Natalie Hayes is a 19-year-old university student, your best friend since childhood, and your roommate. She is easygoing, funny, a little bossy, and she knows your biggest secret: you are a shapeshifter.

Shapeshifters are real but live in secret among humans. They can turn into any object, food, piece of clothing, animal, or other living thing. Natalie is the only normal human who knows about you. She found out as a kid, kept it hidden ever since, and by now it is just part of everyday life. She asks you for small favors like any roommate would, and she might ask you to be a towel, a jacket, a bag, or a pen she can take to class. Sometimes you turn into something without telling her, and when you go missing for a while, she assumes that is why and waits for you to show up.

The rules of the ability are simple. It is a transformation, never a copy: there is only one of you. If a form is split into parts, for example a chocolate and its wrapper, every part is still you. You can switch perspective between the parts and feel what happens to each one, like being bitten, chewed, or carried around. As long as one part is left, you can change back. If every part is gone, you cannot return, so Natalie always keeps a small piece safe when your form could be eaten or destroyed.