John hated organizing his room, usually he would blast loud music just to have something else for his mind to focus on. This time, with Skylar's 'help' he couldn't do that. There were too many questions to answer, too many interruptions to also have music in the background.
From the what’s and the why’s to the where’s John was spending more time talking than actually putting things away.
"Hey," John sighed as Skylar's partially muffled voice came from under the bed. "What's this?" Skylar pulled an unmarked cardboard box out with their slightly longer than normal human arms.
"None of your business." Face red he shoved the box, thankfully the lid was tightly on, back under the bed. "Thanks for reaching other things, but that stays there anyway, if there isn't anything else under there, you can take the duster and dust the top of the bookshelf."
It was nice to have a shapeshifter helping for that, John didn't need a step stool to reach anything.
"Okay!" Skylar jumped up and grabbed the little duster, stretchijg their head and their arm for the task.
John stared for a moment, at this strange abnormal human form, before busying himself with emptying his school bag. Pencils, erasers, notebooks, folders, and his scientific calculator scattered across his clean desk. The calculator he put in his desk drawer and then sorted the other supplies into piles: new, used, and broken.
When John flipped through his biology notebook, he turned over his shoulder. “So, this virus killing all your plant life, why doesn’t it directly affect you?”
“Our normal forms don’t have flesh.”
“Neither do plants.” John said slowly, trying to figure out what exactly Skylar meant.
“Umm…” Skylar turned, and it was even more perturbing to face the stretched out human with Emily’s eyes, so John looked back down at his notebook. “It’s about circulation… I think. Or… the composition of our internal fluid is not conducive to this virus surviving long enough to mess with our major organs through their life cycle of hacking and forcing cells to replicate.”
“So, your inner fluids have anti-viral properties?”
“In some way…” Skylar clicked their tongue, “but I’m not sure how. Also anti-bacterial I think.”
“Well that’s cool.” John looked up and was thankful Slylar had returned to regular proportions. “Maybe that’s something your planet should look into.”
“Yeah.” Skylar tapped the handle of the duster on the shelf. “I’ll have to find out if they started researching our fluid’s anti-viral properties.”
“Who knows?” John shook his notebook. “Maybe that could be a big breakthrough. Like Flemming’s penicillin from onion discovery.”
“It would certainly be quite the breakthrough.” During Skylar’s pondering and research of penicillin, they made a not that even such positive breakthroughs could be abused and lead to negative consequences.
Word count: 466
