Spring, 1901

 

Minden, Louisiana

United States of America

 

 

 

 

 

The baby!  She must save -- !  Then Josephine woke as she had countless times before and calmed.  It was warm and dark and she was comfortable.  There was no burning building about her, the child had been lowered to its father, and only then had the building collapsed.

This time, however, Jo did not relax and go back to sleep.  She had rested enough and she remembered what had happened.

Jo had fallen inside the building as the floors collapsed.  She had been pierced by a beam that kept her from escape just long enough to lose consciousness.  Then in the midst of the fire even her shapechanger's body, already terribly wasted from her rescue efforts, could not repair itself.  She must have died, yet she could feel her body's health with the clarity and detail that only a shapechanger could experience. 

Amazing!  She was a baby, not even born yet!  The warm darkness about her was her mother's womb.

Touching her mother's flesh so intimately, she could also probe her mother's body.  Mama was sitting in a chair, rocking, doing something with her hands.  Shelling peas?  Something like that.

But her mother's body was not healthy.  Though it had extra flesh, it did not know how to use the flesh properly.  Josephine commanded it to awaken to its fullest potential and make itself healthy.  It began to do so.  The extra fat would be a very useful source of energy and raw materials, while it lasted.

There were some problems that needed extra help.  Not that Mama's body could not -- now -- handle them, but it would take a long time to do it right, using just an ordinary human's healing abilities working at its best.  But Jo was an extraordinary human, one who commanded her body's resources several orders of magnitude better than anyone else.  And she could use those powers on others.

Three incipient cancers inside Mama began to dissolve into healthy tissue.  A ragged scar that pulled Mama's mouth down at one side began to repair itself.  Jo made sure that it would take several months to do so; it could be done much faster but that would scare Mama.  Her mother's skin began to lose today's sunburn -- overnight repair would be just about right.

There.  That would do for now.  Jo relaxed into sleep.

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Hours -- days? -- later Jo awakened to unusual activity in Mama's body.  A hardened penis was thrusting vigourously into Mama.

Josephine probed her mother's body.  Mama was enjoying this, and Jo could sense the man's body through her mother's body.  This man had supplied the seed that had helped make Josephine.  And Daddy was making love to Mama, not just having intercourse.

A good thing, too.  For him.  If this had been a rape Jo would make sure that the man quickly pulled out and stumbled away to collapse and puke his guts out.  Figuratively if the man were her father, and if someone else, literally.

Jo felt the love Mama held in her bosom for Daddy.  How good it was to know that.  Comforted, Josephine put herself to sleep to give her parents privacy.

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Jo slept a lot as her body built itself toward birth as a healthy infant.  During her awake time she recovered her memory, working backward from her death and the heavy demands of her rescue effort in the fire.  She discovered that she had died once before, in 1890, at the age of sixteen, in her small village in eastern France.  The illness had swept the village of more than half its people.  All of her family had been among those dead.

Before that she had been an ordinary girl child, working in the fields, tending barnyard animals and the smaller children in her family.  She had learned to read and write French and to do simple arithmetic, as most peasants did.

After her first death she had woken as a shapechanger.  She had lived a decade or so afterwards, slowly discovering her abilities.

She could change her skin in just a few seconds, in color, texture, and other ways, making it and the rest of her body almost impervious to freezing or sweltering weather.  She could change her muscles and other internal organs in a few minutes.  Bones took longer, an hour or more for minor changes, days for major ones.  Bones could be changed much faster, but it left them fragile.

She could also control her emotions and her thoughts better than ordinary humans.  She was very, very cautious about making changes in her brain, but in a few years she had become one of the brightest people in the world, and she began to think of getting a better education, or traveling.  But death had cut short those ambitions.

Now she had a second chance.  It took all of her esoteric self-control to handle her impatience.  She diverted it partly by making improvements in her body, and her mother's, to make birth safer and easier.

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Josephine knew when it was only a day or two before Mama would birth her.  Jo made a few delicate adjustments to Mama's body so that labor began an hour or so after sunrise.  Mama was awake and eating a solitary piece of buttered toast when Jo started labor.  Daddy was presumably awake and ready for the day too, and so it proved.

Daddy quickly had them in the marvelous family vehicle, no longer a novelty to Josephine after several trips in it but still lots of fun.  Jo was eager to see what it looked like.  She had only been able to deduce its appearance and function from the several trips her Mama had taken in it.

As the vehicle began moving it seemed to be traveling quite fast.  At an opportune moment, when Mama touched Daddy's arm and made some sort of protest -- probably about the speed of Daddy's driving -- Jo used the channel established by Mama's touch to calm Daddy.  The journey became safer.

At the end of the short trip Mama lay prone and was taken somewhere in a very smooth fashion.  Jo made sure her mother was calm and happy, not fearful, about what was to come.

For a few hours Mama lay in a bed of some sort as her labor sensations grew stronger and more frequent.  With the improvements Jo had made to Mama's body the sensations never became pain.  So well had Mama's body improved itself that Jo did not have to make any final adjustments at all.

Then the body belonging to the cool hands that had touched Mama's body periodically during labor said something decisive.  Mama made another short journey to a room where several people waited, to judge from the sounds transmitted to Jo's ears, and the birth began.

Several strong pushes squeezed Jo almost painfully and she felt her body began to slide.  World, here I come!

As a last effort before leaving the womb Jo absorbed almost all of the afterbirth and perhaps half of the amniotic fluid, leaving just enough to make her exit smooth and safe for the both of them.  Jo saw no need to waste such useful materials.

Then the world became very confusing.  Bright light assaulted Jo's dark-sensitized eyes, drawing tears before her eyes adjusted quickly to it.  Jo did not try to interpret the images yet.  Sounds were so much less muddy than they had been, and somewhat louder.  Her body seemed to be freezing for just an instant before her skin made itself comfortable.

Worst of all, a massive clamp imprisoned Jo's ankles and raised her to dangle upside down.  Blood in her body began to rush down to her head before her body normalized the blood flow.  Something painfully whacked her bare bottom, startling a cry out of her that brought sludge raining out of her lungs.  Damn it, I was just about to cough that up myself!  Idiot!  Asshole!

The air was sharp and Arctic within her lungs.  Dozens of stenches assaulted her nose, changing to mildly unpleasant as her body adjusted to them, then to innoucuous.  Jo was kept busy for many fascinated seconds puzzling out all the biochemical uses of the substances which had such odors.

By then she was wrapped in a soft, warm blanket, all except her belly and crotch.  Someone fumbled at the umbilical cord, a strong thread was tied around it close to her belly, and something sharp snipped the cord loose from her body.

Shit!  They had cut the cord before Jo's body had cast it loose.  She looked furiously up at the faces above her, each with a white mask covering their noses and mouths.  Then she looked down at her truncated umbilical and angrily dissolved the cincture into her body -- momentarily fascinated with the sharp and complex tastes of the material making up the heavy thread, something not found in nature.  Still angry, though less so, she quickly healed the slightly blood end of the umbilical cord, then retracted it into her body and formed a normal navel.

There.  Idiots!  THAT's what I was going to do until you assholes interfered!

But Josephine's anger was cut short at the sight below her navel.  It was a penis.

Damn!  There'd been some mistake.  She was a boy!

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It was seconds, or maybe minutes, before Jo recovered from this surprising development.  Meanwhile the white-masked people argued among themselves, presumable about a development just as surprising to them.  A decisive voice ended the excited discussion, and several of the people cleaned Jo's body and her mother's.  They focused mostly on Mama's groin and Jo's face.

When Jo turned her -- his? -- attention to her surroundings again she was in her mother's arms, who had one breast bared.  Jo's mouth, seemingly without her conscious attention, took the proferred nipple and began to suck.  She raised both her hands to grasp the breast.  It seemed as large as a mountain for a moment, until Jo realized that her own small head was scarcely larger than Mama's breast.

Mama's face was a bit blurred, until Jo focused her/his attention on making his/her eyes work.

The eyes were in perfect condition, of course, but Jo realized that she ‑‑ he -- would have to learn to see again.  His/her eyes were a different size and shape than in hi/r previous lives, and were spaced differently.  It would take a while before hi/r eyes would work well without conscious attention.

Mama's face was turned down toward her/him, sweaty hair in unruly strands.  Jo took in the smile on his mother's face, enjoyed the love he could feel transmitted through their touching skin, admired the wisdom and humor suggested by the wrinkles of age and laughter etched into his mother's face.  A warm, full feeling swelled in his chest ‑‑ love pure and strong.

Jo was very hungry and emptied both Mama's breasts.  Then mother and son were separated, Jo to the nursery where he was bathed in warm water and scrubbed gently but well.  Placed in a basinet and covered with a blanket, he slept several hours despite the bright lights about him.

Hunger woke Jo and complaining sounds began to come from him, surprising him for a moment until he realized that his baby instincts were asserting themselves.  In a short while a female nurse in pale blue clothing took him up, speaking nonsense to him and cuddling him while she took Jo someplace.

This turned out to be Mama's room, and there was a strange man there.  Strange until the man took him tenderly in his arms and began to talk nonsense to Jo.  When Jo grabbed his thumb Jo "tasted" -- as he sometimes thought of this way to probe someone's body -- that this was his father.

Jo looked carefully at the giant holding him: a trimmed reddish beard that matched the short curly red hair on his Daddy's head, a smell of clean sweat and an aromatic pipe tobacco, age lines showing as laugh lines, and a short but powerful body.  His father was a happy man and Jo felt an answering warmth in his chest.

It came to Jo that he had been very, very lucky to be born to a couple who cared so much for him.  He vowed at that instant to make sure his parents were always healthy and happy.  And beware anyone or anything that threatened them.  A raging grizzly bear was a kitten compared to a furious shapechanger.

Then Daddy turned toward Mama and laid Joe on her bosom, one breast already bared to feed him, and Joe became a greedy baby again.

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The day after his birth began early for the infant shapechanger.  Noise and motion woke him and he instantly came awake and peered about him.  It was a nurse and the time, he knew from his internal clock, was about 6:30.  The nurse placed Joe on a little cart like a miniature stretcher, which he decided was exactly what it was.  Now what was this all about?

She went down one hall, turned into another, and entered swinging double doors by pushing the cart through it ahead of her.  Beyond was an operating room.  Interesting.

A doctor and three assistants waited within, already suited in white coats and masks.  The nurse lifted Joe from the stretcher and placed him on a brightly illumined operating table.  Two of the assistants removed Joe's clothing and placed warm blankets over his chest and tiny legs and feet, leaving his midriff bare.

One of the assistants quickly but thoroughly swabbed Joe's crotch and penis and testicles with alcohol.  The sharp cold was painful for an instant before Joe's body adjusted his skin, then it merely felt pleasantly cool.  A second assistant painted his penis with another substance and it began to go numb.

Aha!  Joe had heard of this.  It was done to Jewish males soon after birth.  They intended to remove his foreskin.

But his parents and thus Joe weren't Jewish.  Joe would have long ago tasted the genetic difference in them and in himself.  This was puzzling, but he mentally shrugged the puzzle away.

The doctor lifted a scalpel from a tray beside him with one hand and reached and grabbed the tip of Joe's penis with a thumb and forefinger.  Joe sent a command through the doctor's latex glove and the fingers beneath it for the doctor's body to go to sleep.

The doctor paused, wavered on his feet, and carefully replaced the scalpel on the tray.  He staggered away out of Joe's sight, but Joe's hearing was perfect.  As surely as if he saw it he knew that the doctor got only to the edge of the room before lying down, sighing with relief, and beginning to snore.

There was a great deal of discussion then, some of it quite emotional, but shortly Joe was returned to his basinet.

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The next morning the circumcision procedure happened again.  This time, however, Joe was ready.  The instant one of the assistants tried to swab Joe's groin with alcohol he put him to sleep.  A second assistant tried.  He too was quickly snoozing on the floor.

There was much discussion.  Then Joe was again returned to his basinet.

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Later that day circumcision was tried a third time.  Joe was really pissed.  As soon as the operating room door closed he breathed into the air a biochemical that he had especially brewed for this purpose.

Everyone in the room except Joe began to feel ill.  The feeling increased in severity.  The doctor, who happened to be closest to Joe, started to vomit.  He rushed to a sink to void into it.  The nurse who had brought Joe to the room had the presence of mind to quickly wheel him out of the room.

Those within the room began to recover.  Joe had limited the biochemical to degrade within minutes.

 That was the last attempt to operate on this new infant.

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