300 Rains By Heather O’Malley Geoff was an Anthropologist studying a newly discovered tribe in the Amazon. After getting a bit more involved in the tribe, he joined in on a sacred ritual. That is where things began to go very wrong and spiral out of his control. Now the tribe is gone and he is left with making sense of this until the tribe returns in 300 rains.

May 21

“You seem a lot better.” commented Janet, as the two of them drove home from the store. Grocery shopping was a very important part of a balanced family visit.

“Apparently you calling out Fae over Thanksgiving helped a lot of things and I have just been getting more and more used to this new body. Periods are still a pain but I am trying to cope with them. And oh my God do women pee loud!” replied Melanie, as she watched the traffic. Janet laughed at this, clearly amused by the things that her sister was commenting on. Melanie continued, “How is your family dealing with this, you know the whole their Uncle becoming their Aunt?”

“Well, Emily now adores you, but that has as much to do with Heidi completely loving and accepting you than anything else. David is not really sure what to think about the whole mess, but at least he accepts that this is you. If it weren’t for the big project he has going on at work he would have flown out with us over Thanksgiving. Threats got him here this time.” Janet smiled. “You know… I am tired of him freaking out and running from all of this. You are my sister now. If I can cope with it e should be able to as well.”

“Sis, some people take their own time about these things.”

“Yeah, well he annoyed me. I bought him a dress and some lingerie after he aggravated me back in February because of this. He had to wear them all day just to appease me. Emily called him Mommy and giggled the whole time. It really was a sight to see. It seemed to work though because after that he got a lot better about things.”

Melanie laughed. She could sort of picture Dave in a flowery dress and it was a hysterical image. There had been no way the big macho man had shaved his legs or anything and that had to have looked really amusing. “You didn’t have to do that Janet. I would have coped with his being a jackass.”

“Oh yes… yes I did. He was being an ass so I learned him. Giving you shit is my job and mine alone. Well, okay… Fae can do it as well. I have to tell you though he looked really cute with the blue eye shadow and rosy cheeks over the stubble.” Janet smirked when she said that.

Mel started laughing, managing to get the air to ask, “Please tell me you have pictures of this glorious event.”

“You mean did I pass up an amazing chance to have blackmail photos of my husband? Not on your life sis. I have a few on my phone that I can show you as well as a huge file on my computer at home and on a jumpdrive I brought with me.”

“Really? I have to see those.” Mel was amused by the mental picture of Dave, who was a fairly solidly build guy who was about six feet tall and muscular, wearing any sort of dress. It was not even close to what she went through, but it was something. If going through that sort of grief had made it easier for her brother in law to deal with her transformation better, than she was all for it. Besides, those photos sounded awesome.

“I might be able to arrange that.” said Janet with a very smug and self-satisfied smirk.

“Oh… I missed you.” gushed Melanie happily.

“I missed you too sis. I really wished we lived closer because I really feel closer to you now.”

“I know. I feel the same and I don’t know why?” replied Melanie with a shrug.

Janet pursed her lips and hurrmmed, looking out the window at the passing buildings. “You know… I wonder if that could be you responding to the crazy stress of the transformation by simply wanting familiar and safe things around you?”

Without missing a beat, Melanie replied with, “That would keep you out. I remember what you and your friends got up to during some of your slumber parties. I don’t think my psyche will ever recover from that time when I was ten and your friend Rachel threw a used pad at me.”

Both women laughed at that.

“No, I’m serious Mel. I think you have gotten closer to Mom and I because of that. I’m getting closer to you because I kind of like this new sister as opposed to my old brother. You are certainly less of a pain in the ass.”

“Hey!” protested Melanie, turning to face her sister.

“Simmer down. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. When you were still Geoff you were so career focused that I am surprised that you were even able to woo let alone marry a hottie like Fae. And I know you guys were drifting apart over the years. That much was obvious every time we saw each other over the holidays. You would go watch the game with Dave and Fae would come talk to Mom and I. You guys barely interacted the last few years. I was constantly expecting a phone call saying you were getting a divorce, certainly not… well this.”

Melanie focused on traffic for a moment, her thoughts rolling over what her sister had just shared with her. “Yeah, I know. I love my family, I really do, but I had gotten lost in my work. For all that this turned my entire world upside down and kind of screwed it six ways to Sunday; it pretty much saved my marriage. Did you know that Fae had actually started an account in her maiden name, slowly building it, just in case she couldn’t take it anymore and wanted to leave? I had no idea it had gotten so bad, that we were almost one maybe two more fights from a divorce. As Geoff, I had been blind to everything except my damn work, thinking that everything in the rest of my life was copacetic. I was an idiot. This transformation gave me back my life.”

Janet nodded, a sad and thoughtful smile on her face. “Yeah, I get that. I can see that really clearly. Melanie, you did something with this change and that made all the difference. You could have just whined and cried and moped and done nothing but you didn’t. You saved yourself. Becoming the superior sex only gave you a little nudge.”

“Superior sex? Right…” snorted Melanie derisively, falling back into the patterns of an old and familiar argument.

“Remember sister mine… it is currently your sex now…” replied Janet in a playful singsong voice.

After a roll of her eyes and a slight shake of her head, Melanie begrudgingly admitted, “Fine, we are clearly the superior sex.”

“Ha… I thought you might see it that way now that you have turned from the dark side.”

“Loser.”

“Schmuck.”

They both made faces at each other and laughed. They were still giggling some when Melanie pulled into the driveway and started unloading the car, getting all the groceries they needed for the weekend visit inside. David took over the unloading process after they carried in the first load and they were able to go out to the backyard where Fae and Melanie’s mother were sitting and enjoying the nice weather. Melanie bent down and kissed her wife on the cheek, while Fae reached up to touch her wife’s hand, saying, “Welcome home love.”

“Thanks. We got everything on the list.”

“Good. So, David is going to be cooking tonight.”

Janet chuckled, still wound up from the car ride. “Right… the Grillmaster must prove his worthiness to us unskilled womenfolk. He will char us some meat!”

The others laughed lightly at that, shaking their heads a little at the way Janet was acting. Melanie asked a bit nervously, “Uhm… so is that how a lot of men come across about the grill? All butch and macho?”

His mother smiled and then replied, her eyes twinkling with fond memories, “Absolutely. Your father believed there was some… I don’t know… sacred bond between man and fire, some primal skill that let men master cooking over flame where women couldn’t quite handle it.”

Janet nodded in agreement with her, throwing in her own two cents to the conversation. “I think it is simply that men insist that it is their right and won’t let anyone touch their sacred meat fire. It’s not as if cooking over flame is superior or anything to other cooking methods, but if you do anything over and over you get better at it. I think they keep us away so that we don’t steal their one big ‘natural’ cooking moment away from them.”

Mel looked thoughtful at this before she replied, tentatively stating, “You know… now that I think about it… there may be something to that. For some people it seems to have become almost a rite of manhood when you let your son help you at the grill. It becomes an established manspace out of a need to assert some sort of domestic strength compared to women, who have been recognized as ‘domestic goddesses’ for hundreds of years. In fact this cult of the barbeque seems to be a recent thing traceable back to the late 40’s early 50’s, maybe as a counteraction to the changes women made to society when they worked in the factories during the War. I think there might be some papers on it.”

The other women laughed. Fae rested a hand lovingly on her arm, her face lit up with happiness, “You are so clearly a professor sweetie that it is almost painful to watch.”

With a blush, Melanie looked down at their patio, at the patterns of the paving stones that had been used. Janet snorted and shook her head, throwing out, “The Cult of Barbeque! That is hysterical Mel. Honestly, some of the stuff you guys study is so crazy and out there that it makes no sense. I can get your discovering and studying new tribes in places, but the Cult of Barbeque? That’s hysterical.”

Melanie shrugged, “Ehnh… knowing why people do things the way they do, and create the cultures they have are important. Sure the way men in the US have developed this near obsession with grilling meat is a bit silly and odd, but it is an interesting cultural artifact driven by both market forces and men’s beliefs about their societal roles. But this isn’t really my area of expertise.”

“But you know so much about it.” teased Janet. “You know… I wonder if you lost your mystical meat skill not that you have tits.”

Melanie stuck her tongue out at her sister. Janet replied with the same. Their mother shook her head and said, “Now girls, play nice. Janet, that was uncalled for, but funny. Besides, Melanie has always had lots of facts in her head.”

Fae nodded and added, “And that’s one of the reasons I married her. Smart is very sexy.”

They kissed while the other two chuckled over the whole situation. The married couple ignored the peanut gallery to focus on each other instead. They did have priorities after all.

A deep voice cleared itself. All the women turned to see David looking out at them a bit nervously from the patio door. He was clearly very uncomfortable and could not meet anyone’s eyes. “Uhm… Ge… Melanie… can we talk?”

Mel turned to look at Fae for support. Her wife’s eyes were very supportive and she squeezed her hand three times. With a faint smile Melanie stood and headed over towards her brother in law, feeling the strength of Fae’s love. She was sure this was going to be loads of fun. “Yes? Can I help you?”

“Can… you know… can we talk?”

Melanie nodded and followed the tall, broad shouldered man into the house, away from the other women, who were clearly interested in what was going on. Wanting to provide him some level of comfort, Melanie detoured to the kitchen and asked, “Want a beer?”

“Sure.”

After plucking a few beers from the fridge, Melanie led them into her office, closing the door behind them. Without waiting for things to get anymore awkward than they already were, Melanie asked, “So, what’s up David?”

David sat down heavily in one of the chairs, took a swig of his beer and looked up at Melanie, his face troubled. “How… how did you manage to deal with… this?”

“My transformation?” asked Melanie, a touch confused.

“Yeah. I mean, just thinking about it freaks me out and I have no idea how you made it through without going crazy or something. I mean, you really are a woman now and not a guy. It’s weird.”

Melanie took a sip of her own beer, buying herself a few moments to sort of settle her thoughts. She was sort of expecting this but she had kind of hoped that David would have never brought it up. This was honestly the last conversation she had wanted to have with her brother in law. Okay, perhaps talking about her periods might be worse but it might come to that so there was no reason to doubt just how bad things were going to get. “Well… it’s not like I really had a choice David. I mean, what was I going to do, abandon my family? This was hard to deal with and if I had not had my therapist I would never have made it through. He really helped me and Fae pull through this crap situation.”

“But dude… you’re a chick now.” blurted David, red faced and unwilling to meet her eyes.

With a smirk, Melanie glanced at her door and said, “I really hope that Janet never hears you say anything like that or wearing a dress for a picture or two will be the least of your worries.”

He actually flinched at that, clearly upset by being reminded of Janet’s revenge. “You heard about that?”

“Yep, today while we were getting groceries. She is going to be sending me the .jpegs. But it’s okay David, I’m not going to do anything mean with them.”

“Look Geoff… Melanie… guh…” He took a bigger swig of the beer and then shook his head, as if trying to clear it. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When he looked up at her, he seemed a bit embarrassed and apologetic. “Sorry. I am still trying to wrap my head around this.”

“She told you the truth, that this was not my choice, that I was transformed… right?”

David nodded his head.

“Good. So what is the question? I am simply making the best of my life, still married to my wife and still living my life. It was a seriously rough road to get here but I did it.” stated Melanie.

David shrugged. “I guess what I can’t understand is how any guy could cope with being a woman. I mean… it just makes my skin crawl thinking about it happening.”

“I just did what I had to do in order to stay with the woman I loved, to keep my family together through a major crisis. That is what a real man is supposed to do… right?” asked Melanie, hoping to make David see that she had only done what any real man would have done, put his family first and drove on through any hardship.

“Well… yeah… it is. I just… you know… I just don’t really get it. I get that you are not like one of those transy guys and that you had to change and that you did not want this. What I don’t get is that how you didn’t go insane?” clarified David, looking her in the eyes. He looked like a lost little puppy that someone left in a wet box on the side of the road.

Melanie laughed lightly, amused by the way her life had turned out. “Well, it has been rather close a couple of times. When it seemed like Fae was going to leave me I almost just lost it, but somehow I held it together and we made it through. And you know, in the end I did sort of become transgendered of a kind, by having a gender that isn’t really mine. That realization helped, it really did. I managed to survive, my whole body changed, including my mind and now I am not as stressed as I was. So, I was nearly crazy but I got better. What else can I say?”

David smiled softly at this. “Crazy, hunh? Well, that’s something. I’m not used to dealing with this shit. It freaks me out. I mean, my brother in law transforming into my sister in law because of some freaky Amazonian goo soup. That’s fucked up.”

“Goo soup. That’s a good description. I am really glad I don’t remember what it tasted like because just the breakdown of what was in it made me gag. I felt like ass for the first week or so after taking it. Then I started feeling weird.” explained Melanie. “One of the first things I noticed was that I couldn’t stand pork.”

“No pork? You mean like no sausage or bacon? Like ever? That’s so fucked up!”

“I know right. This whole thing sucked massively David. I shrank. I got weaker. I almost died… twice. But my marriage is stronger now than it has been in years. That is worth all that I have lost and then some.”

“So Fae is really a…” hinted David, half raising his eyebrows suggestively.

Snorting derisively, Melanie replied, “Nope, she’s bi but our marriage was disintegrating all around us for other reasons. This transformation let me see clearly for the first time in years and let me appreciate what I had before I lost it. It gave me a chance to pay attention to what I had. That was a good thing.”

There was no sound after that except the two of them drinking. Melanie was rather thoughtful, thinking about all the successes and failures that she had faced so far in her over 200 Rains under this transformation. David was shaking his head slowly, clearly thinking thoughts along the lines of there but for the grace of God go I. Both thought they ultimately got the better end of the deal.