"You should be able to awaken now, please get up."
The voice brought Neil out of his trance. As his vision cleared, he could see a figure looking down at him, it was the woman from before.
"What happened?"
He asked in a weak, groggy voice. The look on the woman's face bothered Neil, she was clearly upset about something. She sighed before giving her reply.
"I won't drag this out, the vile I was carrying contained the physical essence of another body. When you startled me, it flew from my grasp and landed in you. Since you have no ability to manipulate ether, it overwhelmed your form."
Just hearing that gave Neil a headache. He thought to himself that he must not have heard something right.
"I'm going to have to take you with me now. It will make things clearer, and don't worry about this world, your leaving it will not have many effects.
As Neil struggled to gain some kind of understanding from those words, the woman lifted a pendent lying on her chest; it began to produce a faint green light, and then suddenly, it released a tremendous flash. The light seemed to stay on for a while, but eventually Neil realized that what he was seeing was not the light of the jewel, but of the Sun. It had somehow become broad daylight.
"What? What happened?"
"This is Aldeltia, the land that I come from. The people of this world have a great understanding of the ether." As the woman said this, Neil finally got his first good look at her. She was older than him, maybe twenty, and had strange silver colored hair tied in a ponytail. Her clothes were somewhat odd, but looked expensive. Neil still wasn't following what she was saying, but he felt so weak and tired that he just went along with it.
"We should be able to return you to normal. However, your absorbing the essence from that vile is a serious problem."
The woman briefly glanced over her shoulder, then turned back to Neil, biting her lower lip.
"I will take you somewhere to rest, then we can decide on what to do."
Neil simply passed out again after that.
He woke up in yet another place, no longer in the woman's arms, but laying on something soft. Upon opening his eyes, he saw some bright white silk all around. He was in one of those fancy beds with its own curtains all around. Neil finally felt good enough to sit up, and did so, but as soon as he did, he heard something outside.
"There's activity in the room, she is awake."
The sound of a door practically being kicked open swiftly followed, through the silk curtains, Neil could see some figures approaching. A hand appeared between the two silk curtains, and parted them, revealing an old man who looked something like a doctor.
"Good day, as the transfusion of ether that lead to your body being altered was not intentional, we must very carefully examine you. Please bear with us for a while."
Altered? What did he mean? Neil thought to himself.
"Um, I'm sorry, I really don't get..."
Neil noticed that his voice was way off, he couldn't even get it to sound like that when your tried on purpose in the past. The doctor just looked on, with an expression that looked half amused, another man was now behind him, perhaps an assistant.
"What's wrong with my voice?"
Then Neil noticed that his voice wasn't just wrong, it sounded like a girl's.
"Hey, hey, hey" he said to test his voice. "What? I sound, almost like a girl!"
The old doctor made a light chuckle, and then turned around to face his assistant, who handed him something.
"That is because, you are a girl."
Neil shook your head when he heard this.
"What did you say?"
No answer came from his mouth, instead he only turned and rested a stethoscope on your chest.
"Wah!"
It was cold, very cold. In fact, Neil never felt one as bad as this. He immediately recoiled and crossed his arms over his chest. It actually felt a little sensitive, but he brushed it off and scowled at the doctor.
"What did you do to that? Dip it in ice water?"
The expression of amusement returned to the doctor's face returned.
"Don't worry it is a good sign, your body seems to have developed healthy nerves. But I think, it's best that you actually find out what happened."
He called for his assistant, who brought over a small mirror.
"This is you."
The assistant placed the mirror in front of Neil, but in place of his face, complete with boyish short black hair and brown eyes, Neil saw some girl with a amazingly abundant wavy brown hair and bright green eyes.
"What do you mean that's me?"
Sure enough, as he said that, the girl in the mirror did the same, and the only voice Neil heard, was not his own, but clearly female and perfectly fitting to the girl staring back at him from the mirror. It caused him to go into a bit of a panic.
"What happened? Where am I? Is this a dream or something?"
"No, this is a serious predicament. We need you to cooperate with us."
Neil turned and saw the woman from before.
"You! What was in that thing you stabbed me with? What did you do?"
"I didn't stab you." She said with a slightly annoyed tone before making an apologetic look and coming closer to you. "I hadn't noticed you, and when you came up behind me, I was so surprised that I lost my grip on it and threw it into the air."
While Neil pretty much agreed that that was what happened, it felt easier for him to blame her, and so he didn't let off glaring at her in the least.
"I know, I'm sorry, but it can be fixed. We just need you to help us first."
Help? Neil didn't know why you should help them with anything after what happened to him.
"Why should I do anything after being turned into this?" Neil said pointing to himself.
"No one will recognize me, and I can't even get over my own reflection. Did you have to make me a girl?"
The woman looked slightly more impatient after Neil's little outburst. She pushed herself through the bed curtains and leaned on the mattress with one knee.
"I said that it was an accident. I didn't come to cause you any problems."
She was almost scary, so Neil decided not to snap at her for now.
"In any case, what's done is done. The reason you're in that body is because it is the body of the princess of the caves. She is the one who must communicate with the incarnations of the ether on behalf of all of our people. Without her, we cannot fully understand the ether's feelings and will. Lately the incarnations have seemed angry. We were counting of the princess to calm them, but something went wrong. We barely managed to save her. In the mean time, the incarnations became more and more wild. We ended up forging a new essence to inject into her body to restore it to health, but it ended up in you, and changed you. That's why you are the girl you see in your current reflection."
She reached out with her hand and grabbed Neil's.
"Please, we need you to take on the role of the princess. You will be a hero to everyone, surely you see out plight? We only need you to remain like this until the true princess is healed."
Before Neil could answer, if he was even going to, the doctor interjected.
"Well, I'm sure that's enough to chew on for now, but we must finish here, so if you would kindly wait outside while we work."
The woman nodded and left.
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author