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Blessed Art Thou He looked at the picture cradled in his hand and slowly, almost reluctantly, took another slow drink of the whiskey. It still burned a little as it slipped down his throat, but he could no longer taste it so that meant that he had drank almost enough to get to where he wanted to be tonight. Deep in his stomach his latest drink joined the bonfire that raged there and he could barely feel anything as it was. It didn't matter anyway. He was going to drain the bottle tonight. That was what it was really for; to numb him when he needed that feeling. To numb him and let the tears that were coming as certainly as sunrise fall instead of holding them in where they would scorch him as they festered there. Normally when he bought a bottle it lasted for months. His need to drink no more than the occasional cocktail saw to that. His record for holding on to a single bottle stood at six years. That was a bottle of coconut rum that he held onto long after the vacation that he brought it back from was nothing more than pictures and fading memories. Not whiskey though. That was his alcohol of choice for when he did feel what need to drink he possessed come to visit him. It didn't visit him often though. Drinking wasn't what he craved except as the occasional social lubricant and times like now when it was the only painkiller that would work to birth his sorrow and throttle it in an alcoholic haze. The glass was empty again. He reached for the bottle and poured a solid three fingers into the glass. The fuzziness of the alcohol he had already consumed hung over him and still it was not enough. At times like these it seemed all the whiskey in the world would not even be enough to get him started until it did and that's what he was looking for one glass at a time. He looked at the picture again. He was on the right side with Martina on the left and little Chloe in the middle. It was one of the few ones he had with all three of them. His face was set in the smile that he used when he knew he was going to get his picture taken. It wasn't a false smile, but if you knew him you knew it was an honest one. Chloe's in contrast was sun, moon and stars in its brightness. Seven years old and she wore her happiness out in the open for all to see and recognize. She hadn't learned to fake a smile yet and Dwayne hoped that it would be years before she was forced to learn to do that. He knew it was an unrealistic hope. That the little girl that he loved so deeply could go through life without the need to learn to hide how she felt behind a mask, but for her sake he hoped that day could be forestalled as long as possible. He hoped that she would never have her mother's smile; the one that Martina was wearing in the picture, the same one that she wore whenever she had to smile. That bare hint of teeth peeking out from under the fake crumple of lips at the edge of her normally hard set mouth. That smile that had never, in as long as he had known her, reached her eyes. Dwayne tried to think and once again he couldn't ever recall seeing any other type of smile grace her lips. Martina had mastered the art of the false smile so long ago that she had forgotten how to make a real one. It was like a mask that she had worn so long that when it was removed everything below it had atrophied into uselessness so long ago that it was impossible to pinpoint just when it was lost. He felt the pressure building beneath his eyes and behind them. What was gestating there wasn't ready to come yet, but it was swelling. When it reached the tipping point the tears would come and then he wouldn't need the whiskey any more. He could let it sit ignored on the small table; it would have done its job and he could leave it behind finally for a time. They had taken this picture on her last birthday. She had just turned seven and in Chloe's happy smile the gap from losing her first tooth stood stark in its darkness against the neat even row of her oh so white teeth. It had been a good day. Dwayne had taken her for her first ride on a pony and promised her that when she was a little older that she could learn to ride by herself. She climbed up him like a little monkey when she was happy and on a good day she was happy indeed and climbed up him as swiftly as if she had been born to do it. It really had been a good day and knowing that there would not be any more of them burned him hotter than the whiskey ever could. Another three fingers. Another quick knock of the glass and then turning back to the picture again. He would have married Martina; he would have even knowing that he would never love the woman. The only part of her that was there to love was Chloe. The rest of Martina was all angles and axes. Harsh conflicts that simmered with her resentments until they boiled over in jealous paranoia. Then her words erupted and splashed everyone around her like an open tub of battery acid and she didn't care who was scarred by its touch. She was singularly ruthless that way. Dwayne figured that out about her within a few weeks of getting involved with her. He used to have female friends then and not just women that he had stayed friendly with after their romantic relationship ended. There were only a few of those and he was glad to keep that part of their relationship alive when they no longer were together when he could. Martina wouldn't have it though. She pitched a fit when one called him even for the most trivial reason. They called and then it would begin; she sulked, she threatened to leave him and in between whichever reaction that she chose to inflict on him, she seasoned the bitter stew by accusing him of still sleeping with whichever one of them had the temerity to still speak to him. Whatever the relationship was that he had with any woman, it didn't take long for him to figure out that as far as Martina was concerned he had no business acknowledging the existence of any other woman but her. If she could have swept his workplace clean of women she would have done so. And with her making no attempt to conceal her contempt for any woman that he spoke to blatantly obvious; one by one every woman that he knew dwindled and disappeared until there was only Martina and Chloe. Even then that wasn't good enough for her. When there were no women in his life for her to hound him with a reasonable person would have thought that might have put an end to it; Martina wasn't reasonable though. Now that there were no real women in his life any longer she was free to invent them and she had a lot of imagination to work with. He'd often thought that if she had turned her malicious streak toward some positive end, she would be like a force of nature and whatever the goal she chose would be over taken like a sudden storm surge. She didn't do that though. She was still like a force of nature but instead it was focused on fanning to life the figments of her imagination and clubbed him relentlessly with them when they were fully formed. He put the glass on the side table and poured another three fingers in it. One of his past female friends had told him that he had made really rotten choices in women most of the time. Sitting here right now he couldn't really disagree with that long ago assessment. He was twenty- one when the woman he was with had first tried to kill him. She was a real piece of work. She had waited until he was deployed and in the middle of running anti-insurgent missions before she told him that she wanted a divorce. The thing was that she didn't really want a divorce. He knew that before the words had even left her lips. What she wanted was for him to get sloppy, to be distracted and get himself killed before he came back. She wanted the money from his death benefits more than she wanted him. He was stupid enough when he married her but that stupidity hadn't lasted that long after being exposed to who she really was under that pretty face. She had probably thought she had the perfect plan when she thought it up and if she had done it earlier in their relationship it might have even worked. Not that time though. By then he had been involved with her long enough that he could see the trap she was laying like he could practically smell a waiting IED at that point. He went out on the patrol that was scheduled and when he got back the first thing he did was change his beneficiary and start the paperwork with JAG to give her the divorce she didn't want and deny her the money that she did. He could tell that it was the right call to make when, what was probably a day or so after getting the paperwork, she started squawking about reconciling before he stopped talking to her. The next time a woman tried to kill him it was Claire, his second wife. She was a real piece of work too. Another controlling bitch who wouldn't be happy unless she was micromanaging him. He still had no idea why he hadn't just walked away from her before he ever made the mistake of saying 'I do' with her. Besides demanding her way in most of what others would see as even trivial things she had a particularly nasty way of reprisal when she was balked. She would bide her time until the evening before he had to be somewhere early in the morning and then start a fight that would last until the wee hours of the morning. At first he had thought that when she did that she was trying to deprive him of sleep and bend him to her will when she pulled that trick. It took waking up to the angry honking of the car behind him when he fell asleep at a stoplight to make him consider that she was just ruthless enough to play with his life to get her own way. The next time she started to play her favorite game he floored her by gathering his things and telling her that he was going to a hotel instead of being put through this garbage. That was the real beginning of the end of that relationship. Things deteriorated quickly after that and he found himself divorced again and with the end of that marriage he actually was serious about swearing off any relationship more serious than a girlfriend. That was a vow he kept for five more years. Karen was the one who make him break it and he hadn't regretted doing it until seven years into their marriage when she called him while he was at a seminar and told him that she didn't want to be married anymore. Her telling him that was literally the last words he expected to hear spill from her mouth and all he remembered about the conversation was him shouting what over and over into the phone and not getting an answer from her. He didn't remember anything of the seminar the last few days. He just wasn't there mentally any more. He was back in St. Paul asking her the same question over and over in his mind and not getting any real answer. By the time he did return, what actually took place was little different from what had played out in his mind before he returned and it was only after spending a week in their empty house that finally moved him to realize just how close to the edge this had brought him. Whiskey was visiting him again that week and ever since then whiskey reminded him of the taste of CLP from the barrel of the nine millimeter that he placed in his mouth. It wasn't loaded when he did that. He wasn't drunk enough to load the magazine in the pistol or chamber a round; but he had been in a dark enough place to thumb the hammer and squeeze the trigger over and over between drinks. That was the closest time a woman had come to killing him. Martina wasn't anything like that. He'd learned his lesson by then and she could leave and he would barely even lift an eyebrow. But when she did leave he would lose Chloe and for him that would be to one female that he had known whose loss would kill him for certain. He hadn't counted on that part. He could lose the woman but he couldn't take the loss of the child. That turned out to be Martina's secret weapon and it had slipped past his defenses before he was aware it was happening. He drained the drink and poured another. He wasn't wearing any shoes or socks and the worn carpet feathered around his feet as he sat in the old lay-Z-boy. He didn't live with Martina and there was little in the shabby apartment to show that either she or Chloe were part of the life he had here. On one corner of the apartment wall there were the few citations and a framed box of medals from his time in the service. Between them were a few pictures of him and his buddies that were the best of his photographic memories of them. The old saber that he had used when he was involved in Civil War reenactment a lifetime ago was mounted on the wall over the old leather couch. Most of what he had was old and comfortable, but looking over it now it just seemed shabby and pinched together in the confines of the small apartment. The bottle was almost finished and so was he. Martina had told him earlier today that they were through and she wouldn't allow Chloe to see him again. She had apparently found someone more to her taste and decided that it was time to move on. Sometime during the last couple of drinks the tears had started to roll down his cheeks and he couldn't remember just when they had started to come. He cursed himself for being a fool and letting himself get involved again. He knew why he had done it. He thought that by getting involved with someone like Martina that he would be able to put up with whatever she could dish out and still make it work. He knew what she was doing when he watched her start in on him and he knew where it would probably lead to if he stayed. As it played out he wasn't surprised either. He had told the others that he could see it coming and when they asked him why if that was so he would stay for it. Chloe was the only honest answer that he could give them and to his surprise most of them could accept that answer as worth it. That little girl had been worth it to him and she still was. The last drops of the whiskey spiraled out of the bottle and gathered in the bottom of his glass. Not even a full three fingers but it was good enough. He sat holding the glass, not wanting to drink it just yet. He wished he could just have Chloe with him. He wished that she was his and no one could take her away from him. "I wish I was her mother," he heard himself say and was surprised that, even knowing how much the alcohol had dulled him how much truth there was in that simple statement. Dwayne knew truth when he encountered it and even drunk as he was here was truth staring at him. He had idly wondered what it would have been like to be a woman on occasion and had even tried to imagine it from time to time; but this was the first time that he had ever honestly wished that he was one. Looking back at all the women that had hurt him the most he just knew that he could be better than any of them had been. He looked across the room to the reproduction of the clay image of some warrior figure that he had picked up in the sukmet years ago. He tipped his glass to the ancient looking figure standing beside the image of some woman and then drank the last of the whiskey. He reached out and touched to cool smoothness of the clay and let his fingers rest there absently. "Being a man has been nothing but pain for me. I wish I was the woman I could be and Chloe was my daughter." Now that he had said the words there wasn't anything more for him left inside. He didn't know why he had felt compelled to lay his fingers on the old figurine, but it didn't matter. He wanted to go sleep it off now. Dwayne put the glass on the table and lurched to his feet. There was still a half a mouthful of the whiskey in the glass but he didn't want to finish it. The absolute blackness of how badly he felt was wrapped around him and he stumbled to bed. Tomorrow was coming soon enough and with any luck he would sleep through his hangover for the most part and he could get started on whatever the morning would bring him soon enough. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Minthe was taking a piss when he heard the man voice his blasphemy. Most of the time he spent asleep. The modern world didn't interest him very much and he paid it little attention for the most part. The world he was interested in; the world he had shaped and ruled had faded away long ago and there was little more to keep his attention since them. He supposed that after he had rested long enough that he would turn his attention back to the world of men and perhaps then he would offer men his guidance once more, but nothing had spurred him to do so and so he slept. It was the prayer that had snapped him out of his stupor. It was a blasphemous prayer but it was still a prayer and it had been centuries since one that he could act on had been voiced in hearing of one of his votive statues. Most prayers he had overheard had been directed at others and he had ignored them as was considered good manners in his pantheon. But this one was just out there available for any to choose to answer or ignore and he had as much a right to it as any deity and it made him furious that of all the things that could be asked for it was something like this. Some of the gods that he had known over the thousands of years that he had existed might have ignored such a prayer. The context in which it was made had come with the words as well. Minthe knew already what sorrow had motivated those words and he had no use for such a paltry excuse from anyone. The piss steamed as he finished making his water and he dropped his robe down before turning to leave. He was wide awake now and he intended to pay this blasphemer a visit. He paid little attention to the world as it passed around him in a blur of speed. His focus was on the home of the one who had offended him with his ill chosen words. That he could see clearly all the way from where he kept his abode. As he left he could tell that his wife, the goddess Sira as she called herself now, was absent again. He really should put a stop to her doing that without his permission, but it had been too much trouble and he had better things to do like dream of better times and wait for them to come again. Now that he was awake though he resolved to do more than just that. The man's dwelling drew closer and he passed through the walls as if they were a mist. To one such as him they may have well have been nothing more than that. The mortal world was nothing more than mist to him and its inhabitants little better than shadows anyway. He manifested his essence just enough that he could touch and interact with what he saw but at the same time not be seen. What he saw around him fanned to flame of his rage even further. This man was not just a blasphemer he was unworthy of being a man at all. Minthe stood stunned in the middle of the wealth this man had surrounding him and could only feel revulsion over how he could even think such a prayer let alone utter it. The entire room was covered with a thick carpet that extended to encompass the floor of not only this room, but, as far as he could discern, nearly every room in the spacious dwelling. The god let his fingers fall lightly on the soft padding of the chair that the man had sat in while he made his unwelcome request of the gods. It was worn and soft and of a make that the god had never seen before. Worse still, he found himself aroused to jealously that this mortal owned something finer than even he did himself. The empty bottle he had consumed still stood on the small wooden table with a mouthful of the liquor still remaining in the fine glass tumbler. The god raised it to his nose in inhaled. No, it was not wine and from the odor it was nothing that he had ever encountered before. He increased the amount in the glass using what was left as a template until it was half full and then took a hesitant drink of this mortal creation. The power of the drink within the tumbler made him close his eyes at its potency and he took another deep draft of it in appreciation. As he drank his contempt for the man grew. Kings did not even have such a libation to consume when last he had walked this world and this man had apparently swilled the entire contents of the fine glass bottle by himself. He placed the now empty glass back on the heavy wood table and looked around the room. The sword drew his attention next and he took it from the wall where it was awkwardly placed. A foolish thing to do in his opinion. Keeping it there was an invitation for a thief to steal it or an assassin to claim it. It should be kept beside it's master's bed where it could be drawn easily when it was needed and not kept on a wall. He drew the blade and grunted in appreciation over the balance of the saber as he hefted it. He ran his finger over the smooth steel and even though he did not recognize what the metal was he saw that it was a finer blade than any of his worshippers had ever carried in their lifetimes. He ran his thumb over the edge and felt his fury towards the man grow. Such a fine weapon and it barely had an edge at all. A true man would have castigated his slaves for allowing such a state of affairs to even exist. It was further evidence in Minthe's eyes that this man was unworthy of his exalted status. His king obviously valued his service to have gifted him with such a weapon, but to see it gathering dust on a wall was an insult to such a generous ruler in his view. He replaced the blade in its metal scabbard. Another sign of the wealth that surrounded him. A scabbard such as that was unheard of in his day. Why even the king that had devoted his life in service to him had made do with a wooden sheath bound in brass. The furnishings of the room spoke to the god as belonging to a man of great wealth. The long leather clad couch below the sword gave easily and offered welcome comfort to him when he lowered himself onto it. On the walls hung portraits of such incredible detail that even a god such as he could not fathom how much this ingrate had paid to the artist for such exquisite work. He reached out to touch the bright colors and was shocked to find that not only was the artist of incredible skill, but the man had encased each work in a thin pane of glass as well. Such a casual display of wealth shook him to his core and he turned away from the images hung on the wall. Some of them were martial as was befitting a leader such as this. They showed him clad in helmet and armor in a strange mottled pattern that he was unfamiliar with. The man's wealth was even greater than he had thought the god realized. Even his retainers were equipped in gear as fine as their lord's; identical in its construction although unfamiliar to him and in some ways impractical in its design. And then there were the books that crowded the shelves of the room. At first he did not recognize what they were and thought them mere decorations of some strange fashion. It was only when he removed one to examine it that it opened and he could see the fine detail of the illustrations and the dense script in an unknown tongue laid out for him to examine. He replaced the strange replacement for a scroll and looked around the room. There were easily a couple hundred displayed here that he could see alone and the wealth of the man was increased in Minthe's eyes. Here was a lord in his own right. A man who possessed weapons of finer make than even royalty owned. A commander of warriors and a scholar as well. A lord whose king valued his service and had heaped upon him great wealth just from the casual items that filled his chambers alone. The building that surrounded them was larger than even the palace of his most powerful worshipper and he could sense the sleeping forms of the servants and slaves within its walls. In the morning they would resume their service to the master of this place unaware of how unworthy that person was. He passed through the walls to the man's sleeping chamber. The bed alone was grander and more magnificent than Minthe's own. The linen that formed it's covering smooth and cool to the touch; the heavy blanket filled with the soft feathers of some unknown fowl and smelling sweetly of some faint perfume under the scent of the man's own natural odor. He looked down at the sleeping man in disgust. He was in his late forties as men reckoned such things. His hair was thick and only starting to grey at his temples and scattered over his head. There was barbarian in his ancestry it was plain at a glance. The yellow of his hair showed that for all to see. That a barbarian could rise so high in service to his king as to acquire all of this wealth spoke volumes to the god watching him. He was a heavy man as well. He had put on weight in his latter years as any man of substance and privilege would, but it was his hands that had attracted the god's attention. They were soft and without callous; a scholar's hands. Just more evidence in the god's opinion of just how this man had been blessed in his lifetime. He had everything the god mused. He lived surrounded by wealth that had clearly been his for many years. He was obviously greatly respected by his king and his men. His body showed for all to see that here was one who was wealthy and deserving of the respect and obedience of all the lesser folk and yet he wished to be a woman. He had everything and he would cast it away to be nothing. That was the most blatant form of disrespect that Minthe could conceive of in his view. This man must be punished for his ingratitude he realized. Such a man could not be allowed to remain in his position and continue to reap the rewards of what his gift of masculinity had wrought for him. There was only one punishment in his eyes befitting such a betrayal of the proper order of the world in such a case. He entered the man's dream and cast his eyes on him. Even in his dreams he wept like a woman and it disgusted him. "Attend me man," he said to him and saw the man's tear streaked face swivel in his direction. "You disgust me," he said. The man started to speak to him, but Minthe had no intention of letting him do so. He gestured and the man's mouth moved soundlessly in the dream space. "You may not speak," he said. "One such as you will be has lost the privilege of speaking to a man without permission from this time on." The man's hands had moved to his mouth and he could see him trying to make sense of why he could no longer speak. "On your knees now in submission," the god said. "Assume to position you were meant to have and hear the judgment you have earned for your blasphemy." Minthe watched the man move against his will to kneel before him. His legs were folded beneath him with his hands laid out before him with the palms facing upward. His head was bent down in shame as it should be. Now that he could see them, his blue eyes were raised to the god's waist in expectation of punishment to come. "You have everything," the god said. "You live in wealth and splendor. You have high position as a man of learning and you have served your king well to have earned such reward as I have seen in your chambers. You have been a warrior and a master of warriors. All that a man may strive for; all that a barbarian such as yourself might attain has been placed in your hands. You have been given all of the gifts a man might have and hold the greatest of gifts; your place as a man as its cornerstone." "And you have spurned It," the god thundered at him. "You have rejected the god's greatest gift to you and have petitioned to become something less and that cannot stand unpunished." "You are unworthy of your masculinity and I have judged that you be stripped of such a gift. I will take it from you now and give it to another. You will be as you asked to be. A woman. The lowest of the low and that you will remain that way in this life and in all lives to come until you have learned the value of what you cast aside tonight. Only then will I allow you to come before me and beg for its return and perhaps in a few hundred lifetimes I may relent and allow you to live the life of a slave when next you are a man." A bright light sprang from the god's eyes and enveloped Dwayne. Its brightness caused him to close his eyes against the glare. He felt it pressing on him and moving against him in its hot touch. Where it moved over him he could feel his flesh running against the heat like hot wax; moving and shifting into an alien form. The light faded and she opened her eyes to face the god looming over her again. He felt its touch linger over his chest and it felt as though fingers were squeezing his nipples painfully. They swelled up beneath the pressure and the flesh spilled painfully around the fingers and remained swollen. The fingers began to pull away from him and he felt his flesh began to pull away and follow the direction of the pressure. When it was released he gasped in relief as the pain fell away, but he felt heavy there now and the flesh throbbed in memory of the pain. Another hand clasped him between his thighs and he would have doubled over from the pain again as it mashed he groin flat against his pelvic girdle. The hand fell free and grasped him by the throat and squeezed again before moving to encase his skull. The pressure as it compressed his head was almost unbearable but it too passed away before moving on to torment another part of his body. It was a nightmare of agony and confusion and any relief he had felt from the whiskey he had consumed before he slept was washed away in the tide of pain. As he felt his will leave off from shaping the man Minthe was disappointed in the result. Her hair was still in the short masculine style that she had worn it in before he touched her. It was still the barely grey streaked golden color of a barbarian woman. She had increased her weight as her manhood was stripped from her and as he looked down at the fat kneeling woman at his feet he realized that this was an insufficient punishment still. "Look at you," he said contemptuously, "even cursed to be a woman and your appearance still reeks of wealth and privilege. Any real man who sees you would be moved to take you as wife even as you are and you would live your remaining years in a life of ease and comfort. That will not do at all for one such as you." The god looked her over and shook his head as he decided what should be done first to make certain that she was punished for her blasphemy of rejecting her manhood. His eyes lightened again and the glow from his power enveloped the woman once more. When it retreated she had shed decades and the overweight woman who kneeled before him now was little more than a woman of sixteen. "You have been given more time by my hand," he pronounced over her. "The remaining year or three you had before you would have died are not enough in my judgment to begin to merit a proper punishment for your crime. So I make you a maiden so you might spend the remaining thirty years of your first life in full as a woman. As you were you would have suffered only a year or two at best before you passed to the next life and I rule that you should not be spared ignorance of why you are the way you are because death took you too soon. Each time you begin anew you will remember that you were once a man and your rejection of that is why you will pass through time as a woman from now on. But this is not enough." "Even as you are though you might still catch the eye of a man of substance. Your form still speaks of wealth and ease and your skin marks you as one who is entitled to a life of leisure. You will not have these things. You are a woman now and you will live as a typical woman and not some pampered wench." His glow passed over her again and when it faded from her this time the weight that hung from her had been stripped away leaving only the toned muscles of the young woman she had become in their wake. Dwayne looked down at her body; every trace of body fat except the bare minimum had been melted away from her. Her thin waist curved into her hips and she could feel the toned muscles of her thighs and calves folded easily beneath her where they still bent. Her arms were stripped down to the toned muscles. She could see her flat biceps running smoothly beneath the dark tan that she had now acquired. From what she could see it was a deep golden bronze with no hint of a tan line anywhere that she could see. Dwayne was confused. She had been since this dream had taken such a strange turn. This strange looking bearded idiot had shown up and started castigating him. He talked some nonsense about him having wealth and position and the in the dream made him into a woman. He stripped forty years away from him as if it were nothing and since it was a dream maybe it was nothing. But then after doing that he stripped away all of the weight that the years had put on him and given him the kind of tan that woman and men for that matter spent hours at the beach trying to acquire. He talked like it was a punishment but so far nothing he had done seemed that way to Dwayne. "That is much better," the god said looking her over. "Now none will look at you and see prosperity. No weight indicating a life of leisure and no white skin to say the same. Now you have the body of a peasant woman. The body that you deserved for your crime." Minthe looked down at the woman kneeling before him. This was much better now. Her thin muscled form would tell all who saw her that here was a woman who made her living with the labor of her hands. Labor that kept her underweight from the hard work in the fields and the home. From a distance anyone would see the bronzed skin and know that this was a woman who spent her days burned brown by the sun and not someone who was sheltered from its rays. No one would mistake her for even having the meager position that a woman could attain now. "Woman attend me," he thundered down at her. "Stand now that I may look upon you." Dwayne felt her body rise to stand before the god. Even with her head bowed she could tell that she was much shorter than she had been before he had begun to change her. Minthe looked at the woman standing in front of him. She was now barely five and a half feet in height compared to what she had stood before and still she was far too attractive in his opinion. With what beauty she still possessed she might yet avoid the life of labor that he intended for her. When she was first transformed she had been a large breasted woman. Her age and weight had dictated that her nipples hung down pointing toward the earth below her feet. But when her manhood was stripped from her and her years erased they has shrunk until they rode high on her chest with her nipples pointing outward in their firm youth. When Minthe had stripped that indication of wealth from her physique she had retained fairly large breasts, but not that large in his opinion. While they were larger than the ideal shape a wealthy woman would strive for; that of just barely being enough to fill a warrior's hand, they were not what he wanted for people to see when she walked in public. The god's eyes glowed again and Dwayne felt the weight of her breasts increasing. She was a B cup when it started but by the time it had run its course she saw that they had expanded to at least a DD in size. She felt the extra weight pulling at her back muscles and realized that if this was something that was really happening she would have to invest in some bras with a lot of back support just to make it through the day. "Good," the god said to her, "that is much better. Those are the breasts of a peasant woman. When your master decides you should do so you will be a popular wet nurse the rest of your days. Your heavy breasts will mark you as a servant from now one in a way that what you had before would not have done so." Minthe looked over the short large breasted woman and decided that it was still not enough. She was still much too attractive. Still too close to the thin hipped ideal of femininity that he remembered. True now her pendulous breasts marked her as one of the peasant class, but there was still more he could do with her to make it obvious to all. Dwayne saw the god's eyes brighten again and felt her pelvis creak and began to widen and push her buttocks out in a rounded hearts shape as it did so. Against the broad hips she now possessed her waist seemed even smaller than it was and she could feel her inner thighs moving apart as well. She felt a warm burning inside of her centered just behind her navel and felt an emptiness inside of her that made her want to fill the space but she didn't quite know what it was that she needed to do that. The god looked over the woman and was pleased by his improvements. There was a noticeable gap between the woman's inner thighs now that her hips had rounded more fully. She would never fit the ideal of the small breasted, narrow hipped woman now. She would remain a wide- hipped, large breasted peasant woman now. That is all people would see and that was his intention. Because she would be so unattractive, even to a peasant man he did grant her a boon. She would be very fertile from now on. At least in that way he could make up for forcing some man to take such an ugly woman as a wife. He would take solace in the many children that she would bear him and even if she was unattractive there would be that consolation for him. He had considered as he was shaping her this time to mar the clear skin of her complexion, but he had decided against it in the end. She needed at least one attractive feature to be accepted by even the lowest peasant man so he left her skin naturally clear of blemishes. To offset that kindness though requires something else though. Her hands he left even softer than they were when she was a man. They would eventually harden when enough years had passed, but between the softness of her flesh and the speed with which her nails would grow she would have a difficult time weaving, spinning or working in fields from now on. The inability of this woman to do the chores expected of her would make life much more difficult for her. Her husband would regularly need to chastise her for her failure to keep up with her labor and that would serve the god's intentions just as well. Dwayne wished there was a mirror for her to see what this weird dream had done with her. She was pretty sure that the woman that she would see reflected there would be some kind of bombshell. Even with her short haircut she was sure that anyone who saw her would be in awe of the tanned, lithe knockout she had become. She felt the long nails curve into the soft flesh of her palm and was pretty sure that she would never need false nails the way she was. If the woman that she was were reflected for her to see right now Dwayne was certain that she would see a rich little sexpot staring back at her in the glass. No one else would have to time to tan and exercise and diet the way the woman with this body would have to do to maintain it. The god walked toward her and laid his hand alongside her cheek. He lifted her face upward to see him. "I take from you the things that would ease your path as you labor woman. You will learn your tasks in time, but you will learn them slowly. Spinning, weaving and the knowledge you need to clothe your family and please your master will come, but not right away. Your incompetence in these things will make him think you stupid and he will punish you for your stupidity. I leave you a woman's ability to cook untouched though. That you will learn well enough so that he will stay and you may not starve even when times of famine." "I increase your lust as well," the god said to her. "That is one woman's ability of yours that I will increase. Your master will delight in what you will do for him as a woman and he will enjoy you so much that he will sometimes neglect his own business as a man. This will make your rapidly growing family much poorer and as you look over the many children you give him you will know that you are to blame for holding him back." He fixed her eyes with his gaze. "I bind you now for a hundred lifetimes in this pattern. A woman you are now and a woman you will remain until when those lives have passed you beg me to restore the manhood you spurned this night. Show the proper humility then and I may relent and allow you the great boon of manhood once again. You are allowed to speak now woman." Dwayne looked at the strange person standing in front of her. He had released her head and was now standing there looking like he expected something stupid of her. Did he really think that she was going to fall to her knees and beg him? For what? And why should she care what he thought anyway? This dream was starting to piss her off anyway. "You're going to wait a lot longer than that," she spat at him. "Who the hell do you think you are? Yeah I asked to be a woman when I was drunk and I got drunk because I lost someone very precious to me. I never thought about really being a woman before but you know what? I'd still say the same thing. If I was born this way I'd still have problems. They might even be some of the same problems, but you know what problems I wouldn't have you arrogant ass?" Dwayne cupped her Venus mound in her soft palm and thrust her hips at him. "I wouldn't have gotten one of my nuts torn up with shrapnel and ended up sterile for one thing. Sure I might have gotten hurt some other way but THAT is one thing I can promise you wouldn't have happened." "And it may not be easy being a woman today but from what I've seen it's just as damned hard to be a man. I may not have been born this way, but from what I can see the only real thing I've done is piss you off because you got offended because I was drunk and hurting. Well you know what I don't care. I stand by what I said and thought before whatever vomited you up into this dream got here. I wish I was a woman. I'd be a better woman than the ones that I've been tangled up with before now. I wish I was a woman and I wish I was Chloe's mother and if you don't like that then you can just piss off. I'm done with you." Dwayne could see that was not what the weirdo wanted to hear and she could see his eyes blazing with increased fury. "So be it woman," he said to her. "It will be as you have said. You will remain a woman from this time to the end of time. And when you beg me to restore your masculinity I will deny you." The god's hand flashed out and struck Dwayne across her cheek, knocking her down. She was trying to push herself up from the ground and rise to her feet when she felt his hand on her neck pushing her shoulders down. She felt her breasts smash against the suddenly hard ground beneath her and was unable to move. She felt him lift her hips high presenting her sex to him and then was still unable to move. His hand reached for her head and as his fingers passed over the short stubble he felt his hair growing. It was but a handful of moments before she felt it long enough to fill his grip. He tugged her head back with it and she felt it moving away from her. The hair that he had not gathered in his palm spilled free from the tress that he firmly grasped and pooled around her face. He tugged her face backward as if he were reining in a balky horse. Minthe looked down at the woman presented her sex to him. The close pressed labial lips gaped barely open with a hint of the moisture behind them. It was a deceiving image. The space behind those lips was solid as of yet and only had the appearance of a woman's cleft. But not for much longer. "I give you one other gift woman," he spat at her. "I give you the opportunity of explaining to your owner why the marriage sheet is unstained when they go to display it." She felt him thrust deeply inside of her. Her solid flesh parted and opened before him. Her hymen formed and tore as he took her virginity and Dwayne for the first time began to question if it really was just a fucked up dream when she felt the sting of that pain strike her. He tugged her hair back toward him as he thrust repeatedly into her loins. Even though she was restrained she found herself still responding. The part of her that he was currently violating didn't care that she was being raped; it was going to respond the way it wanted to. Dwayne felt her sex growing wetter as his thrusting set a steady rhythm inside of her. The rough penetration and the way he was treating her like an object was bringing out some unwanted resonance inside of her and she found she was enjoying it. It may be fucked up but it was one hell of a wet dream she thought. Her orgasm came with a crash and was followed by another unbidden one a few moments later. When he finished inside of her, he pulled out savagely and thrust her to the side to lay sprawled on the surface of the dreamscape. She looked up to see his half erect penis flecked with her blood and smeared with both of their sexual fluids swinging above her. "As you wanted, I give you the 'gift' of womanhood then. Now and for all time you are this woman you prayed to be," he spat at her and vanished. Dwayne didn't know what to make of it and found she was still unable to move even with his departure. She lie there feeling the sensation of his seed swirling deep inside of her and she wondered how she could have ever conjured a dream like this from anywhere in her mind. ______________________________________________________ The sheet had gotten tangled over his head when he woke up the next morning. He could tell that he had slept through most of his hangover but there was still more than a bit of it waiting for him now that he was awake. The sun was streaming in the curtains and the light made his eyes hurt a bit from the brightness as he stripped the sheet away. As the mass of blonde hair tumbled down into his face and the sway of heavy breasts tugged at him as he rose told him; something was very different about this hangover. Dwayne rose up from the bed. She was sitting now with her legs folded beneath her as she had been when the man had told her to kneel in the dream last night. Long blonde hair streamed down from her scalp to drape over her shoulders and reach to her mid back. She looked down but all she could see was the mass of the two large breasts with the matching large areola's filling her sight. She cupped them and felt the soft skin of her breasts compress beneath the softer skin of her palms. She lifted them to the side and stared down between them along her flat stomach where the triangle of her pubic hair barely hid the female mound from her sight. She reached down and cupped her sex feeling her fingers slip between her labial lips and when she raised them back up she could see the sticky remains of losing her virginity on the tanned flesh of her fingers. There were spots of blood on the sheet and what she was certain was drying semen coating her thighs as well. Dwayne felt a scream gathering in her throat. It was a dream. It couldn't be real. This is something that just didn't happen. The scream was cresting the back of her throat when the need to do so vanished. She had no idea just why that was so, but then she had no idea about anything that had happened in the last few minutes either. "He really did a number on you didn't he?" she heard a woman say to her. Dwayne felt her head pivot toward the voice and watched as a raven haired woman in her mid thirties materialized next to the twin bed and sat down. She had dark eyes and an olive complexion like the man she had dreamed of the night before. Physically she was the opposite of Dwayne. Her breasts were small and firm and she was slim and narrow hipped. She had an aquiline face and her hair was dressed in long thing braids that were enclosed on the tips by small rounded stones. She was wearing a white garment that left her left breast exposed, but was arranged in folds to fall around her body as it clung to her figure. "Why don't you go and clean yourself up and when you're done come speak to me in the kitchen. You're going to be like this for a long time to come and I'm sure that you'd rather hear what I have to say that way instead of like you are now." Dwayne nodded and stepped out of the mess of cloth that the sheets had become and walked to the bathroom down the hallway. As she entered she heard the woman tell her that there would be something for her to wear when she was ready to come to the kitchen after her shower. When she stepped out of the shower, Dwayne did feel a lot better. Usually a hot shower in the morning after a night of drinking helped a bit, but this morning it seemed like the water was washing whatever remained of her hangover away with everything else that she scrubbed off of her body. The woman had said that there would be something for her to wear when she was ready to come and talk, but all Dwayne could see was his old blue bathrobe hanging from a hook on the wall. It would do she supposed. It would fit like a tent but even with that it would still fit better than any of the few clothes that Martina had left here would. She was shorter and had a much fuller figure than her ex and she didn't feel like squeezing her larger breasts into one of Martina's T- shirts right now. As she felt the terrycloth of the robe settle around her though she could feel it change. The oversize garment slimmed down until it fit her exactly. The softness of the material cradled her breasts as her nipples pressed against the fuzzy softness of the material. As she turned to look in the mirror she saw that it now fell about mid thigh on her and was definitely cut in a more feminine pattern as well as being new. There were a pair of slippers there as well and as her small feet settled into them she saw the materials shrink to match her size and reshape into the more feminine version of the footwear as well. She walked into the kitchen. Coffee was already brewing. She could smell it thick and rich as its odor wafted down the hallway once she opened the door. She didn't think that she had ever smelt a richer brew in her life and she didn't think that it was anything that had come from her cupboard. The strange woman was sitting at the kitchen table already sipping from her own brew when she entered the room. There was another cup of the wonderful smelling stuff on the table; presumably for her. The woman looked up at her as she entered and shook her head. "That turned out nice enough, but I think we can do a little better than that. Becoming a woman does kind of make it a special day so this should reflect that don't you think?" The blue of the robe lightened to a soft pink and Dwayne felt the soft terrycloth shift and become a cool silk. Embroidery crawled up the silk until it ended just over each of her breasts. "Now that is much lovelier on you don't you think?" the woman said. Dwayne nodded. It wasn't what she would have thought of, but she had to admit that not only was it beautiful it felt even better against her skin than the soft terrycloth had, particularly against her hardened nipples. "Do you mind stepping out of that for a moment Charlotte?" the woman asked her. "I'd kind of like to have a look at what my husband did to you if you don't mind." "Why did you call me Charlotte?" she asked the woman. The fact that she had also referred to the weirdo from last night as her husband was next on the list, but she wanted to know about the former more than the latter. "You're a woman now, although everyone else already knows you are a woman. You're a woman that her mother named Charlotte. I know that she never used that name the way things were before. But I try not to second guess a mother's choice of name and besides, everyone you know already knows you as Charlotte, so you should get just used to that little detail pretty quickly." Charlotte though about what she was saying and now that the name was out in the open she felt natural thinking of herself as Charlotte. It felt right. It was her name and it was part of who she was. "Why did you call him your husband?" she asked the woman. "Oh because he is. Has been for a long time, but don't start thinking that I'm like him. I'm not. Do you mind letting me take a look at what he did to you?" she asked gesturing for Charlotte to slip out of the silk robe. Charlotte didn't feel any reason not to do so. She should have felt a lot of things she realized, but she just didn't right now. She should have been out of her mind from waking up as a woman who had been raped the night before. She should have been anything but accepting of watching her clothing shift and reshape the material around her, and she should have not felt anything but fear over the strange woman in her kitchen asking her to show her naked body to her. But none of that was even a part of this morning. Charlotte slipped the robe off of her shoulders and laid it down on the chair beside her. She stepped out from the table so the woman could clearly see her as she slowly spun naked in the kitchen. She saw one of the guys across the street though the window start gesturing at his roommates and calling them over. Apparently they were enjoying the show and she was almost willing to leave the curtains open for them when she reached to close them. "Let me close these," she said reaching for the cloth. "The guys across the street love it when I leave them open and something like this happens." Charlotte stopped with her hands on the curtains. The guys across the street had raced to answer their roommates shouting and now they were enjoying her bare tits as she paused while drawing the curtains. "Why did I say that?" she asked shaking her blonde curls and finishing pulling the cloth closed. She could almost hear the groans of disappointment from across the street. "Because reality is merging. Don't trouble yourself over it. It'll just give you a headache figuring out the whys and wherefores of it all. Now let me look at you again." Charlotte let the curtains go and turned back toward the woman. "You must have really pissed him off," she said as her face quirked into a sly smile. "It's a good thing for you that my husband is a complete and utter idiot." "Your husband?" Charlotte asked the woman. "Yes, my husband, the ones who worshipped me paired me with him. Although he has been a disagreeable sort and I don't involve myself much with him we are still yoked in this fashion even now," she said. "I call myself Sira now, but when I was known to the Greeks I was called Eleos. I was the goddess of mercy and compassion long ago and I still bring that gift to mortals today. You have been visited by someone else other than my husband though. You reek of one who has been embraced by the Algea; you stink of Lupe's embrace most of all. But the touch of my husband is what hangs over you now." "Who is he? How could he do this to me?" she asked. "He was Kratos, but the name he uses now is Minthe. He took that name from a place that was near where his favorite temple once was. It's an oil refinery now, but he wouldn't even know what that is. He hasn't paid attention to the mortal world for thousands of years. Not since his last worshipper died. And because they are dead there are no new stories of the two of us. I remain bound to him as his wife even now." "I don't really see you as being the wife of someone like that," Charlotte said quietly. "I really don't." "Fortunately he's spent the majority of the last couple thousand years sleeping. Without worshippers a god tends to do that, unless they have a reason not to. He went to sleep for a time. I found a reason not to." Charlotte looked at the woman. She was looking slowly over her body, taking in all of the details that made up who she was physically now. "Why don't you put that back on and have a drink?" Sira suggested. "And while you do I'll tell you why my husband is such an idiot." Charlotte draped the silk robe over her naked body. She could almost hear the groans of disappointment from across the street even though she knew that they had to have left when she closed the curtains. She raised the steaming brew to her lips and inhaled. The aroma filled her nostrils and she felt compelled to take a deep sip of the liquid. The rich taste flooded her senses and for a moment nothing else existed except what was focused on the inside of the cup. She took a deep breath, her eyes had widened as she did so and she slowly reverently placed the cup back onto the table. "Wow," she said looking down at it in awe. "It is some good stuff," Sira said amused by Charlotte's response. "So let me tell you why my husband is such an idiot." "Like I said he's been sleeping for a long time. You just happened to make your prayer just when he was getting up to take a piss. He's usually in a foul mood when his rest is disturbed and you just completely set him off. The good thing for you is that the last time he stuck his head into the mortal world what he did to you would have been a pretty nasty curse and I don't think I could have softened it that much if the world was still that way. It's a good thing for you that the world has moved on since then." "He's an idiot because he cursed you with youth and what is today considered a sexy body. I wouldn't try to learn to weave or sew if I were you. He made you dyslectic as hell in those areas. It's a good thing for you that very few women need to do those things now. If he had known better he would have left you as you were physically when he made you a woman in the first place instead of trying to do what he did. That would be a real curse to inflict on a modern woman instead of what he chose." "So I'm really going to be this way the rest of my life?" Charlotte asked. "And every life after that as well?" "Yes," Sira answered. "He locked you in pretty tight in that area. But if you could go back would you really want to do that?" Charlotte looked down at her hands and felt the gentle touch of the silk weighing softly on her body. "No. I wouldn't," she answered. "I meant what I said to him," she said. "I hadn't considered this as something I would do before. I may have been drunk last night but I'm sober now and if I were to chose again I'd be just what I am now. What I said last night is just as true now as it was then. I'll be a woman and I'll make the best of it. And I'll be a better woman than the ones I've been with before now." "I thought you'd say that." Sira said. "Those like me keep track of good men. We don't interfere as much as some might think we do but we do keep track of what happens to good men like you were. You were a good man and I think you'll be an even better woman for being a good man." "Why don't you finish that while I tie up some loose ends," she suggested. Charlotte nodded and started drinking the still hot brew. Sira stood up and leaned over the table toward her. She touched her hands lightly on Charlotte's cheek. Charlotte felt an unknotting inside of herself as she did that and was almost inclined to ask what she did, but the taste of the brew was just so good that she couldn't let it go just yet and she kept sipping from her cup. "That could have caused some problems," she heard Sira say. "What?" she mumbled over her cup. "He made you heterosexual by default." "I am heterosexual," she said. "Actually until he got his hands on your mind after he had his way with your body you were homosexual. And if I had left that knot he made in your mind like I found it you wouldn't have been any other way. You'd have craved being with men in a way you wouldn't have been able to understand. You'd still want to find woman attractive, but you'd only get hot for a man. He didn't do it deliberately though. All he did was try to preserve your heterosexual nature when he changed you. He's kind of clumsy that way." "So I'm gay now?" Charlotte asked. "No, not unless you're supposed to be. All I did when I released what he did was give you back the choice to be who you would naturally be, not who he wanted you to be. If you like women now it's because you liked them sexually before, if you want to be with men it's the same thing. All I did was restoring who you were supposed to be nothing more." "I guess I'll find out the next time I leave the house then," Charlotte said. "For all I know you'll have to change your panties every time you see a certain kind of guy same as you would have before. I can't change what he did, but I can shift it around a bit," Sira said continuing to cup her cheek. Charlotte felt her hand drop and her other hand begin touching her left cheek. She felt a blooming in her mind as if something was taking up space it didn't before. "That could have been tricky," she heard Sira say. "Nothing too terrible." She continued. "Just his ignorance rather than a deliberate decision to make your life harder that it should be." "What about?" "Just little things every woman like you would know. Knowledge that you will need to make your way around the modern world. Things you wouldn't have been that aware of when you were a man." She took her hand away and rested it on the table. "Now you know a lot more about being a woman than you did a moment ago," she said. "It doesn't mean that you have to be that way, but if you choose you can be. Your call either way." Sira sat back down and reached under the table. She pulled out a packet and slid it over the table to her. "I'm almost afraid to ask what that is," Charlotte said. "Don't be," Sira said. "That's what you need. He didn't give it to you because once again he's an idiot who thinks that the world is the same as it was the last time he looked in on it. The thing is without what's in there his ignorance could have made your life a living hell unintentionally." "So what is it?" Charlotte asked. "Everything you need to be Charlotte," Sira answered. "Your birth certificate, driver's license, passport. Every legal document that says you are who you say you are." "Seems awful thick for just that," she said. "That's because it's a duplicate of everything you've done already. Every degree, every certification, every contract, every deed of ownership. Everything you had last night you have right now. You're still an architect, you still have the same position and yes you still have the same bills to pay." "You could have misplaced those you know," Charlotte said. "I wouldn't have minded losing some of those." "I'm sure you would have, but all I did was give you back yourself. The good and the bad," Sira answered. Like I said if my idiot husband had paid closer attention to the world as it is he could have caused you a whole lot more trouble than he did." "Why are you doing this?" Charlotte asked. "What did I do to have you here to smooth things out for me like this?" Sira didn't answer for a moment. She just sat there watching Charlotte. "My husband and those like him may have been sleeping all this time, but that doesn't me that the goddesses were too. We've been nudging this world for centuries now to try to undo what they made the world into. It's been slow and there is still a long way to go in our consensus, but eventually we're going to make this world into something it should be. Something just for everyone." "The fact is I owed it to you. My Bronze Age husband got offended over something you said while you were in the middle of a crisis. He got offended and tried to wreak your life because of it and I won't let that happen to a good man even if it pisses him off when he finds out things aren't going to be like he thinks they are going to be for you," she said. "I was able to do one more thing for you, but you're going to have to wait a little bit to find out about that particular detail and I don't want to spoil the surprise for you. So did you enjoy your ambrosia?" she asked. "Is that what this is?" Charlotte said. "I've never tasted anything so delicious ever." "Good," Sira answered. "I'm glad you liked it. You needed it this morning." "Why did I need it?" Charlotte asked warily. "Because when my husband chose to rape you last night he forgot that he had just made you very fertile and when he finished with you he left you pregnant as well. It's been a while since a demigod has been conceived and without that ambrosia you would have had a hard pregnancy. It's a good thing I'm not a jealous type like Hera is." Charlotte found the words hard to speak, but she said them anyway. "I thought you didn't want to spoil the surprise," she said quietly, still taking it all in. "Oh that's not the surprise," Sira said. "That's just something you needed to know before I left is all. Let's just say that it is something that you deserve and that it will be the source of happiness for you and others." Sira stood up and as Charlotte watched her she began to radiate light. It was blinding but she could still see Sira in the center of the illumination as clearly as she could a moment ago. "I'm going to go now Charlotte, but before I do I want to ask you to kneel before Me," she heard Sira tell her. Charlotte rose from her chair and sank to her knees in front of the goddess. There was no question of not doing so in her mind. She had been asked to do so and it was the right thing to comply with the request. "I've done all I can for you now," she said, her voice like crashing waves in the kitchen, "But I will look in on you from time to time from now on. You're under my protection now." Sira laid her hands on Charlotte's head and shoulder. She felt the weight of the goddess's hand resting there and was almost surprised that she didn't feel the need to cry out under its mass. "Blessed art thou, for you are a woman..." she heard her begin to slowly intone. ______________________________________________________ Minthe couldn't sleep. After he had dealt with the blasphemer he had thought that being stripped of his manhood would have at least left her a whimpering wreck, begging for its return, but that was not what had happened and he couldn't see why that should be. Not that it would have mattered anyway. Just the fact that he had uttered such words had sealed his fate in the god's eyes and he felt the thrill of pronouncing judgment over a mortal fate once again. It had been a long time since he had felt so righteous and then that woman had to spoil it with her unrepentant behavior. When she had shown such defiance he felt his heart become stone when it came to her. No matter how piteously she begged him now he had resolved that this one would never see another lifetime as a man again. Regardless of how she would eventually feel her fate was just and proper in Minthe's eyes. Imagine the audacity to not only disregard the great gift of life as a man, but to look down on it as of little worth to begin with. And then to tell a god so to his face. The ichor in his veins was still heated over her doing that; especially having a mere woman speak to him in the manner in which she had done so made it especially galling to him. He paced around the abode where he had spent so much time asleep. He was disturbed and what disturbed him almost as much as the woman's defiance was how shabby his formerly splendid home was compared to the place he had left that mortal woman in after he had taken her virginity in further punishment. That last act brought a smile to his face. Her husband would surely beat her when he found she was not a virgin upon entering her on their wedding night. A fitting note for her to begin that part of her life on he thought to himself. The more he thought about it, the more the idea of watching her realize what a loss becoming a woman would be for her as it occurred appealed to him. He had thought to go back to sleep but now he had no interest in doing so. Besides, he needed to improve the condition of his own home as well. No mortal should have a better dwelling place than a god and without walking in the world as it is he would not have an accurate idea of just what that should be after all. He strode out of the cloth stretched across his gate and started making his way back to where he had left the woman. It had been several days now and he would be able to see how she already had started regretting choosing to be another man's property instead of remaining a man herself. It would be something to see, he told himself in anticipation. Minthe sat on a park bench in shock. He had thought to have a short trip and check in on that woman before settling down to see what things he desired to have to improve his abode, but all thoughts of doing that had fled now. Everywhere he looked he saw women. There were old women, young women like he had made the blasphemer into, girls of all ages. They walked in groups, they walked in pairs and they walked alone. The fact that they walked outside at all was utterly wrong to him. All of these women should have been locked away in the women's section of their owner's home. They should not have been out at all and even if there had been some change they should not have been allowed to move about without a man of the household keeping a close eye on them. And the clothing that they wore. Not a single one of them hid their faces or covered their bodies. It was as if they didn't care that a man who was not either their owner or family saw them as they walked about. What had gone so wrong with the world he wondered? In the short time he had sat here he had seen things that had shocked him to his core. Women were speaking to men as if they were equals. He had seen women dressed as members of the city watch and worse yet men treating them as such instead of denying that they could even be allowed to take such a position in the first place. He saw women dressed in the strange warrior's garb that he had noted when he chastised the blasphemer and worse yet seen men treating them as superiors and following their orders without question. And everywhere he looked he could see them reading. In his time only scribes and scholars could do such a thing, yet somehow it had come to pass that it was something that was held to be so common that even a woman was allowed to acquire this skill. It was inconceivable to him that such changes should take place in a mere couple of thousand years. Everything around him seemed completely wrong. The strange carriages that moved about in place of horses stank up the air and still when he looked inside he saw women's hands guiding them as well. It seemed to him that there was little that a woman did now that was that different from a man and that was the thought that left him immobile on his bench right now. At least it can't have completely changed he reasoned to himself. That woman and the last few days reviewing her suffering would make him feel better. He wondered where she might be now. Surely her lord would not have allowed such an ugly peasant woman to remain in the home of his missing retainer. She may have already been put to the question by the king's torturers even. He hadn't considered that possibility. He might have to intervene he realized. He wanted her to have a long first life as a woman before she went on to the next one and did it again. Having her only spend a few days knowing why she was a woman now and then being executed didn't fit into his plans for her at all. He picked up her trace in the home that he had chastised her in. Trailing her from there was only a matter of following where she had gone to. He recognized the markings of a firm of arcitects as he entered the enormous building. He could see no trace of a kitchen but perhaps she was here because the king had banished her here as a scullery maid. Clearly since she could no longer hold whatever position she held before and a wise monarch would have to do something with her after all. As he traced her path through the floors. More floors that he would have thought possible, he began to realize that none of the outcomes that he had envisioned for her had actually taken place. She was obviously still in the home that he had cursed her in and she also belonged here for some reason as well. He moved through the building looking until he finally was able to locate her. When he found her what he saw left him immobile with shock over what he found her doing. She was speaking to a group of men in what he could only assume was her chambers. The men listened to her as she laid out the direction of some project that she held authority over. He briefly slipped into the men's minds and to his horror he only found resentment of her holding such a position in a single mind. And even there he could see where the man felt the need to hide his honest and natural feeling of superiority over a mere woman away from others; that he felt that others would see it as a shameful thing was not right in the god's eyes. But more than that was what he didn't expect to find in the men's minds. She was respected as a colleague, even by the man who looked at her halfway properly. She was respected in her profession and desired deeply by the men as well. It was not possible to him, but these men found her highly desirable and some of them had to work hard to a conceal they desired to have her because of her position over them. As he watched she finished the meeting and dismissed the men. He watched her afterward as she worked. The softness of her hands was no impediment here and now that he thought of it he realized that he had not seen a single woman spinning, weaving or doing any of the tasks that should have occupied their time. Some contraption on the broad wooden desk began shaking with a jangling clamor attracting his attention. He watched as she picked up the device and spoke into it. From how she spoke it was some kind of communications machine the god puzzled out. He stood close to her and heard her speaking to someone named Martin. This Martin was actually apologizing to her. For a moment he thought that she had found a husband already but from the tone of the man's words that could not be the case. He was asking her of all things for permission to come and see their daughter Chloe while he was visiting in a few days. Minthe retreated home in utter confusion. How could any of the things he had seen have been possible? How could the curse he had laid so righteously have become so indistinguishable from a blessing? He had made her a woman to punish her, but all he had succeeded in doing was blessing her and he didn't know how it had all come to pass. ====================================================