Pinkie's Ring - Fragment found on drive (Patreon)

Another of these partial stories found on my drive. Oddly, I remember the entire plot of this one. Maybe I'll be able to continue it. - Erin

Pinkie's Ring

by Erin Halfelven

Chapter 1 - Origins and Auguries

The doorbell rang while Link and I were playing City of Heroes in his bedroom. I'd brought my laptop over so we were both online and being in the same room could talk back and forth and cooperate to blast baddies like nobody's business. The doorbell hardly penetrated the noise of the game but Link noticed.

"Tina will get it," he said. Normally, Link would be out doing something athletic but he'd strained a muscle or a ligament in his foot during basketball practice on Friday so he and I were wasting time lying around on his bedroom floor killing super-villains.

We killed a few more, finishing a fight, and the bell rang again. "She's not here," I said. "Ashley and Darby came by and they went to the mall." Darby is a girl; some parents shouldn't be allowed to name their kids.

Link got up quickly, wincing slightly because of his injured foot. "Why didn't you say so, doof!" he complained. Doof is not my name, it's just something Link calls people when he's annoyed. Link's name is really Ulysses Lincoln MacIan. Hard to make a nickname out of Ulysses, though his sister sometimes calls him Ugly or Useless. Or Ugly and Useless.

"I just remembered seeing her leave when I came in," I said. My name is Marion Leslie Pinck. See what I mean about parents? When I'm lucky, the other kids call me Pinkie but Link calls me Rex because John Wayne's real name was Marion and his nickname was Duke and a Rex is higher than a Duke. I put myself to AFK and then did the same on Link's console and followed him down the hall to find out who would ring his doorbell at two p.m. on a Saturday afternoon.

Link is fifteen, tall and skinny; I'm ten months younger, ten inches shorter and ten pounds heavier. We've been neighbors since Link's mom died in a terrorist attack over in Lebanon and his father moved the family to Fullerton about eight years ago. We've been good friends ever since Link broke up a gang of bullies intent on throwing me up into a tree back in the fourth grade.

I got to the door and found him staring at a bunch of big wooden boxes sitting on his front walk. "What the heck is this stuff?" I asked.

"I dunno," he said. He knelt to read labels. "It's from Turkey, for my Dad." Link's Dad is Professor Seton Innes MacIan at Fullerton University, in charge of the Archaeology department. "Help me get this stuff into the garage." Prof. MacIan had gone to San Francisco on Friday to deliver some lectures at a museum; he wouldn't be back till Tuesday.

"How can we move this stuff?" I pushed at one of the boxes, it didn't move at all. They were each a foot or two on a side and seemed to be loaded with rocks -- which considering what his dad did for a living might be true.

"We've got a wheelie thing in the garage," he said. He went back in the house to open the garage door while I kept an eye on the boxes to make sure no dogs peed on them. Certainly, no one was going to tuck one under his arm and stroll away.

It took both of us to get the tongue of the dolly under the bigger boxes, lean the handle back to lift them and maneuver the laden dolly into the back of the garage. We had to work around all the exercise equipment because, besides the ordinary clutter of a garage, most of the space was actually set up as a home gym. All of the MacIans worked out and sometimes, they even talked me into using one of the torture devices.

An hour or two with free weights, treadmills and stairsteppers wouldn't faze Link at all so it didn't surprise me that he kept limping along even though the hard work must have hurt his sore foot. But he didn't say anything so I didn't complain either.

When we were moving the next to the last box, taller and narrower than the others, something inside it shifted and it fell off the dolly with a huge, heart-stopping crash. One of the wooden sides came off and odd-shaped pieces of pottery scattered all over that corner of the garage.

"We broke something!" I yelped.

"Nah," said Link. "This stuff was broken when Caesar was a pup." Link talks like that sometimes, throwing around the names of historical characters as if they were family pets.

Some of it looked like fresh breaks to me but I didn't argue.  We gathered broken pieces of mud-brown pottery to stack in the broken box while Link explained that pottery shards are like sudoku puzzles to archaeologists; they love solving what they mean and they can't get enough of them but it's really pretty pointless unless you like that kind of thing.

"Hey," I said, pointing. "That's not pottery." It wasn't. It looked like a shiny gold ring lying among the dirty remains of someone's ancient crafts class homework.

Link picked up the ring and examined it. "Heavy," he commented. "This doesn't belong with this other stuff, it can't. Maybe it was lying on the floor already."

I peered at it close up in his hand; a simple, smooth, dark gold band. "Looks like a man's wedding ring," I said. "Your dad lose his?"

"Never had one, as far as I know. He doesn't wear rings," said Link. "It's too small for his hand, anyway." Demonstrating, he slipped the thick, wide, heavy ring on his left pinkie -- it fit perfectly, showing that it wasn't all that big around.

"Yeah, weird," I commented. "Maybe ancient Turkeys had little fingers?"

He snorted. "The Turks have been there less than a thousand years; this pottery is probably Sumerian or Assyrian, like four or five thousand years old."

I stopped piling small pieces on top of bigger ones and stared at him. I didn't know if his numbers were accurate but the idea of handling something that old so casually boggled me a bit.

He stood up, wincing again because of his foot. "Help me get the last box in and we'll go get some utsos." Utsos are Unidentified Taco-Shaped Objects, like those served at various fast-food places including the nearest one down at the end of the street connecting our subdivision with the boulevard.

"Okay," I said. Utsos can be good or bad and the local ones were actually pretty tasty if you put just a little hot sauce on them. I wanted to get away from the pile of ancient pottery, anyway.

Link handled the dolly and I steadied the box while we wheeled it past Nautilus machines, lawnmowers and broken, but modern, furniture. He had just grabbed my shoulder with his left hand to keep me from falling forward as the weight of the box shifted from dolly to floor when we heard a metallic ping and another ring bounced on the cement floor of the garage. We both watched it roll around in the dirt, pottery dust, and grease stains.

"Where'd that come from?" I asked.

"I dunno," said Link, looking at his hand where he still wore the fat, possibly antediluvian, ring.

I bent and picked it up; a somewhat similar ring though thinner, and lighter, it seemed about as big around as the earlier one. "Wild," I said. "It looked like it dropped out of your hand."

"Um," said Link. "The funny thing is, I'd just been thinking that I like my ring and I wished we had found two so you could have one."

"Your ring?" I said, staring at him. Without really thinking about it, I slipped the new ring on the third finger of my left hand. "Hey, look, it fits!"

"Yeah," said Link, grinning. "Does this mean we're married?"

"Huh?"

"You put it on your wedding finger," he pointed out.

"Well, it fit." I tried to take it off but somehow it wouldn't budge.

We forgot the boxes and shards and spent the next half hour trying to get the rings off, using soap, water, cooking oil and even peanut butter. "That's for getting gum out of hair," I told him.

"Whatever," he said. "These rings are not coming off. It's like they shrank or something."

"They couldn't, could they?"

"I dunno, you tell me."

"Um," I said. "Yeah, they shrank."

He looked at me. "How did they shrink?"

"Magic," I said, positive of the answer.

"Huh? What kind of magic?"

"Really old magic," I said. "Like the gods used to do."

"What the heck are you talking about?"

"These rings," I said, holding out my hand. The ring on my left hand seemed to tingle and I stared at it.

"Yeah, the rings," he said. "Do you know something about them?"

I nodded, feeling weird that I knew something I could not have learned in any rational way.

"Tell me what you know, Rex," he said.

"They're magic," I said. The ring tingled again and I thought I might faint at the weirdness of wearing a magic ring and knowing it was magic.

"What can they do besides shrink?" he asked.

"Lots of things," I said in a small voice.

"What can my ring do?" he asked holding up his hand. The fat pinkie ring seemed to me to glow without getting brighter.

"It makes things happen," I said.

"What kind of things?"

"Things that you want. To happen. The ring will make them happen."

He stared at me. "You're saying this ring grants wishes?"

"I -- sort of?" I almost broke out in a sweat from the weird tension of answering questions I didn't know the answers to until they were asked.

"What do you mean, sort of?" Link asked, glaring at me.

"I don't know," I squeaked. "I didn't mean anything--I mean, I don't think I'm saying this stuff, I mean, not by myself."

We looked at the rings and thought weird thoughts.

Link looked up at me and said, "Tell me what your ring does."

"It makes things happen -- to me," I gulped.

He stared at me some more.

The sound of a car in the driveway made both of us look up. "Tina," he said. We'd left the garage door open but he went quickly to the laundry room that connected kitchen and garage and pushed the button that would close the big fold-down door. Like most Californian families, no one ever actually parked in the garage, unless they belonged to a home-owner’s association that would send them a nasty letter about it.

"Let's get out of here," Link said and I nodded. We left by the back door, went around by the side yard, climbed the stile into my backyard and out the back gate onto the fenced-over footbridge above the freeway toward our high school.

"No utsos," I commented. Taco Bell lay the other direction. "We could go to Longorio's for real tacos?"

He shook his head, "We'll get burgers at Great Shakes. Double-doubles."

"I'm not that hungry," I said. A GS-burger sounded good, but a double-double there is a huge sandwich.

"I am for some reason," he said. Neither of us commented on having left the house to avoid a possible interrogation by Tina, Link's older sister.

Actually, Athena Grace Sylvia Pocohontas MacIan -- names again. Eighteen years old, about five-foot-nine, a very shapely body with muscles -- captain of our school varsity cheerleader squad and tennis champ. And an avowed hardass. She'd give us grief over the boxes being moved, one of them busted, contents spilled and if she found out we were wearing rings we may have gotten from those contents, she'd make even more trouble.

The route to Great Shakes turned south before we got to the school; okay by me, I didn't want to see the place on Saturday anyway. We walked along not speaking for a while even though no one could have heard us. It just seemed wrong to disturb a beautiful day with the weirdness of the rings.

Tree roots buckled the sidewalk here and there and the early December afternoon sun peeked through the bare limbs of the sycamores and jacarandas. Live oaks and cedars still had their leaves and their shade felt cool but not cold. Neither of us wore a jacket but we didn't really need one. Winter has no real bite in Southern California and that's the way we like it here.

Link's cell phone played the theme from "Apocalypse Now," which meant that he had an incoming call from Tina. He surprised me by answering it.

"Yeah?" Then, "No, are you home?" He winked at me, he knew she was home. "Rex and I are going to Longorio's for lunch." Misdirection, I supposed; never tell your sister any unnecessary truths was one of Link's mottos. "No, my foot is okay." He glanced down at his leg; I remembered that he hadn't been limping for a bit. "Okay, I'll call if it's late." He rolled his eyes and made the yack-yack sign with his free hand. "Good, fine, bye, Sis." He closed the phone and looked at it as if a bit puzzled.

"What?" I said.

"She just gave in a little easy on when I should call," he said. "Must have found some bargains at the mall." He grinned.

Then he looked down at his foot again, "It doesn't hurt."  He flexed it experimentally, bouncing up on his toes like he might if he were in a game. "Doesn't hurt at all." He glanced at the ring on his pinkie.

I didn't say anything but looked at my own ring. The golden color seemed more red than most gold I'd seen; it might be purer or made of some ancient mixture no one uses anymore. I looked back up and discovered Link staring at me.

"You know that you've answered every question I've asked when I told you to," he said. "Questions you had no way of knowing the answers to."

I nodded. We both glanced around to see if anyone could overhear us. "I know," I said. "It kind of scares the crap out of me."

"Yeah," he said, looking thoughtful. "It's the ring, the ring is giving you the answers -- but only if I tell you to answer."

I shrugged, trying not to think too much about it.

"Tell me if I'm right," he said.

"Okay, yeah, that's what happens," I said, not at all surprised.

"Do you have to do anything I tell you to?" He asked in a very soft voice.

"I think so," I said.

He thought for a moment. "Put your thumb on your nose, a finger in your ear and make a razzberry."

"Phbbt!" I did it, feeling doomed. I took my hands down quickly, after wiping my mouth.

"Oh, man," he said.

I nodded.

We were both quiet for a bit.

"The ring made my leg better, didn't it?" He asked. "Tell me."

"Yeah," I said.

"Could it make me faster, stronger than I already am? Tell me."

"Sure."

"Tell me, could it make me rich?"

"Uh huh, why not?"

"Tell me how?"

I thought about it for a moment. "Help you find stuff? Make you lucky?"

"You don't sound sure."

"Well, there are lots of ways. Persuade people to give you stuff."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

More silence for a bit, then I asked something that had been bothering me. "You're not going to make me do anything embarrassing in public, are you?"

"Roger Rabbit rules—only if it's really, really funny," he said with a straight face. Then he added. "Relax, don't worry about it." I did relax. I did stop worrying about it. And if anything should have made me worry, that should have -- but of course, it didn't.

We walked the rest of the way in silence then got our food at Great Shakes and found one of the plastic booths near the back. No one could hear us there so we could talk as long as we were quiet about it.

Link ate french fries like a machine for several minutes, then slowed down to take several bites of his Giant Double-Double. I had a Regular Single Cheese and a chocolate shake and I tried to eat more slowly, pretending to be a human being.

He pointed a french fry at me, "It's like an origin story, like Dr. Fate or the Blue Beetle -- or Thor."

"Huh?" I said.

He waved the hand with his ring, "We can wish for superpowers, don't you get it?"

I frowned. "Why would you want superpowers? We don't live in a comic book, you know?"

He laughed. "I dunno, I guess I've always wanted superpowers. Ever since I can remember, Superman, Batman, Spiderman. Tell me, could the ring give me superpowers?"

"Yeah, I guess so," I said. "It can do a lot."

"It's a wishing ring, isn't it? Like Aladdin had? Tell me."

"Sort of," I said. Knowing this stuff still bothered me a little even if I wasn't exactly worried about it since Link told me not to.

"I think it would be so cool if we had powers like our characters in City of Heroes." Link's main character was named Gilgamesh, a super-strong tanker-type, meaning he could take a lot of damage and keep fighting. He could also leap over buildings, heal himself and attract bad guys to attack him instead of weaker characters.

I played a female character named Ishtar when Link played Gilgamesh; lots of guys played females online, partly because the female toons were so nice to look at and partly because other players treated you nice -- just in case you really were female. Ishtar could blast people with weakening radiation or drain energy from them to heal herself or her partners in a superteam. She could also fly. Having her powers might be pretty cool, I thought, except the flying part; I'm afraid of heights in real life.

I grinned at Link. "I'd look pretty silly in Ish's get-up," I said. She wore a sort of split skirt, white-red-and-gold, with bright golden panties showing when she moved her long legs. Her top was called a bandeau, turquoise with golden magic designs on it and she was more than just a little busty.

Link grinned back. "I could wish that you looked good in it."

Okay, so I couldn't worry about it but I could get scared. "Link," I said, "she's got tits out to there!" I gestured in front of my chest.

"Make a great secret identity, no one would ever suspect," he said, still grinning. He put his ring hand on mine and the two rings touched. "You know you'd love to be able to turn into a superheroine, Pinkie." Link almost never called me Pinkie unless he meant to tease me -- but the magic of the rings made it more than teasing. Suddenly, I did want to be able to turn into Ishtar, tall, beautiful and powerful.

And I knew that Link had magicked me into it! "Link! Bastard!" I said.

His grin faded as he realized what he'd done. "Rex, I'm sorry." He started to say something else.

"No!" I said to stop him. "Don't make any more wishes." I knew what he'd been about to do, wish me back to being my original self. But I didn't want him to do that, now. Because if he did, I'd never get to become Ishtar and be his beautiful partner, fighting by his side. I knew it was crazy but I knew what I wanted and I didn't want him to change it. I didn’t want him to change me back!

I even knew this was because of his earlier wish and I didn't care. How's that for screwed up?

We stared at each other for a bit. "Are you okay?" he asked me.

"I think so," I said. Link looked different to me now, somehow and I wasn't sure what the difference might be.

"This magic ring stuff," he shook his head. "It can't be real, but.... My leg doesn't hurt at all." We stared at each other some more.

"Tell me what I'm supposed to do," he said.

And I said, "You're supposed to save the world from being destroyed."

Chapter 2 - Transformations and Trepidations

Link decided he was still hungry so while he went and got more food, I took a trip to the bathroom. I didn't feel well and by the time I'd pushed the door open, I made a rush to find the toilet bowl where I threw up most of what I'd eaten. I'd barely cleaned my face up with toilet paper when I had to turn around and get rid of even more stuff through the back door. I trembled and shivered all the time it was happening, too.

"You okay in there," someone asked.

"Yeah, I think so," I replied. I felt sticky and sweaty, too, like I really needed a bath. When I rubbed my arm where it itched, a wad of dead skin rolled up like usually only happened when I'd been camping without bathing for a week or more. I must have made a noise.

"Are you sure you're okay in there?" the voice asked again.

"No," I said. "I think I'm sick. Uh, who's this?"

"I'm Shari," said the voice.

Shari? I boggled. Had I gone into the wrong bathroom while I was feeling so bad? I looked around quickly for something that would define the stall as a boys' bathroom -- or not. Not turned out to be the case; a little sign on the inside back of the stall door  said, 'Do not throw tampons or sanitary napkins into the toilet. Please use the receptacle provided.' A round, silvery trashcan sat on the floor beside the toilet bowl.

About the time I fully realized that I was sitting on a stool in a girls' bathroom, I felt something weird happen inside me. It felt as if my balls had suddenly pulled up inside my body. I know I made a noise that time, a sort of squeak followed by an "Oh, shit!"

Outside the stall Shari asked, "Do you need a tampon? I've got a spare?"

"No, no," I said. Her question may have literally scared the shit out of me. Another load of something smelly burst out of my body into the bowl and I wondered with horror whether I had just shat out my testicles. I groaned.

"I'd better call a nurse -- or something," Shari suggested.

"I'll be okay," I said. "Uh, can you tell Link MacIan where I am? He's sitting in the back booth out there, or should be."

"Uh huh," she said. "He's your boyfriend? What's your name?"

"Uh...Marion," I said. My voice hadn't changed yet -- and now I realized it might never change. But I sounded enough like a girl that Shari hadn't thought anything about talking to me in the girls' room.

"Mary Anne?" she asked.

"No, all one word," I said.

"Marianne, okay," she said and I heard her go out the door.

I began rolling off wads of toilet paper to try to clean myself up.  I used most of a roll, wiping sweat and slime off my face and arms, too.

I almost fainted when I wiped between my legs and found my penis was still there. I had the disturbing thought that it might fall off into the slime and mess in the toilet bowl. Irrationally, I knew I'd have to retrieve it. I decided I had better get out of the bathroom, quickly.

Shari came back. "Wow, he's dreamy! Wasn't he on the football squad at Hillside?"

"Uh huh," I said. "Jayvee. Quarterback. Now he's playing forward on the b-ball team." I stood up and flushed--twice!-- then tried arranging my clothes. They seemed to fit oddly. Disbelief made me grunt again when I discovered that the fatty places on my chest had become real tits. The nipples itched, too, like they were still growing. They weren't big--yet--but they were definitely girl's breasts.

My jeans settled low on my hips because my waist had shrunk. My ass sure hadn't -- if anything, it was bigger. My clothes still fit but I couldn't figure out how.

I stepped out of the stall and stared at my reflection in the big mirror. A girl with my face, or a version of my face, softer and younger looking. I hadn't noticed but my hair looked odd, too. Fuller and my head itched all over as if my hair were growing faster than my breasts. Short blonde curls seemed to be growing right through the tangle of my shaggy brown straight hair. Ishtar had blonde curls down to her waist in the game.

"Oh, God," I whispered. Maybe I should have said, "Oh, Goddess."

I felt peculiarly thrilled by the sensation of what was happening to me. Thrilled and frightened. What did I know about how to be a goddess of magic, war and love? Or about being a girl for that matter? I didn't really want to be a girl but it seemed inevitable. It even felt a little disappointing that I still had evidence that I was really a boy inside my pants. Very peculiar emotionally.

And I knew Link would love how I was going to look.

But not how I smelled. I sniffed of the back of my hand cautiously. Even there, I seemed to have the worst case of body odor I'd ever imagined. Doggy, cheesy, rancid smells wafted off of me -- and worse.

Shari came back in about that time and almost ran out again. She put a hand over her nose and mouth. "What's that smell?" she said, her voice all pinched by trying to hold her breath.

"I think it's me," I admitted. "I'm sweating like a horse and I think I've got a fever." I put a hand to my head and found that yes, I did feel feverish. I swallowed something else trying to come up from my stomach. "I've got to get out of here," I said.

"Uh, Link is buying a bunch of food to go. Whew. Okay, let's get out of here if you're not going to throw up again," she said. "He's like, I dunno, muscles and, um, hair and, um, that smile...." She trailed off with a slightly goofy expression on her face, unaware that she had shot sideways on a tangent, conversationally.

I started for the door, trying to get past her without getting any slime on her. I needed a bath and I wanted to go home. After thinking that, I changed my mind. I wanted to go to Link's place.