Antoine Catches The Bouquet, Pt 1 free porn video

ANTOINE CATCHES THE BOUQUET I had spent most of the war in Africa. I was just days short of my 10th birthday in 1940 when my father was killed in Rotterdam. There was not even time to mourn before the hated germans were pouring into France and then conquering our country. My brother Pierre immediately became the Marquis and with the germans just a day or two, perhaps hours for all we knew, from our estate, he sent me and my sister Nicole, one year younger than me, to Tunisia. He stayed at the estate as did our mother who was simply too shattered by my father's death to do anything, including flee. We urged them to come with us but Pierre absolutely refused. "I am the Marquis. I have to stay. I have to protect the estate and all who work on it." He said it with such complete conviction, with such strength. He made it believable even coming from a 120 pound fourteen year old boy. Just days into his new role he was completely committed to it. I remember staring at him, my brother with his resolute expression. The boy who used to play silly games with me his younger brother was gone. So, Nicole and I flew out just ahead of the bosche with an aunt and Dimitri, a huge man who was assistant to my father and to whom Pierre entrusted our safety. At some point in 1941, the craven Vichy government officially declared that it was allied with our conquerors and demanded that all french accept this subjugation. We moved on to Dakar on the extreme western tip of the continent. There, we spent three years doing nothing. It was incredibly boring. It must sound superficial that I should complain that this time was boring while others were fighting and dying but life in a city of exiles like Dakar waiting for someone else to free them, was boring. I idled my time away as a boy of that age will, in a thousand different ways, whatever diverted me at the moment. It would sound more noble if I tell you that I spent every moment pining for France and its lost glory but that would be a silly lie. I went to the beach. I rode my bike. I played sports and I read lots and lots of comic books. The americans always had wonderful ones. The new Captain Marvel Jr. series particularly caught my eye because here was a superhero who was a boy of about my age. I even looked a bit like him, with my dark, slightly wavy hair and the same sort of face. My sister could have been Mary Marvel, too, I thought, because she looked just like me only she was a girl, but they had given Mary Marvel light brown hair for some reason. But Nicole, who already had a difficult personality when we flew out of France, only became more so after encountering a young woman named Catherine in Dakar. This Catherine had studied at the Sorbonne under a professor De Beauvoir, a woman professor! She filled Nicole's head with the most ridiculous thoughts. Nicole repeated outrageous sayings third hand that men were oppressors. Not just germans but all men! Men exploited women etc etc. She had one that "a penis is an instrument of oppression" or something like that. Nicole became so hostile toward men and boys that she didn't have any affairs at all as a girl typically did. She sat in her room or at the quai along the beach reading and talking with this Catherine. I did not refrain from relations with the girls of Tunis and Dakar. On the contrary, our bodyguard, Dimitri, often called me "girl crazy". If he had only known about the film of actual lovemaking that the older brother of one of my friends showed us. It was an actual man and a woman, both young and slender making love. I was shocked to see it, as were my buddies when my friend's brother played it on the wall of a room at their home. But there it was, lovemaking. It made a great impression on all of us. We imagined ourselves in the place of the young man, kissing like that, caressing like that and... well... doing that. Seeing that movie only increased my desire for the lovely females of Dakar. They were all so beautiful, so delightful, so exciting. I readily confess that my affinity for any of the girls I kissed did not last very long. But that was not out of disrespect to any girl. It was affinity for them all. I was excited by all of them. Constantly. Finally, in June 1944, we got word that the Allies had returned to France. There were parties all night long in Dakar. I was allowed to drink alcohol, not just the wine we always had with dinner, but brandy and all sorts of other things. Such a headache I had the next morning! We moved back to Tunis to our family's winter home there. Really, it was a winter estate, not just a home. It included 3 square miles around it and had a magnificent view of the Mediterranean. We were there just three months when we received word from my brother Pierre that they were free. It was a joyous day in May when we arrived back at the estate. There were hugs and kisses all around. Mother was still in Paris. Our brother Pierre had become engaged to a gorgeous young american girl, Winnie Campbell and mother was picking dresses for bridesmaids so one last joyous reunion still remained. And in addition to a reunion with our mother I looked forward to the wedding and reception. All those beautiful women squeezed into lovely lace dresses! All those lovely bosoms! All those wonderful derrieres! I couldn't wait for the reception. But there were other reunions, too. Just minutes after getting back to the estate and going through a series of hugs and kisses with longtime employees, I went off the estate to see my pals Guy, Robert and Gilles whom I hadn't seen since 1940. There were, again, hugs all around and I shared with them my collection of comic books that I'd started in Dakar. We spent the afternoon flipping through them and pretending to be this or that superhero. That may sound immature for boys of 14 but we had not had the years of being 10, 11, 12 and 13 together so perhaps we were making up for lost time. My pals loved the new books I showed them and like me they particularly liked Captain Marvel Jr. "Hey, Antoine! He sort of looks like you!" noted Gilles as I had hoped he would. I did have hair and a face a bit like Freddy Freeman but, of course, wasn't anything close to that athletic. Back at the estate, Nicole laughed contemptuously when I told her that my pals and I had been looking at comic books. "You ridiculous little boys! How sad that there should be a bias toward you in the laws of France! We're all so fortunate that Pierre was that rarest of things, a mature boy. I'm sure he wasn't spending his time thinking about the fantastic tales of your comic books when he was 14." "Ha! You don't know what you're talking about because Pierre did, too, enjoy comic books." "A likely story." "Besides, what's so bad about fantastic stories. What about those stories great grandmother told us?" Nicole sniffed contemptuously but I could tell from her expression that she remembered exactly the ones to which I referred. The year before she passed away, in her 97th year, our great grandmother, who lived in Marseille, came to visit the estate in the summer of the year before the war. Though it was warm, this wrinkled old woman always went about as though it was actually late in autumn. But bent and lined as she was, she was surprisingly clear and fast in her thoughts. She showed no deterioration at all as one expects from such great age. I remember, her fantastic tale began as she watched Pierre running about on the lawn of the estate. She and my mother were marveling at how fleet afoot 12 year old Pierre was and as my mother left to attend to some matter in the estate house, Pierre loped up to where great grandmother sat on her lawn chair next to where Nicole and I stood. "Bonjour great grandmother!" Pierre grinned. "It is true. It is true," she said smiling up at the sky then at Pierre. "I had guessed it at your birth but now I'm sure. You're a child of the spell book." "Pardon?" Pierre still grinned. "They don't teach you the legends, do they?" the old woman said with a shake of her head. "It's not surprising. As admirable as he is, your father is not one and your mother is gripped by a narrowing devotion to religion." "Great grandmother," began Pierre plaintively, "please don't insult father or mother." She waved him to her side and patted his head. "I don't mean to insult them, but look at you, boy! Look at you! Your face, your eyes, the shape of your boy's body. You are not your father or of your mother's line, the Rousseaus. When you grow, you will be the Son of Reason at your gates," she said referring to one of twin statues at the entrance to our estate. They were a young man and a young woman who looked to be brother and sister, perhaps both about 18 years of age. Both were slender and nude. The young man was wonderfully athletic looking despite his slenderness while the young woman was a slim, hourglass shaped venus. They were striding forward confidently, each with a torch including carved flame held aloft, and on the torch was carved the word "REASON". Our mother disliked that these nude forms, however exemplary, should be presented as they were to every visitor to the estate. She often spoke of commissioning another sculptor to make a fig leaf for the Son of Reason. Real fig leaves don't grow that big. Pierre just stared at her quizzically, not knowing what to say. "You don't take in all the implication of what I say to you, do you? That's because you don't know all that is prologue to your being as you are, boy. You should know because you will be the Marquis and it's the story of you. It begins with the 13th Marquis-" "Jean Paul Richard!" chirped Pierre "Yes. That's correct," she patted his shoulder. "You know your predecessors, Pierre. That is good. But perhaps there's much about him that you don't know." "I know that he made wise purchases of much of the southerly portion of the estate and that he built the mill on the swift river at our easterly boundary." "Yes. That is true. Jean Paul Richard was a wise steward of the estate. He was but a boy of 18 when his father sent him to study in Paris to become acquainted with more of the world than this corner of France. There he met the lovely girl who became his wife. But, at first, he had a rival for her hand. His rival was an evil man who could see that the lovely girl favored Jean Paul Richard. So, to eliminate your ancestor as a rival, he turned Jean Paul Richard also into a lovely girl." "What?!" "What?!" "What?!" All three of us scoffed at this ridiculous notion. "Ah but it is true, children. Jean Paul Richard, a handsome, fleet footed 18 year old boy found himself, through the magic of a book of spells, to be a beautiful young woman of the same age. He looked down at his chest only to find a beautiful bosom. Behind him, his narrow rear was widened and ballooned outward into the most full round female derriere. And between his legs... no longer was he a young man at all." Pierre's eyes and mine were wide in shock. "All his male form was gone, replaced by the hourglass shape of a woman. And not just any woman's shape. He was so beautiful a sylph that every man wished to kiss him and hold the girl that Jean Paul Richard had become in his arms. What's more, he was stuck in a female body for months and came to adopt a woman's perspective and even know desire as a woman." "What? How can that be great grandmother?" "The book of spells had made his body into that of a girl of exceptional beauty and gradually his new girl's senses acted on his mind. But his beloved remained true to him even while he was fit to be her bridesmaid and not her groom. Eventually he was able to affect his change back to masculinity and not just as any boy but as perfect a boy as he'd been made a girl. You see, children, the Son and Daughter of Reason at your gates look so much like siblings because they are even more closely related than that. They are both Jean Paul Richard. The female statue was made of him when he was just turned female. He had lost his own money as a result and could only trade on his newfound female beauty for recompense. The male statue was made right after he'd returned to masculinity and still desperately needed funds." "What of the blackguard who'd done that to him?" I asked "Ahh! Jean Paul Richard gave him a taste of his own medicine. He turned him into a lovely girl and then had him left at a most unsavory brothel in Amsterdam to spend all his days servicing low born visitors to that city." "Ha! Good!" said Pierre "But that is not all" continued great grandmother. "Some years later, the legends say that the spell book, which your ancestor had taken possession of, was used by his wife. She did not want her sons conscripted by Napoleon's army and made daughters of them while somehow her one daughter became a son." "Yuck! Why would a girl want to become a smelly ugly boy?" Nicole said with a shudder. "She must have had her reasons, Cheri, for she chose to remain a boy and, yet, one of the sons chose to remain a daughter." "What?!" This time I was the shocked one and I think great grandmother enjoyed my shock for she smiled faintly. "It's not important, children. There are advantages to both the male and female conditions. What is important is that Jean Paul Richard became wiser from his months as a beautiful girl and his children became wiser too. For they knew what it was like to be of the other sex, how both men and women thought and perceived of things." "Where is this spell book now?" asked Pierre. "No one is quite sure" answered great grandmother. "According to some it was used again by one of the negro families on the estate when one of their kind was ill. According to others it was used again in a most unwise fashion. According to most, it was destroyed. But I'm not sure. For three generations after the children of Jean Paul Richard, all the line of the Richard family consisted of men and women who at age of majority looked just like your statues of the brother and sister of reason. But then the Marquis was of a different appearance. There was a son of a Marquis's brother who looked just like you at your age, Pierre, but then two more who had wholly different, more unexceptional form. I thought, at first, that your father was another child of the spell book but eventually realized he is not though he is quite admirable. But you, Pierre, are clearly a product of the spell book." "But, even if so, great grandmother, what is the import of that?" asked Pierre. Alas, we never learned, or at least, Nicole and I never learned, for my mother approached and great grandmother would say no more in her presence. We had no more opportunity to question her and a few days later she was back to Marseilles where, unfortunately, she passed away within a few months. It was this tale to which I was referring and which I could tell Nicole also remembered. That is why neither she nor I was left stunned and gawking when I had a most incredible bit of fortune just a few minutes later. I was bringing additional wood in to the fireplace, not to burn, but for ornamental purposes. Our family typically displayed the most impressive white birch logs we could find in the fireplace during the summer months, the fine white bark being more visible than logs of oak. I was reproaching Nicole for not bothering to help. She was five feet six inches tall and weighed more than I did at five feet seven inches tall and just 102 pounds, but would never perform the slightest manual labor. Even as I groaned to carry three heavy white birch logs into the house she mocked my reed thin arms and legs. I struggled to step adroitly onto the brickwork beside the fireplace laden with the birch logs but lurched to one side as I did, striking the stone masonry to one side of the fireplace hard with the saw cut side of one log. But the sound produced by the contact seemed most odd. It was higher pitched than seemed likely. I put down the logs as Nicole continued to mock my efforts and picked up the poker. With the end of it, I tapped at the stones of the masonry work. All produced a sound of the same deep dull thud sound but one. I tapped at this one again. My curiosity was piqued. The mortar even seemed to be slightly cracked around it. I pressed and tugged and pushed at this stone till finally, purely by accident, I found that a combination of these actions moved the stone back almost as if it was on a hinge. Into the space revealed, I pushed my hand and found a depressed space below the aperture. Inside, I felt cloth. No, an object wrapped in cloth! I carefully removed it and peeled off the covering cloth. Nicole was by my side now and she and I both came to the realization at the same time. It was the spell book of which great grandmother had spoken! I'm embarassed to admit that both of us immediately cast mischievous glances at the other. Our sibling rivalry got the best of us. We examined the oddly bound volume at some length. At the front, it indicated which pages were to be read to affect which changes. Some affects to be produced were rather minor. I noticed one for the seemingly unworthy of witchcraft ailment of a simple sore at one's mouth. My finger went immediately to the corner of my mouth which, I realized Nicole had noticed. There was another to remove birthmarks and I saw her touch the spot on her neck after reading that. We agreed to put it back and leave it alone but neither of us really intended that. I came up with a brilliant scheme to play a little trick on my sister. Wouldn't it be funny if my sister, the disparager of all men thought she was reading the spell to remove virth marks and instead read the one that changed the reader into a handsome young man? An hour after we walked away I took the book out again and changed the notation of the birthmark removing page from "63" to "68", where the spell to change a girl to handsome boy was found. I could not wait for night to fall for I guessed that Nicole would try to use the minor spell just before going to bed. Sure enough, near midnight I pushed the door open and peeked into her room. I smirked at the sight. Nicole lay on top of her bed covers, the book on the floor beside her. It had only been a few minutes but the sorcery was doing its work on her. I grinned looking down on her. I thought I could almost detect the shrinking of her modest breasts taking place as I watched. Oh this will be delightful! Nicole Richard forced to go about for at least a day or two as a young man. I resolved to make sure she got to spend a day working at the dirtiest, grimiest tasks possible, perhaps cleaning a stable or slopping hogs. I laughed at the thought as I picked up the book from the floor. I happened to touch one finger to the kissing sore at the corner of my mouth. The damned thing was no smaller than the day before despite my applying the ointment prescribed for me. I debated it with myself but decided that it wouldn't be a big deal if I used the book of spells to rid myself of the kissing sore. I looked at the listing of spells. I hadn't changed that one, and saw it listed as page 58. I flipped to that page and read the series of sounds written there. I couldn't figure what language they may have been written in. It didn't fit any that I knew. As soon I was done, I felt as though a paralysis was coming over me. I fell to all fours on the bed and then found myself, against my will, arching my back downward as much as possible in a way that left my head and my backside up high. I tried to get up. I tried to move. But I couldn't. And now, my whole body became icy cold and then, just as suddenly, hot as a camp fire. All this, to remove a kissing sore?! My modest backside, in particular, felt spectacularly hot as well as a bit sore. My chest, as well, felt as though perhaps it was being licked by flames. Oddly, my boy's organs felt not hot at all but perhaps even cold. Those were my last recollections till waking. I remember opening my eyes with a feeling like the morning in Tunis after I'd had far too many sips of that odd arab drink the night before. But this was worse. My headache was less but every muscle and bone in my body felt, well, not quite painful, but odd in a way that is hard to describe. I opened my eyes to the sight of my semi-darkened bedroom at the estate house. "Ugh! How did I get here?" I mumbled. "Hey, what's happened to my voice?" It was ridiculously high. Girlish, in fact. I was very self conscious about my voice as it was. It hadn't changed yet and was nothing like my brother Pierre's powerful sounding bass. But it had never been like this! I felt terribly thirsty, though, and saw a glass of water on the nightstand. It must be from a parched throat, I reasoned and reached for the glass. Somehow, I actually missed it when reaching out in that direction. My hand hung in the air above the glass because I started staring intently at it. "Why is my hand so small?" I gasped and even this whispery question came out in a ridiculous soprano. I forcefully cleared my throat and it was then that I started to realize what had happened to me. For as I cleared my throat, I felt... jiggling... on my chest. Jiggling?! There's no reason why a slender boy should feel jiggling on his chest unless it is a chain with a religious medal. My chest was flat, not muscled like Pierre's. What was this sensation? With my fears multiplying exponentially each second, I threw off the covers partly off me and sat up. "No!! It can't be!! NO!!" I gasped in a voice as high pitched as the chirping of birds. But despite my denials, they were there, two large breasts hanging from my chest like a pair of large fleshy mangos tipped with giant pink nipples. I was aghast. They were bigger than those of the negro girl in Dakar that I had held in my hands. I tentatively reached out to touch them to see if they were real. It took several moments to dare, for I must have suspected the answer. I also noticed, again, how dainty my hands now looked. At last, I cupped each hand beneath a breast. "Oooooo!" I squealed, my voice humiliatingly like a songbird, shocked at how mere touch of these large mango sized breasts sent a mild tingle through me. I quickly pulled back my hands. "What the hell is-" I clamped my mouth shut and finished the thought in my head only. I could not bear to hear that high soprano voice issuing from my mouth a syllable longer. I reluctantly glanced down at those breasts again, examining them closely. I followed the skin from the pointy pink nipple tips all the way up to my chest. They were clearly part of me. They were me. But how? This was too incredible and horrible a fantasy to be real. I can't let anyone else see me like this. God! I would never hear the end of it from Nicole. Wait. I remembered setting a trap for her with the book. Had that somehow changed me? Damn. I won't be able to deny having tricked her, but it wasn't supposed to work like this, was it? She wasn't supposed to trade her femaleness to me for my maleness! Hers weren't this big, though. How could this be? I fumed wondering what I could possibly do and in the course of frantically pondering, shifted my weight a bit where I sat. Uh oh. That felt odd. My rear felt very... well... wide beneath me, immensely wide. I was an exceptionally slender boy and I had a meager behind, not a ballet dancer's behind like Pierre. At that moment my rear end felt gigantic. This was horrible! Hesitantly, I leaned forward to look down past my... past... them. My stomache looked fine, still flat, though I wondered why I couldn't see the squares of stomach muscles I could usually see, but starting around my navel, I seemed to widen, to expand, to balloon outward dramatically. The sheets and quilt hid the final answer from me. Oh god, I pleaded. Don't let this be true. I pulled away the covers and saw ridiculously wide, full girl's hips spread beneath my waist and to my horror discovered that my penis was gone as was my scrotum. In their place was a slight hair covered mound with a vertical slit down its length. "NO!!! NO!!!!" I shouted and ran to the full length mirror at the side of the room as my frightened girl's shriek still echoed. There in the meager light, I stared, agape, at the body of a naked girl. She looked just like my younger sister, but taller, a bit more voluptuous and astonishingly pretty. Something seemed wrong though. Despite my new breasts feeling the size of cow udders and my rear the size of a mare's, the girl in the mirror was a slender beauty. Was this some sort of trick mirror? No! No! No! I poked and pinched at all parts of the naked girl, still hoping somehow that I was not her, but I was. I pinched her thick thighs. I felt at pull at my thighs. I ran my hand along one arm and felt a gentle touch of skin skimming my arm. I swirled one finger around a nipple as I had done to the negro girl in Dakar and felt a little electric current of pleasure zing to my brain. Yikes! So that's why she'd reacted like that! I turned in profile and saw the immense addition of flesh that had been made to my flat, little drum tight boy's rear. I could feel this expansion just standing there. It was so different from what I, Antoine, had been. Even with my breasts-what a bizarre thought, my breasts-even with them, my center of gravity felt unpleasantly lower due to this sudden accumulation of flesh on my thighs and rear. I disgustedly patted the bloated feeling but actually beautifully taut and round derriere in the mirror and felt slight pressure against my own ass. Ugh. It is me. I turned to face the mirror again. I only quickly glanced in disgust at what had happened to my crotch and focused instead on the face in the mirror. My face. It was hard for that term to make sense. This wasn't my face. But touching my embarassingly delicate looking fingertips to one dewy soft cheek, I felt the pleasant skin on skin contact. This was my sister's face only much prettier, altered in many tiny ways, but a perfected version of her. Framed by hair that was suddenly a cascade of waves and curls extending to my shoulders, my face now had a cute little button nose like hers, all that remained of my strong nose. My jaw, too, had been reduced and my mouth seemed very small though my lips seemed fuller as though I'd been stung on both by bees. My eyelashes were clearly longer and my eyes reshaped. The sum of these changes could be explained by the response that flitted through my brain. I had a wordless reaction of appreciating the beauty of that girl's face. Well, actually it was an instinctive desire to ravish her. God, what a tangled psychological web this was, wanting to ravish the girl that I, myself, had become! But I only had a moment to consider it before there was a knock at my bedroom door. "Antoine? Are you alright?" came Pierre's voice. "Just a minute," I grunted trying to produce the lowest possible pitch and only sounding like a girl attempting to approximate a man's voice. I ran back to the bed. "Oh god! I can't let him see me like this, not even Pierre" I gasped to myself in gossamer voice and with no particular plan but plenty of desperation, began trying to actually pull off my breasts and squeeze away all the extra flesh from my immense new ass. "Antoine?" I didn't want him to hear my ridiculous voice and only pushed and pulled and tugged at my feminine form harder. But, of course, I made no progress. Those breasts and that derriere designed to bewitch any man were part of me, not attachments. "Antoine, I'm coming in. Don't be embarassed." I pulled the covers up to my neck as he entered. Pierre was calm and only advanced slowly. "Antoine. I know what's happened." "What do you mean?" I answered ridiculously and at the sound of my coquettish voice and realization that I hadn't even tried to hide my pretty face and long hair, I gave up the game and let the covers drop. It was all I could do to not burst into tears. That would have been even more girlish. "Look what's become of me, Pierre?" I said despairingly, gesturing to my large dangling breasts. "I know, Antoine. You and Nicole each played a great joke upon the other." "She... did this... to me?" Pierre approached and pulled a chair opposite to where I sat on the edge of the bed. "Yes. She did. It seems she tricked you almost exactly as you tricked her. Nicole is now a 13 year old boy. She-" "Ha! Good! I hope the hater of men enjoys having a penis and having to do some work," I said in an angry coo of a voice, feeling okay about things for the first time. But Pierre frowned and shook his head slightly. "In the other room, Nicole was absolutely disgusted by her new boy's body, particularly her new generative organ and only brightened at the news of your metamorphosis." "But, what did this to me?" I asked, now crossing my arms modestly across my breasts. "The spell book. You affixed a page indicating that an innocuous spell was on a page which was actually the spell to change a girl to a beautiful boy. Just before she fell insensible, she had changed a page number indicating a certain innocuous spell to the one to change a boy to a beautiful girl" "Beautiful?". I was incredulous. "Beautiful? Are you serious? My-my face is pretty, but my ass is immense, Pierre," I said jumping to my feet and spinning before him. "Look at this-this mare's behind I have now!" Pierre chuckled. "You have a very lovely little derriere, Antoine," said my older brother reassuringly. I groaned. The mere fact that circumstance had put me in such a situation that Pierre would openly compliment my ass was bad enough, but little? "You must be kidding, Pierre! I feel like I have the hips of a hippo, or perhaps a pachyderm. Didn't you see it?" I said again angrily pushing and tugging at my new widened, fleshy pelvis wanting to somehow peel off this mass somehow glued or attached to me and reveal my Antoine body beneath it. Pierre grabbed my hands. "Antoine! Don't be foolish. As much as you may not wish it to be so, it is a fact at this moment that you have the body of a girl... and a very very pretty, slender girl at that." "Well, I feel comically grotesque. I feel heavy and slow and wide and- and weak. I hate this." Realizing my despair, Pierre wrapped me in a hug and I must confess that it felt good to feel the reassurance of his strong arms and to squeeze my big brother. His wonderful physique seemed even more impressive in my present condition. I was still holding onto Pierre when steps came rapidly our way and a boy's voice shouted "You bastard! You'll answer for this, even if you are bigger than-" And at that moment, a very slender but quite athletic, naked boy turned the corner and strode into my room, his surprisingly well developed penis flopping side to side as he walked. My huge ass was toward the door as Nicole saw me and she realized my condition first. I heard her smirk. "Hahahahahahaha! It worked! Good! How do you like your new strumpet's body, Antoine?" I was filled with anger and pulled apart from Pierre. "How do you like your new scrotum, coarse little boy?" "Well! What a fine silvery voice she has! Like a nightengale, Antoin... ette." I advanced intending to punch her, I mean him, well... Nicole. Nicole brandished her new fist as well. But before we came to blows, Pierre stepped in and then his fiancee, Winnie rushed into the room as well, apologetic for having let newly minted boy Nicole get away. We cursed each other a few moments more till Pierre physically lifted Nicole then me up and placed each of us firmly down onto the bed before sitting down between us. "Each of you did a foolish thing. Each of you!" He said looking Nicole then me squarely in the eye. "To change another person as you did, simply as a prank is unacceptable. You may be 14 and 13 respectively but I would expect better from 6 year olds. What's more, there is no time to undo this before the wedding." "What?" I gasped. "The spell takes such a toll on the body that it cannot be invoked without at least a week's time between uses. Our wedding is 8 days away." "Well, a week from 8 days still leaves a day," said Nicole hopefully and I noticed that her voice sounded very much as mine had last year before it had started to deepen. "But you two have been in bed for two days. It takes that long for the spell to finish its work and in that time, the person who hears the gender changing spell is incapacitated. We do not have enough time for you two to change back before the wedding." Pierre let that sink in a bit on the two of us. "What's more, Maman is returning late this afternoon. She has not seen the two of you since you flew out in those grim days of 1940 and now she will have to meet you," he turned to Nicole, "her second son Antoine and," turning to me, "you, her daughter Nicole." "I have to pretend to be that smelly, sweaty jackass till the wedding?" "You think I wish to add sanity to everyone's regard of you by pretending to be you?" We squabbled some more till big brother Pierre had enough and separated us, shooing me to the door with Winnie, for the boy's bedroom was no longer to be mine. I would stay in the room all white and pink, overrun with flowers and stuffed animals. He had one last set of instructions before Winnie led me off to a bath. "Remember. Maman is of a religious mindset and was horrified by even the whispers of the legends of the spellbook she heard from great grandmother. It would kill her to find that her very children have been acted upon by forces that she regards as being from Satan. You have to give me your word, both of you, that you will do everything to maintain this illusion till you can be changed back after the wedding" "You have my word," I declared solemnly but feeling slightly ridiculous for it sounding like the vow of a chorus girl. "You have my word," said the thin but athletic naked boy that was actually Nicole. From there, Winnie led me down the hall to the bathroom where a bath had already been drawn for me. Without a word, I stepped into a hot bath with Winnie seated in a chair beside the steaming waters. She watched me very closely but didn't force conversation on me. She must have seen that my mind was racing with all the fantastic implications of this. I don't remember when she handed me the soap but found myself lathering my girl's body while trying to figure a way out of this. There must be some way around those insufficient number of days! Damn Nicole! And I thought, with some envy and anger, of how Nicole now looked. In the course of our shouting and brandishing fists at each other I could not help but notice that she now had a larger penis than I'd ever had, for god's sake. And those shoulders! And that behind! She was a thin boy but Nicole now had a rear, that though narrow, was still somehow extraordinarily muscular, like Pierre's, so much better than the flat little rear I'd had. Why should my sister get a better boy's body than I'd had? And here I was, stuck as a prettier, more voluptuous version of her. She was a better male than I'd been and I was more feminine than she'd ever been. How could this be? And damn that negro girl for giving me that sore! What a temptress! How many other boys had she been kissing? If I hadn't had that sore I would never have fallen for Nicole's fake description. I thought of how anxious I still was to see my friend Charles and his older brother Victor, Pierre's good friend. Ugh. I couldn't see them like this. I looked down at myself and saw my breasts, perhaps they were larger than mangos, buoyant in the water, my two pink nipples pointing skyward. I inwardly cursed Nicole some more but finally took a long deep breath. No. This was my fault. I brought this on myself, beginning in Dakar and through to the present. I looked Winnie in the eye. "I brought this on myself," I shrugged. "Yes, you did. But it will only be for a while," she said patting my moist cheek. "You'll get through this okay, Antoine, I mean, Nicole." "Yes," I sighed. "I, too, have to remember that I am now Nicole, at least in public." "You'll have to take her place as a bridesmaid in the ceremony." Oh god. I hadn't really considered that. I would have to wear a special dress and, oh god, a corset. "Will I have to wear a corset?" Winnie nodded. "Madame Richard was very explicit about some of the arrangements. The bridesmaid dresses are a style that can only be worn with corsets." I sighed helplessly and continued washing myself. I wasn't sure what to do about my ridiculous girl's sex and took Winnie's counsel on how to wash that new part of me and then rinse it. Finally finished, I stepped embarassedly from the tub and into the towel that Winnie held out for me. I dried myself and then tied it about myself for the trip back to my room. "Silly!" Winnie laughed. "Look at yourself." A glance in the mirror showed me I was no longer Freddy Freeman or Captain Marvel Jr. I looked like Mary Batson's lightning bolt had gone astray and stuck him and turned him into a girl. It also showed me my silly mistake as my pendulous breasts bobbed freely on my chest. Winnie showed me how a girl should tie the towel to hide her breasts and her rear and sex. "You really don't have a clue about being a girl, do you? Well, I'll give you all the tutoring you'll need, how to sit, how to walk, how to hold your hands, when to make eye contact, when to avoid it. There's a lot involved. Follow me to my room and we'll start." It started with humiliating panties which seemed bizarrely shaped yet turned out to fit me perfectly. Then, Winnie helped me into my first brassiere. I didn't want to wear it but she explained that it wasn't an option for a girl as well endowed as I was and that I would probably prefer the support. I had to reluctantly admit that she was correct. Having those two weights held tight against me was easier to deal with. Next were a woman's slacks. As Winnie pointed out, Nicole was notorious for eschewing the most feminine garments. Winnie handed a pair of hers to me. I glanced at them. The waist was tiny. The hips quite large. "These fit you?" I asked her skeptically, for she was a beautifully proportioned slender woman. "Yes and I think they'll fit you too." They did. Like a glove. I was shocked. How could what felt like a horse sized rump fit into them? They were a bit long for me but Winnie expertly pinned the straight hems into cuffs so that they were just right. I pulled on dark nylon socks and medium heeled, plain women's shoes and then picked out a white blouse from among Winnie's. She brushed my hair a bit and applied ribbons in a simple fashion, explaining to me all that she was doing. Last, she applied just the barest makeup to my face and carefully directed my application of lipstick. I looked in the mirror again and felt another twinge of that impulse to ravish the girl reflected there. It was bad enough to be a girl, ugh, but every man would want the girl in the mirror. Every one. She was gorgeous and she was... she was me. God, what was I in for? All four of us got into Pierre's coupe, me and Nicole in the back seat and drove off at Pierre's usual high speed to the dress shop and tailor's in the city 35 miles away. Nicole and I stared angrily at each other. I watched her tug repeatedly at her undershorts and stare in disgust at the slight convex arc of fabric at the front of her pants that was the result of her new penis. A few times, we looked at each other with venom and might have started arguing but Pierre saw the first of those instances in the rear view mirror and declared, with authority, that there would be no arguing. We remained silent. As we roared up to the curb in front of the intended shop and Pierre and Winnie were both getting out, I turned to Nicole with a sigh and said, "I'm sorry for what I did to you." Nicole stared back at me. "Enjoy your corset," was all she said. I didn't. But there wasn't anything about that shop that I did enjoy. Two middle aged women met me in the front of the shop and Pierre introduced me as his little sister Nicole. They said that our mother had made arrangements with them and to follow them to the back room. Winnie went with me but could offer no defense for their ministrations. I had no sooner set foot, walking unsteadily even on medium height heels, behind the curtain than I was exhorted to strip. I glanced at Winnie who nodded. Reluctantly, I pulled off my clothes. Winnie helped with my brassiere. It felt quite odd for those new breasts of mine to dangle freely again. I resisted the removal of my panties but the two women insisted saying I wouldn't be wearing those anyway. So there I was, 14 year old Antoine Richard, awakened to being female just two hours before and now standing naked as one before perfect strangers and only a shoulder height screen separating me from Winnie. Amazing. "Oh, mademoiselle is beautiful!" declared the round one taking one of my hands and turning me in a full circle before the thin one. "She has the Richard derriere!" said the round one, proudly. "Oh, your brother Pierre!" the thin one giggled. "What a sight he is in ballet tights!" They shared a chuckle at their recollection of the sight of my older brother and then set themselves to their task. Me. "With a strong effort at shaping she will be resplendent at the ceremony" declared the thin one. First, they took my measurements, including my height and weight with a scale having an attachement to measure height in the corner. I was now five feet seven inches tall and weighed one hundred seventeen pounds. I doubted the veracity of that. That would be a slender girl. My rear felt as though it weighed a hundred seventeen pounds all by itself. I wouldn't have been surprised if the two women had laughed at my rear end. But they pronounced it "exquisite" as they read off the "34" of my 34-22-34 measurements. "Mademoiselle has a wonderful shape. You have been corsetted before, yes?" asked the round one. "No, never" I said before noticing, too late, Winnie with raised eyebrows nodding slightly but frantically to tell me to answer in the affirmative. My "no" excited the two women. "If mademoiselle has a 22 inch waist with no training, think of how good she will look once we help her," one purred to the other as both disappeared into another room and came back with three small boxes. The round one approached and brushed her fingers along my side. It tickled. "Yes, She has such fine skin." said the thin one rubbing my abdomen just below my new navel. "Velvety soft and with a peaches and cream hue. Only the best for her." "Raise your hands over your head and grab that bar," commanded the other. I hadn't even noticed the bar just below the ceiling and did as instructed. Immediately the two set rapidly to work on me like a crew at Le Mans changing tires on their driver's car. The round one held a white, lace edged garment in front of me. I felt the other reach between my legs and pull a strap from front to back. "Oooo!" "Pardon Mademoiselle," the thin one said from behind but never stopped what she was doing. I quickly found that this lacy edged garment was quite stiff. It was wrapped around me and the thin one began tightening laces behind me from top to bottom. In short order, I felt as though I could barely breath and though I thought a corset was simply for reducing a girl's waist, it seemed to me that the effect was also to make me fuller above and below the waist. Perhaps I wasn't, but that was how the corset made me feel. With the lacing finished, I let go of the bar and tried to catch my breath but couldn't. I looked at myself in the mirror. Oh my god! There was no denying it. The femininity of my appearance really was increased. What an hourglass of a girl I was now! And my god. Look at those breasts! The corset had first lifted then squeezed my bosom into an even more impressive shape, making it appear even more substantial. What would my best friend Gilles say to the sight of a girl like that? Or Guy? Or Robert? What should they say at a sight such as that? I had another of those confusing moments. I wanted to kiss the gorgeous girl with the surprisingly ample bosom. I remember feeling a curious sensation where I thought I no longer had a part to act upon such a sensation. But my reveries were short lived. "Look at how mademoiselle flushes with color!" said the thin one not realizing the real reason. "How is mademoiselle's breathing?" asked the round one. "It's okay," I said with a boy's stoicism, not meaning to literally say that it was okay but not wanting to complain despite it being terrible. "Good!" "Good!" they chirped and I was instructed again to grasp the bar over my head. "Again?" I resisted but they simply started on me anyway. The thin one behind me even put her foot against my back at one point to draw the laces tighter. I protested in the thin gasping breaths I could manage but they simply went about their business. At last, they finished and I felt as though my ribs had been crushed and that a vise was cutting me in half at the waist. Conversely, my new bosom felt half again as large and my humiliatingly large rear even more so. But, panting for breath and desperately, almost painfully uncomfortable as I was, I thought the girl in the mirror before me was more gorgeous than ever. The curious tingle at the junction of my legs fluttered again. Mon Dieu! What a circumstance! The two women then brought forth a white bridesmaid's dress of beautiful white lace with intricate white lace flowers in the shapes of roses, daisies and cornflowers all along it. First, though, the two women pulled wonderfully soft stockings up my legs. They were so soft, a much finer texture than anything I wore against my skin as a 14 year old boy, quite pleasant actually. The women fixed them to my corset with garters and then I pulled on my bridesmaid dress. It scarcely covered any of the bosom my corset left exposed. I thought the pencil thin sleeves would prove too thin, but I slid my arms in to the ends with no problem. For some minutes, the women went about pinning the back and hem of the dress and almost as if they somehow had been signalled, Pierre and Nicole, now a very slender 13 year old boy in a new suit, came through the curtain. "Wow. What a pretty girl she is!" said Nicole approaching me and then patting the side of my reduced waist with a smirk. "She looks so much better with her corset," she added. I shot a look indicating my willingness to torture her. "Can she be reduced even further?" she added hopefully. "Oh, your sister will be reduced further" said the round one cheerfully. "She is only down to 19 inches. Nicole will reach 17 inches and be incandescent" The little brat apparent boy prepared to say something else but whinced softly in pain when Pierre's hand closed about his and led him out of the room. The two seamstresses finished marking my dress but wouldn't let me out of my corset. "Please... this is... most un-... comfortable." "No, mademoiselle." "But... don't I have a say... in this?" "No, mademoiselle. This dress was chosen for you by Madame Richard. We are following her orders for her daughter." I was given another, plain dress, soft white cotton with a print of cornflowers to leave the shop. I would have preferred to return to the slacks and blouse given to me by Winnie but I was told that this new dress was better suited for a girl in her corset. At least I got to keep my nylons. I was given a box with the clothes I had worn entering, two more corsets and a special gift, a new swimsuit, the women said. I fell into the back seat of Pierre's coupe, literally fell. I tried to bend at the waist but found I couldn't and toppled over into the back seat but Pierre caught me with one hand redirecting me away from the usurper of my masculinity to my side of the back seat. Nicole looked uncomfortable in her boy's clothes but did nothing but smirk at the sight of me in my new dress and corset. We drove to a cafe that Pierre favored in another part of the City and got a booth toward the back. As much of the staff came by to greet Pierre, my little mouth watered at the prospect of a large meal. Remember, I had just that morning made my transition from 14 year old boy to 14 year old girl. I had been an extremely thin 97 pounds. Everyone was always urging me, practically demanding of me that I try to eat more to fill out with muscle. But I had a racing metabolism such that no matter how I ate I didn't gain any weight. So, when I sat down to that table feeling hungry, I expected to eat everything put before me. But after gulping down a glass of water and a roll, I had but a few forkfulls from my entree before feeling stuffed. I looked about in shock. How could this be?! Winnie explained to me that one effect of the corset was to squeez my stomache such that it could simply not hold as much food. I had wasted that meager capacity with my glass of water and roll. Ugh. Nicole smirked at me and made a show of eating not only her meal but the remainder of mine and a rich dessert while I watched helplessly. Pierre and Winnie assured me that we would be changed back as soon as possible after the wedding but reiterated that we would have to play our parts as each other. The next step was meeting mother. What a weird mix of emotions, a bouillabaisse of joy and shame that was when we met her in the crushed stone drive in front of the estate house that afternoon. I was very anxious to see mother again, but I was her 14 year old son Antoine. I hated meeting her in the body of a girl and I felt guilty for lying to her and pretending to be my sister. But mother was so delighted to see us, my discomfort at my female condition and guilt were brushed aside by her joy. Mother shed tear after tear and held me in her arms hugging me with all her strength. She did likewise with now boy Nicole but seemed to spend even more time with me, gushing over how lovely I was and how mature I looked, how I had become a beautiful young woman in four years absence from her. I tried to say as little as possible and didn't really have to say much as maman kept expressing her delight at being reunited with her son and daughter. I only wish I had been the son. Mother was a whirlwind of activity that evening, making plans for the wedding, deciding on place settings and flowers and hors d'oeuvres and everything one could think of. I'd had no idea how much effort women put into such preparations. But it seemed like she was trying to plan everything that evening. Couldn't some of it wait? But she explained that we girls would be spending a day at the spa tomorrow and again just before the wedding. I was a bit apprehensive about that, but figured a day of pampering as a young woman might not be so bad. The next morning, I woke with a shriek of shock at finding breasts on my boy's chest and my rear so wide. And reaching between my legs, where was my morning erection? Where was my penis! Oh god. But quickly I remembered the incredible events of the previous day. Mother came rushing into that room, Nicole's room, to see if I was okay. I explained my shout to my mother as mistakenly thinking I'd seen a mouse. I thought I heard a gasp of confusion come from my former room as I walked by it on the way to the bathroom. I opened the door slightly and said softly "Give it five minutes while you think about something else and it'll become softer". I got another comparatively better moment than Nicole as mother and I were getting in the car with Winnie to go to the spa. Nicole, dressed in workman's clothes was being led off for a day of work in the forest by the woodsmen. I could not suppress a grin. In all her rants that Pierre and I somehow got preferential treatment, she always left out the fact that Pierre and I worked with the estate workers at least three out of five days during vacations from school. The sour expression on the boy's face that shouldn't have been hers was delicious. I tittered at the very thought several times in the course of our drive. Winnie drove us, nearly as fast as Pierre would have, to my surprise, to a large structure that looked like another estate house on the edge of the nearby city. A handsome young man in a white uniform greeted us at the driveway, helping me out of the car. I needed the help for, as I was all the previous day and all night as I slept, I was wearing my corset. I needed a strong tug to help me out of the back seat of the coupe and the boy's pull brought me right up against him. His hard stare at me was unmistakeable in its intent. Ugh. I mean, the boy was handsome. Tallish, slender. Athletic seeming. But I didn't want that sort of attention from any boy. I wanted to tell him what a fool he was being, that I was Antoine Richard, not Nicole Richard but kept my mouth shut. Mother squeezed my arm "You have an admirer," she whispered to me as I rolled my eyes. We were led inside and we quickly removed our clothes. I felt my torso reshaping, ribs spreading and my girl's abdomen relaxing with the removal of the restraining corset. Ahhhhhhhhh! We were given thick towels and led to a massage area where mother, Winnie and I lay down on adjacent tables. A paper was presented to my mother and she chose the services we would receive. I was a bit apprehensive that Winnie seemed to mutter a question of mother's choice for me, but soon enough, a tall blond woman entered the steamy warm room and began gently rubbing Winnie's back. A minute later, another large woman came in and exchanged pleasantries with maman, on the other side of Winnie, before applying oils and gently rubbing her back. Then I saw that same young man from the driveway. God no, I thought as I lay there naked but for a folded towel across my huge girl's rear covering most but not all of it. That boy?! With his hands all over my naked girl body?! But the boy gave me another meaningful look and left after putting a bottle of goldish fluid on the table next to me. But right after my admirer left, a huge man, not so much tall, but incredibly thick entered and came straight to me. I marveled as I glanced at him in his white uniform which looked like that of an asylum attendant's. He was the shape of one of those new machines that dispenses bottles of Coca Cola upon the appropriate insertion of coins. He just grunted a greeting and went straight to what it is fair to describe as a pummeling of me. While the masseuses attending to Winnie and maman gently pushed, the brute assigned to me leaned on me and pushed and kneaded with all his might. I ought to have complained immediately, but, again, my boyish stoicism did not suit my new female condition. I felt as though I was human dough and he was a giant rolling pin flattening me out. And there was no part of me that was safe from his battering. The towel was removed from my big girl's rear and it frankly felt as though he was trying to push my wide ass right through the table on which I lay. Hey! I looked toward Winnie with a plaintive glance as he continued mashing my expansive rear and thick thighs. "Maman ordered the deep massage for you," Winnie whispered as the huge man shifted from one side of my big rear to the other. All I could do was lie there and take my battering. I speculated that if this gargantuan were applying this same force to my original, 14 year old boy's rear, I would certainly be injured with the much lesser volume of flesh I'd have available to absorb this force. I whispered as much to Winnie in the next room as we were having special exfoliating treatments applied to our bodies from head to toe. "Just as well that I'm female, for the moment, my boy's rear could not have withstood that." Winnie smiled then adopted an impassive expression as the two girls slathering us with a greenish goop got to her face. When it was my turn, I was surprised at how comprehensively they coated me with this greenish mudlike concoction. I think they coated every square inch of my surface except for my hair which they had tied atop my head. We three females were then led to an adjacent room, very hot but also dry, like a sauna with some tables against a wall at a 45 degree angle. We were led there and each leaned back on one of those tables from which we could see out a window and over a valley of fields and forest. I chose to look out over it while mother and Winnie had cucumber slices soaked in special solutions placed over their eyes. We waited there for a pleasant half hour as the verdant solution dried on us till it made our skin feel tight. Maman spoke a bit about that particular spa and how she liked it, how it was such a wonderful thing for a woman. "You're brothers Antoine and Pierre don't get this sort of pampering, do they Nicole? Though, I'm sure some of the attendants would love to get their hands on Pierre! And, did you see skinny Antoine going out with the woodsmen?" "Yes maman. He looked very displeased. I thought he had never been a shirker before but he seemed as though he was sulking." "Yes, but he has seemed a bit out of sorts, to me. Still, he'll be fine. I know you quarrell with him but he's a good boy. He simply belongs out with the woodsmen, not here. Could you imagine super skinny Antoine on that table in your place?" Mother laughed. Winnie winked at me from under one cucumber slice and I forced an appropriate guffaw in response. Next, we were brought to yet another adjacent room where the two girls who had slathered this body masque, I think that's what they had called it, onto us now scoured it off us with loofahs before each of us rinsed any remaining off us by standing before jets of warm water. I wondered what those girls would have said if they had known that the naked body they had scrubbed from head to toe actually belonged to a boy. It was surprising to me how blase these women were about their nudity in this setting. Nicole would get apoplectic if Pierre or I accidentlally showed ourselves naked in the hallway or bathroom and seemed to be in positive terror of either of us seeing her. And mother never tried to alter this attitude. Yet, there I was, five feet seven inches and one hundred seventeen pounds (or so they claimed!) of naked girl being vigorously scrubbed by two young women a few years older than me with loofahs and who did not bat an eyelash at working away at my wide rear or even beside my girl's sex! After I was scrubbed and then stood against jets of water that I could almost have leaned into, the same two girls helped me towel myself dry and helped me into a thick white bathrobe. Maman led us out a different door and into a gleaming black tiled beauty shop. There were a half dozen reclining chairs in the middle of the room with one wall a huge mirror and all sorts of solutions and implements on the counter before it. Maman directed me to one chair and waved to one of three staffers attired in white coats at the far end of the room. This middle aged woman approached and mother pointed to me. "Beatrice. This is my daughter Nicole. I want you to make her as beautiful as possible." This woman, Beatrice approached and stared intently at me from a foot away, circling around me. "Oh, Marie, she is gorgeous. What wonderful cheekbones," she said running a finger along the side of my face. "And such a fine little nose!" she cooed touching her fingertip to it. "And such eyes. Oh my!" she said stepping back and sighing as she looked at me. As much of a boy as I still was in my mind, I have to admit that I liked being so effusively complimented. "She has the Richard derriere, too!" said one of the other white coated assistants who I recognized as the masseuse who had worked on Winnie. "Well, it's not the Richard derriere," mother laughed. "My son Pierre's is magnificent, every eye at the ballet followed him. But my son Antoine has only a meager rear end." I nodded and snickered as I knew Nicole would in my place and saw Winnie nod at me saluting my wise response. But it certainly felt odd to be praised to no end for the girl that I now was and didn't want to be but snickered at for the boy I wanted to return to being. Another confusing moment. Still, though they all said I was beautiful, that did not stop them from changing my appearance. The woman, Beatrice, plucked my not very thick eyebrows into two thin arching, so very feminine lines. She put on a glove and only then touched the contents of a small blue jar. "Pucker up, cherie," she instructed "and don't touch your tongue to your lips. This ointment will have to remain on for five minutes. It may sting a bit." A bit?! It seared. It was terrible. I ought to have said something. It couldn't have been intended to burn like that. I thought my newly thickened lips might burn off. She said that it would make my lips fuller, but why did I need that? My girl's lips were already very rounded. No matter, the stuff had been smeared over them and only after the prescribed five minutes was the horrible paste wiped off. When it was my lips felt as though they had swelled to twice their previous size. "Should we also apply the bosom cream?" Beatrice asked my mother after the lip treatment was done. To my chagrin, mother immediately nodded. Beatrice approached and turned a crank so that my chair reclined. She casually opened my robe. "Verrrrrry nice" she pronounced the mammaries that I, Antoine Richard a 14 year old boy now possessed. I felt as though I must be blushing crimson at this new humiliation, admired for my breasts! If my pals, Gilles and Robert knew how I was being humiliated... ! But no one seemed to notice and, with a gloved hand, she took a handful of a white cream from a large bottle and rubbed it onto my breasts with no particular delicacy. An assistant gave her a sheet of wax paper which she put over my bosom and then closed my robe. "We're going to give you two jars of this special cream, cherie," she told me. "You'll see that it does wonders for a girl's bust." I nodded compliantly. What else could I do? This cream was not as hot as the lip formulation. It had a sort of minty smell to it. And I was thankful that my robe was closed, because as it started to seep into the skin of my new breasts, they became hard and my nipples stood straight up. I looked around nervously, hoping that no one could tell but one assistant approached me saying "Don't be embarassed. We all have that reaction to it." Mother, Winnie and I all had our hair styled after that, but mother and Winnie simply repeated their existing styles. My style was chosen by mother. I thought it looked silly. My long thick tresses were raised upward and curled into what seemed to me to be an imitation in hair of a tornado. Well, that's a bit of hyperbole. It wasn't that silly, but I didn't like it much. And while they were styling my hair upward, I only belatedly noticed that new long nails were being glued atop my shorter, more natural length nails They extended an inch beyond my fingertips and were pink. "Aren't those a bit impractical, maman?" I suggested hopefully "Oh, nonsense, Nicole. They'll be beautiful. Besides, what will they prevent you from doing?" "I suppose you're right, Maman. They are quite lovely," I said, mechanically, while thinking them distinctly not. But this was not the end of the feminine indignities I had to suffer for as soon as t