Jake looked at the odd pendant in his hands. If it weren’t for the letter and pendant both appearing out of nowhere, he would have dismissed the whole thing as a prank. But as odd as the pendant’s power seemed to be, using it did have a certain appeal to him. It said it could work with just an intentional thought of the person changing, right? If he didn’t have to do anything embarrassing to activate it, why not just try it out on the next person he saw. If it was a prank, no harm, no foul.
“Jake!” Called out a familiar voice. “How’s it going?”
Jake looked up to see Zack walking toward him, followed shortly behind him by Pablo.
While most of Jake’s friends, like him, had a jock’s physique, Zack distinctly did not. Short. Scrawny. Dealing with a horrible case of acne. These were things that described Zack. Many wondered how he’d ever found his way into Jake’s much more athletic circle of friends (The reason few knew was that Zack had offered Jake some comfort after his mother had left them, having been through a similar situation himself).
Pablo, on the other hand, was more athletic, though with more of a runner’s build than was typical of Jake’s friends. His laid-back and self-assured personality made him easy to get along with.
“It’s hot and slow as it’s ever been man,” Jake said, waving toward them. “Come on in. We’ve been waiting.”
As his friends stepped inside, Jake willed the pendant to activate, feeling a little conflicted. On the one hand, for his first test, he wanted to do something truly out there, wildly different from what the person was before. On the other hand, it was Zack, someone who’d been there for him during one of the lowest points in his life, and he didn’t want to risk doing something that would destroy that… He’d hold off on any personality alterations, then.
Besides, it wasn’t as if Zack’s body couldn’t have used some improvement.
As he pictured Zack’s new form, (and the past that would come with it,) it already started to manifest. The room grew colder as Zack’s skin became smooth and clear. And not just of acne. No, his skin was turning into a magic, mobile, unmelting ice. Blood and bone beneath were banished, leaving his glistening body transparent. His legs grew longer, gaining mass and taking the appearance of toned muscle, while his feet reshaped, each toe growing into a long, thin, icy talon, with the smallest toe on each foot shifting around to the back of said foot . Similar changes occurred in his arms, though the talons on his hands remained in a far more human arrangement.
Already Jake’s eyes were bulging. He still wasn't expecting it to work so thoroughly. His idea of a golem made of ice was supposed to be too strange to work! On the plus side, he was very glad he hadn’t thought up many changes to Zack’s personality, no that he knew it worked. On the minus side… he was kind of having second thoughts about what was likely to come next.
Zack’s torso pinched inward around the waist, while his hips and rear flared out. An ample bosom stretched out Zack’s shirt, and the front of his pants was slightly less prominent, making it clear that she was no longer male.
Once Zack, now Zelda’s face, already looking like an intricately carved ice-sculpture began to take a more rounded shape, her ears seeming to vanish, while her hair smoothed over, leaving her with a “bald” appearance. Her nose and mouth were pressed down into the short, curved beak of a snowy owl, while her eyes began to glow with a soft, yellow light, a dot of black in the center of each.
Her clothing seemed to unravel into thin air, a portion of her pants around the belt loop becoming a leather belt, with velcro-sealed pockets to hold her belongings.
Pablo, usually one not to miss an opportunity to oogle a pretty lady, seemed completely oblivious not only to the change going on in his friend in front of him, but indifferent to her sudden nakedness as well.
Without any clothing to get in the way, an icy fan of tail-feathers grew out above her rear, before the star of the show emerged from her shoulders; two great, glimmering, glacial wings rose up from her back, the ice carved to mimic feathers down to the finest detail. They spread wide, then folded up neatly behind her, as she turned toward the door to the basement.
Jake could only stare dumbfounded, while Pablo just casually walked past her downstairs, like nothing happened. Every bit played out like he’d pictured it, no matter how absurd. The pendant said he could change the person’s past and future too, didn’t it? Did that mean that his silly backstory of Zach, er, Zelda being born with a lethal condition, but had her soul transferred to a golem body, capable of growing at the same rate as a human child, by a sorceress friend of the family was true too, now? And how would he go about finding that out?
Zelda turned her head toward Jake, a look of slight concern in her eyes. “You feeling alright Jake? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I, Uh… Yeah, I think I’m seeing things… This, uh… this summer heat, you know. Messin’ with my head.”
She chuckled slightly, and to his surprise, suddenly unfurled a wing, and wrapped it around him, pulling him to her side. “If you wanted to cool off with me, you just had to ask, you know.”
Even with the chill he felt around him, Jeff blushed. Despite his working out, he’d never actually bedded a girl, and finding himself suddenly right up against a naked one, even one that was a golem of unmelting ice in the shape of an amazonian humanoid snow owl, and not five minutes ago was a guy, got him flustered. She either didn’t notice, or simply played it casually, walking down the stairs to the basement with her wing wrapped around him, until they reached the couch in front of the game console, Axel and Pablo already holding their controllers.
“Okay boys… And Zelda,” Alex said with a grin, “we’ve got a few more guests coming later, but let's get this party started!”