26-year-old Ben Winthrop had always thought 'Ren Fest' a silly waste of time. But when the beautiful, silver-haired big-city graduate-school-‘Medievalist’-chick Astrid Michaelson had turned up one day at the coffeeshop where Ben worked, all keyed-up to spend a weekend at the travelling ‘Ren Fest' making a stop in North Fort Collins that weekend, he’d summoned up the gumption to ask if he could join her—like, on a date!
Unfortunately, both the ‘date’ and the evening as a whole had gone very poorly for Ben. He’d turned Astrid off by being a buzz-kill about the whole ‘Ren Fest’-thing, until she’d finally stormed off, and had then managed to annoy an older woman (named Nimue) working at the Festival as the resident ‘village Sorceress’ (who just so happened to turn out to be a real, actual Sorceress!), so badly with his pleading requests that she use her magic to turn him into a super-macho ‘babe-magnet’ (one which women like Astrid would find irresistible) that she wound up secretly hexing him, instead, so that if Ben ever came back to the Renaissance Festival again, he would turn not into a big, manly stud-muffin, as he had wanted, but into a chick!
Which, of course, was exactly what had happened the following evening. Returning to the ‘Ren Fest’ environment once again expecting to see and to feel himself becoming a bigger, stronger, more ‘studly’ and masculine version of himself, by the time he’d finally realized that he was turning into a girl, it had been too late for Ben to do anything about it. When Nimue’s spell was through with him, Ben had become 'Elizabeth,’ a fairly plain-faced and unfeminine 26-year-old blonde chick in a Valkyrie’s costume.
Outraged at having been deceived, the new 'Elizabeth’ had just been about to storm back across the village once more to confront Nimue when he—she—had accidentally run smack into Astrid, instead. Recognizing the mortifyingly embarrassed 'new girl,’ Astrid had taken pity on 'her,’ and had dragged Ben/Elizabeth out of the ‘Ren-Fest’ ‘village,’ taking him/her out for ice cream to a local diner not far from the hotel where she was staying.
To their mutual surprise, the two girls actually wound up having a rather pleasant time together. In fact, Astrid wound up having so much fun with 'Elizabeth,’ (once the two of them had gotten over their mutual shock at the new girl’s transformed, newly-female state) that on the following morning, after 'Elizabeth' had turned back into Ben once again, she’d even invited Ben to come back out to the Renaissance Festival with her once more. To her disappointment, however, Ben had declined. Based on some of the things he now remembered Nimue telling him, he was reasonably certain that if he ever returned to the ‘Ren-Fest’ village environment, he would only be turned back into a chick again, and no matter how much fun he (as she) and Astrid had enjoyed the night before, he was too embarrassed about having been so easily and effectively emasculated--robbed of his manhood—by the Sorceress’ powers to subject himself to that experience again.
And yet, the thought of all the fun that he was missing out on had continued to gnaw at Ben as the day had worn on. Finally, only shortly after he returned home from work that afternoon, he texted a surprised-but-delighted Astrid to tell her he’d changed his mind, and then hopped into his car to speed across town towards the fairgrounds.
