"I wish you could experience the kind of first love I had." And with that, Mum's head dropped away from the door for a moment, she was shaken out of her dreams of a life for me, and put the stone back in the box and back under my cupboard, shouting back "John don't forget to put out the bin!"
While in the shower, with water running down my face, I had noticed a moment when I closed my eyes and felt goose-bumps all over my skin, but I had no reason to imagine that Mum might have hold of the stone. Hell the relaxing warm water and the uncomfortable conversation had made me forget about the stone for a few moments while I washed my hair.
My hair had been getting longer, that is to say that over the past few weeks I had noticed my normally short hair had grown and was now a little curly, needing its bimonthly cut again. Yet as I pulled my fingers back across my scalp, water rinsing out the conditioner, longer strands of hair followed my hands backwards.
Tilting my head and letting the water cascade down my back, I could suddenly feel my hair slipping down my neck. Running fingers over my head again, this time grabbing up hair and wondering how long it was, I stared up at the showerhead, I realised something was not right.
Suddenly there was a shock of cold in front of my chest, my gaze shifted and my eyes grew wide. Before me I could see bare flesh, skin stretching out to two pointed nipples atop two rounded breasts, water running over and through the gap in between, a left nipple again rubbed against the chilling tile.
"What!" I almost screamed as I took a frightened step backward.
With a slow, deliberate movement I brought my arm down to the right side of my expanded chest. Touching it felt real, it felt like me, and it felt a bit surprising, then I noticed my hand was not my usual hand. Both hand as I stared at them were these smaller, softer, slender things, with longer, refined nails, and delicate wrists.
"What the hell happened." I whispered, not even thinking it might be the stone.
Then I managed to think past my arms, past my big chest, and down to my groin, "Am I?" I said as the thoughts started to become clear in my head, and I could already feel it, "I've got a ."
There it was, or there it wasn't. No more prick, dick, dong or schlong, instead of my penis, pubic hair and balls, there was this, this other thing. Totally foreign to me, I'd only ever seen one in pictures, but there it was. Bending at a slimmer waist to get a closer look, it was a split between two folds, lightly covered in a downy rug of auburn fluff. I touched it gently, poking into the crevice and pulling a fold back a bit with a fingernail.
"Weird." I said without thinking, then "What am I doing!?" I took a look now down at two long shaven legs, and decided to use them.
Promptly turning off the taps and stepping out of the shower, putting myself in front of the bathroom cabinet mirror, I looked at a reflection that was not my own.
