Changing Island: Entry 12

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Entry 12

I suppose it's time to talk about myself. This is...a little embarrassing to type up, to be honest, but I'm committed to making as complete and accurate a record as I can. I've been taking notes from the first time I noticed anything was different until it was over; I've been trying to mentally prepare myself to compose this practically since the first interview I took. I want to note not just what physically happened to me, but also...what I feel has happened to my mind.

Now, you shouldn't worry; I don't think it's like this island hypnotizes people or anything. It's just that I've noticed consciously, and can easily see from the tone of my own writing in the earlier entries, that my opinion of things definitely has changed. I think it's a combination of accepting my situation and getting to know a lot of other girls on the island, listening to and recording their stories, and ultimately knowing I'm not alone. I'll try to explain what I mean as I go, actually.

First of all, I wrote my initial entry under the impression that anyone reading already knows me, and so would be familiar with the circumstances of my disappearance. That's not very professional of me; I should at least say a little bit about that here. I'm an anthropologist and historian; I was in the north doing some hands-on archaelogical research into the history and culture of the indigenous peoples there, including taking interviews from their surviving descendants. I guess that might be what put me in the mood to do interviews here, or at least a part of it. Anyway, the ship broke up in a storm, like I said before, but I've been able to track down some news reports since then that most of the passengers and crew were rescued not long afterward, save for a couple of disappearances—including one Lucas Jost.

I don't feel compelled to relive my experience of sinking into the frozen water at great detail here in writing, but...I'm sure you can imagine. It was a huge relief to wake up alive and well, lying on my back on the sand with the waves lapping across my body and the warm sun on my front side. It was a relief until I sat up and had the briefest of looks around, and then it was extremely confusing. The questions that came into my mind were the same, I imagine, as a lot of girls' first thoughts when they woke up on this island: "How did I get here? Where's everyone else? Is this island inhabited? Where even is this?" It didn't help that I could pretty well immediately see that I was far from where I'd fallen into the ocean, way too far to not be dead. At least—according to my own understanding of geography and climate, anyway.

I didn't get very long to confusedly look around, trying to make sense of my situation, before some girls ran up to greet me and help me up. I had the situation explained to me, and of course I didn't believe it at first—but I soon decided that, even if it wasn't the truth, I wanted to hear everyone's stories. Najira came along to welcome me personally not long after that, helping me find an unoccupied space in a house to live in. I was actually offered a choice between a presently-empty house, or one with a couple of people already living in it in case that would help me adjust to things better.

All of the houses are pretty big here, with three to four bedrooms each and plenty of space for that many people to live comfortably and not get in each other's way. Najira's house is the biggest, with five bedrooms; the other four have been filled by different girls over the past five years, as evidently people shuffling around between houses is a moderately common occurrence. But I just wanted some space to think, and felt a little uncomfortable about—well—living with two to three gorgeous girls right off the bat, since I didn't yet believe that I would be one too pretty soon, so I elected to live alone at first.

When I came to my bedroom and looked around, I found the desk and closet stocked with plenty of notebooks, pencils, and pens. I assumed that this was what everyone got, but found out later that the amount of note-taking supplies I got was quite a bit more than most people find in their houses from day one. I guess the island knew what I wanted to do before I did; I was actually inspired by seeing the notebooks and the computer on that desk to go and try to start getting people's stories. I thought, even if what they were saying wasn't true, they seemed to believe it, and I wanted to hear it all firsthand. Since Najira was still there at my house to see if I needed anything, I asked her for an interview first thing.

When we were through, I asked her who else might be a good person to interview, and she suggested that Danny might be willing if I could catch her "between waves". After that, I wandered around, found the library and met Millie, and then of course there was Irya. It was a couple of hours after she got transformed by this island that I actually talked with her, and since I'd seen that change firsthand, it was a fairly brief interview. I didn't want to take up too much of her time adjusting to things here anyway, being fully aware of how much of a shock this place is even if you don't instantly shrink into a cute girl on arrival.

Something I've wondered about is whether accepting the reality that the change is coming, or wanting it, has some sort of influence over how soon it begins and how quickly it progresses. Irya's experience seems to contradict that hypothesis, but she could be an outlier for some unknown, unrelated reason; it's not like we have the means to actually rule out confounding factors in order to do a proper scientific study on this extremely supernatural phenomenon. But it certainly matches up with my own experience to think so, anyway: My first day here ended with me accepting the inevitability that I'd change, and the following morning I discovered that it had started.

For me, it started with a change to my face: I woke up, looked in the mirror, and saw a girl's face looking back. I'd actually been wearing a pretty big beard when I first arrived, one of several measures taken to help me out in the frozen north. But with how hot it is here, that was extremely uncomfortable, so I used a razor I found in my bathroom to shave it all off as best I could. The little bit that my efforts left over had now vanished, but it wasn't just that I looked clean-shaven. My face was small, round, soft-looking: Cute and girlish, standing out very starkly and strangely against my otherwise completely male body. The clothes I found to wear that morning all fit that male body just fine; I chose some bermuda shorts and a thin t-shirt that seemed like they'd be comfortable for walking out on the beach.

Given that the face is a very obvious feature, the first thing many people look at when they greet someone, it was only natural for everyone to comment on how I had "started" as soon as they first saw me that day. Dr. Haden didn't make any such comment; she has far too serious a demeanor, even while she's relaxing. I had to conduct my interview out on the beach, sitting next to her while she continued sunbathing.

She had her laptop next to her, and sat up to pull it over and show me those pictures she took. Not very many of us get laptops here, myself included, but it seems like the island decided Lauren 'deserved one' not long after her arrival. Anyway, I was a little shocked at how willing she was to show those kind of exposing photos, but she said "It's in the name of science" and "we'll all be women soon, anyway". I couldn't argue with either of those, not after seeing my face that morning.

At the end of the interview, I stood up and headed off to compile my notes on my computer, assured that Lauren was going to email me the pictures she'd shown me right away. I realized on my way back to my house that my arms and legs were missing most of their hair, and pulling up my shirt for a second, it became obvious that the rest of my skin was the same way as my face now: Soft, smooth, hairless. It hadn't stopped just because I was busy giving an interview; if anything, it was like it had waited until I was too busy with that to notice.

Nothing else seemed to happen to me for the rest of the morning. I had lunch in my house, and then went out to find someone else to interview. Then I spent a large chunk of my afternoon trying to interview Ciera; my entry on her already detail what made that a somewhat difficult process. I also asked a few of the other girls who'd been around at that time for corroboration of her story, but found that she more or less told me the whole truth, so there wasn't much need to mention that in the entry itself. I think the sand that wound up in my keyboard after that came from her, maybe deposited onto my notebook and then dropped onto the keyboard while I was holding that up in front of the screen.

I'm not really the best with computers, hence my preference for paper notes. So I didn't know it was the keyboard making it impossible to type what I wanted to type, and thought it was the entire computer having fits. Soon enough, I gave up in frustration since I didn't know what was wrong and was getting hungry anyway, and went to supper. I'd been invited to a small dinner at Najira's place (I think so I wouldn't have to be alone for every meal), and was glad to not have to prepare it myself in my present mood, so that's where I went.

Dr. Haden was another of the guests at that dinner. Perhaps Lauren saw that frustration on my face and followed me to my place to see what I was so upset about. It didn't occur to me until then just how open everyone's houses really are, but I guess nobody really minds visitors, or at least it's normal to tell people when you don't want them instead of that being the default.

After a change of complexion and a loss of body hair, what a lot of the stories I've compiled so far move on to is hair growth, voice change, and/or bodily shrinking. None of those things happened to me while I was watching Nikki try every diagnostic test under the sun on my computer and, simultaneously, interviewing her. Instead, I felt my shirt crawling its way up my stomach while its sleeves fell increasingly loose. I was always a little on the short side as a boy, and what was happening to me was partially the opposite of the usual: I got taller, yet also slimmer and narrower.

Nikki is quite a tall girl too—having maintained the height she had as a boy—and when I was thanking her for the interview and the help with the computer, she remarked that I'd grown—no doubt seeing that our eyes were now level instead of me having to tilt up to not be staring at her impressive chest. I only really put together what I'd been feeling for the past half hour or so after she pointed this out, and then I rushed to scribble some notes about it in the separate notebook I had earmarked to use for my own change.

Nothing else happened to my body that night. I noted down that my appearance was now "tall, but slim and slightly androgynous with an effeminate face". That's pretty much what I woke up to the following morning, and when I saw that, I was conflicted between being relieved or being stressed that things weren't progressing very quickly. I began trying to more seriously contemplate how I really felt about what was happening to me, and try to force myself to process it—but I still had interviews I wanted to do that day.

I saw Ara with her catlike ears and tail almost as soon as I was outside, and I had to know what was up with that. She'd been going out to get coffee—apparently one of her neighbors "made it the right way" or something—and allowed me to follow her back to her house/animal hospital for an interview, since she didn't anticipate being too busy that morning. I could hear my voice slowly changing while I talked to her, but it wasn't a very straightforward change; it was like it would get higher, then deeper again yet less masculine, and then higher again. This cycle repeated a number of times before it finally seemed to settle into the way it sounds now. I'd describe it as mid-range, decidedly feminine and mature, but with a hint of cuteness still—and that's just where it naturally settles when I don't think about it; I've found with some brief experimenting that I've actually got a fairly wide range overall.

Looking at my entry for Ara, I believe I can see the start of a change in the way that I write. First, I started to refer to a generic person on this island as "she/her" instead of something more general, which makes sense..everyone's female, after all. But it is definitely a stylistic change from what I would've written before coming here.

Second, I see the beginnings of my own commenting on other girls' appearances in..complimentary ways. I think I was starting to pick up the way that girls talk about each other all the time here on this island; everyone's more than happy to point out what she likes about how whoever she's talking to looks. It seems a little awkward to speak that way as a man, but..from one girl to another, it's hard for me to really find a fault with it. Would 'real' women, who hadn't been born as men, compliment each other this way? Maybe not...or at least it might be different particular features being pointed out. But it's a part of this island's culture, I think, especially if it slipped its way into my writings a mere two days after my own arrival.

At any rate, this is some of what I meant about my own mentality changing. Another point about that is my reflection at the end of that entry, about competing senses of dread and anticipation. Hearing a woman's voice come from my throat really drove home the fact that my own impending femininity was coming closer and closer. It forced me to think about it, for sure.

Saya's interview was next. I didn't include this in her entry, because it belongs here: When she barged into my room and announced that she was here to check if I was 'done', I told her I was still quite male, thank you. And she said, "Oh wow, that's a pretty voice you've got! And just look at that adorable face! I bet you're gonna turn out drop-dead gorgeous!" Asking her if she'd agree to an interview was partially my own way of brushing off those forceful compliments, I think; I was feeling a bizarre sort of embarrassment at having those features called out like that, and badly wanted to change the subject. Not that it helped much—she brought it right back up at the end of the interview, after all.

While I was sitting there composing the entry for Saya, I found some unusual discomfort in my computer chair that I'd never noticed before. I wriggled around, or stood up and briefly paced before sitting back down, and it would go away. It didn't take me too long to realize what was happening, and some quick examination confirmed my first guess that this was a result of my lower body beginning to take on more feminine proportions. That is: My hips were getting wider, and my bottom was getting bigger. It happened slowly and steadily the whole time I was writing; it soon began to pull the shorts and underwear I had on strangely tight, stretching them against..well, what was between my legs at the time..in a slightly uncomfortable manner. I put up with it until I was done writing, and then went to see if the island had given me something more fitting to wear.

By now, the growth was all done; I had hips to die for (or what would be that for a girl, anyway), and my thighs had grown noticeably plumper, too. The way I stood up and walked was different now because of that; my center of balance had shifted noticeably. It was strange: I was aware of the difference, but had no difficulty adjusting, as if my body and the motor-control parts of my brain already knew exactly what to do. Anyway, I found some underwear resembling a pair of boyshorts, and a pair of gymshorts, that were wide enough for my expanded butt yet still had enough room between the legs to be at least reasonably comfortable.

Millie actually bothered to knock on the front door to the house, loud enough for me to hear from my bedroom. I hurried to let her in, and we had a pleasant chat, still the interview I think I enjoyed the most so far. She could see how stressed I was about the changes coming on right away, and put both of her hands around one of mine, saying, "It's okay, you'll get through it and feel better than ever. I promise." The usual kind of encouragement people give each other on this island is helpful, but...I feel like Millie's quiet, kind words helped me the most of all. If I'm ever in a position to do the same, I definitely want to be more of a 'Millie' and less of a 'Saya', I think. But I'll admit, at the time certain parts of my body interpreted this gesture as a beautiful woman holding my hand and leaning in close, and..I was very definitely attracted to her. I managed to suppress it socially for the most part—I mean, I was probably blushing, and she was blushing for the first few minutes or so, but we both focused on the matter hand: Her interview.

I didn't think anything else changed while I was talking to Millie, not until she left and I stood up to go for a walk out on the beach. That was when I realized that I wasn't feeling quite so squeezed by the underwear and shorts I'd put on to fit the widened hips. No, they weren't any less tight—I was actually smaller in the place they'd been uncomfortable. Of course: The part of my anatomy that made me actually male was beginning to give way before the island's effects.

About Millie's entry, though. My first few entires, I wrote—and thought of—the women on this island as "they", "the inhabitants"..you know, other people. By our librarian's entry, I can see that I was already starting to feel like a part of the community: Now it's "us" and "our". I also started calling the other girls "girls" quite a bit, I can see, a trend that continues in my later entries on through to this one. And..there's more of me talking about how good the girl the entry is about looks. By the time I was typing Millie's entry, I knew my manhood wasn't very long for this world, so...if I even noticed I was doing it, I suppose I felt like it didn't matter anymore. After all, like Lauren said, "We'll all be women soon anyway."

I went out to the beach with Millie because I'd been planning to anyway, but also to get out of my own head for a little while. I won't be so histrionic as to describe myself as mourning for my masculinity, but it's fair to say that I did start out with denial and was inching ever closer to acceptance at this point...especially when I occasionally felt a slight, strange twinge of motion between my legs that afternoon. Maybe some of those were just my still-male body reacting the way one does to close proximity to scantily-clad, beautiful girls..especially when it was Millie...but I think the majority were just what you'd probably imagine. It's certain that enough of them were that that when I paused between supper and writing my last entry for that day to check, I found myself to be quite small down there.

I'd like to describe the experience of changing sex frankly and forthrightly. It's likely that not every girl on this island had exactly the same physical sensations, but I think it's fair to say that...even the ones who did have sensations similar to what I got, who I've interviewed, may have been understandably embarrassed to fully go into the details. I can't say for sure that anyone had an experience like mine, but...I believe it's likely that some did. So, the more a girl blushed when coming to this part of her story, the more I now suspect she was..putting her own description of it somewhat mildly. I won't name names, of course; I only want to talk about myself here.

All of that is to say..I took a seat on a couch in the main room of my house after I finished writing Millie's entry. No change had come between my legs while I was writing—thankfully, because that would've been pretty distracting—but almost the instant I was finished, this..curious tingling had started, down there. The tingling, I realized, was actually the same feeling I'd been getting before, but continuous instead of in only brief little bursts. It came on stronger and stronger from there (by now I was sitting down), turning into a tugging and slipping feeling. I found myself squirming around in my seat and making little..sounds of anticipation as it got sharper, and I could physically feel that part of me that was male starting to pull itself that last little bit inward.

I'll admit: I actually cried out when it happened. A very girlish "Aaa~aaah" kind of cry. Even after all of the build up, it was a surprisingly intense bragge of sensations: a quite sharp pull, a fuzzy, flowing sensation down there, and a motion in the pit of my stomach that must've been the rapid formation of a womb. The tingling and tugging had definitely been..stimulating me, down there, in the last moments that I was a man, and that stimulation seemed to somehow immediately transfer into the feminine organs I now found myself with being just as affected, if not even more so.

I probably cried out a little more while I experienced this, until it finally came to an end. And then I felt—just physically speaking, mind you—happy, satisfied, relieved. It was like something (some part of me?) had been pressuring me to feel that...pleasure, to at least give it a try—and now that I had, and had enjoyed it, that very same 'something' was happy, and I couldn't help being at least little happy with it. Maybe that doesn't make any sense; perhaps my tired mind was just making all of that up. But...I certainly wasn't dreading the transformation anymore; with my manhood completely gone already, there wasn't really anything to dread. I could only look forward to the rest now—or at least, that's how I felt that night.

The next day—today, my first full day as a woman—there was the breakfast and the interview with Kate. I can see those changes in the way I think and write about things in full force with her entry, from calling everyone "girls" to mentioning how cute she was (and still is!). She has this nonchalant, seemingly perpetually ill-tempered way of emoting that still fails to hide how happy she really is here with everyone else, but her tail is always wagging whenever she talks to certain people, or any time she hears someone compliment her appearance or her cooking. Excuse me—I'm tempted to edit that last sentence out, but I feel like it puts on full display the change of disposition I've undergone since the island began transforming me. That's another thing, actually: I've noticed myself increasingly describing anything supernatural that happens here as "the island" doing it, like it's a person or at least a living creature that causes those events. I don't think that's really how it is, but it's a convenient shorthand for "scientifically inexplicable phenomena" anyway, I suppose.

Returning to the topic of my own change: It was during breakfast and the subsequent conversation with Kate that my hair (I mean what grows from my scalp) actually, finally grew out. It was almost shoulder-length by the time I was done eating—some long bangs threatening to get in my vision while other locks framed my face—and it slowly trickled its way down my back and shoulders while I was interviewing Kate. By the end it was about halfway down my back, covering the back of my chest, and that's where it's stayed until now. Seeing Kate's hair still put up from when she'd been cooking, and noticing my own increasingly long hair, put that concept in my mind. So after Kate's interview, I asked one of the other girls just what everyone does to take care of their hair, and that's how I wound up at Jill's salon.

Jill told me that my hair didn't need any attention just yet—"Everyone's perfect when they first change," she said—but I clarified that I wanted an interview and why, and she was happy to oblige. I'll probably be back there to get her "assistance" too, maybe when it's not so busy. Or, maybe when I do want to do something new with my own hair, or my nails or something...but I digress.

I didn't change any more throughout that interview either, and you should note that at this point I looked every bit like a tall, cute, curvy woman—aside from a completely flat chest. My wardrobe choices this morning had been rather limited compared to previous days too, and I was stuck with only panties and bikini bottoms, not even any shorts to choose from! So...I was in a bikini bottom and as long a shirt as I could find, which still barely covered the upper half of my hips when I was standing up. Nobody really seemed to mind my state of dress, or even find it remarkable—as I've said before, skimpy outfits are a pretty consistent trend here because that's what the island provides and they're more comfortable out in the island's heat, so it's pretty much a completely acceptable state of dress.

I went back to my house to write up Kate and Jill's entries, and wound up sitting at my computer for quite a while in order to achieve that. Around halfway through writing Kate's, I happened to notice my chest seemed a little more sensitive than usual to the way my shirt moved across it when I shifted around in the chair. A quick examination found the nipples were bigger than before, both wider and taller, and so I knew that the last step of my change had begun. From there, tiny bumps slowly rose their way up from underneath those two as they continued to slowly get bigger themselves, and by the time I was nearly through writing Jill's entry I had what could reasonably be called a girl's breasts.

I took a moment before finishing up the closing few paragraphs to get up, roll the shirt up, and actually take a good look at them in the mirror. I..admit that when I was taking notes for Saya's entry, I felt like it was a little ridiculous of her to see herself having rapidly grown breasts—something that usually takes years during a woman's puberty—and yeet still impatiently poke and prod and jeer at them to get bigger already. But...I'll also admit I felt a slight disappointment at my own..'size', at this time. I wrote what I did at the of my last entry in anticipation and expectation of them continuing to get bigger for a while yet. It's fair to say that at this point I had no negative emotions whatsoever when it came to my transformation; it was all eager anticipation of what was to come.

I had some lunch, and then I took a break, going out by the beach to just talk. No notepads, no pens—I just wanted to relax and hang out with some of the other girls, like I had with Millie yesterday. I had to put up with the occasional teasing words as the girls noticed my chest pushing itself up and out more and more throughout the afternoon. Well, I say put up, but I found myself blushing, smiling and giggling along with them. They were, in their own way, cheering me on, and now I found myself happy to hear compliments of my increasingly amazing figure, as well as people pointing it out for me as it became even more so.

I must've thought they were finished growing five or six separate times, only to then feel the motion of my shirt across them as they swelled out just a little bit more. By suppertime they'd grown big—bigger than Millie's, for sure, and at least Ara's size. One of the girls invited me to eat with her and her housemates, and I was happy to accept. Then I came back here to start writing this entry. I was feeling eager and energized to write this, and even though I could feel my boobs pushing out a little more even as I sat down at my computer, I knew it wouldn't be much longer before I was finished.

In a...sort of coincidence, it was just after I wrote that part about the experience of changing sex that I felt one particularly long and hard push from my chest. I was already feeling a little..warm in the cheeks from thinking back over those sensations, and somehow the feeling of my bust growing this particular time seemed to exacerbate that, giving me a slight recurrence of the fuzzy feeling down between my legs, like another insistent reassurance that I am, completely and totally, a woman. Not that I'm really complaining...it felt nice, I must say.

Nothing else came after that, and I can't say that I really want it to. The breasts I wound up with are a pair of gigantic, almost comical globes that'll probably squish against each other once I actually put on some support instead of only having a loose t-shirt hang down over them. As of now, I have just the kind of gorgeous, tall, curvy body that Saya was probably anticipating for me, and I honestly couldn't be much happier with it!

Speaking of her...it's pretty late into the night now, so I guess I'll ask her to take my picture in the morning. I'm sure she'll do a great job of showing off all my best features!

I've also made a decision about my name: I'll be going by Luka from now on. Maybe it's a bit lazy, just cutting off one letter from my male name and changing another in a way that doesn't alter the pronunciation, but...I feel like it's "me". It's a little hard to describe, and I can see why other girls had a hard time fully and properly explaining why they changed their names when I asked them. I just want what the other girls on this island call me to fit, I suppose, the same way that I want my clothes to fit me; it simply makes me feel more comfortable.

I can ask myself, now, how I feel about being stuck as a woman. There are some aspects to it which I hadn't anticipated, much less anticipated enjoying quite so much. Being taller is nice. Like I was saying back in Jill's entry, it's hard for me to really even see the loss of manhood as a meaningful disadvantage in the face of everything else I'm getting.

On top of all of that, I feel like...it makes me fit in with everyone else a lot better. We've all got this bizarre, shared experience of washing ashore here male, then undergoing an involuntary metamorphosis into an attractive female. It's a part of what defines the community here on Changing Island, and how we all interact with each other; it's a known quantity we can use to help introduce any newcomers to this place, too. That's not to say that I think we couldn't all get along without it, but seeing how it's inevitable anyway, co-opting it as a kind of societal glue to help us all relate to each other better definitely isn't the worst way to handle it.

You shouldn't imagine, by the way, that this is my last entry; it's just that it's my entry. I'll be doing another interview tomorrow, I'm sure, and I'm intent on compiling my notes and typing up the accounts of the other girls on this island until I've got every single one of them down. And even then, I know my work won't be done—more boys will wash ashore with their own changes to experience and their own stories to tell. Even they don't, there's a lot more I can research and write about when it comes to this paradisiacal society we've got going here, and the various mysteries of supernatural provision and physical metamorphosis that seem to be intrinsic properties of this island. I'm bound to keep on writing about all of those things, because I'm Luka—the historian of Changing Island!

Was that too cliche? Too chipper? Too informal? It feels like the right thing to say to round this entry off regardless. No, I refuse to edit it out. I'll leave this in, too; I want an honest account of myself, after all.

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I've had the image for Luka picked out for a very long time, I think even as far back as the initial run of this story as an eventually-abandoned caption series. I had a rough idea of how this entry would work, and came up with some more ideas for it while I was putting together the recent bunch of entries for this story and tried to work those ideas in so this would feel a little more natural. Hopefully the wait was worth it.