Pwalu got back into bed with Gareth’s help, and lay there, mind reeling, as he left the house. She hadn’t been really pregnant, just infested with one of those parasites Gareth had told her about – like Qesem. Where was Qesem? She’d had a parasite too, a mature one that must have spawned and its offspring infested half the village, and then she’d taken the drug… she must have gone into rapid labor at Tiequ’s house, like Gareth had said, and was resting there afterward.
And now Pwalu had a vagina, and a womb, and possibly other female parts inside. Would her penis grow back now that she’d gotten rid of the parasite? Somehow she doubted it. She wasn’t sure she wanted it back – it was nice to be at least partly a woman, but without a penis to satisfy her in bed, would Qesem want to stay married to her?
She didn’t have long to stew in her thoughts. Long before she felt well enough to get up and go look for Gareth, Qesem returned. She looked pale and tired as she came and sat beside Pwalu. “Are you feeling all right? Gareth explained to me about the parasite… I’m so sorry.” She started to sob.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Pwalu said, reaching up to stroke her hair. “If anything, it was mine, for not bringing you to Gareth sooner, so you could get the drug before the thing in you spawned. But if I hadn’t brought in the harvest first, we would go hungry this winter. I don’t see how it could have been any different.”
Qesem continued to sob for a couple of minutes. When she was able to speak, she said, “I know that. I wasn’t in my right mind for the last – how long has it been again?”
“Almost three months.”
“Looking back on it, I was so happy I was going to have a baby, and it was all a horrible cheat. I’m afraid it might have damaged my womb so I can’t ever have a real baby now… if I could have done in the first place.”
“We can ask Gareth, he would know.”
“I asked him. He said it sometimes did and sometimes didn’t.”
“Oh.”
They were quiet a little while, and then Qesem stood up and said, “I need to go. Gareth asked us to help him hunt down any parasites that are lurking and looking for hosts, once we’re recovered enough from expelling the parasites to walk. Come join us when you can, but don’t rush it – you didn’t just have to push out the parasite, you lost blood when the thing chewed through your privates to your insides.”
“Check the corners of the house first,” Pwalu urged. “There probably aren’t any more in here, since Gareth was here for a while and didn’t get attacked, but since I was attacked here…”
“Oh, yes, I’ll do that first.”
While Qesem was carefully searching the room, Pwalu hesitantly spoke up. “Before you go… have you thought about whether you want to still be married to me? Since I’m not… well, not entirely a man anymore?”
Qesem turned from the corner she was searching and said, “I love you. Not your penis, although sex with you was a lot of fun, and it was nice to hope we might be lucky enough to have a baby, or even several. Of course I want to still be your wife. How could you run that farm on your own?”
Pwalu smiled weakly. “I love you too. So, so much.”
“And…” Qesem said, hesitantly, “maybe we can figure something out? About sex, I mean. You could, I don’t know, maybe put your fingers in my vagina and we’ll see if that feels good? And if you want, I could do that for you… I don’t know if yours will work the same way, since the parasite didn’t need you to feel pleasure in sex, only to have a way to give birth to its babies.”
Pwalu blushed. “Y-yeah, we could try that. Sometime.”
Qesem giggled. “Yeah. Not now. Got to kill those parasites.” She resumed her search, and a few minutes later kissed Pwalu and left the house.
It took a while before Pwalu felt like getting up, and when she did, she realized she didn’t feel as good as she thought and laid back down. She tried again a while later, and this time managed to stand straight without feeling dizzy or lightheaded.
“Time to go hunt some parasites,” she muttered, and looked around for her spare trousers and her shoes.
The men who had been infested had mostly taken longer than the women to recover from the false pregnancy, but by the time Gareth and Fialasem had administered the drug to the last few infested, some of them were helping hunt parasites as well, and were particularly vicious as they stomped on them or speared them with pitchforks. They started at the end of the village where the shrine and the priestess’s house were, since that was where Qesem’s parasite had spawned, and worked their way outward through the village and the surrounding farms. Most of the ones they found were within a couple hundred meters of the priestess’s house, but some were up to eight hundred meters away. The hunt continued for several more days, with Gareth and Fialasem recruiting the farmers nearest the village to help and declaring success once they expanded their search radius again and didn’t find any more.
On the fourth day, Qesem, Pwalu, Gareth and the people of the village gathered in the shrine to talk about the future of the village. Gareth told them what he’d told Pwalu about the estrogen beans, as well as another sort of plant that was made in the old days for women who wanted to be men.
“So if you’re happy with your new vagina and want to have breasts and hips and so forth, look for estrogen beans and start cultivating them, but if you don’t want to be a woman, you can eat testosterone berries and it’ll keep you looking manly everywhere except your privates. There’s a few bushes of them in the ruins; I’ll guide Tiequ and some others to where I saw them growing and we’ll bring a harvest, if they’re still bearing this time of year, and anyway some cuttings or seedlings so you can plant more.”
“Has anyone seen a plant like this growing?” Pwalu asked, passing around the drawing of an estrogen bean plant that Gareth had given her. Someone said he thought he’d seen it or something like it growing in a meadow south of town.
“Will we be able to get our wives pregnant somehow, if we eat those berries?” the miller asked.
“No, unfortunately. It’ll just help you keep your muscle tone. You women will need to use surrogate fathers if your partner has a vagina now and you want to have children after this. If your wombs are still able to have children, after what the parasite did to them. I won’t lie to you, probably about half of you who were fertile before are no longer so.”
“What about us?” Pwalu asked. “Could I have a baby, if…” She couldn’t quite bring herself to think or talk about having sex with a man. Wouldn’t that be cheating on Qesem?
“I have no idea,” Gareth said. “I don’t have the equipment to tell if you have ovaries or just wombs.”
After Gareth’s blunt delivery of bad news, Fialasem led the people in a paean of praise to the Shining Ones that they had fared no worse, and a prayer that most of the people would still be fertile despite their ordeal. Gareth slipped out quietly during the prayer.
That night, Pwalu talked about her choice of names with Qesem, and after hearing Qesem’s suggestions, she decided to call herself Pwalem.
They searched the meadow south of town where the estrogen beans were supposed to have been seen, but couldn’t find them before they had to leave. The villagers promised to keep looking and send them some next year if they found them.
Pwalem and Qesem didn’t have a chance to try having sex the way Qesem had suggested until they got home, just ahead of the first snow, as they were always sharing a bed with their hosts in the various villages they stopped at. But when they did, they found it delightful, just as satisfying as the old way for Qesem and even better for Pwalem. They couldn’t have children this way, but it had always been chancy, and they would have each other, at least.
Everywhere they stopped on the way home, they showed people the tracing of the estrogen bean plant, but no one remembered having seen one. Several promised to keep an eye out and send word if they found it. But over the following winter, Pwalem found that her chest was growing puffy and her aureoles expanding, like a young girl. By the end of spring, her breasts were obvious to everyone, even in her loose shirt, and her hips were getting to be more feminine.
They talked about bringing a man in to share their bed, so they could try to have children, dithering about it for months before making up their mind to broach the subject with Shwaki and Seilum. Seilum wasn’t happy about sharing her husband with them, but finally agreed to let them try. But after one night, extremely awkward for Shwaki and Qesem and traumatizing for Pwalem, they decided it wasn’t worth it, and quietly dropped the plan.
Not everyone was happy with them. Some of the neighbors and people of the village said they should separate, and find men to marry. But Pwalem had cleared the land herself, albeit with help from her family and neighbors, and it was hers by law and custom even though it wasn’t customary for women to own a farm unless they inherited it from a dead husband. So they went on loving each other and working their farm, losing a few friends but none they deeply cared about, and if they had nightmares now and then about the parasites, the other was there to comfort them.
But over the following winter, Pwalem found that her chest was growing puffy and her aureoles expanding, like a young girl.
I thought that might be the case.
But dang, that critter is thorough!
This is going to live rent-free in my head for... several years, probably.
Honestly, the fact that Pwalem's body is going through a second puberty means she probably could have kids if she wanted to. Odds are, the parasite gave her ovaries, and ovaries are the main natural source of estrogen. Of course, since she and Qesem have decided against trying again with a surrogate it's kind of a moot point, but personally, I'd feel incredibly euphoric to even be capable of having a kid, even if I never intended to do it.
If you can't tell, this story is also taking up permanent residence in my mind. Tris' stories are always so trippy and genderf*cky and fun.
@ashlynflagg but what do those ovaries contain? parasites that make their belly swell up?
How do we know its residence is only in the mind? Will new stories spawn there in 3 months to lurk in the shadows of Scribblehub? Time may tell.
I'm inclined to suggest anyone suffering writer's block to go visit Tris' for a good time.
I'm glad it worked out well for them