You walk with the skunk-woman, your fingers laced in hers, and for a long while, you say very little. You lose your sense of time in the eternal twilight of the jungle, which is lit at night by bioluminescent fungi of some sort and some of which is too shaded by canopy during the day to see the sky, so it is never clear whether it is actually night outside or you have entered a part of the jungle where the canopy is more dense than usual. Stops involve lazy hours of mutual grooming and feeding, which you occasionally see two or as many as a half-dozen other skunk-women doing with each other. Rarely, you see one alone, and she is usually immersed in something in the nature of grooming, bathing or idly watching a trail of harmless ants going about their business.
It's interesting that you can walk in this wilderness completely naked without the slightest sense of shame. It is more like being in a shower, at this point, than being truly exposed. The steamy, humid air, which is concentrated into a mist in cooler, low-lying areas, adds to this perception as it forms on your naked, black skin in a glistening sheen occasionally, quickly evaporating away as you walk out into the sun again. After a while, you have seen so many beautiful, naked bodies lounging in every conceivable position that it would seem peculiar to go around covering them up.
There are things it takes you longer to get used to. It takes you a while to get used to the natural hip-sway of a woman's body, actually. The loose gearing seems to make your gait smoother, but somehow, it seems a little harder to judge relative distances. It occurs to you that you have no idea how far you and the skunk-woman have walked into the wilderness. No matter how much you move, it feels very much like you have stayed in one place, your bottom just rocking pendulously as your luxuriant tail sways gently behind you. Your mind wrestled with this for quite a long while before it slowly began to give up the fight.
After all, time and distance don't seem to matter as much as they used to, and getting anywhere has lost its sense of importance. Everywhere is just a place, isn't it? You've never thought of it that way before, but it makes sense. As your wheels turn in your head, comparing your past memories with the present, those memories seem increasingly nonsensical and the behaviors you're recounting astray from reason. It seems so foolish that everything used to be a race for you, from one place to another, without any concept of why any particular place was worth racing to. Then again, it doesn't seem like that was really a worse way to think: as you probe your memories more, you realize that you used to think, inversely, that others must be very foolish to want to molder in one place or stay occupied with trivial or small things. After all, what did those things mean "in the scheme of things"? You counter that with your more feminine perception, though: does there really have to be a point or a purpose or a use to everything? Is it such a sin to have something whimsical, which is just there to be loved? If creating the universe had been left up to a man, then he would have dismissed it as a frivolity. Without the man that created those memories there to defend himself in person, the outcome of the argument was decided from the outset.
However, where are all the men? Are there any? Has one ever been allowed to linger in this jungle, or does reproduction only occur here by transformation? "Where are all the boys?" you ask the skunk-woman timidly.
She turns to you, massaging your fingers gently. "Why would you want one?" she asks just as softly. "Have I not been paying you enough mind? If so, I am so sorry."
Your face flushes, and you realize that, yes, she has paid you quite enough attention. You would not part with your girlfriend for anything in the world, and you like being naked together with her without shame. You like being able to touch her freely, and her warm body, which is about twice your own weight from her life of eating well in this peculiar paradise, is pleasant to touch and run your fingers over. "Yes," you say, as you realize it, "but..."
She turns to hold both your hands in hers, her concerned eyes glistening with care as they look into your own. "Please, just talk to me honestly, love," she says. Ever since you have also been transformed by this woman, although by force, the woman has come to be like a mother to you. You are naked to her in more than just body. Your soul is naked before her, and you must confess every thought.
Bending your head guiltily and speaking in a squeaky whisper--wondering if you're doing something wrong--you just say, "I just sort of wonder what being with one is like," you say.
"Men are nothing but trouble, dear," she says gently. "That's why we convert them, like I did you. No good could ever come of a man. Let's leave those dark thoughts in the past."
"They can't be all bad," you whimper.
She looks you sternly in the eyes for a moment, and she steps up to you, pressing her breasts against yours. You recall that, when you were a man, this would have sexually excited you, but now it just feels familiar, comfortable and motherly. She laces her fingers around the small of your back and holds you like her child. "When you get you get your chance to convert a man to one of us," she whispers, "you may keep him as a man if you choose, but...you must find someplace else to be."
The thought of this upsets you a little, and you are concerned for her now. "But what would happen to you?"
She smiles back at you, unworried. "There is always another clueless man stumbling into the jungle, dear," she reassures you. "Besides, if none of us ever tired of paradise and ventured out, then we would never have anyone to transform: we'd just stay the same lot forever." That does make sense.
There is no telling how much time passes after that conversation. In time, you and your girlfriend come upon another couple, and you spend hours getting to know each other by ritualistically grooming each other, with much giggling and nonchalance. After all, you have bodies made for living on forage, and the jungle is an apparently endless wilderness with not a single predator in it. By the standard of peace and tranquility, it as close to a heaven as there could be.
After what might, for all that you know, be centuries, you are having one of your rare moments alone, and you are quietly grooming your tail. Your body has grown from being that of a 90 Lb. teenager to being that of a voluptuous mature woman with ripe, full mammaries. You are certainly not anywhere near as curvy as the matriarchal, dominant woman that converted you, though. No, your body is just svelte enough to pass for a virginal maid at the height of her fertility.
All of a sudden, a young man comes stumbling naked out the trees, and you startle with alarm. He looks to be...