Exploring gone wrong

Exploring gone wrong

Shino liked exploring. He loved it so much that he spent every holiday and free day out somewhere, wandering through a forest or a more or less hidden valley.

Today he had driven to a small village, called ‘Riverwood’, near a deep forest. He had rented a room in the village inn. Then he had packed a backpack and went out into the fields on his way to the forest.

As always he had taken no map or other orientating item with him. His friends called him ‘mad’ and ‘crazy’, because he did that, but he thought it just made things more exiting.

Over the years he had gathered a lot of experience in the field and he was able to navigate almost any territory, without a map or other help. Because of that, he wasn’t worried a bit about finding his way back home into the village. Until now he had always been lucky.

If only he had known that his luck would fail him today…

He walked through the forest, taking smaller paths and not sticking to the official paths. “It’s so beautiful here… I wish I could always stay here…” Shino sighed, though he knew that wasn’t possible. He would have to return to his work in three days.

Shino walked through the forest for hours, enjoying the beauty of it. At noon he sat down on a small meadow and ate his lunch. A few birds sang in the trees. He watched two squirrels collecting nuts for the winter and he even saw a fox sneaking through the bushes, eyeing him with interest.

Later he moved on. When the sun began to set, he turned and started to make his way home.

Then things started to go wrong. He took a few wrong turns and eventually ended up completely lost in the middle of the forest. Though he didn’t admit it for a long time, he eventually grasped that he got himself lost.

Shino sighed. ‘Well, I should be able to get out of here. I have years of experience in navigation and I will get out of here!’

At least that’s what he told himself. A few hours later it was completely dark and he was STILL lost.

“Giving up is not my style.” Shino told himself and walked on. Lucky for him it was nearly full moon, so he could actually see a little.

Suddenly the whole forest lit up and a split second later Shino could hear a thundering crash. Then he felt the first drops falling on his skin.

“Great…” he muttered to himself. “Now it’s raining too…” And not just a little. Within minutes, it was raining cats and dogs.

“DAMN YOU UP THERE!” Shino shouted. But of course the rain didn’t stop. Quite the opposite in fact… It started raining more and more.

About an hour later Shino noticed something odd. “Huh? What’s that?”

Through the rain he could see a dark shape. Something very, very big. And a light.

“Why is there a light?” he asked himself. He walked closer and saw that the large shape was actually a huge mansion and the light was a small lantern hanging at the gate of the wall surrounding the house.

‘Maybe I can get in there and dry myself a little.’ Shino thought and went to the gate. It looked very old and a little rusty. ‘Luckily it isn’t locked.’ Shino thought by himself.

He walked through the gate and up to the main entrance of the mansion. ‘This place looks like nobody has been here for ages…’ Though the front door was locked he could enter the mansion through a broken window.

Inside everything was surprisingly well maintained. ‘Huh? Why does everything look so clean? I thought this place was deserted long ago…’

Nonetheless he walked on, happy that he had found a dry place. He opened some doors, in order to find a place to dry his clothes. Behind one door, he found a large room, with a comfortable looking bed.

‘I think I’ll stay here, until it is day again and the rain stops.’ He was surprised, when he found a stack of firewood next to the fireplace, but, freezing as he was, he decided that he didn’t care about why it was there. After he had started a fire, he took off his clothes, hung them in front of the fire and crept under the blankets.

He awoke the next morning, well rested and full of energy, to find his way out of the forest.

But when he opened the curtains, he saw that the rain was still falling down. It hadn’t weakened over the night. In fact, it even got worse.

‘Well, at least it’s nice and war here. I wonder if there’s something to eat in this house.’ With that thought in mind, he jumped out of the bed and wanted to put on his clothes…

“WHAAAT?!?” Shino shouted. “Where the hell are my clothes? I am sure that I put them onto that chair…”

But no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t find a single item of his clothes again…

“Damn, what am I going to do now?” Shino paced back and forth in the room. He had taken a linen sheet from a cupboard and wound it around himself, to preserve at least some dignity.

“Maybe there are some clothes in that cupboard…” He walked over to it and opened the door.

Well, to tell the truth, there were lots and lots of clothes. The problem was that they were all girls’ clothes. Shino spend about half an hour to search through the cupboard, but in the end, he found out that there wasn’t a single item of male clothing to be found in there.

“Great…” He muttered to himself. Right then his stomach grumbled. “And I’m hungry too… could this possibly be worse?”

In that moment he heard a thundering crash. When he looked outside through the window, he saw that the rain had intensified once more.

“Okay… I’m stuck in here for some time now…” He walked through the house in search of something to eat, wearing nothing but the linen cloth. But no matter how much he searched he couldn’t find anything edible.

Also, every room in the house, except for the one in which he had spent the night, looked as if it had been deserted a long time ago…

After his fruitless search, he went back into ‘his’ room again, thinking that it all must be a dream…

He entered the room and crept under the blankets again. “Maybe, if I go back to sleep and wake up again, everything will be alright…”

Two hours later he woke up again. Before he climbed out of the bed, he tried to reassure himself that it was all a dream and that his clothes would be there. “Okay, now get up, put your clothes on and get the hell out of here.”

He turned to the fireplace and the chair in front of it. “WHAAA! Why are they still gone?”

He took the linen cloth and wrapped it around his body again. “Damn, this is not going to work, if I ever want to get home…”

He paced back and forth in the room and it took him quite some time to swallow his pride, but eventually, he opened the cupboard with the girl clothes again.

Sighing he said: “It’s no use… I guess I really have to wear one of these…”

Shino looked through the clothes, in order to find something not too girly, but he had no luck. The cupboard contained only maid outfits…

“Oh god… I can’t wear these… Never!” Just in that moment, his stomach grumbled again, reminding him of his gnawing hunger. “Ugh… I guess… I have to go outside and search for the village… Even in one of these… Else I’ll starve to death…”

He picked one of the outfits and put it on. At least, he tried to. “How are these things even supposed to fit? And how do you put the damn things on anyway?”

Suddenly the outfit started glowing. “What the hell?” Shino exclaimed. A second later he was blinded by a flash of light.

Rubbing his eyes, trying to get his vision back, he felt something slide across his body…

When he could see again, about a minute later, he was shocked. The maid outfit had somehow managed to slip onto his body… Now he wore a black dress, which barely reached his knees. Below that he could feel that he wore panties and a small bra, which made him feel very uncomfortable.

Above the dress he wore a white apron, with a red ribbon tied at his neck. White gloves covered his hands and even reached over his elbows and a small white cap had settled on his hair. Shino breathed heavily. Of course the outfit didn’t fit anywhere. Either it was too tight, for example at his waist, or it was too wide, for example further up his chest.

“WHAT THE FUCKING HELL? HOW DID THIS STUFF GET ONTO ME??” Shino tried to pull the outfit off, but it wouldn’t move an inch. He couldn’t even untie the ribbon. “Is this thing glued in place or what?”

He got up from the ground and went out of the room, hoping that he would find something sharp to cut the outfit open.

When he opened the door of ‘his’ room, he stopped in surprise. “What happened here?” he whispered to himself. “This morning everything lay in ruins… Why does it look so clean now…?”

He was right. As he walked through the mansion, he saw that everything looked as if someone was living in the house and not as if nobody had set foot into it for decades.

Something inside of Shino stirred, though he couldn’t really grasp what it was.

He noticed that a corner next to a staircase was full of spider webs and dust and, not really knowing what he was doing, he went to a nearby cupboard, picked up a feather duster and started cleaning off the dust.

About halfway through the task he stopped. “Wait a second… what am I doing here?” He tried to drop the duster and walk on, but something in him wouldn’t let him do that.

“What in heaven’s name is happening to me?” Shino cleaned the rest of the corner, but actually he had no control about what he was doing. It was like someone else was guiding his hands…

Later that day, he lay on the bed in ‘his’ room again. Somehow he had managed to find the kitchen and to his surprise he had discovered that he was able to actually cook a meal. Normally he would just heat up some fast food, but apparently, the outfit not only forced him to clean dust away, but also provided him with the knowledge needed for cooking.

He was pretty sure that it was the outfits fault. “What else could it be…” he muttered to himself.

A while later he started to feel sleepy. “Might be better not to sleep now… Who knows what this… this thing can do to me…”

But no matter how hard he tried, a few hours later he couldn’t keep his eyes from closing and eventually he fell asleep.

As soon as his eyes fell closed, the maid outfit started to glow again. Slowly, very slowly Shino’s body began to change, to better match his clothes:

He shrank by a few inches and his arms and legs slimmed down. All his body hair disintegrated, leaving a soft and smooth skin behind. The hair on his head grew a tiny bit, until it nearly reached his shoulders and it also turned completely black in that process.

A pressure began building up in his chest and, feeling a bit uncomfortable, Shino scratched it in his sleep. Then he lay still again. With every breath that he took, his chest expanded, forming to small bumps, which eventually grew into solid C-cups.

Suddenly Shino felt a stabbing pain in his lower parts, which actually caused him to wake up. “Wha-what?!?” He wasn’t really awake yet, but he instinctively reached for the source of the pain.

Within a heartbeat she was completely awake. “It’s gone…?” she jumped out of the bed and ran to the full length mirror, hanging from the wall.

At first she couldn’t make sense out of what she was seeing. A girl in a maid outfit stared back at her. ‘What the… hmm… actually she’s pretty cute…’ she thought for herself.

“Hey, wait a second… THIS IS ME???” she screamed in shock and horror, when she noticed that the girl had her face. Though not for much longer…

Something forced Shino to close her eyes and she could feel a change in her face. When she could open her eyes again, a few seconds later, she looked into the mirror again and her mouth turned into a perfect ‘O’ of surprise.

Her whole face had restructured, softening her features and making them less prominent. Her nose had shrunk a little and looked pretty cute now.

But the biggest change were her eyes: Before the changes they had been of a dark brown, but now they had tuned into soft, dark green, sparkling orbs.

Shino blinked. “This… is me?” Even her voice had changed. It was very soft now and a lot more high pitched than before.

Before she could move another inch or do something else, the cap on her head suddenly emitted a bright flash of light.

“Ugh…” her memories began to change. The life of Shino, the hobbyist explorer began to fade away into nothingness. Instead, she now was Shizuka, short Shizu. She worked as a maid in the Greyka-forest mansion.

After the light had faded Shizu blinked a few times. Then she sighed. “I hope mistress returns soon. It’s a little boring to be alone…”