Extract from Ben’s diary:
After our scouting party had returned to Chiron’s Grove (with our two human guests on the backs of Snow and Lucy), Amanda and Chris greeted Zainab and Gulpari, and welcomed the two Muslim ladies to their new home by giving them a centaurback tour of the village – pointing out the new shops and services that we were collectively starting up again, such as the bakery, tailor’s, laundry and library. They explained to the humans why they couldn’t read the signs in the village, even though Epona had, granted them the ability to understand and speak the English language whilst they had slept overnight.
“We will both have to experience…intercourse…in the manner of horses, after we have become centaurs, in order to read the native language?” Gulpari had turned red as she said this. So Chris later told me.
“In the manner of us centaurs, yes,” Amanda told her. “Don’t be worried. After your transformations, you will acquire equine instincts. That includes the urge to mate. When you are ready to be mounted, it’ll come naturally. Once that is done, you’ll become a centaur in mind and spirit. You will be happy and content with your new forms and lives – and you will want to help the herd survive and grow, just as we do!”
Their tour ended at the church. Lucy and I had told our head stallion and head mare that we believed the two ladies would need some time alone to pray to Epona – given that Zainab and Gulpari had already been informed by us that Epona was open to us praying to other deities in her church.
“We will pray to your goddess first. Then to Allah. It seems the proper thing to do,” Zainab had told Chris, before dismounting from him.
I understand from Amanda that Zainab had then lingered for a moment, looking at Chris’s equine privates – before entering the church with Gulpari. For myself and Lucy, this just confirmed what we suspected would happen later.
After overcoming their reticence, Zainab and Gulpari started speaking with some of the foals and us adults during the communal evening meal. The two women were encouraged to eat well, to be prepared for their transformations to come. By that time, both of them had relaxed enough to remove their headdresses and remove their jackets – revealing that Zainab and Gulpari had already begun to grow their black manes, and that their ears were developing the cinema elf-like features that we centaurs have. Also, I had already learnt from Daisy that Qudsia was already beginning to moult and start to haltingly speak English.
Lucy and I smiled at each other as we ate whilst watching our new arrivals become acquainted with the other villagers. Before long, there would be three new members of the herd, adding to our colony. Each individual counted in our shared mission to survive and gradually rebuild the centaur race…
It happened in the bungalow we had cleared out for the two ladies. Zainab and Gulpari had asked for a mare and a stallion to stay just outside – ready for the moment we were needed to help out. With Lucy saying she would keep company with Cindy at home, I – along with May – volunteered to be on stand-by. Meanwhile, Spirit and Amanda would watch over Qudsia.
May and I talked about various things as we both waited outside the bungalow. Firstly about the progress with our farming, and how well our adopted foals were settling into their new lives – in a world without the electrical conveniences us human-born were used to. Then I asked her about Fred was adjusting from being scared of horses, to being half-horse himself.
The freckled red hair smirked. “My coming back to Fred, following by his transformation and his mating with me, was all what Fred needed to get over his PTSD and grief at the accident that killed the young human woman that I used to be. My beau is now just as proud and delighted to be a centaur as the rest of us. I know that, in time, we will become parents to our own foal, Ben. I do not need to be part-psychic to predict that. And Fred’s lactose intolerance has been cured, too. Epona’s magic has been good in resolving our physical imperfections...”
“…like Sarah’s now cured cancer – and the fact that Fred and I had to wear glasses before we were transformed.” I smiled back, before changing the subject. “I’ve seen how close you and Fred are, May. I’ve no doubt you two will make great parents.” I paused, moving on. “You and Gulpari were talking intently, earlier. She seemed worried. Is she alright?”
May nodded. “She was disturbed that her period suddenly stopped when she was sent to our world by our goddess. I’ve reassured her – telling her that it’s a sign that her transformation will soon take place. As a centaur, she will never have to worry about her painful monthlies again.”
“Got you…” I trailed off as both Gulpari and Zainab cried out loudly. At the same time.
But even as our half-pointed ears twitched and we rose upon all four hooves, we also heard Qudsia neigh long and loudly from the barn where she was being looked after. Panic laced in her voice.
“It’s happening to all three of them, together! Our goddess is back to balancing the transformation between horses and humans,” May breathed.
“Let Spirit and Amanda help Qudsia. May – you know the plan…,” I instructed her.
“I will comfort Gulpari.” The redheaded mare nodded. She then flung open the door to the bungalow, and quickly headed inside, with myself trotting in behind her. In the living room, Zainab was on the floor, on her side, twitching in pain and gasping as she tried to pull her Afghan tribesman clothes off. Gulpari was yelling from the main bedroom – and Snow quick-hooved herself over to there, to assist Gulpari. In the meantime, I squatted down to help Zainab undress, who told me she was too warm.
As soon as I had helped her to shake off her trousers, two things became apparent. Firstly, the now-visible bulges over her hips, underneath her underwear, suddenly grew larger and tore through the material, destroying it, to reveal the beginning of her forehooves. Secondly, Zainab’s plumed tail had already started to grow from the base of her protruding spine. She looked over her changing body with amazement and wonder.
“Merciful Allah! I am scared, Ben!” she cried out – just as Gulpari’s body, in the next room, began to ‘grind, crunch, snap, and pop’, as the other lady shrieked. And I could tell that Gulpari’s trunk was expanding, in the same way that mine had, when the goddess had blessed me with my transformation into a centaur. It hadn’t felt like a blessing at the time, of course – but like all of my herd brothers and herd sisters, Lucy and I were happy and proud to be centaurs now. So too were all of the foals. We were more than comfortable in our hybrid bodies. And now I was looking forward to having our latest guests joining our haras and finding their own freedom and happiness, too, as newly-formed centaurs themselves.
I heard May comfort Gulpari. Then I squeezed Zainab’s hand. “Don’t be scared, Zainab!” I told her. “Yes – it will hurt. But not for long. And then you’ll never want to go back to being human! You’ll come to love the benefits of being a centaur. I guarantee it.”
Zainab gave me a weak smile of appreciation. Then she gasped as the next stage of her change kicked in. Both she and I looked down at her exposed bra, which was deflating. I let go of her hand, and she unhooked her bra, to reveal her shrinking areolas and now flat chest. Her upper frame was altering too – becoming slightly larger and muscular. The waist turning thicker and studier. The thin arms bulking up so that they were becoming those of an adult man. Her facial features subtly altering, so that Zainab had a ridge above her eyebrows, her jaw hardening, and her Adam’s Apple becoming slightly larger. I also saw the emergence of hairs around Zainab’s mouth – she was beginning to grow a moustache!
“Aagghh!” She yelped and shot her hand from above her lips to her privates instead, as her vulva sealed itself up. Her labia puffed out into a scrotum – and I saw Zainab’s clitoris grow larger and turn into a man’s penis.
“The goddess heard my prayers! I am becoming male!” Zainab cried out with relief, as she – or rather he, now – saw the physical results of his sex change. Then he grabbed my hand again as his body exploded with the sudden emergence of a trunk below his human hips, forcing his legs and new equipment backwards and out of his sight. The new trunk rapidly expanded, allowing for the growth of new skin – and underneath that, the onset of Zainab’s secondary set of vital organs, heart, chest, stomach, intestines, kidneys, liver, blood vessels, and all the rest of it. Even as his newly-formed male reproductive organs grew also, and shifted into those found on a stallion, gaining a furred sheath as they did so. Meanwhile, Zainab’s mane and black fur blossomed and grew to cover his human spine and lower body respectively. The toe nails were swallowed up by expanding flesh, while Zainab’s toes merged together, and the balls of his feet swiftly transformed into hard hooves, even as the ankles rose and morphed with the rest of his legs. They stretched and altered, granting Zainab with the back legs and hooves of a horse – complete with ergots, coronets, fetlock, hocks, gaskins and equine buttocks. At the same time, the budding growths below his human stomach lengthened into his new forelegs, complete with pasterns and white forehooves.
Zainab cried out at the pain. His voice now lower in tone, to match his new gender.
“Hang in there, Zainab! Take deep, steady breaths, as we advised earlier – and don’t panic! It’s nearly over,” I encouraged him.
Finally, with his lower body filled out to the size and likeness of a horse, tail fully formed and twitching, and his ears now half-pointed, Zainab’s body fell silent after the sounds of his intense transformation. He panted, exhausted by the ordeal.
“What…? What breed am I?” he gasped.
The answer came to me instinctively, as I looked over his dark centaur body. Another of the psychic gifts from our goddess. “You’ve become a black-furred Fleuve, Zainab. A horse breed from Senegal, Africa.” I smiled at him. “Epona likes to give our horsey halves different nationalities.”
Zainab nodded and passed out with a smile on his lips. Whilst his mind and body rested, to recalibrate to his new life as a quadruped being with two sets of vital organs and extra nerve endings, I got up and peeped into the main bedroom, where May smiled back at me, crouched besides the new, just-transformed centaur mare that was Gulpari, who was also knocked out by her rebirth.
“She’s okay, Ben,” May answered the question on my lips. “Gulpari is now… Epona is telling me the words…a brown-furred Kaimanawa mare. Where on earth is that breed based? I’ve not heard of that one.”
“New Zealand,” I answered. “They are a feral breed.”
“Alright. And Zainab?”
I smiled, and my answer made May grin. “Our suspicions were right. Zainab is now our new herd-brother. He and our new herd-sister here will no doubt mate together, before the week is out.”
Minutes later, Gulpari and Zainab were both stirring again. Playing my part as the doctor I now was, as I checked their pulses, I asked them how they were feeling. Apart from being stiff and a little drained by their transformations, as was usual for our kind, they were recovering just fine. Zainab made the witty remark – just like my Lucy had – that, as a centaur, he now felt fabulous.
Between May and myself, we helped them up and brought them to face each other. Gulpari gasped and took a series of hesitant hoof steps in order to embrace her new boyfriend. She stroked his stubbled face and broad, toned, flat, naked chest, before sniffing him. “You look…wonderful. You smell…enticing,” she whispered. “What name will you bear now, dearest one? Zainab is ‘beauty. But ‘handsome’ is what you are now.”
Zainab hugged Gulpari back. “Well, we are free now, my lover. We have escaped the Taliban – and I have gained what I wanted. To be your man. Well, your male, anyway. Call me…Zafar. Victory in the English tongue.” He smiled at her. “You look beautiful, by the way, Gulpari! There is no need to hide your femineity under a disguise now. We are with friends. Our past ordeals are over.”
Gulpari blushed as she ran a hand through her black, wavey hair. It had grown over her shoulders during her transformation. She nodded, the ends of her lips perking up.
I patted their human shoulders. “Welcome to your new race, Gulpari and Zafar! You are both part of this centaur colony now. And as herd creatures we look after each other. It is our ethic. It will be a hard life – we need to make the best use of the land and our resources, to feed each of our two stomachs. But I hope you’ll make it a rewarding life. And a happy one, too.”
They both shared a look and then nodded. “Understood,” Gulpari responded. “We are used to working hard. We will play our part in this new community, to help it survive…” Here, she gave Zafar a sly smile. “…and grow.”
“You are now both physically complete,” May informed them, smirking. “As to when you will become centaurs in mind and spirit also…, well, we will leave that to yourselves to decide.”
Then the ears of all four of us centaurs twitched as we heard quick hoof steps approaching the front door of the bungalow. We all headed outside – me helping to guide Zafar, as he began to adjust to walking on four hooves. We stopped to see a beaming Amanda and Spirit with another centauress. A white-furred Qatgani beauty, with Nordic facial features and grey eyes. She had long, white hair that hung over the tunic she had evidently just put on, to cover up her now-human female chest.
“Greetings, Gulpari and Zainab. I hope your rebirth was not too painful?” she spoke haltingly, with a Swedish accent. “Main was jarring, but the pain did not last long. It is strange to now have fingers and hands, arms, and human intelligence – but I look forward to exploring my new potential as a centaur!”
“Qudsia…!?” Gulpari gasped.
The centauress dipped her head and smiled. “It is good to see you as kindred beings, mistress…and master.”
Zafar shook his head. “Not master or mistress. You are your own being, now, herd-sister. You are free. All three of us are free…” And with that, our new trio began to all weep tears of happiness, as they slowly stepped forward and embraced each other in a group hug. With Spirit, Amanda, May, and myself all smiling at another happy moment in the ongoing formation of our haras.