Carrying Martin to the village was no easy task. His body was heavy, and every few paces they had to navigate the tangled web of gnarled roots that shaped the jungle floor.
"Why was he making those weird sounds" Rob asked, as they made their way.
"I'm not sure, they were so guttural. It almost seemed like the jungle had taken his ability to speak properly."
As the two boys nimbly hopped from root to root, Martin in tow, the steady bumping of their hops began to dislodge the loin cloth stuck in his back pocket.
Chad's foot caught on a root, causing him to stumble before quickly regaining his footing. His flexible body was well trained to handle slip ups with ease. The slight stumble, however, was just enough to dislodge the loin cloth which fell gracefully to the forest floor.
"Careful Chtok" Rob said, his mind slipping gradually into jungle boy thoughts as he was forced to concentrate on maintaining his footing as the boys leaped, in increasing jungle-trained fashion, from root to root. Pausing, he turned to make sure his friend had recovered his balance. His brown eyes locked onto the green of Chad's own. "This floor is uneven. Steady your footing. "
"Ruut! Ugh...I mean Rob, fuck." Chad replied, blinking his eyes in concentration as he fought away the creeping jungle boy thoughts "We're not from the jungle. I'm not Chatok"
"Fuck" Rob said, shaking his long wavy locks. He opened his eyes once more, the blue shimmering away the brown. "Sorry, it's just ...focusing on my footing was focusing my mind on more jungle like thoughts."
Looking at Chad, Rob noticed the body was sloping in the direction of his friend. Chad was clearly tiring, and the body was lowering closer and closer to the ground as his energy failed.
"I think I need a beak Rob, He is starting to get heavy."
"Sure thing" Rob replied. He noted with some pride that unlike his friend, he hadn't grown tired at all. While his arms weren't bursting with muscle, this body had a natural limberness and strength.
Setting Martin down, each fell naturally into a strange squatting posture rather than sit. The jungle was bending their actions in many, sometimes imperceptible ways.
"How long until he wakes?" Chad asked.
"The medicine man says it varies."
Chad winced at Robs sudden outpouring of knowledge yet continued to listen.
"Men recover much more quickly than women. But even among genders there is great variety. Only the goddess knows why. For men it might take only a half pass of the sun, for women, a whole sun cycle!"
"So he'll be out for a while..." Chad replied "Thats good cause I'm still pretty winded. I was feeling great at first. this body is just so naturally strong. But as we walked It almost felt like I was losing some of my strength. It was odd, it felt different from getting tired, it was almost as if I was just less muscular. It's hard to describe..."
He looked over his arms, trying to see if they seemed less developed, but they remained the same generally thin brownskined arms he had before.
"We have time to wait. And if he wakes, I have more mam’ya powder. It's getting late and getting him to the village is important. We can't have him getting lost in the Forbidden Land. My father says without the proper training, he wouldn't survive. " Rob replied.
As Rob spoke, Chad looked into his eyes with concern, his words were of the jungle, not their world. They remained the familiar blue. "um...Still with me Rob?"
"Yes." He replied with a note of uncertainty " I'm still thinking like me, it's just getting harder. This knowledge, these thoughts are weaving naturally into my thoughts, my sentences. It's almost as if increasingly, there isn't a clean distinction between jungle boy me and normal me."
"I feel that too Ruut, er Rob. I look at these plants and their names just seem to appear in my mind. I've never seen them before, yet they are so familiar. Like with the Kapok Tree." Chad said, hand gently playing with one of his many braids. "I also can't shake a feeling of nervousness. I keep finding myself thinking 'I'm going to shame my family if I'm out this late!' And I somehow know that we'll be punished if we are out after moonrise. I don't want to be punished...."
Rob nodded "I've had the same thoughts...."
Not wanting to dwell on the anxiety of their shifting minds, Rob turned to the sleeping Martin. His blue eyes traced the man's body, studying him.
"It's funny. His clothes would have looked so normal before. Yet I can't help but think how silly they look. There's no breathability, no flexibility." He said, looking back to Chad.
"They're so confining" Chad agreed "Probably designed to block mosquitos. I'm not sure why they would cover so much otherwise."
"Er..." Chad continued "I mean I guess I KNOW why he would cover so much, but it just looks so strange now. And the weave, just so unnaturally neat. I'm not sure anyone in our tribe could make such cloth."
"I prefer my loin cloth, Its freeing." Rob added.
"They don't let the jungle take back the water. For some reason they just cling to it" Rob added "How can you expect to hunt game or climb trees in such clothes?"
"And he's a man" Chad grinned in amusement "When i'm his age I'll need all the help I get when hunting. I lose enough water just climbing trees, let along hunting!"
"It no doubt brings his family shame to see him in such dress." Rob paused and returned his gaze to Martin "Perhaps Martin would prefer us to dress him in his loin cloth?"
Chad thought for a moment, and smiled slightly. "I think he would. He looks pretty sweaty in all those clothes."
"The cloth was in that small pouch sewn into his cloth" Chad continued, giggling slightly "The pouch sewn onto his BUTT. why don't you grab it?""
Giggleing at the absurdity of a butt pouch, Ruut gently pushed Martin to his side and began to fish through his pockets.
"It's not here." He said, looking up at Chad "Perhaps it fell out?"
"The design of those pouchs make no sense. Yet another reason he needs to change." Chatok thought for a moment "We were moving pretty fast, lots of jumps and bumps on that path. I bet its back on the trail somewhere."
"No matter. He'll just have to suffer the heat a bit in this ulgy cloth, once we get to the village the Chief will find him something."
Almost as if prompted by their conversation, Martin's clothes began to shimmer. Bands of sparkling orange-ish light began to cross the fibers of both his shirt and pants, fizzling the fabric away as they crossed his body. As the bands ate away at the clothes, the fabric itself seemed to shift. Both garments began to soften, and orange and black tiger-like stripes began to emerge from the base color. As quickly as the process started, it was done.
"The jungle has blessed him with new coverings!" Ruut said in amazement. "Replacing what he'd lost."
"He's so pale!" Chatok said, smirking with a slight giggle at Martins exposed skin.
"Chatok" Ruut replied, a more serious tone in his voice. "Ignore the ugly pale skin. Why does he have the coverings of a woman?"
For some reason Chatok hadn't noticed this, but once he looked past the skin he saw that Martin's legs were covered by a similar, albeit longer and slightly more modest cloth, while a similar band was worn over his chest. For a woman this would have helped preserve modesty, for Martin it was just odd.
"Why would the blessing of the jungle give him the wrong clothes?" Chatok asked. Chatok always deferred to Rutt's knowledge. Ruut had studied under the medicine man and knew much more about the jungle goddess's ways.
"I'm not sure, it is not for me to say" Ruut Replied. Bowing his head, he offered a short prayer of thanks for blessing Martin with these new clothes, regardless of their implied gender.
Silence filled the air as Ruut gave his thanks. A toucan called in the distance, seemingly acknowledging his words.
"Um, Rob?" Chad replied, breaking the stillness "I think we got a little carried away."
Rob paused, blinking his eyes a bit in vaguely confused concentration. "Damn, more so than usual."
"We can do this...bro" Chad deliberately tried to force his once jocular vocabulary, but in his current body the words felt awkward. There was something alien about the sounds, they almost seemed accented. What he didn't realize was that the word lacked a cognate in his new Toung, the result was a heavily accented attempt to form the sounds with his language's slightly different, more limited alphabet. Not realizing he had long since abandoned English, Chad failed to realize this,
Rob stood, idly hoping moving would help keep the influence of the jungle at bay. "Ready to go yet?" He stretched his arms in the air, limbering up his child like body in preparation for moving martin. While he was strong in this form, moving an adult body was still hard for a child and he was feeling some soreness set into his muscles.
"When I'm older I'll be able to carry two men all by myself!" He thought, smirking in excitement before just as quickly shaking the thoughts away. He WAS older, he just didn't look it right now.
"Okay Rob, still tired but ready as I'll ever be" Chad said as he stood, gently brushing a few of his braids behind his shoulders.
"Chatok doesn't normally tire this easily" Rob thought as he studied his friend with a vague sense of concern.
In the light of the moon that was beginning to stream through the trees, Chatok's hair looked different than normal. Slightly glossier, the braids somewhat neater. A few new feathers appeared, these far more brilliantly colored than the initial set, weaving their way into his locks. Ruut found himself oddly thinking it looked prettier than normal...