This is the first chapter of my sequel to "Away With The Faeries". It's a work in very sporadic progress but I thought one or two people mght find it vaguely interesting.

A Faery Tale Wedding?
Belinda stared down at the piece of writing paper before her. Festooned with flowers and twining vines around the borders it was obviously intended for billets-doux and party invitations. Right now, however it was divided into headings as follows

Reasons to marry Stefan

I think he might love me

He’s a multi-millionaire who lives in a fairy tale castle

He is very good in bed – or I’m very easily pleased, not sure which (Query: does that make me a slut?)

We share lots of the same interests and those we don’t share complement each other. (Although that does include; I like to cook, he likes to eat)

All of our friends were his friends first – if I break the engagement they probably go

Reasons NOT to marry Stefan

He can be very traditional – I’m the woman so I’m in charge of cooking, making the place look pretty, being the hostess, being really impressed when he tells me things and clinging to his arm looking up at him in adoration!

I was a man three days ago!!

He did this to me!!!

That wasn’t entirely true, she reflected. Yes, subjectively it was only three days since she’d woken up to find that Brian the arrogant male, aggressive teacher with a mean streak had vanished to be replaced by the sweet, good natured and anatomically female Belinda, but in fact she’d lost a year and a day’s worth of memories overnight thanks to post-hypnotic suggestion from Stephan’s pet evil hypnotist. All those IT programmes he devised for the CI – for agencies that couldn’t be mentioned bought a lot of favours it seemed.

“Butterfly?” Belinda hastily covered her notes with a pack of envelopes as Stefan came up behind her

“Hi Stef-mmffll! Mfll! Mmmm!” Belinda wriggled a little as Stefan’s right arm went around her waist, pinning her to the chair while his left hand tilted her head upwards and back for Stefan’s passionate kisses.

Oh God he’s so good at this! How can he make me feel this way? I’m so ashamed; he shouldn’t be able to do this to me. I’m a man!

Had she been able to see herself at that moment Belinda’s appearance would have belied her thoughts. She was dressed in a long, cream coloured nightgown made of silk and lace which did as much to emphasise as to conceal her ample charms. Her full, heavy breasts swelled beneath the silk as did her child-bearing hips. Night dark hair hung shining down to the middle of her back in raven tresses. Her smooth skin was pale as moonlight except when, as now, excitement and embarrassment lent her a rosy hue. Belinda’s plump, pretty feet with their purple toenails could be seen kicking faintly as Stefan scooped her up into his arms, sat down in the chair she had occupied and lowered her gently on to his lap. Only then did he break the kiss and allow the appreciatively blushing Belinda to speak.

“Well, “ she said breathily “That was very impressive. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were showing off -reminding me that you’re the big, strong man and I’m the helpless, delicate girlie-girl. Were you?”

“Do I need to remind you? Besides, you didn’t seem too distressed at being the girl earlier.”
Belinda flushed crimson

“I wasn’t. But if you’re going to do that to me again I need to be lying down. My knees are still shaky as it is.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere – but I thought you might like to go for a walk down to the river before it does.”

“I mffll mmfmmmmm! Mmmm! Stefan! I mmmm! For goodness sake, how can I answer you if you keep kissing me like that? What am I supposed to do, moan in Morse Code?”

“I like that idea.” Stefan grinned

“You would! Honestly, sometimes I feel like a sex object!

“Oh good!”
Stefan closed with her again and there were no more articulate sounds for several minutes.

“So what do you think?”

“Of what?”

“Going for a walk?”

“Oh that – it had gone right out of my head. Yes, I like it. I want to get dressed first though. Meet you in the hall in ten minutes?”

“Why don’t I come up and help?”

“Because if we go into that bedroom together I know perfectly well you won’t let me leave it till the morning’s gone. Ten minutes. I promise.”

Back in the bedroom Belinda slumped in front of the mirror on the dressing table which Stefan had installed especially for her and clutched at her hair in despair.

“How does he do that? All he has to do is lay hands on me and I melt! I stop thinking about being a man, about how I can get out of this, about anything except being with him. I don’t even know if I want to get away. I just know I’m not sure of anything anymore! And no wonder he treats me like he does. Look at me!”

Mournfully she gazed at her reflection. The heart shaped face with the full lips and big blue eyes that pouted sadly back at her bore only the faintest of family resemblances to Brian, the man she had been all her life – until Stefan had turned the former bully of the children’s home where they had both been brought up into the buxom young girl who now nightly warmed his bed with embarrassing enthusiasm. As for her figure – she could have shaved her head and dressed in a boiler suit and not been mistaken for a man for even the briefest of instants.
Not that there’s much chance of that she mused as she turned towards the wardrobe. Despite the fact that she still rented a house in the nearby town an awful lot of Belinda’s clothes and underwear seemed to have migrated over to Stefan’s enormous master bedroom – especially the fancy stuff, but here or there, she didn’t seem to own a single pair of trousers.
Belinda still wasn’t sure if this was because Stefan had somehow programmed her against them, or forbidden her to wear them or if she had simply discovered that they made her bottom look like a hippo trying to squeeze into an eggcup. With more than a year’s memories missing, her life was full of questions that she didn’t know the answer to.

Sighing, she selected a set of pink satin underwear – much less itchy than lace – an ankle length skirt of soft, loose material and a black velvet top that showed off her ample bosom without making her feel too bovine And words cannot say how much it embarrasses me to have think of this kind of thing. Just getting dressed is enough to make me blush! And blushing makes me blush more! It’s so damn girlish!

To complete her toilette Belinda inserted silver earrings in the shape of a tear drop, their surfaces scrolled with Celtic knotwork, that dangled to and fro as she tossed her head from side to side to check their fit before selecting a silver ring in the shape of a fish biting its own tail and placing it on the third finger of her right hand.
The third finger of her left hand, of course, was still claimed by Stefan’s engagement ring and she shivered a little, before pulling her thoughts back together and carefully re-applying the lipstick that Stefan’s enthusiasm had wiped away. Just why she felt so naked without make up Belinda wasn’t certain, but suspected more of Stefan’s post-hypnotic suggestion.
“I have to do some serious thinking.” Belinda told her reflection sternly
“Being here is like living in a fairy tale: I wake up in the most wonderful home I’ve ever seen, surrounded by beautiful things and spend the day being courted by someone who seems to adore me and repeatedly sweeps me off my feet – literally as well as figuratively. If I don’t pull myself together then before I work out what to do, or if I can go back to what I was, then before I know it I’m going to be marching down the aisle in a huge white dress and Stefan is going to put another ring
on my finger and seal my fate!

I’ll be a wife. I’ll be a wife!”

Belinda considered her reflection again. The girl in the mirror didn’t look terrified at the prospect. Worried, yes, confused, yes, a little scared, certainly, but not terrified. That was terrifying in itself.

“Belinda! Come on down or I’m coming up to get you. We’re wasting sunlight.”
Belinda jumped and rushed down to the Great Hall, where Stefan awaited her by the huge, black, iron studded oaken door that dated back to goodness only knew when.

“Hello butterfly. What kept you?”

“It’s a lady’s privilege to be late.” She replied, tossing her head in the air in mock annoyance. Then they were moving hand in hand out of the door and on to the great sward of sunlit turf that led down to the river.

As ever, Belinda was struck by the beauty of her surroundings. Stefan’s home was an actual castle, built on Roman foundations with additions running from Norman times to the seventeenth century. Barns and cottages competed with walled Tudor gardens for the prize of Most Picturesque Supporting Man-Made Feature but marvellous as Belinda found them they couldn’t match the castle’s grounds which comprised almost all of a smallish river valley tucked away in steep sided hills, half an hour’s drive and an eternity away from the dingy post-industrial town where an orphan named Brian had tormented a fellow inmate of the children’s home by the name of Stefan Shilpott.

The green turf that shaded imperceptibly into water meadow as it moved down the hillside was covered in dew drops which the slanting morning sunlight turned into living jewels every colour of the rainbow and Belinda danced through it joyously.

“You’re barefoot.”

“Yes, I’m bathing my feet in summer dew. It’s your fault.”

“Eh? How so?”

“Because right this minute I don’t have to be responsible. I’m a meek, helpless girly-girl, remember? Just like you planned. So while I wait to find out what evil plans you have for me this morning I can have fun!”
Stefan let out an involuntary growl of lust

“Come here and I’ll show you my evil plans. In enormous detail!”

“Catch me if you can!” Belinda laughed and ran away

“You call that meek?” asked Stefan as he chased after her

The chase didn’t last long of course. Stefan was taller, longer-legged, and better muscled while Belinda was hampered by her long skirt and the discovery that her boobs made painful escape attempts if she went too fast. Soon she was lying on the damp grass while Stefan alternately kissed her and threaded wildflowers into her hair. All in all, it was an idyllic scene. All the stranger then, that when Stefan asked if she was happy Belinda burst into tears.

“Belinda! Please, please, what’s wrong?”

“Everything! Nothing! I don’t know!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I- I’ve never felt so loved – never felt loved at all –since my parents dumped me at the children’s home.”

“What? I thought your parents were dead.”

“You were supposed to think that, idiot. That’s what I told everyone. The truth is they just – they just didn’t want me!” And with that Belinda dissolved into sobs and floods of tears, while Stefan tried frantically to comfort her.

“Butterfly, shh, please, please don’t be sad. I love you. I’ll never let you be hurt or lonely again.”

“How am I supposed to know that’s true?”

“What do you mean? I – “

“I mean that I don’t know if I like being a girl. No, scratch that, I know I do, but I don’t know if that feeling is real. I don’t know if I’m real!” And with that she buried her face in Stefan’s shoulder and subsided into quieter sobbing interspersed with sniffs and hiccups.

“I still don’t understand?”
Belinda pulled her face from his shirt to stare up at him wild-eyed.

“You created me, Stefan. You turned the school bully who tormented you into your ideal woman. I don’t even know that I blame you; I don’t know if I was much of an asset to the world as Brian Jenkins. But how much of the real me is there left? And what happens to me when your ideal changes?”

“Huh?”

“I went to sleep one night as Brian and woke up the next morning as Belinda. What if I wake up tomorrow as Barbie? A silicone enhanced bimbo with hairspray for brains? I don’t want to be like that.
“Worse, what if I wake up in a cage wearing a pink poodle collar marked ‘Princess’? You admitted to me that you are a control freak. I know you have a sadistic streak, only a small one, true, but that might change. I’m afraid, Stefan, can’t you see that? You – you” she began crying again “You said you liked me because I was brave. I’m not brave any more. I’m frightened!”

“Hush! You’re still brave. I’m proud of you. You’re right, I am an idiot. I shouldn’t have suppressed your memories. I just wanted to see the look on your face when I could present you with your new life, all wrapped up like a present. I didn’t stop to think what a shock it would be. I promise I don’t have any evil plans and I’m not going to do anything to you. Apart from the obvious.”

“But you already have. I’m not just a girl, I’m girly with it.”

“Maybe, but I swear, Belinda was there in potential all the time. Like a beautiful statue in a block of marble.”
Belinda sniffed “So you’re saying you’re like Pygmalion?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Not like Doctor Frankenstein?”

“No, I swear.”

“Then prove it. Give me my memories back. Please!”

“It could be traumatic. You’ve no idea how much pain the operation put you through. It was wiping that out that first gave me the idea to surprise you.”

“I’ll take that risk. I want to be real, Stefan. I have to know I’m not a toy or a puppet. If you really care about me, you’ll give me that.”

“OK, I promise. But it can’t be done all at once, your head would practically explode if I gave you a year’s worth of memories. Even when I told you about the engagement a couple of mornings ago you went into shock.”

“Well, what did you expect?”

“I didn’t expect you to sit completely frozen saying ‘Wuh – wuh – wuh – wedding?’ over and over again for five minutes. Five minutes is a long time, you know: you had me worried.”

“Hmm,” replied Belinda, pulling herself together now and directing a mock-glare at him from narrowed eyes “I’m sure you were very upset at what you had to do to snap me out of it.”

“I don’t know what you’re complaining about. Lots of girls like being spanked.”

“Oh, is that what it was? I didn’t realise what you were up to: I’m far too sweet and innocent.” Belinda rose to her feet and hauled at Stefan’s arm to pull him upright after her. “When do I get my memories back?”
Stefan muttered a phrase which she didn’t quite catch. “That should release the mental blocks slowly. They’ll come back to you in bits and pieces over the next couple of days, hopefully in some sort of order.”

“Mmm. I think spanking has just come back into my consciousness.” Belinda aimed a giant swat at Stefan’s backside. “It is fun, isn’t it? Ahh, no, that tickles!” and she was away, running towards the lake with a cry of “Catch me if you caaaan” floating on the summer air behind her