A few days earlier
"Damn, damn, damn" whispered the eighteen-year-old Baroness Carlotta Menderes as she was being fitted into her tight corset. (Carlotta enjoyed a good meal, and was now paying for it.) It had been a rotten day. A rotten year. A rotten life. She grimaced as she thought of how the middle-aged Duke she would marry had commented on her "wide, child-bearing hips." The baroness had lived through three of her mother's pregnancies and two of her older sisters, and had absolutely no desire to go through the experience herself. The female body, with its periods and poorly balanced curves, was in the baroness's opinion sufficient evidence against either the benevolence or the design skills of the gods. Nor, judging by what most of her previously married friends had told her, was the bedchamber much to look forward to.
Suddenly she felt the hands of the fitter freeze, and turned to see that the girl was paralyzed as an elderly woman walked into the room. "Hello there, remember me?" Carlotta remembered an old woman who had been turned away from the castle five years earlier, and how she had overruled the guard to admit her and give her a good meal and a night's lodging. "I've come to return the favor."
"I'm not sure what you can do for me."
"Well, you clearly don't like being a woman. Would you rather be male?" Somehow, this didn't seem ridiculous.
Carlotta snorted. "Are you kidding? I don't like being a woman, but men are the worst!"
The old woman smiled. "I didn't say 'man', I said 'male.'"
"Males are men, that's how it works."
"Carlotta, how would you like to eat as much as you like, never have to worry about periods or getting pregnant, never be squeezed into corsets or uncomfortable clothes, and enjoy sex with an enthusiastic, passionate partner as you lead a long and happy life?"
"That sounds awesome! But I suppose there's a catch."
"How committed are you to being human?"
"Not at all. But this marriage is important to my family, so I suppose I have to go through with it."
"Yesterday, a sweet peasant boy shared a crust of bread with me. He spends most of his time dreaming of being a beautiful noblewoman. I suspect he would make a far better Carlotta Menderes, and certainly a better duchess, than you ever will."
"You can do all that?"
"Of course, I am a goddess."
Carlotta looked around her. There wasn't a thing about this she would miss.
"Very well."
She instantly heard her clothes rip as she fell to the floor. By the time her arms hit the floor they were short, stumpy legs ending in hooves rather than hands. Her legs underwent a similar metamorphosis. Her nose elongated to a snout as bristly hair covered her body and her breasts disappeared. Her ears became long and floppy. "I'm a pig?" she thought. Then she felt a change sweep her internal organs as something new grew between her legs. "I'm a boar?"
"You are! And I know just who would make a great sow for you!" said the goddess, as she released the corset-fitter from her paralysis and led the new boar from the room.