“Sarah…? H-how did you… And, why are you…?” Chatok sputtered frantically as he looked at the pale woman in front of him. Even though her hair was short and undyed, her body shorter and her chest totally flat, her face was still unmistakably that of the young woman he knew. But that face didn’t show even a hint of recognizing him.
“...You know me, little boy?” she asked curiously, looking closely at Chatok and studying his face. “Can you help me get out of here? Something really weird is happening, and I-”
“You’re turning into someone else! That’s it, right?”
Sarah’s eyes went wide at the boy’s words, and even Chatok looked shocked that he had managed to finally say exactly what was happening. It was like a veil had been lifted from his mind, making it finally possibly for him to speak more clearly about the incredibly strange happenings that had been occurring in the jungle.
“Oh my god… Right, exactly!” Sarah exclaimed. “S-so, that means… you too…? It happened to you?”
“Yeah, I was a big strong boy, and now I’m a little kid!” Chatok chattered excitedly, oddly skipping right over the part where his entire ethnicity had changed as well as all the new memories that had been filling his head. “Sarah, it’s me! Chatok, your friend!”
Sarah raised an eyebrow at that, wondering what exactly this kid was talking about. “Look, I don’t know a ‘Chatok’… You seem like a nice kid and all, but I dunno if we’re ‘friends’…” she said slowly, until something in the boy’s eyes made her jaw drop when she recognized them. “...No. No fucking way… Chad, is that you?”
“...Chad? No, my name is Chatok,” the dark-skinned boy replied. Even though he was thinking more clearly, by now some things had completely vanished from his mind; although he could vaguely remember being older and going to school with Sarah, the name ‘Chad’ had been wiped away, leaving only the name ‘Chatok’, just as Ruut had completely taken over Rob’s persona.
“Chad, snap out of it! Y-you’re not some dumb jungle kid! You’re my boyfriend, remember?” she asked. And odd look passed Chatok’s face hearing this, and he bit his lip and looked down at the ground to avoid her gaze. He couldn’t tell Sarah that he’d been feeling much more attracted to his friend Ruut than he currently was toward her, nor could he explain that the boy she was turning into, Saa’rok, was far more pleasing to his eyes than the pale girl she was right now.
“I-I know, but… but it’s so hard to remember stuff from before…” Chatok whined childishly. “I know this is all really weird, that I should just try to run away, but…”
He glanced over toward the nearby village, and in particular to the medicine man’s hut. “But, I can’t just leave Ruut behind! And, it’s really dangerous to run away into the jungle, at least not until we learn the ways of survival from people like your father,” he said nervously.
“...M-my father…?” Sarah whispered, flashes of a man’s face flashing through her mind. The man who had just left, Nequi the legendary hunter. “H-he’s not…”
Sarah groaned as a wave of disorientation shook her body. She looked down at her dirty, calloused feet and saw the ground rising up toward her as she shrunk down to just half a head taller than Chatok, while her legs grew both skinnier and more muscled, the skin tight against her lean and tight muscles. She felt a tingle on her scalp and reached up with one hand, feeling her hair once again begin to slowly retract back into her skin, until it hung just a few inches below her ears in a loose bob that looked like it had been hacked into shape by a sharp stone.
Well, of course it was. What else would we use? She thought to herself. The idea of using scissors, or indeed any sort of metal implement at all, did not even occur to her. The tribe did not work metal, except perhaps for the bits of gold sifted from the river. A man should wear his hair cropped, not worn long like a child like Ruut does. But a piwayi like Chatok can wear his hair long, no matter his age…
Sarah frowned at the flood of information filling her head, but she tried to just ignore it. Chatok looked on as a dark tint began to seep into the roots of Sarah’s hair, the same glossy brown that all members of his tribe shared. As he looked at Sarah, he still saw both the pale girl and the strong, brown-skinned youth seemingly superimposed over one another, with his mind and his eyes arguing over which one was ‘real’. But the longer Chatok stared and the more Sarah’s body shifted before his eyes, it was as though a blurry image was snapping into focus. It made his head ache trying to sort it out, and it was easier to just not think about it. Especially when there was still work to be done...
“Sarah, it’s getting late,” Chatok replied quietly, distantly seeing the cooking fires in the village begin to be lit for the evening meal. “M-maybe we should deal with the deer, like Nequi asked?”
“Chatok, there’s more important things to do right now…” Sarah sighed, but at the same time as she looked at the half-dressed carcass she felt an urge rising up inside her. She saw a job left unfinished, an affront to the goddess. “...Fine. Let me handle this. It will go quicker.”
Without a further word, Sarah took a small stone knife that Nequi had left behind and brought it close to the dead deer. Only a few hours before, Sarah had been a devout vegan (albeit mostly to maintain a slim figure rather than anything else), but without even blinking she effortlessly began to use the knife to peel away animal’s skin in long strips, leaving the pelt as intact as possible to be tanned and used later. With the deer’s flesh exposed, she took a stone tool and began to scrape the meat away from the bones, while Chatok collected the scraps that fell away to be cooked into soup or fed to the village dogs. Every bit of meat would find a use; the marrow would be drained from the bones to be dried and used in cooking, the organs could be fed to the dogs or dried to form waterproof pouches, the bones would be carved into sewing needles, darts, arrowheads, or flutes, the antlers would make fine handles for their knives and other tools, and the tendons would be cured to form bowstrings and dozens of other uses.
If Chad or Sarah were still in control, they’d likely be nauseated by the gruesome work being done, but Chatok and Saa’rok knew it was necessary to avoid wasting anything. Other villagers hurried over to collect the raw materials the two were harvesting, bringing the meat to the kitchen tents and the skin, bones, and sinew to the craftsmen. As Sarah reached up to wipe the sweat from her brow, Chatok saw a tiny patch of dark fuzz sprouting under her armpit, a sure sign that the girl was maturing into a fine young man. And encircling her upper arm, a pattern of dark red pigment was etching itself into her skin, the traditional body paint of their tribe that marked her as a future hunter like Nequi.