Collete woke up from her slumber. Had it all been a dream she thought as she slowly opened her eyes. Surely it had been a nightmare. She couldn't be a donkey. Yet when her eyes finally opened she immediately saw that it hadn't been a dream.
She really was a jenny, a poor young jenny stuffed into a cramped crate with eight other equally poor jennies bound for a hard life of labor in the salt mines.
"HAW HEE!" Collete brayed pitifully. Then she took a look outside of her crate through the small gaps in between the boards. She could see that she were on a wagon that was steadily moving throughout the countryside.
The sun had begun to set and it was getting late. Collete's stomach rumbled and she licked her muzzles, thinking of eating.
Suddenly the wagon came to a full stop and moments later the Man who bought her hopped off and began to unload her crate from the wagon. Collete took another quick glance from between the gaps of her crate and saw that she had arrived at her new “home” -- a Salt Mine.
The salt mine was nestled in a medium sized rock quarry in the middle of the countryside. A large stone gate guarded the perimeter of the mine and four wooden buildings stood in two separate corners of the quarry.
One appeared to be a shack that functioned as an office for the mine’s workers, another served as the tool shed for the mine and yet another functioned as the lodgings for some of the mine's workforce.
Finally there was two barns that served as a stable for the animals that were forced to work there.
"Come on, now! Stop being asses, you dumb animals!" the Man growled.
The Man, owner of the mine, opened the crates and obligated the jennets to enter to the barn. The interior of the barn was rough, but it had at least five stalls for the animals working the mine to live in. Three of the stalls were empty and the other two contained horses, which flared their nostrils and gave the donkeys a look as if they could tell that the jennets weren't natural born donkeys by their scent.
Collete and the other jennies went into the stalls. Collete began to look over her new "home". Just like the barn, the stall was very rough even for an animal to live in.
A wooden gate blocked the entry out the stall and was too tall for either donkey to reach even on their hind legs. A wooden manger, meant to house their food, stood in the front corner of the stall next to the gate and straw coated the floor, intended as their bedding, which was a far cry from the warm beds they were used to when they had been human girls.
A younger man entered to the barn and greeted the Mine Owner.
"Glad to see you back, Emil," the younger man said as he peered into the stall and inspected Collete and the other donkeys. "These are our new donkeys?"
"Yeah, Steve" Emil replied disdainfully. "They're not much to look at, they're just like the other ones, the Pleasure Island’s farm donkey breeder has sold me over the years."
"I'm surprised they don't sell us any adult donkeys", the younger man replied. "Adult and male ones would be stronger and more efficient for mining. These young jennets are strong, but stubborn and they give out after a while. We've gone through so many of em` the past few years." Emil said.
“Anyway, that strange farm must sell two hundred or three hundred donkeys every week and they're always females. How many jennies does that place have to breed all of these little ones?"
"Who cares? They must know better than anyone that adult asses cost more and the little and young ones are a bargain, so they have a lot of buyers" Emil retorted. "When I can buy them at a steady price of three for the price of one adult donkey, I'm more than willing to use them over adults any day. Now lock the gate and set our guard dogs loose. Don't want these asses getting any ideas like the last ones."
As Steve left, Emil filled Collete's manger with hay for her to eat. Collete approached the manger and began eating, she already liked the hay taste so she didn't have to complain.
"HAW! HEE HAW! HEE HAW!" Collete was surprised by the bray of joy she had just emitted from her mouth.
"Good," Emil said. "Now I'll leave the nine asses to sleep. You work hard in the morning.”
And with that Emil stomped off, closing the barn door as he left. As Collete continued to munch on the hay that was provided to her, a irritating sound suddenly began to emanate around her.
“Zzzzzzzzzzz…”
Collete stopped eating and turned her head and listened to the noise intently with her long donkey ears.
Her ears were by far stronger and more sensitive than when they had been human ones and now she could pick up noises much more clearly and louder than before.
The source of the noise was four little gnat-like flies which had entered to the barn through a crack in the wall and were now buzzing around Collete’s backside.
“Sacrebleu!”, thought Collete. “Flies are so annoying! Why are they buzzing around me? Don‘t I have enough to worry about now?”
Instinctively Collete swatted at the flies with her tail and she gave a agitated bray to the annoying insect intruders. After a few more swats with her tail, the flies got the message and flew away.
Collete then began to wonder about her new tail. She had never had a tail before and she felt she would never get used to it, but as a donkey she needed it to cover her pussy and anus from everyone's sight. Yet at the same time it felt natural and good, which caused a considerable amount of worry to the young jenny.
She didn’t want it to feel good, nor did she ever want to get used to being a donkey. She was born human and never wanted to let go of that fact. If she gave in to the feelings that she felt about having a tail then what was to stop her from giving in to other instincts and desires real donkeys felt.
Her mind and memories were all that Collete had left of her humanity after her transformation. She wasn’t about to let that go without a fight.
Still it would be a battle, one that she could very easily lose in the coming days, as even now those feelings and desires of real donkeys were gnawing at the back of her brain, urging her to accept who she was now and give in to her fate.
Collette moved back to the manger and finished the hay that was allotted to her. Suddenly there was another noise, one much louder than the flies and it was coming from the stall next to her, which contained the other jenny that had been sold with her.
Collete once more stopped what she were doing and trotted over to the wall of the stall next to her.
Getting up on her hind legs, Collete propped herself up against the wall and peered over into her fellow donkey’s stall. The donkey was frantically bucking and kicking the door to her stall with her rear legs, trying to break out.
After a few minutes, her fellow donkey grew tired and stopped. She spotted her staring at her and with tears in her eyes began to bray at her.
“I want to go home!! I don’t want to be used as a donkey!! No,no!! I'm not a donkey!! HEE HAW! HEE HAW! HEE HAW!!” she brayed desperately to her.
But Collete was completely unable to help her, they were on the same problem.
Her fellow donkey cocked her head to the side in a confused manner and continued to bray and cry. Eventually she gave up and plopped to the floor to rest. Tears continued to stream down her muzzle from her eyes and she gave several pitiful brays.
Collete, now tired, spread out and curled up into a ball of straw on the floor of her stall.
Emil's words rung throughout her head. She was going to be worked HARD.
Living the life of a donkey would be tough and grueling, but it was something that would have to learn to live with. She was no longer a girl, at least not a human one.
At the next day, Collete was grunting heavily as she struggled to pull the heavy mine car that she had been tasked with pulling up to the surface of the salt mine.
Only a few days ago she had been a beautiful girl, whose only work she had to do was learning in school. Now she was a scared gray donkey, who was forced to perform hard labor for the rest of her life and was treated as if she was expendable.
Collete’s back ached from the heavy loads of salt rock that she had been hauling up and down the hot and grimy salt mine tunnels all day long. And that was only the beginning of the numerous exhausting tasks that she would be forced to perform for the rest of her life.
Tomorrow she and the other jennies would be working even deeper underground and were likely not to see the sun for a couple of days.
Collete had overhead from some of the mine’s workers what had happened to the donkeys that had come before her. Two of them died in a cave in last week and the other one died of starvation, having refused to work or eat.
And before her had been at least over a dozen more donkeys like herself who either died from being overworked to the point of total exhaustion, had gotten ill or went lame and sold for their hides.
Behind her, Collete could hear the jenny of the stall next to her that was kicking and bucking the day before, she was pulling her mine car down the tracks as well. Neither of them had slept very well the previous night.
It was hard to adjust from laying in a comfortable and cozy bed to laying on the hard ground with only straw to serve as her bedding as flies buzzed around them. In addition, the thought of what the next day would be like had kept the jennies from sleeping and filled them both with dread.
As Collete rounded the bend in the tunnel and started toward the mine's exit, she heard a sound she caused her to jump and recoil in fright.
It was her fellow jenny, she lay on the ground a few feet behind her, braying in agony as the Mine Owner cracked his whip over and over upon her.
"YOU REFUSE TO WORK, SO I WHIP YOU GOOD!!" Emil angrily shouted at the helpless donkey.
Collete hated seeing her fellow donkey being whipped over and over, but there was nothing she could do about.
Emil had quite temper and was not afraid to showcase it. He probably would have whipped her fellow donkey to death if Steve didn't stopped him.
"Enough, Emil!" Steve cried out as he placed his hand on the owner's shoulder. "Poor jenny, she’s had enough."
Emil raised his whip once more as if he was going to strike the poor donkey again, but ultimately relented to the protest of his employee. "Take her back to the stable," he commanded. "If she doesn't work tomorrow, I'll sell her for her hide."
"Salaud!" Collete thought. "How can I possibly live like this?"