The Great Outdoors Pt. 03

Part 3

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The genomic origin of Zana of Abkhazia

Ashot Margaryan, Mikkel-Holger S. Sinding, Christian Carøe, Vladimir Yamshchikov, Igor Burtsev, M. Thomas P. Gilbert

First published: 14 June 2021

Funding information: This project was funded by University of Copenhagen Internal grant to MTPG.

Abstract

Enigmatic phenomena have sparked the imagination of people around the globe into creating folkloric creatures. One prime example is Zana of Abkhazia (South Caucasus), a well-documented 19th century female who was captured living wild in the forest. Zana's appearance was sufficiently unusual that she was referred to by locals as an Almasty--the analog of Bigfoot in the Caucasus. Although the exact location of Zana's burial site was unknown, the grave of her son, Khwit, was identified in 1971. The genomes of Khwit and the alleged Zana skeleton were sequenced to an average depth of ca. 3× using ancient DNA techniques. The identical mtDNA and parent-offspring relationship between the two indicated that the unknown woman was indeed Zana. Population genomic analyses demonstrated that Zana's immediate genetic ancestry can likely be traced to present-day East-African populations. We speculate that Zana might have had a genetic disorder such as congenital generalized hypertrichosis which could partially explain her strange behavior, tall stature, lack of speech, and long body hair, but we now know that genetically she was 100% homo sapiens. Our findings elucidate Zana's unfortunate story and provide a clear example of how prejudices of the time led to notions of cryptic hominids that are still held and transmitted by some today.

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Claire woke up feeling an unexpected weight on her chest. Maybe she had fallen asleep cuddling one of the drybags? She tried to push it off only to find it was, well, her. Soft and surprisingly sensitive, her breasts had easily doubled in size during the night, her previously overstuffed b-cup bra was never going to contain them. "Holy Shit look at these!" she paused "They're gorgeous." She cupped them experimentally. Her hands felt small in comparison.

She crammed her torso into a previously-loose fitting merino wool base layer, but when she went to put on pants she stopped, shocked. Her feet were getting caught in the cuff and couldn't pass through. Cautiously, she pulled her pants back down. Her feet were absolutely enormous.

Sushmita felt hot. She had stripped down to just her panties to sleep, and even now, in the alpine morning cold, she threw off her sleeping bag. She blinked. It was probably time to get up. She was hungry anyway. She put on a t-shirt and shorts for modesty, and caught off guard by the smooth sensation of the clothes moving over her new hair. It was kind of... thrilling, maybe.

At some point in the night her increasingly dense body hair had achieved nearly full coverage, except her palms, soles and face. Was it possible she had ever seen someone, anyone, this hairy? Hal from Malcolm in the Middle? That Armenian guy that Emily had dated a few years back? Maybe. Certainly she was on their level. Her belly button had its own little nest. She noticed her breasts had also grown again, eagerly cupping them to find that her nipples also had a forest of hair around them.

Emily was curled up on her side, which, in truth, was the only way she would fit in her tent. She didn't wake up until she overheard the other girls talking animatedly.

"You could cut them off at the ankle with my pocketknife, but I still don't think they'll fit. I can't believe you would go hiking in June without a pair of shorts, but you can't have mine and you wouldn't fit into them anyhow."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Emily stirred. She had a curious idea, and she lay on her back with her feet touching the screen, unzipping the door and laying her head down in the vestibule under the fly, hoping not to draw her friends attention.

"What do you think it means? Look at your fat ass. It's not just your tits, you know. You're absolutely piling on those curves."

"I can't believe you called me fat. I'm in a crisis here."

"You're not fat, you're just changing. We're all changing. Look at me" Sushmita posed left, then right. Her t-shirt and shorts were tight on her fuzzy frame, revealing that the tiny woman had also put on some curves. She seemed very pleased with herself. "Emily probably has something that will fit. Hey! Emily! Get up!"

"Are you calling me fat?" Emily said, emerging from her tent on her hands and knees. She, like Claire, was naked from the waist down.

Sushmita rolled her eyes "That's not what I'm sayi- Oh holy fuck!" She stammered as Emily stood at her new, full height, and for a moment she even straightened up for maximum effect. Emily had been a foot taller than Sushmita before, but now she positively towered. Her body was monumental. Her breasts were massive, bigger than Claire's, and stretching her spandex-poly running shirt to the absolute limit. Her muscular ass had blossomed into a comfortable looking bubble butt. Her bare feet looked substantially longer than Sushmita's.

"No, no, you're right. I don't even fit in my tent, let alone my clothes. Look at me! I'm huge!" She said through a smile, enjoying her full command of her friends' attention.

"Wow Emily" said Claire "You are huge. You must be six feet tall"

"Taller." Emily let a quick smile escape "My tent is six feet, so I bet I'm like six two". What did you guys make for breakfast? It smells great"

"What are you talking about?" Sushmita fumed "Some of us haven't even figured out how to wear clothes yet!"

"So what's that on the fire?"

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Down at the lakeshore the embers of the cooking fire smouldered. Above them, someone had replaced the large roasting spit with a number of smaller ones. Four spits hung over the fire, each with four roast game birds on them. The slates held wild onion, chicken-of-the-woods shelf fungus, and the same mushrooms as yesterday that none of the girls recognized. Off to the side were rustic baskets of blueberries, loganberries, and wild strawberries.

"Is that a partridge? Or like grouse or something?" Sushmita looked worried "How does this keep happening? Did the hikers come back? What the hell is going on?"

"Let's talk about it after breakfast" Claire still did not have pants on but she sat down on a log, grabbed a spit of birds off the fire and tucked in. In a couple hours the girls had finished all but two of the birds and a few berries. Emily took the largest share.

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They lounged on some fallen logs beside the cooking pit. Sushmita started with the obvious. "Okay, so, I'm hairy like Robin Williams and I'm growing an actual beard, but I'm the only person here who can fit into normal shoes anymore. Claire has hair down to her gigantic butt, Emily is just gigantic,actually we're all getting curvier."

"I'm wearing Claire's old bra, Claire is absolutely poured into Emily's shorts, and Emily is wearing two travel towels as a skirt because nothing else fits. We have no food but some sort of benevolent forest spirit is feeding us. We're still a day's hike away from our car, and we have no idea why any of this is happening, when it will stop, or what to do next."

"That's about it." said Claire "Any ideas?"

"I don't know about you, but I feel like the worst is over." said Sushmita "I'm not ravenous and loopy like I was yesterday. I'm still freaked out, but it's more, like, intellectual than immediate. If you stop thinking about the body horror for a moment, we're actually having a really nice vacation. Great weather. Beautiful water. Free food."

"And the biggest feet you've ever seen in your life" said Emily. She kicked up a leg and wiggled her toes.

"Hey, hang on." Claire held up her own foot. "I think I'm catching up to you."

"Whoa, yeah" said Sushmita " her foot is like an inch shorter than yours."

"No way. Here. Put it up. Let's measure." Emily repositioned on her log, facing Claire with her leg out.

Claire responded in kind, extending her leg out until her sole came into contact with Emily's.

It was like time slowed down. Claire and Emily felt the air thick and heavy, almost like being underwater. It was like stage fright, a first kiss, like shoplifting, like speeding on an empty highway. They locked eyes. The rest of the world in their peripheral vision went fuzzy and indistinct. Emily felt her blood pounding in her cunt, she felt herself become wet and open. Claire's nipples and clit went instantly hard. Their inner ears swam and their mouths went dry.

And then it was over. "See, I don't think her foot is even an inch smaller. That's messed up. She's so tall! You're so normal sized. Messed! Up!"

Claire regained composure first "Well, uh, you know, if, if, if anything normal had happened this weekend, I might have more room to think about how weird it is to have NBA clown feet."

"Guys this is going to sound nuts and I mean it is nuts everything is nuts, but I think I know what's happening. I think we're turning into bigfoots" Emily had a thousand yard stare. "We're getting hairy and tall and our feet are getting big and I think we're turning into bigfoots"

"Bigfeet. Is it bigfeet? Bigfoots? Sasquatches. Anyway you're right" said Claire.

"I am?"

"Yeah. That's nuts. That's not a thing that happens."

"No, she's right."

A deep, slow voice chimed in from beside Claire. Somehow, a ten foot-tall apeman had joined them, without announcing his presence at all. The girls were, at this point, too deep into a very strange weekend to scream, but they looked on in terror. No, apeman was wrong. This was clearly and evidently an apewoman. She sat casually, as though she had been sitting with them for hours already.

Sushmita marvelled at her thick, light brown hair, both all over her body and flowing from her head down her back, and the enormous, dense beard that hung down to the top of her massive bust. She realized she was fascinated. She realized she was enviously fascinated, actually. Claire found herself open-mouthed pondering the beast's feet, before she caught herself. Emily was silently astounded by her sheer size.

"We prefer 'sasquatch' as a singular and plural." She smiled, trying to sell the joke. It didn't land. Jennifer's tongue was slow and clumsy in English. She hadn't spoken it in a long time. Her R's rolled strangely, all of her vowels were almost imperceptibly off, and H's inserted themselves into places that they didn't really belong. It was almost like her tongue was too long for this language anymore.

The girls gaped wordlessly.

" My name is D'hennaha. Dennefa. Jennifer! My name is Jennifer. I can help you. I mean, I've been helping you.... I've been so worried. about all of you"

" Uh huh. A sasquatch named Jennifer. I'm losing my mind. I already lost my mind this weekend but I'm definitely losing my mind now." Sushmita had started pacing. "Wait. wait! I saw you! I saw you on the trail before the washout only I thought I didn't see and so I told myself I didn't see you but I saw you. Have you been following us this whole time? What do you want?"

"No, no, it's not like that. I'm looking out for you. I've been bringing you food. I... how do I say this? I'm like you. I mean I wasn't always a... sasquatch. I was... human, before I drank the spring water. The three sacred springs from way up that mountainside... If you drink from all three of them, you become a sasquatch."

"We're gonna become sasquatches? I mean we're gonna become sasquatch?" Claire looked bewildered and sad "We're going to live in the forest and never see our families and never eat a burger ever again?" She almost sobbed out, very quietly "Thank you for all the food that was very kind of you."

"That's... I mean... No one is going to force you to do that." Jennifer paused. "We find it's simpler for us than having to get jobs... and commute to work.... and live in an apartment."

"We? There are more of you?" Emily momentarily could not help but think of legions of giant, hairy women. A society of them. She tried to shake the thought.

"...Yes" Jennifer shifted her eyes evasively. One of the unwritten sasquatch rules was never to reveal numbers if you didn't have to. It was easier to follow in the forest, through action, than it was to do with words. "But listen. I do not think you are becoming sasquatch. You have to drink from each spring... And I think you each drank from a different spring. Because each of you is growing in a different way."

"You're saying if you put the three of us together, you get one Sasquatch?" Sushmita looked puzzled.

"Uh, yeah,... sort of" Jennifer stood up

"You will have a choice. You can embrace the wild, go back to the spring, and join us on the mountain.... Or... You can go back to the city."

"You mean we can go back to normal?" Sushmita realized as she spoke, that she said that only because it seemed like she should want to go back to normal. She was slowly realizing that she wasn't sure she did. She absently stroked the hair on the back of her palm.

"...I didn't say that."

The girls looked at each other nervously.

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Sushmita Gaddam (25)

Height 4'9" 145 cm

Chapter End No change

Shoe Size 8 1/2" (size 4.5) 22 cm (size 34)

Chapter End 9" (size 5) 23 cm (size 35)

Bust 32B

Chapter End 32C

Hips 31" 79 cm

Chapter End 321/2" cm

Hair J ust over shoulders when down, mostly up in a ponytail for hiking

Chapter End About an inch longer. She hasn't noticed.

Body Hair legs like she hasn't shaved in six months, barely visible arm and chest hair, peach fuzz beard and moustache.

Chapter End Imagine a normal human man who's got a lot of body hair but not, like, a medical disorder. About that hairy. Beard is feathery and short but dark.

Emily Mmeremikwu (27)

Height 5'11" 180

Chapter End 6'2 1/4" 189

Shoe Size 11 1/2" (size 13) 29 cm (size 45)

Chapter End 12 1/4" (size 15.5) 31 cm (size 48)

Bust 34DDD

Chapter End 36F

Hips 41" 104 cm

Chapter End 45" cm

Hair big and frizzy, just above the shoulders. Up in a wrap for hiking

Chapter End About an inch longer. She hasn't noticed. There's a lot of other stuff happening

Claire Rigel (25)

Height 5'1" 156 cm

Chapter End No Change

Shoe Size 10" (Size 8) 25 cm (size 23.5)

Chapter End 11 1/2" (Size 11.5) 29 cm (size 44.5)

Bust 32B

Chapter End 32DD

Hips 32" 81 cm

Chapter End 36" 81 cm

Hair about 2 inches past her shoulders.

Chapter End Hanging to just above her butt. Wavy and high-volume

Jennifer Alder (35) (No change)

Height 9'2" 275 cm

Shoe Size 18 1/4" 46 cm

Bust 106" 269 cm

Hips 115" 292 cm

Hair Length 4'5" 137 cm

Beard length 10" 25 cm

Clit Size 4 3/4" cm x 1 1/4" 12 x 3cm

Body Hair Density Furry like a gorilla (summer coat)