Answer To A Maiden's (?) Prayer Part Two

“This is the work of the Devil, right?” I asked, discontentedly, staring at the colour wheel. Designed supposedly to help you choose what make-up would suit you, the wretched thing baffled me. I'd expected learning to wear make up to be embarrassing, even humiliating. I hadn't expected it to be intellectually challenging. Clearly I was going to have to rethink my whole definition of what constituted a bimbo. Maybe so-called bimbos had a reputation for vapidity because their minds were on higher things – like figuring out colour wheels!

“The Devil has nothing to do with it I'm afraid,” replied Clarence. “You humans make your lives so complicated the Adversary is hard put to it to keep up. These days he mostly sticks to straight violence and occasional politics.”

Since Clarence was, literally, an angel, he knew what he was talking about. He'd been masquerading as my father for a week now, which I suppose made him my guardian angel.

That didn't stop me being annoyed with him. As he rightly said, I needed to learn feminine skills so I was working on sulking and had been since he told me I couldn't change my new name from 'Annabelle' which meant 'grace and beauty' to 'Morag' which meant 'Great Sun'. The way Clarence argued it, if I changed my name once I'd keep changing it every time a new name occurred to me, and I'd never truly come to accept that my new, female name was really who I was now. The fact that he was probably right was doing nothing for my mood at all.

“Of course I'm right,” said Clarence, one of whose annoying habits was reading my mind “You're simply upset by all the hormonal changes you're going through. It's nothing to worry about. You physically can't stay calm and cheerful until things settle down a bit. Just remember this will pass.”

Clarence was probably right again. When I'd been told the deal I'd assumed Clarence would simply wave the angelic equivalent of a magic wand and turn me into whatever I was going to be, like the fairy Godmother in 'Cinderella'. It turned out that although God could have done that (or anything else He wanted) angels had to work with existing materials.

I hadn't understood the explanation but broadly this meant that Clarence couldn't turn me into anything my genes, suitably recombined and fiddled with, didn't have the potential for in the first place and although he could dramatically speed it up he couldn't avoid the need for me to undergo a new and female physical adolescence. I'd lost four stone in weight and five inches in height, not to mention most of my body hair and muscle mass over the course of the last month, a process physically gruelling enough that I'd spent most of it in bed with the worst flu-type symptoms ever. The fact that my fever dreams had constantly involved being attacked by giant sharks hadn't really helped either.

I'd refused to remove my knickers for the last ten days. I showered in them, slept in them and, when I really had to change or remove them, shut my eyes. There were changes going on in there which No Man Should Wot Of. Granted I couldn't keep this up for ever, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't be a man for more than another couple of days, no matter how you stretched the definition. After that, I could explore without forbidden Wotting.

No, what was getting me down today and causing me to panic, was that I had definitely budded; two little lumps, very sensitive lumps I might add, were under my nipples poking them forward to stand clear of the puffy skin developing around them. Given my current rate of development I reckoned that in a week at most my nether regions would have settled down to femininity and a week or so after that I would have full-on boobs, which, with the way I was shrinking would probably be a major part of my body mass.

I was completely and utterly terrified!! I was turning into a girl! My name was Annabelle! In order to avoid Purgatory I had to lead a life of virtue and achievement, starting with becoming a stranger's Ideal Woman! A stranger I hadn't met yet. How was I going to flirt as a woman? What could I say? “You had me at 'The alternative is being eaten by giant sharks'?”

“You're jumping too far ahead,” said Clarence “Stick to doing the things you can practice now and worry about everything else when you've got those learnt, or when you have to, whichever comes first.” Clarence was clearly determined to continue his streak of being annoying, sensible and right but it was good advice, so for the next hour or so I continued to practice my list of non-swear words. I didn't particularly like it when women swore and Clarence had been helpful enough to inform me that my destined partner felt the same way, so I worked on saying, fudge, sugar, gah, bother, blast, gosh, darn, blooming, oh my Goodness and scary biscuits instead of swearing properly.

“Argh!” I eventually concluded “Fudge! I can't concentrate any more. I need a break. Is it all right if I get changed and go for a walk?”

“Of course it is,” smiled Clarence sweetly “But do be careful. Remember, an adolescent girl is vulnerable in ways a young man is not.”

I just managed to stop myself from screaming I am not an adolescent girl! I was going through female puberty, so that's exactly what I was, no matter that I'd lived twenty-five years and no matter how much the thought frightened me. “Giant sharks” I murmured to myself “Just think of giant sharks”

The hot water of the shower soothed a lot of the aches and pains that seemed to come with my rapid physical changes. One of those changes was that my hair had grown about eighteen inches in the month since all this had begun and I took the opportunity to crunch handfuls of mousse into it. To my surprise it actually worked. A few minutes later I had fine thick wavy tresses instead of my natural straight, lankness. I'd actually done something right! Maybe this whole 'being a girl' thing wasn't going to be impossible after all!

Then I braced myself. Since this started I'd been sticking to jeans and shirts. Clarence had raised an eyebrow but nothing more, since there was no reason why a woman couldn't or wouldn't do exactly that. But what Clarence knew and I knew and I knew he knew I knew was that I was simply terrified to wear unambiguously female clothing. So I'd come to a decision: it was thirty-eight degrees centigrade outside, I was going for a walk, the time had come to grow a pair (of ovaries, obviously) and try on a dress. I had to take several deep breaths before selecting something summery from the wardrobe Clarence had supplied and slipping it over my head. After that I had to take some more to avoid hyperventilating.

The good thing about the dress was that as a light, floaty, short-sleeved piece of cotton, thin enough that it might have been see through without the brightly coloured flower patterns that covered it , it effectively came with it's own air conditioning. The bad thing was everything else. It suited me! It made me look pretty, carefree, delicate, everything I didn't want to be. Granted I had no real cleavage, but the cut of the dress gave enough exposure to my soft, smooth flesh and long legs that there was plenty to distract from that.

OK, to Heck (very good, Annabelle) with make-up, which I was no good at anyway, this was as far as I could bear to go right now. So, quick trip into town, buy a paper and a snack and back I came.

I hadn't gotten more than half a mile from the front door before I was wanting to swap the dress for a nun's habit, or maybe a burqa. No one had made any remarks, but the way people were staring made me worry constantly that someone was about to. Oddly enough, although they were more subtle about it some of the women were as bad as the men – it felt like they were rating me on the Slut-O-Meter. Whether they were or not, I couldn't have borne to wear another stitch. By the time I reached the town centre I was sweating, which was mildly embarrassing in itself and also causing me to give off great bursts of peach scent due to my generous lashings of perfumed deodorant. What with one thing and another I was as nervous as a carefully disguised cat at a dogs convention. So when someone shouted a crude albeit complimentary comment about my bottom I almost jumped out of my skin.

I turned to look at the man who'd shouted at me, a young tough of maybe twenty who looked as if he'd slept in his clothes and peed in them in his sleep (Later I was to discover that this impression was almost cer5tainly right on both counts) dithered for a few seconds between confronting the commenter and running for my life and while I dithered someone else jumped in

“Rocky, you apologise to that poor girl right now or I swear you can sober up on the streets next time and take your chances with the police.”

Rocky recoiled before a dark haired man a few years older than himself who'd just emerged from the door of a building marked Socal United Charities Homeless Shelter. To his credit, although the newcomer, who sported a staff badge, looked to be made of hawsers wrapped around crowbars Rocky's expression suggested genuine regret, rather than fear.”

“Hey, I'm sorry man, you know how it is, when you hungry and a steak dinner walks by somedays you just got to say 'hello'”

“That metaphor would work better if the lady was a steak dinner and not a person.”

“I'm sorry Miss, I didn't mean anything by it.”

I was no longer paying attention to Rocky however, because I recognised the Sir Galahad in charity worker form who'd come to my aid – Clarence had shown me a picture. A picture of the man whose prayers I had been transformed to answer. I was so not ready for this.

“I – oh -oh my goodness- “

When I came to I was indoors lying on a bed in what looked like a first aid room while several people stood around looking worried and Sir Galahad sponged my forehead with a cool cloth.
“What happened?” I said feebly

“I'm not quite sure,” my personal white knight replied “I think it was a faint, but I'm not quite sure if you were out or having some sort of a fit because all the time your eyes were closed you were babbling about fins and waves and huge sharp teeth.”

“Oh holy fu-”

End of Chapter Two