Age: Roughly early twenties
Height: Entirely variable, but he usually keeps to within a few inches of Kyle’s 5′8″ when they’re hanging out - taller when he’s being assertive / big spoon, shorter when he’s trying to look cuter / innocent
Weight: Varies somewhat based on how much he’s eaten recently, but usually around ~90lbs (~40kg)
Appearance: A big blob of transluscent goo the color of lime jello. Not sticky unless he wants to be. He keeps himself mostly humanoid when awake, mimicking Kyle’s general body shape and putting a good amount of detail into his face and hands, but rarely bothering with legs. When deeply asleep, he relaxes into a blob, but he can maintain his shape during a light nap. He tends to wrap onto anything anything he touches, especially while asleep, which makes him a very good blanket.
Personality: Cheerful, curious, creative, but panics under pressure. Likes drawing, cooking, and sculpting. Very good at spatial reasoning and has a natural grasp of applied chemistry and math, but not very good at their symbolic forms. Big on hugging, cuddling, and physical contact in general. Also likes trying any and all new foods, and is a very good cook.
Slyk is an alien who sneaked onto Earth without the knowledge of his or our governments. He is unusually curious, energetic, and adventurous for his species, who as a rule tend to be laid-back and pretty cautious about new stuff. His species discovered ours, the first intelligent species they'd ever encountered, several years ago, but has been putting off making contact due to their caution and a lot of uncertainty over how we seem to behave. Young Slyk decided he wanted to meet the new aliens as soon as the news of Earth's discovery was released, and was disappointed when the decision was made to hide and observe until more was known about us. When Slyk was old enough to go out on his own, he managed to arrange access to a single-seater spacecraft with which he secretly traveled to Earth.
On Earth, Slyk managed to sneak his ship in without being noticed and hid it near a smallish city in the northern hemisphere, where he planned to observe and record whatever he could about humanity. Unfortunately, even though he has the curiosity to be a great scientist, he doesn't have the training or patience and quickly became bored sitting in his ship watching stuff through remote sensors. So he left the ship to try and watch some humans first-hand, which lead to him accidentally meeting Kyle on a hiking trail one morning. By falling out of a tree. Luckily Kyle took the sudden appearance of a large green blob landing in front of him pretty well.
Slyk, who had already been trying to pick up the local language from observation and had also figured out that humans used their faces and hands to communicate, learned very quickly with Kyle's help. After meeting a few more times in the woods, Kyle agreed to show Slyk where he lived, and that night Slyk wound up moving into Kyle's apartment. Neither of them had intended for the visit to be permanent, but Slyk was too fascinated by everything to leave - particularly access to the internet - and Kyle enjoyed Slyk's company enough he didn't mind having a new roommate. After living together for a year, the two have become close friends.
Though Slyk can imitate human speech decently, it requires a lot of focus and effort, since he essentially has to create vocal cords to do so, and that amount of fine control over his body is difficult for any long period of time. Because of this, he and Kyle have been learning American Sign Language to make communication easier. While still complicated, hands are much larger and easier to shape and maintain than functioning vocal cords.
Slyk helps pay for food and such by making small sculptures and figurines to sell on the internet. He’s great at working off of references, and he can work lots of detail into very small pieces. He earns a small profit, but it’s enough to cover living expenses.
