"Yeah. I'd still rather not worry them, can we drop in on them to explain?"

"Sure. Point me to your slime mold infestation? I will put it in a magic freezer box."

"Thank you!"

There's a lot of slime mold. Most of it still looks like the twins' coworkers.

That's really gross. Luckily, being baby Cthulhu has done wonders to her gag reflex, so she can just tidily sort them into magical space-themed freezer boxes without reacting to the grossness. The freezer boxes are very strong, have no holes, are the same temperature as the ice in Antarctica, and are impossible for anyone that isn't her to open. That should handle the slime mold pretty handily. She makes an effort to sort and label coworkers for later.

"If you don't mind, I'm going to check for extra slime mold so we can be sure we haven't missed any," she says, once all of the known slime mold has been collected into the freezer boxes. "To be safe."

"Good idea."

She nods. Her jacket looks like intricate dark lace set on a darker, light-eating black, set with stars that don't move. She waves a hand, and motes of night-sky bleed out from behind the lace and drip like ink into the snow. They swarm and dart out very quickly in all directions, looking quite purposeful.

"It'll probably take a while for me to check everything properly, so we might want to go be inside."

"Nice jacket."

"Thank you!" she says, pleased. "It's not precisely necessary, but it makes my life a little bit easier. Also a little bit less creepy and gross in favor of being stylish, which is always a bonus."

"Creepy and gross?"

"My method before the jacket was bleeding starscapes from the insides of my fingernails. Which was in itself much more comfortable than the one before that, which was vomiting them. This is much preferable."

"I can see that. Not that I'm one to judge creepy and gross anymore."

Shrug. "I don't mind. I'd rather be self aware and honest instead of pretending I'm not kind of unnerving, now."

"Sure. Just--same." She holds up one of her hands; the fingers start to run together like wax on a radiator.

She smiles in empathetic understanding. Yeah. That's - yeah.

"I'm Yvette, by the way. Nice to meet you both."

"I'm Emily, and this is Edie. She's the reason we survived the slime mold; she got infected and she won, assimilating it instead of it assimilating her. And then she infected me, and of course she didn't want to assimilate me."

"Nicely done," she says approvingly, to Edie. "So it wanted to, what. Assimilate all of humanity to join its communal mold hivemind?"

"Apparently communal hivemind slime mold is the dominant form of life in this universe and it considered humans tragically crippled for living alone inside our own brains. It wanted to save us."

"Some idea of save. Perhaps I should put together an explanatory slide show on consent, and why it matters."

"Well, maybe if you count as eldritch enough to not be thinking with a tortured cancerbrain it will listen."

She makes a face.

"Tortured cancerbrain? Ugh. Well. I mentioned that my mind is in another dimension, perhaps that's enough to qualify me for. Not that particular unflattering description."

"It thought it was really gross that humans do all our thinking with a single organ encysted inside bone instead of our whole bodies."

"What an open minded line of thinking that allows for understanding many different configurations of mind and species. Surely this would not ever lead to grievous miscommunication and misery for individuals and collectives involved. I for one applaud the slime mold for its empathy and insight into the human condition."

"To be fair to the slime mold, it had met lots of life forms on lots of planets, and humans are the only ones who don't work like it."

"... Are you sure, or could it have conveniently forgotten about and assimilated all of the species that didn't fit into its narrow worldview?"

"Its initial assumption was that we used to be like it and forgot how. It was an earthshaking revelation that we hadn't.

Also, in its defense as regards empathy with humanity, humans started shooting at it shortly after they woke it up. Which wasn't unreasonable, exactly. It had tried to greet them, and, uh, humans being humans this didn't go great for the ones it was targeting. Just. Neither side was doing anything they had any reason to think was bad, at that point."