“I-it’s okay, j-just calm down…” Chad tried to say, but Martin was too worked up to listen to reason. “We’re safe here in the village…”
“Village… the village…” Martin muttered quietly, looking all around and feeling the tug of vague memories as he glanced around the medicine man’s tent. Memories of coming to the medicine to get a scraped knee cleaned or a stomachache relieved. To witness the medicine man and the midwife help her mother give birth to his baby brother. To try to find Ruut and beg him to go on another adventure out in the jungle. Names and faces were rushing into Martin’s head so quickly it made him dizzy, and with a quick shake he managed to banish them away for the time being.
“Maaa… M-Maa’ti. Maa. Tii-n,” Chad tried in vain to say the name ‘Martin’, but his limited phonology made it nearly impossible to wrap his tongue around the short ‘R’ in the middle of the word. “You’re Maa’ti, right? From… from… The learning place?”
Chad struggled to communicate his meaning in a way that would tell Martin anything useful. They might now both speak the same language, but certain words and concepts from their lives before just didn’t exist anymore in their jungle child brains. ‘School’ just wasn’t a concept in their tribe; learning didn’t happen at a place, it happened with a respected person like Nequi or the medicine man. The idea of children getting stuffed into a hut to learn seemed so silly that even putting a word to the concept was absurd.
“Learning place? You mean, the school?” Martin replied, struggling to say ‘school’ now that the word no longer existed in his native language. Chad just looked at him blankly, shrugging his shoulders when he heard the unfamiliar word. “Okay. The learning place, then. I was bigger, then I came here and now…”
He looked down at his slim, brown-skinned, and above all female body. It was different in practically every way from who he was supposed, and yet being in this body felt so right. Like he'd been born with it, grown into it over his entire life. But at the same time, he remembered his old body, and the two images he had of himself were struggling for prominence in his head. “Now I’m like this. Did it happen to you too? You came here, and now you are a girl, too?”
Martin looked over Chad’s body, just as delicate, brown, and smooth as his own, and with long, beautiful hair that was just as intricately decorated as his was, and naturally he just assumed that Chad was a girl as well. But hearing the implication that he was anything but a man made Chad frown with annoyance and stomp his feet childishly.
“No, I’m not a girl! I’m the chief’s son!” Chatok said proudly, loosening his loincloth without even a moment’s hesitation to reveal the boyish nub beneath, then Chad managed to regain control and blushed across his whole body as he realized he'd just exposed himself to a girl. (No, a boy. No, no that either, a man. Or, was he a man?)
Martin felt a flush go through him as he looked at Chad’s young body, and looked away immediately. He wasn’t sure exactly why he was so embarrassed to see Chad, since in the back of his head he had plenty of memories of swimming in the river with Chatok, Ruut, and all the other village children.
“W-well, I’m not a girl either… Right? I’m not supposed to be, at least…” Martin said quietly as he absentmindedly played with a few of his long, girlish braids. “And I’m not supposed to have dark skin… or long hair… or be a child…”
“I know. It’s the same for me,” Chad replied after tightening up his loincloth once again, his words sounding forced as he struggled to communicate his true thoughts. “It’s like… There’s the old me. And there’s Chatok. And then, in the middle there’s me right now. My body, my instincts, my feelings, they’re Chatok’s. I look at you and I see… I see Maa’ti. A girl, my friend, my w-… M-my wif-…”
He couldn’t say it. He knew it would just upset Martin again if he knew he wasn’t just turning into a native girl, but also being forced into the role of Chatok’s wife. But then, Martin spoke up to finish Chad’s thoughts.
“...Wife. Your future wife. That’s what I am…” Martin said slowly, the memories rushing into his head as much as he tried to keep them out. “My father and your father agreed that we would wed when we came of age.”
Once the flood of new memories began, it was hard to stop them. Little pieces of Martin’s life were eroded away, and Maa’ti’s feelings and experiences began to fill in the cracks left behind. Maa’ti, the girl whose name meant ‘jewel’ and ‘princess’ and behaved just like one, the sweet and friendly girl that always got her way with her seemingly endless charm. Just as adept at playing with the boys as the girls thanks to her natural energy and sportiness, who had dreamed of one day learning from the huntresses of the tribe. The spirited girl who had a months-long argument with her father about having to one day marry her childhood friend Chatok and having to give up on that dream to instead settle down as a chief’s wife. Going on adventures in the jungle with Ruut and always dragging Chatok along, even though they all knew they’d be shouted at endlessly when they returned. Tomboy and princess all in one, the so-called queen of the village children.
That is who Maa’ti was, who Martin would become if he couldn’t shake her away. He had already lost his body to her, and who had already begun to influence him in ways he couldn’t even see. Without a word, Martin rose up, making sure his chest was covered and his loincloth properly tightened, then he walked to one side of the medicine man’s tent, where she knew that the old man kept a polished obsidian mirror. He gazed at the girl in the mirror, admiring the cute braids and big, brown eyes that were now his. The tiny, adorable nose and the bright, white teeth that glittered as she smiled. It wasn’t his face, but… there were certainly worse faces to have. Maybe, he could… she could…
Realizing the trap he was falling into, Martin stepped away from the mirror as quickly as he could, tumbling over backwards and falling right on top of Chad. “S-sorry, Chatok… I mean… Chaaat. Cha-duh,” Martin tried to say the boy’s true name, but his old name and his old face had almost completely vanished from Martin’s mind...