My earliest memory is discovering I was in an egg, and having to fight my way out of it. My giant mother breast-fed me. My father was larger than me, but only by the degree I would expect, or even less than that. He had a normal-sized house inside the huge house where my mother lived.

I realized I wasn’t in a womb; I was in an egg. They said anything was possible when you ethertraveled, and that was one of those possibilities; many ethertravelers had reported being born from eggs.

I tried to bust my way out of the egg, but failed at first. I slept again later, and the next time I awoke I was feeling hungry. The yolk sac was empty. Now I really needed to hatch, to break my way out of the egg. I couldn’t tell whether I had arms or wings at this point, but they had elbows. After trying several other strategies, by poking both elbows to opposite sides at the same time, I was able to break a hole in the eggshell. Once it was broken, it was pretty easy to break the rest of it.

Besides being long in the past compared to the time onthe Earth I came from, there was a major difference, and it had to do with restrooms. I was 4 when my parents first spoke with me directly about it.

“Kevin, you’re going to go off to school pretty soon, and you’re going to have a choice.”

“What’s the choice?” I asked, not yet connecting this with what I’d heard about restrooms and thinking I was going to get to choose between different schools.

As fall approached, I knew my flower was not going to last. Sakura and I decided we were going to leave, and we told the others our goodbyes. Nobody had any problem at all with it. I suspect the original five had mostly not been born here, but migrated from who knows where, so they understood our desire to go see other places.

Several days later I asked them about the other people they had mentioned lived across the stream. My friends didn’t seem to be on a friendly basis with them. When we got there, we found that whoever had lived there was gone, with only the dead remains of their flowers left, which meant in all likelihood they were dead. They hadn’t eaten the flower remains, and my friends had told me how unlikely a merger was, much less three of them.

I was in a grassy field, but I couldn't tell what I was.

I saw a green-skinned girl enter the field, a prepubescent girl with green skin and no hair, and seemingly naked. She came pretty close, maybe examining me, whatever I was. She walked about 100 feet away, dug a small hole with her hands, and squatted down over it. Maybe she pooped there? She covered it up with the dirt and grass she dug from the hole, then left.

The next day, a group of girls similar to the first one came by. I couldn’t tell if the original one was part of the group. They came right up and touched me. I could feel the touches even though I couldn’t tell what it was they were touching. One of them said something I thought sounded like “Soon, soon.” Sort of, anyway; I don’t think I actually heard the words, but I definitely understood it even though I’d just arrived here and had no idea what language they might speak. Some of them went to other spots in the field and pooped in holes like the first girl did.

“Are you ready for this?” I asked Linda.

“I’m ready,” were the last words she ever said with her body’s mouth.

“Ready,” some of Linda’s family members said.

Linda’s torso was perched on top of a small table with a pillow on it, with her rear legs on the floor and her front legs stuck to the sides of her head in preparation for the pairing.

I’m a horse-like creature with the ability to stand on my hind legs and use my front legs as hands. But my parents are centaurs!

Author's Note: There is sex in this story. Some of it is explicitly described. I've seen folks post in the comments of other stories they were surprised or unhappy with this. Be forewarned.

Once the party was over, it was time for me to plan starting college. I accepted one of several pre-made class listings for first years. Making living arrangements was often even tougher than picking classes in college on Earth, but here it was pretty easy. There were dorms, and there was a single room for each person, with doors that would allow them to pair up couples in adjoining rooms.

She, he, whoever, was looking at me, too, and looking just as confused as I felt. He spoke first, sounding like Chelsea’s manner of speaking but in my actual voice.

“Kevin, are you in my body?!”

I replied, “I must be, because I see my face over there. So I’m Chelsea now?”

An entry in Erin's February Short Story Month Story Challenge

The Thirteenth Witch
by Raine Monday
Chapter 8

Thomas paced anxiously in the living room, gnawing at his knuckle. He knew he shouldn't have left her down there, knew he should have stayed by her side. Then he heard someone screaming in raw, horrid, grating tones, a screech.

One of the witches…he forgot which one, came up. "You can come see her now."

Thomas bounded down the stairs and past the witches who had gathered. In the center stood another of the witches. Why was she naked? And he looked around for Lydia.

Mikhail Gregorevich was one of the many mad scientists on the Earth of the 24th century who tried outlandish things to extend the human lifespan. He developed a machine to transfer a human mind from one body to another. It worked, sort of. The first big problem with it is that the receiving body must not already have a mind. He successfully tested it by transferring the mind of a person suffering from a terminal disease into the body of a person who was brain-dead and being kept alive by machines.

The Lessons of Time

Anthony Michaels was a confident and ambitious 21-year-old college student majoring in Ancient World History at St. Augustine University. Known for his sharp mind and quick wit, Anthony excelled in academics but had a glaring blind spot: his dismissive attitude toward the role of women in history. In class discussions, he often downplayed their contributions, declaring men to be the real architects of civilization.