It had been a trying day at school for Michelle. The young girl hefted her backpack and made sure she collected her assignments and notes with a soft sigh during the hustle and bustle of other students. She didn’t have that many friends, but was generally well thought of in class- at least maybe until now? The girl could almost feel whispers around her and other kids sneaking probing glances with a slight smirk. Did they know? Trevor wouldn’t tell them…
The whole film had unsettled her in a way that the rest of the class found amusing, given how they all giggled- especially the part where the egg was dropped and cracked to prove a point. A sickening feeling she was sure would not have been done if it had been produced by an actual egg-layer… or did they want to scare them, to make sure the eggs were properly protected?
She knew that the subject of the birds and the bees would eventually come up. It was just that her particular sub-species was more ‘bird’ than other humans. Why were there different kinds of humans? They were the same in every ‘other way’ that counted. They had no separate history or state, except for perhaps one ‘very’ poor attempt in the dark ages- which didn’t go so well.
In some ways feeling different saddened the girl… separated in some ways from others who could never understand. she didn’t want to be so distinct from other people but at the same time, the fact that their biology ‘was’ different, made her feel somehow more… special.
The young girl lightly giggled at the self-praise and worth she granted herself before recalling her parents wouldn’t want her to think she was ‘overly’ special- well- no more than others. However, she was sure they thought of themselves as special too. If nothing else, they were special to her.
“Michelle!” A voice called out.
“…Trevor.” Michelle clutched her backpack. “I’m not talking to you.”
“What? Again?” The boy looked rather shocked and surprised. “But we’re study buddies! We got an assignment to look after the egg together!” He looked very excited as he walked with Michelle, even taking hold of her hand.
Michelle didn’t exactly object to him holding her hand, but… she was still quite annoyed with her friend. Yeah- they were friends… but she just really wanted to do well in this assignment, more so then any other… for the simple reason that she wanted to show she could. She wanted to show how good a mom she could be, as well as an egg sitter just like her big sister Jen. Out of everyone else in the class, she had the most riding on this as it was the most relevant to her… why should non egg-laying humans have anything to do with it?
Trevor was always pushing himself into it and specifically right into Michelle’s place. She had no choice though, they did have to work together this time. “Okay… Trevor we’ll work on this together, but you got to promise to be serious. We got to be serious. It’s real important. No Juggling like you did in class.”
“Ha! That was funny uh- I mean Yes!” Trevor smiled. “We can work together.” He thought it was going to be a lot of fun. “I know I know I can do it!” It’s gonna be awesome! We’ll get an easy A. All we got to do is take care of the egg, right?”
“Just… take care of the egg… for a whole week.” Michelle nodded, glancing at the electronic egg in her bag. It was made of plastic and ceramics, that gave it a pretty good facsimile of what the real one would look like. It was perhaps a little bigger than what a real egg would typically look like due to all the parts inside. It even felt a little warm. Trevor put a finger into the bag that contained the assignment and poked at it.
“Hey!” Michelle quickly pulled it away. “No touching! You got butter fingers.”
“No I don’t! And we both have to look after the egg or we don’t pass. I can look after it too Michelle!”
Michelle sighed. “… but uh- only the girls are supposed to sit on it.” She tried to explain delicately.
For the first time Trevor seemed saddened by this. “Oh… so… I don’t get to do… anything?”
“Well… you’ll help build the nest but after…” what was a boy supposed to do? “Um… there’s not…really muc-“ Michelle saw Trevor’s expression get even sadder. Damn it! Why did that look make her feel… something. She rolled her eyes. “Uh- well- that was probably in the old days. You can do more stuff sure.”
“Yay!” Trevor was instantly cheered up. “Let’s go to your house! We can sit on it there!”
Michelle sighed inwardly. Why did she get Trevor of all people!
Mrs Madison quickly answered the door and saw the two children inside. “Oh you brought a friend?” She asked her daughter.
“Hi Miss Madison!” Trevor said quickly. “Yeah! We got an assignment to work on together!”
“I see,” the older woman nodded. She was a little surprised that Trevor was a friend to Michelle like this. He was such a… typical boy. A little on the rough side with sports and such, while Michelle had always been a more… girly girl. Maybe it was true that opposites attract? “Jen isn’t home yet. Oh- um- Michelle, please make sure your friend stays away from Zoe… she’s uh- not feeling so good…”
Trevor gave a look of recognition. “Is that cause- mphh!” Michelle put a hand on his mouth. “Haha! Trevor just- let’s go finish this work…” the young girl dragged him away from her mom.
Mrs Madison just smiled and chuckled to herself. “Oh, those kids…”
“So… your entire family… lays eggs?” Trevor asked curious as they walked into Michelle’s room.
Michelle had brought out the egg they were supposed to protect for a week. They had to prepare a box for it first, which was not unlike a cradle box that certain companies made for newborns. “Yeah,” she muttered looking at the instructions half listening to her partner.
“So… is that how it works? Your mom is an egg layer so you’re an egg layer?”
“Of course, how else could it work?” Michelle shook her head.
“But… what if your mom wasn’t from an egg born but the dad was?”
“Then they wouldn’t lay eggs cause the mom doesn’t have eggs!”
“But- what if the mom’s mom laid eggs but the dad didn’t-“
“Trevor! This is… not important, okay?” Michelle didn’t know herself any of these questions. She just knew her mom laid eggs, so did her sister, so did Zoe... and so would she. Someday. The kids she had would also lay eggs if they were female… but suddenly she thought like Trevor. Wait- what about boys that came from eggs? Did they lose being… special?
Trevor looked at Michelle’s unreadable expression. “Um… okay. So, let’s make that box” he said quickly.
“Uh – yeah.” Michelle was relieved to move the conversation on.
Making the box itself, the ‘nest’ was surprisingly quick. Trevor had very strong building skills, and was good at following instructions, at least on a piece of paper. For the first time in a while, Michelle was impressed. The resulting box was made from wood, a bit of glue and fastened securely. Trevor did a good job with that. “Don’t we need nesting stuff?”
Michelle suddenly panicked. “Where is it?” She gasped. “Oh no… I didn’t bring it!” she looked mad at herself. They were going to lose at the first hurdle! It was on one of the counter and she didn’t pick it up.
“We could ask your mom-“
“No! Uh- No I can’t ask that!” This whole assignment was embarrassing enough without asking her mom to get involved in it too. They just needed some wrapping cloth, maybe some paper… straw would of course been best but… they could make do with that. But they didn’t have anything that would fit in the box properly. “I’ll check my sister’s room.”
Michelle quietly opened the door to Jen’s room. It wasn’t exactly a ‘forbidden’ room to her. She had shared many wonderful moments here... she knew that her sister would have a few things around- just in case. Her sister was always well prepared and organised… something she wished she could be herself.
Trevor had waited outside the door… but curiosity got the better of him. He went inside. “I’ll check under the bed.” He grinned trying to help.
“Trev- urgh!” Michelle looked exasperated again. “This is my sister’s room!”
“I’ll be careful! I’m good at finding st-“ He paused as his hands brushed on something between a bunch of boxes and books. “Hey… I found something…” it seemed to be a shoe box? It might contain the material they needed. He brought it out and opened it up. However, the only thing inside appeared to be a simple small stone. “Huh…”
Michelle was now curious too. “Hey- let me see. What is this…” She looked at the stone curious. Oh! Dawning realisation came to her. Jen must have used this to practice egg sitting when she was younger… It was just the right shape for it. Michelle smiled a bit, admiring the rock that was probably was the foundation of her sister’s empathy and wisdom, not to mention joy at taking care of eggs. She blushed a little at the thought.
Trevor approached. “What is it? Do you wear it?” Egg-girls were so weird…
“No! We got to put it back.” Michelle felt a bit bad finding such a… precious item. She had a good suspicion on what it was and fit Jen to a tea. It was well known that the first thing an egg layer sat on for brooding when younger, even with practice, sometimes strong instincts would just ‘kick in’. It was hard to let it go… perhaps because the desire to see something hatch was just that strong and she had no doubt Jen’s instincts were very strong. Of course, an egg would naturally decompose unless frozen- but a rock was a rock. Jen probably kept the stone for that reason, unable to let it go. It made perfect sense to the young girl. However, she couldn’t explain the significance to Trevor without causing her big sis serious embarrassment. She put it back in the box… but then Trevor grabbed it with a flash of his hands. “Is it gold? Silver?” he asked. “It’s so glittery…”
“Hey!” Michelle quickly tried to get it back. “You don’t understand!” She said. “It’s my sisters!”
“I like collecting rocks too!” Trevor smiled. “I can bring some if you like, even bigger and better then this one.”
Michelle had had enough. She jumped quickly and wrestled Trevor down to grab the stone with all her strength. Trevor was a lot stronger then Michelle, but two things caught him off guard. First of all, the sheer surprise at how mad Michelle had become at him, and two… he didn’t actually ‘want’ to hit or do anything back to her. He was pushed aside and lost his balance slightly. “Hey!”
“You don’t understand this! You ‘can’t understand!” Michelle said angrily. “This is about… well… yes it is egg stuff but you don’t get it. You’ll never get it!” she gripped the stone tightly.
Trevor frowned a bit at the impasse and silence of Michelle’s angry eyes. He shied away from her gaze. “I’m um- I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just trying to help.” Trevor looked on wordlessly feeling like he had somehow screwed up something but didn’t really know what. Was the stone really that big a deal? Was it some kind of egg-girl religious thing? He thought it was just jewellery or something. He rubbed his hands nervously. “… I wish I could get it.”
“Yeah…. I wish… that too,” Michelle started. “Well- at the end of the day- um-“ she took a breath and exhaled. “I guess no harm done.” She sighed and carefully placed the stone back in the box… not even realising that the stone had become warm briefly. The stone was pretty good at working out wishes like this though… and ‘technically’ Michelle did say ‘at the end of the day’… so for now, nothing would happen… until sunset.
Trevor nodded and backed away awkwardly to the corridor. “Um… I guess I’ll um- I’ll look for some stuff in the kitchen to build the nest. I’m sure improvising something wont take marks off us. At least we tried right?” He wanted to cheer Michelle up and show he could handle his part of the assignment.
Michelle shook her head and put everything back as it was. She folded her arms feeling unsettled by … something.
Trevor had gone home after spending an hour or so at the Madison’s house. He was pleased with the work but… Michelle was going to do the rest of it. Which meant the ‘real’ work? Egg sitting, keeping it warm for the day, all that stuff. Would she really do that all day? Why couldn’t he help?
He sighed. “I get it,” He muttered. Of course he got it, but Michelle seemed to think he didn’t get it at all. Egg people did their thing, normal people did normal things, and girls did the girl stuff, guys did the guy stuff. Michelle didn’t have to hit him though, the more he thought about it. Yeah… Michelle was the one over acting!
The young boy was used to a scrap now and then and was quite proud to have never lost a fight… (well except that ‘one’ time) but he had never had to fight a girl… and when it looked like Michelle was attacking him, he felt utterly paralyzed. He didn’t know what to do… if she had just explained it was some stupid sentimental thing he could have just given it to her. She assumed he wouldn’t listen! Trevor just grabbed it because it looked like a rock!
Michelle had apologized though… and Trevor accepted maybe he didn’t think. He couldn’t help his curiosity of the Madison household… still it was almost the late evening and he had to think about school tomorrow…
Trevor decided to spend a little bit of time playing video games. Homework could wait. As an only child, he didn’t really have any other company besides his parents… life wasn’t that bad though. He was able to do pretty much anything he wanted, and his parents tended to be generous with gifts. He wasn’t exactly ‘spoiled’, but he did have a certain expectation for something each birthday… but most kids his age did.
“Time to beat this boss!” He declared. A tough one from the game of Lava-King. He had become pretty good of it lately…
… outside his window, the sun started to set. The street-lights slowly turned on as dusk approached.
When the lingering shadow reached his house, something seemed to glitch. Suddenly the screen showed pink pastel colours of a ‘cake baking’ game called ‘Little Miss Bakery’. “What the hec-“ Trevor exclaimed.
Trevor gasped as his voice sounded… off. In fact, ‘everything’ was off. Looking down, his jeans felt a little weird… but more so, they pinched horribly not quite fitting. His legs felt a little further apart then normal and… His T-shirt had become a bright pink in colour with a design of a girly looking cartoon character… underneath his vest seemed to have changed too, somehow only now covering his chest area. Confused he pulled it away slightly, only to be confronted by the odd new budding breasts. More shock and horror as he felt between the legs…
“AAAAH!” The new girl screamed.
Her mom and dad quickly rushed to her room. “What’s wrong what’s happened!” Her mother quickly asked.
“Mom I- I- I think- I- I’m a girl!” She said looking down at herself in acute distress. How! How did this even happen?!
“Well- yes dear. What’s brought all this on? Is someone teasing you in school?” her mother asked. The new girl continued to stare looking around in shock. She touched her hair and felt the new face she had yet to see. “Tara, are you okay?” her mother asked
Tara… that was her name?!
She stared around her room. It wasn’t just her body… Everything was gone. Her posters... her games… the thing between her legs was gone… and what else? She turned back and stared at her mom, seeing that she was also different. She was wearing a white dress she had never seen her wear before… and perhaps even more confusingly, her body shape seemed ‘very’ different. When before his mom was more skinny and well- had ‘average curves’ most woman had… She was now a lot more… curvy? Like- a lot-lot- With very wide hips emphasising a very maternal look, as well as large breasts modestly covered.
The young girl blushed suddenly realising she was staring at her mom. “Uh- I- I- don’t feel… so well…” her voice was so different… one might say… cute.
Her father looked at his daughter in concern. “Oh dear… do you have a cold?” He placed a hand on her head. “You seem okay to me… maybe go to bed early, you’ll feel better.
Why were they acting as if this was normal? Had their brains gone funny?! Maybe if Tara went to bed though, she would wake up from this strange dream…
