completion, Victor lifted his chiseled leg and set his left paw on the tub's lip. "But I suppose he provides in exchange."

"For you guys, maybe. All I get is a jail cell."

"I too have a cell, Miss Lilly."

She scoffed, but he gave no reply. There was no punch line.

"...What, for real?" She never expected that, given his loyalty to the ringmaster. They both seemed too chummy. Although, she didn't expect to be conversing with her assailant either. Maybe if she kept him talking, he couldn't be mauling her at the same time. Presumably.

"All animals do. But you are lucky. I am only allowed in the bath once a week. You have special treatment. You are a star."

"Sure, and what's stardom get me? An air mattress, last week's crossword, and some very un-Sloppy Joes. Can't wait till I bounce out of here and get a real burger."

"And will you be, as you say, bouncing?" Victor grabbed a handful of sudsy water and began to lather his thigh. Lilly shied away, visibly uncomfortable.

"Duh. I've been trying to all week."

"You say this, but you would like to stay with the shit-shoveling boy as well."

"Don't call him that! And yeah, I care about Everett, but I'm not playing prison princess forever. Believe it or not, I'm still human. Murdering me would still be a felony." Lilly emphasized the last part.

"Yes, I am aware," he spoke as he lackadaisically washed his paws, paying no mind to her warning. "Like a fairytale, you want to make the reversal serum and become human."

The temperature of her bath suddenly seemed to plummet. Her leg started shaking again. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Your hearing is very good. Mine is better. These walls are thin. It is a trailer, as you know."

Lilly bit at her lips. This was going in a bad direction. Very south. Should she bail and find Everett? No, that would confirm everything the beast was saying. She had to play it cool. No flying off the handle this time.

"I have not told anyone," he assured. "I will not tell anyone if you listen to me now."

"You're not giving me many options are you, pal?"

Victor shook his head. "No, I am not. But I believe we would like the same things."

"Uh, sorry, but I would _not_like you to disembowel me and turn me into literal frog's legs."

"You want to become human. I want to you become human. I want you to leave. Do not stay here."

"I think you should clean out your pointy ears. I already said I'm going."

"Yes, yes. The frog boy often said this. He did not leave. He could change his form as he wanted. He could not hide the truth."

Lilly's brow tilted. "Am I supposed to be following any of this?"

The furry beast lathered his pits, and the room began to stink of drenched cat. Lilly knew better than to complain. "I have seen you in the show. The shining in your eyes is bright. You like the crowd. You like the...service boy. You like the attention of both. When you have the choice to be human or frog, you will also want to stay. Perhaps you already do."

The green girl turned red. As much as she wanted to dismiss his obvious mind games, she couldn't deny being torn on the matter. If the circumstances were different, would she actually want a life like this? Not every act she did was a nightmare come to life. Spinning on aerials -- swimming with giant beach balls -- entertaining people across the world? The movie in her head was captivating. Being around Everett certainly sweetened the deal.

"The service boy likes you as well, but only as you are now. He will not like you after." The Beastman began rubbing soap bubbles into his chest. "Unless you are the frog."

Lilly sat up offended, almost forgetting to cover her chest before she quickly crossed her arms. "If that's what you think, you really don't know him at all."

"I know that he waited to tell you about the notebook."

Her chest stung. The truth clawed into her skin. Nevertheless, she kept a stone face to his waxing poetic.

"But no, I do not care to know him. He will never become the frog. You are the last. So, I have come to you now with an offer. If you leave, forever, tonight, I will help create the serum for you to be human. It will not hurt if I have the proper paperwork. Bring me the notebook."

There's the shoe drop.

"I think we can make our own magic elixir," she spat with a sharp brow. "Do you know how many hours I logged into WoW in high school? More than my parents approved of."

"It is not magic, Miss Lilly. It is science." Victor reached behind the tub and retrieved a wooden bucket. The froggy girl had assumed it was simply for storing sponges or bath bombs. God, she missed bath bombs.

Filling the pail with water, he began to rinse the soap from his fur. "Let us say the two of you find the frog boy's instructions. Are you trained in chemistry or biology? Do you know how to recreate it? Do you know how to alter it?"

"Do you?"

"I can connect the dots. The frog boy told me much about it. We were good friends."

Her stomach suddenly churned.

"Bullshit. I know what you did to Graham," she bluffed.

"You know nothing of it, little girl." He waved her off dismissively. It made Lilly's blood boil hot enough to vaporize the water.

"All I need to know is that you and your crazy master kidnapped me, so your request to join our mage party is very much declined."

"Miss Lilly, I did not want to bring the frog back. I did not want to sit inside the tiny cramped box and restrain you. The service boy does what he is told. I do as I am told."

"No way Peters told you to kill his star attraction." With that, Lilly made her declaration, knowing full well what the repercussions might be. Pressure built in the air. She waited for his response.

The beast known as Victor set down the bucket and lifted his hands, showing off his claws and padded fingertips. He would not take the bait. "Everything I do is in service of the ring. Before I was the Beastman, I was the Strong Man. I have become a monster to save our troupe...because of what they have done for me. I remember my bones breaking. I suffered what you suffered. Yet I am always forgotten when the frog is here. You kick me. You spit on me. I lose so you may win. Now I have become nothing."

"Oh my God, then why didn't you use the frog goo yourself and save me the trouble, you jerk?"

Victor growled. "One must be human to use the serum correctly. The frog boy would change back and forth as needed. Clearly, you understand nothing about what you are toying with. You are an ignorant child!"

The last of Lilly's patience disappeared into thin air. She didn't need a lecture from a murderer. "Y'know what, Vic? We can handle this on our own. And when I do actually have a choice about what I am, then I'll make my decision." In a huff, she grabbed the towel from the side of the tub and coiled it around her. Water dripped off in pitter-patters as she pulled herself from the tub and headed for the door, her flippers leaving frustrated slaps against the tile. It was her best attempt at stomping off.

As she passed the beast's tub, a clawed hand clamped down her wrist.

Lilly yelped as the daggers sank into her skin.

"You will agree to what I am saying."

"Hands off, Mufasa!" she berated, anxiously trying to pull free from his ivory grip.

The Beastman rose from the water like a leviathan, lifting her arm overhead. Soon, she was hovering off the ground. "I have tried to make this simple. If it is more efficient, I will dispose of you and the boy now, and the frog will die with you."

Outmatched again, she struggled with every free limb to fight back, slapping at the beast's snout like a pest. She was nothing more than a fly buzzing in his ear. With a whip of his arm, the Beastman tossed Lilly back into her bath. Her towel unraveled as she landed mostly in the water -- though her arm whacked painfully against the wall. That was going to hurt in the morning.

Her opponent stomped out of the water and approached with ground-shaking footsteps. His dooming shadow overtook her like the night they first met. "We are not done talking."

"Yeah, furball. I think we are."

Both combatants became keenly aware of the pounding work boots outside. At least their ruckus hadn't gone unnoticed.

Everett flew through the doorway with animal speed.

Crunch!

Lilly winced at the wooden snap of a wash bucket breaking against Victor's head. Her one-man cavalry had put his whole weight into the swing in an effort to knock out the juggernaut. It wasn't very effective.

More annoyed than injured, the Beastman spun clockwise and backhanded the raven-haired hero, who stumbled into the other tub. The lingering bath water fortunately broke his fall, but unfortunately left him smelling like day-old beef stew and mint.

The frog girl's temper flared. Her legs curled in a rage and jumpstarted the electric cannons in her muscles. Both fuses lit, she catapulted forward and slammed her shoulder into the beast's lower back. Victor staggered from the force, falling over and slamming his snout against the side of his tub. That was really going to hurt tomorrow.

Lilly hopped over to Everett as he got to his feet, his overalls soaked to the core.

"Are you okay?" she asked, grimacing at the red mark of his cheek.

"He's hit me harder."

Before she could pull her friend out of the water, the Beastman reared up on his back paws like a startled stallion. This was the monster she knew. With each calloused hand, he took them both by the throat and slammed them up against the wall. A handful of tiles came loose on impact. The green girl gasped as his claws pushed up against her neck. Victor's pupils dilated as a wild sun began to burn in his eyes.

"Now we are done talking, Miss Lilly."

His muzzle twisted itself into a jagged snarl as she squirmed about in his grasp, but not even her slimy skin was enough to slide out of his rough paws. His grip tightened. If the fiend wanted to choke her into submission, she could probably hold her breath till his arm got tired. However, she could see Everett struggling from the corner of her eye, his fingers clawing desperately at the Beastman's wrist, boots futility thrusting into its meaty side. He wouldn't last much longer.

Relying on her powerhouse legs once more, Lilly curled up and slammed her flippers into the beast's stomach. It had worked in the ring before. Only this time, Victor had braced for the impact, huffing in indignation while she continued to struggle. As long as his paws were around their necks, the two of them weren't going anywhere.

She was running out of options. She had to think fast, and not just for her own survival. What else could she do against his titanic form? She lacked the upper body strength to brawl, and her kicks seemed powerless at this angle. Victor's body was built like a Russian tank. She had to aim somewhere else.

Okay. She had an idea. An ugly one, at that.

Putting all her strength into a Hail Mary, Lilly wrapped both hands around the Beastman's wrist as if she were prying him off. Then, she kicked up her heels and curled one foot all the way around his bicep. His muscles were large, but her flippers were larger. Before he could catch wise, she lined up her other foot with the beast's elbow, and scored by a grunt of merciless force, she stomped through until it --

CRACK!

The walls echoed with a sharp snap and a violent roar.

Lilly and Everett fell to the ground, retrieving their breaths from the edge of death. Lilly recovered far faster and, without hesitation, pulled the human onto her back like a mother frog.

Once the duo hopped out of the trailer, the attending guard smirked in their direction. "You all having fun in there?" he chided, counting the wad of cash with which Victor apparently bribed him. Fully out of patience, and partly out of reflex, Lilly's tongue burst forth and slammed into his forehead, knocking him to the ground.

She should've whacked him harder. The man panicked and pulled out his walkie-talkie. "Code 20-05! Crazy Frog is out! I repeat, Crazy Frog is loose!"

"Seriously, dude?"

"Lilly, you have to go," Everett urged as he climbed back on his feet.

The thunderous paws of the Beastman rocked the bathhouse stairs. "Yes, Miss Lilly, you both need to go." He clutched his broken arm as he stomped, disgust driving the daggers in his glare.

There was no more waiting for the right time. The duo hopped and ran for the nearest exit. They didn't get far, however, before a backup squad corralled into the tent and blocked their path. Although she spotted firearms on their belts, not one of the guards reached them. They had to be under orders. Well, that was just perfect for a seasoned acrobat like her.

One guard flanked her on each side, charging like wild horses. This was a routine she'd become familiar with. Putting her show work into action, the emerald girl easily leapfrogged over the left-side attacker and kicked backwards into his shoulders, shoving him on top of his ally in a cartoonish manner. As a third man retrieved the taser from his belt, Everett sucker punched him with an unexpected left hook.

In a feat of grace and agility, the self-christened Amazing Lilly dodged punch after punch and wild swings of batons. She took one fist to the snout, but her tongue shot back like lightning and spun her attacker into the dirt. Having dealt with a monster twice their size, she felt undeterred by this gaggle of goons. In fact, this was a week's worth of frustration that desperately needed releasing. Her adrenaline built with each slap and kick she delivered. Her flippers had mastered the art of launching opponents skyward. Who needs a trebuchet when you had legs like these?

Ill-equipped and underpaid for this level of beatdown, the bawling guards crawled away in defeat. Victor didn't even bother to intervene -- she presumed due to his fracture, and her sheer badass skills on display. Even her partner managed to land a few hits. She thought that was pretty hot. Standing victorious, the slippery heroine wiped her brow with a satisfied smile as she and Everett recovered from the bout. She may not be as strong as a lion-man, but up against any human, she hopped on a whole other level.

Lilly felt unstoppable until a bolt rifle cocked behind her.

"Going somewhere, my dear?" The sniveling voice of the ringleader soured her win. His pounding boots drew closer, but kept their calculated distance. Carefully, she raised her hands and nodded towards her previous opponent.

"I wasn't, until your furry friend tried to maul us."

Peters glared at his feline behemoth from afar. "I told you to stay away from her! We can't make another one."

"No, we cannot," the beast asserted. "She and the boy attacked me unprovoked in the bath. I was defenseless."

"I've heard that before, Victor."

"It keeps happening."

"Oh my God, can you two shut up!" Lilly yelled at the two bickering brutes. Still on a fighter's high, she dropped her hands and spun on her heels. Even a gun couldn't stifle her overflowing outrage. "You're both insane! This whole week has just been insane. And apparently, I'm crazy too because for just one second, I thought that this could somehow work? Goddamn Stalker Syndrome!"

She berated herself as much as the others. There had been some modicum of truth to the Beastman's words, some idealistic vision of her becoming a star -- but after two attempted maulings and a rifle shoved in her face, she knew that this place was nothing more than a nightmare. If there truly was a future for her in showbiz, it wouldn't be here.

The fame wasn't worth dying for.

"Let's all just settle down," said Peters, calmly aiming his rifle at Lilly's head. "Both of you go back to your cages for the night, and we can all get some rest before the big move tomorrow. How does that sound?"

Before she could lip off again, Lilly watched her partner-in-crime step between her and the barrel.

"Everett, don't!" She pulled at his arm. For the first time, he resisted her.

The ringleader rolled his eyes at this abysmal display of gallantry. "Boy, either carry her back to her cage or get out of my iron sight."

His words slipped through one ear and out the other.

A cold spell froze the ring and everyone in it. The frigid air thickened as the two men traded mental blows in silence. Neither cared to move. Blinking would be fatal. Condensing beads of nervous slime rolled down the frog girl's neck. Her chest tightened with each passing second. She tugged harder on her friend's arm. She wanted to hop in front of him. She had to do something, anything before the ice broke under their feet.

She almost yanked Everett back in full force when Peters finally lowered his weapon.

"You're always disappointing me, boy."

The master surrendered. Hell had frozen over.

"R.J., you...you never keep your word, not to me, not to anyone. I thought we were doing the right thing, but Lilly's not safe here. No one is." He shot a bitter glare at the wounded Beastman. The fiend deserved a far worse punishment in Everett's eyes.

Unamused by his spiel, Peters leaned to the side and talked around him as if the boy was a brick wall. "Ok, Amazon Lilly...I could stand here and threaten you all night, but clearly we've reached an impasse. What will it take for you to stay with us now? No more cages? Fine. Fried horseflies for dinner? Of course. You don't like Victor? Consider him gone."

The Beastman chortled with a guttural glee. "You are funny, Ricky. Who else will be doing your dirty work?"

"Well, Ricky," Lilly scoffed, stepping out from behind her partner. "You know what's really funny? If you had just asked me to join your mage party, instead of abducting me in a half-baked magic act, I might have said yes. You picked the one adult in that crowd who wanted to do this since she was a kid and kind of held out hope that it could be possible. But you made a bad call. You took away my choice, so this is on you, pal. I'm leaving."

"We're leaving." Everett reached back and took Lilly's hand. Her heart thumped.

The ringmaster scowled at their intertwined fingers -- the greasy webbing that grazed human flesh. His jaw tightened. "You're a traitor, boy."

"And you're acting like a dictator! This isn't what you and Mom started the show for."

"I'm keeping this show alive to hold us together, you brat!" Peters clenched the grip of his firearm. "Did you see how many tickets we sold this week because of your slimy little bitch? We've finally got Jefferson City back! Your mama won't have to worry about another bill in her life."

"She wouldn't want the money if she knew what you were doing to get it!" Everett's face twisted in on itself, coiled by fury and betrayal. "You should've just let me use the last serum!"

"No son of mine is going to be one of these disgusting animal freaks! Do you hear me, Everett James!?"

His boot stomped furiously in the dirt as if to crush the idea once and for all. Lilly recoiled for a multitude of reasons.

His lungs filled with fire and burnt his face scarlet. "It's bad enough that you fuck them...Oh yes, she's had her slippery tongue all over you, hasn't she? I know exactly what you two have been doing. And I knew you were shacking up with the last bastardization we had! I never should have made another one. Graham ruined you!"

THWACK!

Everett's fist collided with his father's nose. A warbling groan fell from Peters as he tumbled backwards, his top hat flying off into the dirt.

Wiping a glob of blood onto his overalls, the shivering young man took Lilly's hand into his own. They walked in silence towards the supply tent to retrieve what paltry belongings they had. She gripped his clammy palm tighter with every step. Comforting him was all she could do.

"E-Everett? Lilly..." Barely lifting his head off the ground, the master watched his two investments dwindle with every step. His vision blurred, but he imagined the gangrene frog laughing at him, undermining him, cavorting with his only heir -- just like before. It never ended. It was futile. It was Hell.

Peters sat up gingerly and wiped the flow of blood from his upper lip. "Fine, fine," he grumbled. "Abandon your family, boy. You always wanted to run away with your little flings, didn't you? I'll just run this place on my own. I usually do. And if we fail, we fail, and it'll be all your fault, and the bills will sit unpaid, and then you're mother will die. You're killing your mother, Everett. You're killing her!"

As the battered showman wallowed in defeat, his sequin jacket soiled by dirt and blood, Victor saw fit to follow through on his earlier plans. The time for talk had indeed passed. He could not let the frog woman retrieve the formula. Even if she did not return, he could not allow the notebook to fall into the wrong hands. Not hers. Not anyone's.

Its truth must remain buried with the dead.

With his free paw, Victor retrieved the rifle and aimed it at the wandering couple. His grip was shaky given his injury, and the frog's back swayed in and out of the crosshairs -- so did the shit-shoveler's. If he took out her boyfriend too, that would solve an entirely different problem.

"No, don't shoot at him, you animal!" Peters reached desperately for the gun.

Lilly heard a metal --

click

-- pierce through the silence.

Spinning on her heels, she twisted back and shot her tongue forward like a bullet in its own right. Her de facto fifth limb coiled around the barrel before Victor's claws could even pull the trigger and hoisted his firearm into the air. It flew across the ring like a missile. Within reach of his hand, Everett grabbed the weapon and shot twice into the dirt -- just inches away from the Beastman's paws.

"The next one's between your eyes, boy." His face was so neutral a face that it screamed in fury.

Lilly and her gunman continued through the stage curtain, never looking back, as Peters berated his pet in an indecipherable diatribe. The muffled sounds of whip lashing echoed far behind them.

Not a word was spoken as the runaways grabbed as much from the supply boxes as they could fit in three sacks. Water bottles, bags of kettle corn, a beer or two -- make that three -- and of course, the tiny plush frog that served as Lilly's cellmate for her entire sentence. It was perhaps the only one left that was wonderfully bald and generic.

She couldn't help but smile at its dopey, cross-eyed face.

=====================================================================================

Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.

A family of crickets joined Lilly and Everett by the fire. The duo had made camp at a nearby lake since Lilly's apartment was four bus stops away and it was already way past midnight.

After peeling off his still-drenched work clothes, the ex-labor boy scooped up Lilly in his arms and carried her out into the shallow water. "Since your bath was so rudely interrupted..."

"Wow, quite the gentleman," she chuckled as he lowered her into the pond. She couldn't help but notice his boxers -- patterned with his favorite animal. A smile crossed her snout. Her eyes took in his face under the moonlight, trying to read his thoughts. This week had been a roller coaster for both of them, and today it finally crashed. "So...rough day, Overalls?"

Her partner let out a deep exhale. "It's weird. Graham talked about quitting for a long time. He always said being around R.J. gave him a stomachache. I should've trusted his gut. Maybe he'd...I don't know."

Lilly pulled him in for a hug. His hand sat comfortably on the slick skin of her back. "Well, he would be proud of you for standing up to your dad like that. 'Between your eyes, boy.' I mean, you sounded like such a badass!"

"Graham and I watched a lot of Western movies growing up. That was from Green Meridian."

As her head rested in the crook of his neck, she watched all the fireflies coalescing around the lake. It was like a little forest of lanterns, drifting off into the dark unknown.

The unknown was the only thing that still scared her.

Mustering her courage, she looked up from the safety of his shoulder. "Everett, can I ask you something? You're gonna think it's dumb, and this is bad timing, which is kind of my whole shtick, but --"

"What is it, Lilly?"

His warmth disarmed her. A frog caught in her throat. Ok. She had to be direct. It was never a problem for her before.

"If...when...I change back, will this...I mean...will all of this still be real?"

His face fell as she pulled away.

"Look, I get that you and Graham were a thing. And I figure that I've looked kinda like him this whole time. And it's fine if that's how you feel, and why you feel what you feel, and if you just want me to look like this, but I would like to know if you're not --"

Everett embraced her as tightly as he could. Her hands curled around his back, never wishing to let go. "Lilly...I don't like you just because you're a frog...or, because you're anything like Graham. Which you're not, honestly."

He retreated to meet her eye-to-eye, to make every word count.

"But you are sweet, and clever, and I've always said that you're amazing. Not because you jump off stuff or because you can grab things with your tongue. You are the freest spirit in the world. Nothing gets you down for long. Even when you were locked up, you kept trying to find a way forward. I said I wanted to you stay in the troupe, but that was selfish, and it wouldn't have worked out anyway. You were never meant to be tied down. I want you to be yourself, whoever you want to be."

A flush rolled into Lilly's cheeks as she pressed her lips to her lover's. He was too kind.

She parted with a follow-up peck on his cheek. "I hope all of that means you still like me?"

"As long as you still like me after my dad took you prisoner for a week?" he asked, scratching his head awkwardly.

A laugh-turned-ribbit erupted out of her. He loved all her accidental croaks.

"Oh, yeah! What happened to no more secrets, dude?" She smacked him half-teasingly on the arm. "Were you ever gonna mention that? You always just called him R.J."

"Well, he didn't like when I called him anything else."

"Jeeze."

Everett shrugged it off. "And I really would've told you, but you never asked."

"So if I was like, 'Hey is the flamboyant psychopath who made you kidnap me really your Pa,' you totally would've said yes?"

"...um..."

Lilly rolled her eyes before taking his hand into her own and turning to the moon above. "So...St. Louis?"

"Yeah, St. Louis. We have to get to the warehouse before R.J."

"Do you think he'd toss Graham's stuff?"

"I think if Victor tells him about the serum like you said...more people are going to suffer."

The possibility of an enslaved army of amphibians gave her the chills.

"Yikes. Ok, first thing tomorrow, we start hitchhiking."

"I don't think anyone's going to pick us up," he noted, looking at the blood on his overalls and the overall greenness of his partner in crime.

"You're right. Plus, I get motion sick on long car rides, or at least I used to. Maybe frogs don't. Anyway, where's the nearest airport?"

"I'm not sure flying's an option either."

"I just need to update my passport photo." She shrugged.

"Hmmm...maybe you can fit inside a suitcase?"

"Is it weird that I've kinda always wanted to do that?"

"I mean, you are incredibly weird."

In rapid response, Lilly kicked up a wave into his face. He swiftly reached down to return friendly fire. Each splash struck like a drum beat in the night, crickets and cicadas harmonizing over the laughter.

Everett's wide grin sang words of admiration to his partner, promising to leap over a canyon if she needed him on the other side. Lilly smiled back in kind, spinning her flippers through the water like umbrellas in the rain. She would stand by him in any weather.

The fireflies floated higher, dancing in time with the most unlikely couple. Two bodies twirling in a field of little stars.

[THE END]

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