"Reality just is, it can't be tested or proven. You either believe in it or you don't. If you don't, people call you crazy." . Green Sun Chapter 12 Sapphire Eyes, Ruby Lips by Donna Lamb

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Bruce Martin parked under the leafy canopy of three cottonwoods next to the adobe cabin his friend Arthur Bullrush lived in while working the mine. Arthur had no motor vehicle himself and Holly Bullrush's Kawasaki crotch-rocket was nowhere in sight. Arthur may or may not be home but probably could be found nearby, possibly in the mine itself which was tunneled into the side of a rocky hillock about a hundred yards from the cabin.

"Stay here," Bruce told the girl in the cargo compartment.

"Okay," she agreed. "Can you bring me a Coke or something when you come back?"

"Um, maybe. Something," he said. Arthur probably had nothing but beer or water to drink--the ex-Marine was not partial to sodas, especially if he had to lug them in on foot from Christmas. He smiled through the rear window of the SUV at the girl and tried not to let his glimpse of her abundant assets distract him. Striding to the door of the cabin, he knocked and opened the door, calling out, "Art? You there?"

No answer. He stuck his head in and looked around in the dim one-room interior. Arthur's deer rifle lay across its pegs above the single bed and his hunting vest hung from another peg. Good, thought Bruce, he's here and not hunting, so he's probably in the mine. He backed out, closed the door and started up the trail toward the entrance of the shallow mine.

The old man sitting on the apron of the currently unused adobe fireplace chuckled, a deep delicious burble like an old fashioned percolator. The white man had not seen him but that wasn't unusual. He stood up from his almost yoga-like position and followed Bruce out of the cabin. He watched from the shadows of the cottonwoods while the white man crossed the strip of desert between hillock-and-mine and cabin-and-well. When Bruce clambered up the trail to the mine itself, the old man turned and went to the back of the SUV. Opening the hatch, he spoke to the girl lying on the army surplus blankets with one olive-drab corner being used as a sort of fig leaf.

"Hello," he said in a deep voice as calm and as dark as moonlight. "I am Mangas Junco. What's your name?"

"Hi," the girl said, smiling at first but then frowning. "I don't know what my name is. Do you?"

He nodded, putting a finger beside his broad Apache nose. "I'm a wizard. I know lots of things." And he smiled, moonlight on white desert rocks.

The girl giggled. "You're funny."

Mangas Junco opened the lower half of the tailgate downward, then hitched himself up sideways to sit. He half turned to face the girl. "I know that in a very few moments, you will begin to remember some things. It may be painful or scary to remember, that is why I am here--to help you to know that things are well and not horribly wrong as they may seem."

"Oh," said the girl in her tiny voice. Even a wizard who might have lived more than a century noticed how cute she looked, though the enormous breasts made her resemble a fertility idol or a cartoon character more than a human being. He swung his legs up into the truck and leaned back against the door frame. "Besides the remembering, there will be other changes. Here it comes," he said. "Don't be afraid."

* * *

Bruce stuck his head into the opening of the mine and called out, "Art? You there?"

"Yo! Don't come down here." A hatless Arthur Bullrush appeared in the dim light filtering in from the blue Arizona sky, his black hair slightly wavy from the dampness of his own sweat. "Too narrow for two big guys like us." He scrambled up the slight slope to the opening, walking bent over because of the low roof. He had a rock hammer in one hand and a canvas sack in the other. "What's up, Kemo Sappy?"

"I--" Bruce hesitated. "Um, I found a girl in the desert," he said then stopped.

"Yeah? Better'n what I've been finding." Arthur grinned. He dropped the hammer beside some other tools near the mine entrance and reached into a pocket in his shirt. "Have a look at this," he said, passing a polished blue nugget to Bruce.

The ex-Regulator took the item and looked at it. "Art, this is beautiful!" He tuned the pebble over in his hand, admiring the nearly sky-blue color and the hard, waxy shine.

Arthur grunted. "Should be, got that in a pawnshop in Bisbee. Here's what I'm digging out of this dung hole." He poured some greenish, chalky-looking rocks out of the sack into his big hand.

"Oh," said Bruce. "Well, they are bigger."

Art laughed. "Size isn't everything."

"That's what he said," said Bruce then they both laughed.

"Getting hot," said Art, wiping sweat off his face before retrieving his hat from a nail driven into the frame of the mine opening. Bruce held the sack for him and he poured the rocks from his hand back into the bag and put the blue pebble back in his shirt pocket. "Wanna a beer and some beans?" Arthur asked.

"Sure," said Bruce. They started back toward the cabin.

"What'd you do with the girl?" asked Art.

"She's in the truck."

"Yeah? Alive? Hurt? Illegal?"

Bruce shook his head. "She's not hurt bad, which is amazing since it was a plane crash and the pilot is burned up dead."

"Jeez," said Art. He resisted crossing himself the way he'd been taught in a Catholic boys' school he attended as a boy. He'd been exposed to so many religions in his life as a world-traveling Marine that he liked to think he'd developed an immunity.

"And while she's probably not an illegal, it's likely the plane was involved in drug smuggling," Bruce added.

"Drugs? And you did what? You put the girl in your truck and brought her here?" Arthur rolled his eyes. "Are all white men as stupid as you?" He grinned.

Bruce sighed. "You've got to see her.... But the kicker is while I was--uh--examining her--someone stole my AR-15 out of the truck. And there's lots of other stuff that makes no sense at all, like a full set of hot pink luggage that's not even singed."

"Hmm. Well, lucky for you, I happen to have a man staying with me who is an Authority on Stuff That Makes No Sense At All," said Arthur. "My great-great-grandfather, Mangas Junco."

"You're not helping. You're fifty if you're a day, your great-great-whosit Mangle Hunko would be something like one hundred and fifty. I'm serious, Art. This stuff is making my sphincter shrivel. And you've really got to see this girl."

"Mangas Junco," said Arthur. "And I won't be but forty-nine-and-a-half next month. I don't know how old he is or even if he's really a relative but Mangas is one canny old man. You know that card trick I showed you? He taught me that when I was eight. And I swear on a pile-of-shit the size and shape of the Pentagon, he looked just as old then as he does now. Old enough to have been the original owner of Manhattan. Is she that good looking? Or what?"

"She's Miss Wet Dream of Every Ninth Grader in America. Squared, cubed, blued and tattooed." Bruce blinked. "Literally for that last."

Arthur made motions with his hands.

Bruce nodded but said, "Biggerer."

"Whoo!" said Arthur. "Let's go see this Paragon of Pulchritude, if Grampa Mangas hasn't eaten her all up by now." He started down the hill and Bruce followed.

* * *

The memories came back at the same time as the last set of physical changes unwound. Hobie Carson's sapphire blue eyes got very big while her breasts shrank, her feet unkinked and her body grew from tiny to merely small. She made odd squeaking noises when her hair shrank to waist-length right under where she lay on it. "Those toad sucking bastards!" she said in what remained an almost-little girl voice. Her ruby red lips pouted deliciously, but she didn't know that.

Mangas Junco nodded. From a pocket of his loose khaki cotton pants he took a corncob pipe and a pouch of some herb.

Carson looked at her hands. Her nails had shrunk from two-inch daggers to mere half-inch extensions but were still candy pink and decorated with little white flowers with glittery centers.

Mangas began filling his pipe while watching Carson explore her new body. When she sat up easily, the blanket fell away, showing her breasts and the complete hairlessness of her body. She gasped but he merely quirked an eyebrow. She had not even the slight blond fuzz most people have growing anywhere below her neck. Without it, her skin glistened in a matte shine, her round softness seemed emphasized. It felt weird, too, wherever the blanket or her hand touched her skin.

"I could scream," she said. She still sounded cute. "Why...how? No, why did they do this to me?"

"Because they could," said Mangas. He went about the ritual of lighting his pipe and blew spicy puffs of smoke from the corner of his mouth before putting his matches away. "Understand that while they are evil, they do not always do evil. You were going to be caught with the money the next time you took the plane to Phoenix. Your partners in Mexico had sold you out to the authorities in exchange for letting them make this last shipment."

"What? How?" Carson gasped. One of Junco's eyebrows twitched slightly watching her chest inflate. "How do you know anything about it?"

He shrugged. "I am an Authority on Things That Cannot Be Explained But Just Are. Like the fact that you are now a beautiful, naked, young woman sitting next to a pile of luggage. Shall we open these cases and see what they contain?" From another pocket of his pants, he pulled a small Swiss Army knife, opening the smallest blade.

"I guess so," she said. "Am I really a woman? What do I look like? What am I going to do? Is there anyway to change back?"

He made his coffee-perking noise and cut the strapping tape holding the three suitcases together. Released, they tumbled off one another but he caught the smallest one before it landed on her foot. He closed the knife-blade one-handed and opened the "toothpick" blade. "You ask a lot of questions," he said, smiling at her.

She felt herself blush, a sensation she didn't remember feeling in years. "This can't be true. I crashed the plane and now I'm dreaming."

Without saying anything, Mangas reached over and poked the heel of her tiny foot with the pointy metal toothpick.

"Ow!" She pulled her foot up into her lap and examined it, amazed at her own limberness and startled that she had taken no actual injury. "Are you trying to prove this is real?"

"Can't be done," he said. Using the toothpick, he popped open the latches on the smallest cases and opened it. "Reality just is, it can't be tested or proven. You either believe in it or you don't. If you don't people call you crazy."

"Okay," she said. "I'm either crazy or I've been turned into a woman and I'm having a weird talk with an Indian wizard." She rubbed her foot and then stretched her legs out, looking at them. "Wow," she said.

Mangas puffed smoke from the corner of his mouth like visible laughter. "The rest of this one is full of cosmetics, cheap jewelry and bathroom stuff. You might want to look at that." He held a leather folder out to her from the top of the open case.

She took it, opened the folder and gasped.

Mangas commented, "Corporal Rodney Clarence remembered to insist on documentation for you. Passport, birth certificate, California I.D. card, Social Security card and two eight-by-ten color glossy headshots."

"Who's..?" she began then got distracted. She stared at the photos. "That's what I look like?" She began to cry, softly.

"Um, hmm." He pulled the middle-size case toward himself and worked on the locks. He didn't tell her not to cry but did hand her a small packet of tissues from the first case. "The boys will be here soon. Do you want to have clothes on when you meet them?"

She gasped, looking up. "Boys?"

"Bruce Martin, the man who rescued you, and my grandson, Arthur Bullrush." The second case popped open. "Underwear, stuff to sleep in, bathing suit, couple of dresses and a pair of high heel sandals." He said after searching a bit. "More than that, but not much more."

She sighed. "I guess I'd better put on some undies at least."

Mangas passed her a pair of lacy, pink, nearly-transparent, barely-there-at-all, thong panties.

She glared at the item. "You've got to be kidding," she said.

continued...