There was nothing he could do about it.  Once again, his girlfriend had managed to get the upper hand.  It wasn't, exactly, that he deserved it.  But, then, sometimes women could be such<span style="font-style: italic">unbearable</span>assholes.<br/><br/>Saying that aloud was a bad idea, turns out.<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>"Ow!  What the fuck was....that.....about..."<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Ok. I know she didn't hit me that hard.</span>The thought circled inside his head like a shark in a pool full of surfers.  It wasn't very welcome, but then again, neither was what he was seeing.  For a moment, he lay there, wondering if she had done some real damage this time, like spring a gear loose in his head.  When he shut his eyes and opened them, however, nothing changed.<br/><br/>And so he sat up, and blinked against the sunlight streaming through the too-tall trees.  Definately too tall, since he had been just walking in the front door of his house a moment before, which most assuredly was not in any forest.  It had also been morning, not afternoon.  He looked around at the tall trees, pines mixed with other deciduous ones that he could not recognize.  High hills surrounding a valley, though he could only see bits and pieces of them through the dense foliage.  And then he looked down.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Also, I am pretty sure I wasn't a girl before.</span>There was nothing for it but to stare.  reluctantly, he touched bits of his anatomy that had been decidedly flatter some thirty seconds before, and blinked as they actually touched something solid.  Well,<span style="font-style: italic">sort of</span>solid.  For a moment, he stood there just absolutely weirded the hell out.  He must be asleep, the woman must have knocked his ass out cold, and he was having one HELL of a dream, because this couldn't possibly be real.  Frantic thoughts burned in his head (<span style="font-style: italic">Narnia....Sword Art Online....dot.hack/sign...a really good acid trip...</span>)<br/><br/>And then he - she, as it was for the moment - dropped to her knees, and howled in consternation.  Something seemed to stir deep within, and he swore to god if that was a period starting things were going to get extremely violent, extremely quickly.  The feeling, though, seemed to spread outward, suffuse his limbs with a kind of light and life that he had never in all of his life experienced.  Even certain illicit things didn't feel like this.  It built, as if gaining pressure, as his - her - howl changed tone.<br/><br/>And it was as if something...changed.  He knew what it was - on some instinctual level - but consciously he was as lost as, well, someone doing something they had never done before.<br/><br/>The ground trembled faintly, and quickly grew in intensity.  The howl of outrage and confusion became one of horror, delivered in a crystaline tone of a young woman.  The trees swayed as the ground  shifted restlessly, and that feeling of light, life, and<span style="font-style: italic">power</span>seemed to flow out of her flesh and into the ground in a staggering wave.  Abruptly, she stopped her shriek of terror, and when she did, the ground immediately quieted.<br/><br/>"What.....the..." she said in a low voice.  Only mildly dazed, she rose to her feet, and looked around.  A few trees had toppled, and there were some small cracks in the humus of the forest floor.  All of the birds had ceased their chittering, and the land lay as silent as death itself.  Uneasily, the woman -<span style="font-style: italic">man, man, I'm a damned man</span>- turned, and looked around in greater detail.  A short distance off was a pool of water where a creek had been dammed by some creature or another.  The surface had yet to fully still from her...her whatever it was...but it would serve the purpose she sought all the same.  On unsteady legs, feeling oddly drained from that whatever it had been, she approached the pool and, reaching its shore, looked down.<br/><br/>In the shivering waters, she saw fish flit underneath rocks.  And saw her face.  She stared at it for a long, long moment.<br/><br/>After a time, she shook her head, hair of unaccustomed length shifting against the back of her neck.  "Well.  Its got to be the most twisted dream in the world."  The words were low, meant only for herself.  Clearly, there couldn't be anyone else here.  It was a dream, and nothing more.  Still, she - he, damnit! - had to wonder at how he ended up in<span style="font-style: italic">this</span>particular body.  Still, it did explain some things.  Well, it explained....<span style="font-style: italic">that</span>...but not how in the hell he had wound up as a she.<br/><br/>"Ok.  So.  This is a dream.  All I need to do is wake up, then."  Without a second thought, he slapped himself in the face.  Hard.<br/><br/>"Ouch."<br/><br/>Well.  That didn't work.  How did one go about waking up from a dream?  He was pretty sure it was never a question that anyone had to ask.  You just did, eventually.  And then you forgot everything that happened in it.  Moving about in unfamiliar dress, feeling more awkward by the moment, he had to take stock of the situation.  And found that he had no specific answers for dealing with something of this nature.<br/><br/>"Fuck it.  Guess I'm walking.  I hope there isn't some kind of sex-crazed beast looking for teen-aged women lurking in this forest."  A snort.  "At this rate, I might run into little red riding hood."<br/><br/>Or the big bad wolf.  Who could say, at this point?