Chad watched with awe as his friend quickly moved up the trunk of the massive tree, grabbing vines and branches with perfect timing to move higher and higher into its canopy. As Rob got higher up, however, Chad frowned as he noticed Rob beginning to change before his very eyes. Rob’s short hair slowly began to grow longer, flowing past his ears and over his neck until it hung just past his shoulders. Not only that, its sandy brown shade became deeper and glossier, taking on the color of dark chocolate or black coffee.
“Rob, stop!! You’re losing yourself to the jungle!” Chad cried out, his voice cracking one final time before settling on the fine soprano of a young boy. “You can’t go any higher or-”
“Na-na-na~ I can’t hear you~” Rob teased childishly in a cracking tenor from high above. He hooked his slender legs around a sturdy tree branch and hung upside down, staring down to the ground at Chad while sticking his tongue out tauntingly. “You’re just jealous that I’m the best climber in the whole tribe! You’ll never catch me!”
“You’re not in a tribe, snap out of it!!” Chad snapped, though truth be told his complained came out as a petulant pout instead of a command. Not only that, something about Rob’s mockery was egging him on, and before he knew it his skinny legs had tensed up and he leapt into the air and grabbed onto a hanging vine. Putting his hand over hand, he ascended the vine straight upward until he had nearly caught up to where Rob was, not even noticing the tickle on the back of his own neck as his hair began to straighten and darken to a similar coffee shade as Rob’s. Chad swung his legs to pick up enough momentum and leapt from the vine, landing perfectly on the nearest branch before clambering up the tree’s trunk after Rob. By now, he’d half-forgotten exactly why he was chasing after Rob as the childishly competitive spirit that was blossoming inside him was beginning to take over.
Pretty soon, he was so close to Rob that he could practically smell the slight scent of his friend’s sweat (no longer the strong musk of a man but instead the unmistakably that of a boy). From just above Chad, a tiny rain of little hairs began to rain down upon him as all the body hair that still remained on Rob fell away like dust and left only smooth skin. Chad felt his stomach drop when he realized what had happened, and a quick glance at his own arms, legs, armpits, and crotch confirmed that he too was now completely hairless just like Rob was.
“I’m getting so young… probably haven’t even seen ten rainy seasons…” he mumbled under his breath as he continued to climb after Rob. By now, they had gotten so high up the kapok tree that they could get a good lay of the surrounding land, but rather than give Chad a sense of security it just worried him even more when he realized what he was seeing.
He could see for what must have been thousands of miles, and there was almost zero sign of any modern civilization. No sign of clear-cut jungle, no cities rising over the trees, not even the slightest indication of a road winding through the seemingly endless jungle. For all he knew, him and Rob had not just been transported from their homes to this wilderness, but they’d also been thrown thousands of years back in time.
“Told ‘ya I was the best climber,” Rob laughed in his own bright and boyish voice as he hung cheerfully at the very top of the kapok tree. He tossed down a couple of fleshy fruits to Chad, who easily caught them and recognized them as the kapok seeds he needed to make blow darts.
“T-thanks, Rob…” Chad stammered quietly as he tucked them away in a plant-fiber satchel that hung from his loincloth, unsure how to deal with the strange barrage of conflicting thoughts and feelings he was experiencing. This little body of his was so quick and effortlessly agile that he had just climbed up over a hundred feet in mere minutes, but it wasn’t his body… right? No, of course it was his, what else would his body look like? Chad’s head ached as he tried to sort out everything, trying to hold on tight to the person he thought he was instead of this primitive little boy that he seemed fated to become. And as he braced himself against the trunk of the tree and gazed out over the infinite jungle, he didn’t notice as his long, glossy brown hair began to twist itself into loose braids that hung halfway down his back, each braid now decorated by simple wooden beads and colorful feathers...