The Hermaphrodite's Curse

PART FIVE - MOUNT IDA

- 4 -

Gabe let the waters of the fountain wash over him as other emotions and sensations crashed around his body. It was just like all those dreams, the waters of Salmacis washing his body and the soft touch of a beautiful woman bringing that body to life, every touch causing an electric tingling sensation to run right through him, causing blood to rush to his head, not to mention between his thighs.

Only now, looking at the woman before him, he did not see the unattainable, barely imaginable image of the love goddess with her perfect features and flowing blonde hair. Now he saw something that thrilled him even more, the very real, yet still beautiful, sight of a girl with flame red hair, piercings in her eyebrows, nose and tongue and a body covered in tattoos, the girl he realised that he had come to think about, feel about and fantasise about more than ever could an image of a goddess.

Saphy was what he cared about, not Venus, not Hermaphroditus, not Salmacis, or any of those mythological distractions. None of them were touching him, kissing him, thrilling him in the way that she was right now beneath the raining waters of the Fountain. Every slightest touch that she gave him, brushing through the water was a new thrill, her hands in his wet hair, her breasts pushed against him through their soaked clothes, her lips kissing his, her tongue stud inside his mouth.

She pulled at his wet white tunic, the single item of clothing he wore, tugging it over his head and casting it into the fast flowing current that took the river away from the waterfall. Gabe watched his clothing float away, followed quickly by Saphy's miniskirt, before she planted a series of soft kisses on his lips.

"But," gasped Gabe, "I thought...You were pretty clear you were a lesbian..."

"Yeah, well, we're only here because deep down you always wanted a woman's body," she said, dismissively, "So, I guess that's good enough," she laughed, "Come on, what are you waiting for?"

With that encouragement, Gabe reached out and tore off Saphy's ripped and pinned together t-shirt, putting his fingers in one of the existent tears and ripping the whole thing in two to expose Saphy's body, painted in tattoos, dressed in just her underwear in the cold clear waters of the river.

They kissed and kissed again, their wet, near naked bodies, pressed against each other, tangling around each other. Gabe's lips felt a shiver run through them with each kiss. They felt alive, growing and changing. It was almost as if Saphy's kisses had given him a set of fuller, more sensitive lips to feel every touch of her own.

As they kissed, Gabe fumbled with Saphy's bra, still feeling a little awkward and self-conscious. Her hand, however, found his and, in a moment, her pale white breasts were on show beneath the shining sun. Gabe cupped her breasts in his hands running his finger around her hard nipples as Saphy pushed him back through the tumbling fountain of the waterfall so that his back was pressed against the wet rocks behind.

She slipped her last remaining piece of clothing, her panties, over her legs and let them drift away with the current, before wrapping her legs over where Gabe's were pressed against the rocks. She pulled him into another kiss, running her hands through his hair and pushing her breasts against his chest. Every part of his body that she touched was now shivering and tingling just like his lips.

Beneath the water line, Gabe felt his manhood stiff and hard, ready for what he eagerly anticipated was about to come. Saphy's hands ran down from Gabe's hair, over his shoulders and across his chest. Between his legs she held his hardness while her other hand slid between her own thighs.

Soon Gabe felt Saphy guiding him between her legs, into her wet spot, her body gliding against his as his hardness slid inside her. Saphy's moist pussy felt tight as it clasped around his erection, holding him in a way he had never been held before. He had never even been anywhere near this close with a girl before and now here was Saphy rubbing up close to him, riding down over him. It was all that Gabe could do not to release completely the moment he felt himself inside her.

At first Saphy simply began to grind her groin into his, letting him grow more accustomed to the feel of being inside her. Gabe had to remind himself that all this was just as new to her, given her previous proclivities. He could only imagine that this was the first time his aggressively lesbian companion had allowed herself to be penetrated by a man. Yet she was the one to take control here, Gabe only too happy to be lead. Soon Saphy began to pick up a rhythm to push herself further against him and back, riding his manhood as the waterfall tumbled around them.

As Saphy's thighs pressed against his, her legs wrapped around him, pulling him deeper inside her, Gabe could feel a tingling in his skin and the muscles beneath as if every fibre of his body was growing and changing. Looking beneath the water line, Gabe could see their legs tangled together, a mass of winding pale naked limbs, almost hard to tell which were his and which hers. The ugly tattoo on Saphy's thigh listing slurs and insults and its "sticks and stones" motto was all that showed where was Saphy's leg and where Gabe's. But, for a moment, it almost appeared as though this image was repeated across both of their thighs. Then, a second later, it seemed to have disappeared completely, both sets of legs appeared smooth and unblemished.

On top of this, Gabe noticed something else as he pushed his hips up to meet Saphy, burying his hardness deeper within her. It may have been a trick of the light, refraction from the cold, clear water, but it almost looked as if those hips had grown wider, and his waist was narrower. Under the waterline his body seemed to match Saphy's in its shapeliness. It appeared to Gabe as though his flat skinny body had curves, feminine curves. But he was probably imagining things.

Saphy tossed her head back as she started to pull Gabe deeper into her, her muscles constricting tighter around his hard aroused parts. He looked at her with awed desire, her flame red shock of hair, pierced face and naked breasts looked so good to him in the shower of Salmacis' fountain. The water fell over Saphy's fiery hair and ran down her shoulders. Gabe's eyes widened in surprise to see the Chinese characters, stubbornness and free will, indelibly marked into Saphy's arm begin to fade. It was as if the tattoos were written in nothing more than marker pen ink and the fast running waterfall was rubbing them clean off. It had not been an optical illusion. Saphy's tattoos really were being cleansed from her body.

Saphy's body was not, however, the only one that was shifting and changing under the fountain's free falling water. Gabe pushed his chest out as the curve of Saphy's breasts arched away from him, his nipples starting to feel tender and every time Saphy brushed across them he felt more excited than ever. As Saphy noticed this, she started to fondle his chest and he was shocked to notice small bumps around his nipples that had never been there, while they themselves stuck out as hard as his erect manhood.

Saphy raised her eyebrows at the sight of what appeared to be pubescent breasts emerging from Gabe's chest, but did not stop. She laughed and wrapped herself tighter around him, pushing her own bosom against his chest. Gabe could no longer deny that changes were happening in his body, that it was not illusion or imagination. With Saphy's breasts pressed into his, soon he had a chest that nearly perfectly matched her, a complete pair of grown, adult mounds of feminine flesh.

Always somebody who found the feminine form much more desirable than the masculine, Saphy barely hesitated as Gabe's body feminised in the fountain. If anything it seemed to drive her on, her interest in Gabe's mind and soul now matched by a desire for his body. If Gabe had thought it felt good before, now was something else. Their feminine curves pressed together as Saphy drove his penis deeper and deeper inside her, writhing and grinding with gleeful neediness.

"Oh my God," Gabe heard a sigh come from his mouth in a voice that was his and yet not his. A voice that was as transformed and womanly as his body was becoming.

"I think 'my Goddess' would be more appropriate in the moment," Saphy grinned.

As she said this, Gabe watched her open mouth, the stud glinting on her tongue. He could see Saphy's lips open in ecstasy and could tell that she was as perfectly in this moment as him. As their bodies entwined and moved in a single rhythm, her wrapped around him, him inside her, their skin and muscle shifting and changing to reflect one another, it was as if they were one united creature, one body working towards achieving its ultimate pleasure.

Saphy gasped as the water splashed around her and the muscles between her legs tightened around Gabe. Her breathing was fast and heavy, her body shook. Gabe knew that she was reaching her climax, knew that, penetrated for the first time, her body could take no more and was releasing wave after wave of pleasure just in the way the waterfall flooded over her. As Saphy came Gabe glanced at her chest and saw the ugly scar there begin to fade and the tattoo heart beneath it to wash away.

Light headed, new body parts still being explored, Gabe remained pushed as deep as he could be inside Saphy's wetness. In her moment of passion, however, Saphy's hand pulled him further against her, straying and exploring parts that he was not yet even aware of. Sliding beneath where their sex parts united them like the original Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, Saphy's questing fingers found something new and began to stroke it.

Gabe nearly lost his mind at the feel of Saphy fingering his labia. For all the transformation his body had been through he had not realised this most female of parts had opened between his legs. As Saphy slid two fingers right into his newly emerged and aroused pussy it all became too much for Gabe. He could hold back no longer. Thrusting himself against her, he felt his orgasm sweep through him, ejaculating his love deep within her as the fountain's waters swept everything else away.

Afterwards, admiring the shape of his new body in the clear mirror of the lake, Gabe could still hardly believe it. He had breasts, a narrow waist, wide hips and smooth shapely thighs. His face had changed. It was still sort of him, sort of recognisable, but it was her. It was him as he would be if he had been born a girl. It was the face that he had always subconsciously wished for but never truly understood. His long hair was still wet with the waterfall, but he saw there was a streak of colour it never had before, a bright flame red seemingly taken straight from Saphy's head.

He turned to her and smiled, noticing her examining and admiring his body. Hers had changed too. Where he had a streak of red running through the fringe of his hair, hers had a streak of his dark hair in its place. Where once her body was covered in rainbow stripes, Chinese letters and Greek poetry, now it was bare, a clean slate. All except for the symbol on her arm, the circle and cross, the female symbol, the mirror of Venus.

He reached to point this out to her and she instead caressed his opposite arm. Looking at himself, Gabe now noticed another thing that had never been there before. A tattoo had appeared on his own arm, the mirror of Saphy's, but for one thing, the circle and cross had an arrow too. It was the combined symbol of male and female, Mars and Venus, that had first begun this strange, unpredictable quest.

Gabe remained amazed as he absent mindedly fondled his new curves. Only his penis and balls remained to show his remaining masculinity. He had truly become a hermaphrodite just as the legend told.

"It actually worked," he finally articulated, "It really does turn men like Hermaphroditus."

"I wasn't sure, but I thought this was the secret," Saphy responded, "What the Hospitallers never understood."

"That it needed a woman's touch," Gabe laughed, it all becoming clear to him, "The transformation into a woman needed the physical love of a woman to happen."

"That's what Professor White knew all along," Saphy agreed, "It's not just the fountain, it's sex too that does it."

Turning back to his own mirror, the waters of Salmacis, Gabe admired the twin reflected images of himself and Saphy, reflected in the water, but also their bodies reflecting each other. This is what it had all been for. For a moment he thought he saw a third figure, a tall, statuesque blonde familiar from all his dreams and fantasies. She looked straight at him, smiled in a proud fashion and then faded from time and memory like Saphy's tattoos.

END OF PART FIVE