A comment Erin made regarding her story SHOCKING PINK, about the role of lightning in various gender transformation stories (she cited Bob Arnold's serial ZAPPED and Julie O's FRESH START stories) got the wheels turning in my head for this one... a magical transformation story set in The Age of Reason.

On her back, on the wet grass, she brought herself to still another orgasm. Her britches were pulled down, her shirt, waistcoat and doublet unfastened and opened, but it was too cold out here to fully remove her now ill-fitting male clothes. What had begun as a simple assessment of these peculiar circumstances had become something else entirely. Despite the night's chill her face was flushed. Her hand was sodden with an admixture of humors that she had never before produced. She moaned.

"Here I am frigging myself again today," she reflected wryly, "This much at least hasn't changed!"

It amazed her just how calmly she was taking this unfathomable transformation. Or rather, as the uncanny currents of pleasure coarsed through her body, she was anything but calm. But since awakening in this new form she had hardly been at all concerned- a response greatly at odds with how she would have assumed she would react, had anyone told her that on this inclement night she would be sprawled here like this, kneading her own soft breasts and diddling her very own little "man in the boat"...

But the only person she knew who might say anything so at odds with reason was a New Amsterdam glass blower named Aloysius Van Groot. The poor fellow was daft- suffering from all manner of strange notions, given to unexpected furies, and beset by frightful tremors. No one sane would speak of such a thing.

She thought she had experienced sexual delight before, as a man. She had been no stranger to the carnal side of life, and had performed this dexterous little minuet on the venereal rosebuds of quite a few eager ladies both here and abroad. And now she knew what all the screaming and bucking had been about!

But finally enough was enough. She sighed languidly, and after a minute's respite she sat up, draping her garments more fully about herself against the drizzle that had begun, lost in thought and queer new emotions.

To her great surprise she found that she had no desire whatsoever to change back to her male form, if such was even possible, which she seriously doubted. As a committed student of Natural Philosophy, she did not take this fantastical occurance for some act of Providence, nor did she believe it to be a product of the so-called Black Arts. No, her translation into the opposite gender was simply a physical result of that bolt which had struck her.

If electricity and magnetism had a dual polarity, which sometimes abruptly reversed itself, then it would be sensible to suppose that those affected by it might in some wise become converted into their opposite. This was a hastily devised theory, which ultimately might not hold water. It would take much reading, and perhaps a few experiments (these would be conducted solely on animals, as she fathomed she might not survive a second similar tempting of Fate!) before she could reach any conclusion.

And yet, if she were as fully reversed as that, then the fantasies that had passed through her head as she explored the amatory potential of this new body should have been toward men. It would not be any sort of sodomy, but natural to her present sex. Instead she had discovered during the reign of those bawdy imaginings that she still had quite a taste for the ladies!

Luckily for her, she held the acquaintanceship of several exquisitely debauched young Parisian beauties, who had spoken unabashedly of such yearnings. And she knew that for her changes they would take to her arms and to her bed even more readily than they had before! She concluded as well that since she'd found most aspects of human nature to be generally universal (except perhaps among Earth's farthest-flung Chinamen and Hottentots- of which, she admitted, she knew little) there might even be a few such females here in the Colonies.

So all told, she took this to be a much improved situation. Except for in one far from insignificant matter. She had political ambitions, dreams of helping to forge a new type of State---managed by the people themselves in every conceivable way---the likes of which this World had never seen!

But by no excess of the democratic spirit would she be allowed to try setting these plans forth as a woman, or to even to join in the daring philosophical exchanges of her circle of comrades- who because of this might soon become her former comrades.

Peering into the polished surface of her pocket watch---which had been stopped by that meteoric discharge, as if to commemorate the exact hour of her renascence---she saw that from the neck up she was not too terribly changed. She began to form a plan, singularly devillish in its scope!

Her plump features were to some extent more comely and sanguine, which she hoped might simply be attributed to robust health. She had never favored the vulgarity of a beard or moustache, so nothing would be suspected there. Her paps moreover were not exceedingly large, perhaps they could be concealed in some fashion. And her voice...

"Hello, I am most pleased to meet you. Pleased to meet you. Pleased... Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Is this ship sailing for Bristol on the morrow?"

Well that could be worked on.

A deceit perhaps, but one that would harm no one, and which would only guarantee her that which was her due (And perhaps the due of all women? Or at very least those who could shew they had a capacity for judgment? This novel notion bore deeper reflection.).

She would in all matters public pretend to be a man, as when she had authored the Journals of Silence Dogood she had once pretended to be a woman, fooling more than a few people...

Picking up the glowing leyden jar and the charred ruins of her kite, the woman who had been and would continue to be known as Benjamin Frankin---except among her dearest intimates---made her way down the hill to her home, her warm study.
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[I have to confess I did no research for this story. Everything in here I remember from grade school: Ben Franklin had helped to design the American government, he went to France, he flew a kite in a storm, and he was very horny...]