Richard Winchester was a young 22 year old historian who was assigned to categorize a large set of relics that dated back to ancient times. His grandfather, head professor of history and evolution at Oxford, was originally going to travel to Africa to organize the relics but let Richard go in his place after considerable begging.
Richard had strawberry blond hair that looked faintly red and green eyes. He was hairless and liked to keep it that way. He never needed to shave much due to some lucky genetics. He wasn’t muscular but you wouldn’t describe as a bean pole either as he has a nice swimmers build.
Richard was quite accustomed to the finer things in life. He normally never wouldn’t be caught dead in such a hot and dirty place like the jungles of South Africa if it wasn’t for the news he had been hearing recently. Apparently a wild man who lived in the jungle was recently captured and caged.
He had heard stories of this beast of a man who clearly wasn’t one of indigenous people. A man that was actually living amongst the wild animals. Even more interesting was the fact that the wild man was recently captured. Richard wanted to study his behavior for a research paper and had his grandfather pull a few strings to get the savage in his possession while he was over in Africa researching old relics .
When he arrived he had a team of men along with his trusted colleague Timothy who had arrived before Richard a few days earlier to get some preliminary data on the wild man.
“I had quite the interactions with him Richard.” Timothy began.
“Sounds nice but I’ll wait until I get to meet him myself to gather data.”
The excavation team that came ahead of time with Timothy laid out what they had found.
“You start going through the right side Tim and I’ll do the left.” As he was going down the relics he noticed a most peculiar one, it looked like what seemed to be a large golden butterfly. Richard picked it up, it was surprising sturdy. It looked like it had writing on it, but he would need a powerful magnifying glass to make out the words.
While he was holding it he heard a snap and the butterfly split in two!
“What was that Richard?”
It was Timothy, Richard couldn’t let him know that he possibly damaged a relic so he shoved it away in his pant pocket.
“Oh nothing Tim, one of old tribal jars just had some debris still inside.”
Richard was almost done with the other relics when a man walked in.
“Sir, the jungle man’s cage is in your tent for when you a ready to study him.”
“Oh of course, I’ll go right now” Richard wanted to leave as soon as possible to get the butterfly incident out of his mind.
“Here he is, the jungle man.” Just like Richard has heard, he was indeed Caucasian and massive. His hair was long, brown, and messy and he had a thick facial hair as well. The jungle wasn’t just his home, he had his own personal jungle of hair on his chest and arms. He had a loincloth on made from what looked like a dried leopard pelt. Apparently this creature had some for of modesty. Or more likely he just wore it for the convenience of keeping his large penis out his way and move faster.
His feet were massive and walked on all fours on a similar fashion to a gorilla. Richard noticed the bottoms skin of his feet and knuckles was thick and worn. The man was very muscular and didn’t looked deprived of food. Probably because he was successful hunter.
“Can it speak at all?” Richard asked the crew member that transported the cage.
“Actually yes, very broken English but it’s something. Understanding is pretty difficult for it as well. He was caught in a poacher trap close to a safari zone so we assume he picked up words from monitoring people around that area for a while.”
“Fascinating, you can leave now.”
“Ok sir. Me and the men are going down to the river to pick up supplies. Timothy wanted to come along to see some bird so you’ll have the camp all to yourself. There’s a flare gun if something happens but don’t worry, we lined the perimeter with some coal to ward off some animals.
Richard attempted to communicate.
“H E L L O, ME RICHARD, YOU UNDERSTAND?” The man just spit at Richard and turned around.
“Disgusting. Well I can’t help you get out of this cage unless you speak to me.”
The man turned back around. “Man lie.”
“Ha so you do know English, I doubted what Timothy and that other fellow told me. Well if you answer my questions I’ll release you, plain and simple, I promise good sir I do not lie.”
Richard was indeed lying, no way would he let a brutish creature such as this get away. He wanted to take advantage of the man’s stupidity.
“Here, I’ll even cross my fingers as I promise to release you, than means I really mean it. Here have some water.” The wild man took it and gulped it down instantly.
“Oh so you were thirsty. Well, now will you tell me your name?”
The wild man still looked angry but knew he had no other options. “Garok”
“Lovely.”
The two spoke a bit but very little actually came of it. Garok didn’t understand much past presentations and all the information Richard got out of him was that leopard meat was the tastiest.
“Well this has been... informative but I must be going”
“Richard say Garok free now!”
“You’ll be free, after I get some more information. Here’s a new word to learn in the meantime, *paitence.* IT MEAN WAIT OOK.” Richard said with his arm scratching himself like a chimp to taunting Garok.
As Richard bent down to put away his notepad, Garok saw one of the butterfly wings from earlier sticking out. He decided to grab it to force Richard to freedom. He quickly jumped to one end of his cage and stuck his hand out far enough to grab a wing.
“HEY THAT’S MINE YOU SAVAGE.”
Just then the wing began to glow in Goraks hand. Richards looked in his pocket to confirm that the same was happening to his prince. Slowly, two rings a wind started spiraling around Richards and Garok respectively.
“What’s happening?!” Richard screamed. His skin started to glow as his body expanded. His pants were the first things to give way as they ripped across the ass crack. The shirt soon followed as it tore open in the middle, revealing a growing chest. Dark brown Hair started sprouting on Richard’s body like weeds.
At the same time Garok was changing within his cage. His body shrank and his hair began to lighten and recede into his body. His eyes changed from brown to green and his beard simply vanished, exposing a strong chin that was slowing losing some definition.
“WHAT LYING MAN DOING TO GAROK”
he screamed as he shrank.
Richards feet grew, causing his boots to rip apart as each of his hairy toes poked through the front. His hair turned into a messy mane of brown curls that flowed down to his shoulders.
The two looked at eachother and realized they had been transformed into exact copies of each other. Garok’s hair even styled itself neatly and his old stench went away as the opposite occurred for Richard. When the wind finally stopped. Richard looked at the cage and saw his old self locked inside wearing nothing but an oversized loincloth while he himself was now standing in the middle of the tent in the tattered remains of his clothing...