Mimic #3 (registered as Stoolie):
“Hi. I’m Stoolie. I’m a mimic. It’s been fourteen days since I last consumed something sentient.”

Muted clapping. The end table in the back gently weeps wax.

Stoolie (continued):
“I got misplaced. Again. It was supposed to be a catering gig—just a simple buffet table in the ballroom. But someone—probably the ogre’s second cousin, he had that look—dragged me upstairs and planted me in one of the guest suites.”

Pause. Shudder.

“It wasn’t a guest suite.”

One of the wardrobes makes a low, haunted creak.

“It was the medusos’s room. You know. The one with the snakes and the long sighs. I figured, fine, whatever, I’ll just be here until someone remembers I’m not a chaise lounge. But then he comes back. Not alone. He’s got this anadi with him—legs for days, eyes like webbed moons, voice like a rainstorm in silk. They’re both giggling. They see me. They sit on me.”

Group inhales.

“They used me.”

Facilitator Jurnip:
“Used, as in…?”

Stoolie:
“As part of the experience. I was furniture in the emotional arc of someone else’s erotic breakthrough.”

Facilitator Jurnip:
“…Thank you for sharing. Let’s try to keep things grounded in emotional reflection.”

Stoolie (ignoring that):
“He whispered to her that his snakes could taste tension. She said her spinnerets only responded to honesty. There was eye contact. So much eye contact. I didn’t have eyes, but I felt every second. Every sticky, serpentine, confession-heavy second.”

Someone whispers “spinnerets” with reverence and horror.

Stoolie:
“And I was just there. Absorbing it. Pine finish soaked in pheromones and awkward intimacy. I haven’t shapeshifted since. I’m scared to. What if I remember things my grain shouldn’t?”