"It started when I was just Jon. My grandfather had found this magical wishing stone. It's not like your crystal, it grants unlimited wishes. He died and I inherited it. Of course he wasn't dead, and he had magical powers of his own... otherwise I never would have gotten it.
"So he just gave you something which grants unlimited wishes? Wow. I'd at least have given it to your mother or something."
"There was a reason. I didn't have any parents, they died right after I was born--and since they died then they didn't give me any siblings either. It was just me. But right before he gave me the stone he went into the past and wished away the accident which killed my parents. So I now grew up with parents and siblings... but he didn't know my siblings at all, and he didn't know my parents for the last 17 years of their life, so they were virtually strangers. I was the only one he knew well enough to give the stone to.
"Anyway, I got this magic stone. I tried it a few times. Then things change depending on the timeline."
"What?"
"I"m getting to that. I did a whole bunch of things with magic, some of which were pretty strange and a lot of which taught me a lot. Body parts, travel to distant galaxies..."
"I don't think there are any close galaxies."
"Don't interrupt. Lived lifetimes, gave birth, travelled through time, merged with counterparts.... At one point I had married my girlfriend Karyn. A year later, I made a big mistake. I wished that I could live a girl's life. I ended up as an embryo in a womb in the past. Embryos don't have memory, so I forgot everything. But I was still me, so I had mostly the same personality. I grew up liking the same things Jon did and became best friends with Jon."
"I see. It's a time loop. You grow up knowing Karyn. Then at one point you wish yourself to have been Karyn. It was inevitable you would do that, because you being Karyn was already a part of history. As Karyn you grow up knowing Jon. Then Jon makes the mistake and disappears into the past, just as you did."
"That's right. Except that the loop got broken. The wish wasn't clear and the stone didn't interpret it exactly the same way each time. This time I was an embryo whose brain had developed just enough that I kept a little bit of memory buried in my subconscious. Right before Jon made the mistake I rushed into his room and told him I wasn't sure why but he had better not make the wish he was about to make. He didn't make the wish, and he wished to know why I knew that. Once he found out he wished my whole memory back."
"Which makes you the same person up to the point you broke the time loop."
"Right, plus my life as Karyn. We wished away the marriage while we figure out how to deal with it. Do I want to be married to myself? Should I even stay a girl?"
"You run a shop where people can change into girls sometimes. You'd want to have at least one person changed into a girl just to go with the theme. By the way would you like some brownies?" She held out a tray to Karyn.
"The fairy kind or the chocolate kind?"
"You can see the tray."
"You never said you were offering me the tray. And I know how your boss works--if the customer assumes anything, the Wizard is free to treat it as the customer's mistake and hex him for making bad assumptions. Even if the assumption is just common sense."
"The brownies were just going to rearrange some things, they wouldn't have done anything serious. They're actually quite friendly."
"Sure. So does your boss want this cheerleader's outfit back?"
Dannie thought. "If I say yes, then that's an excuse for you to hex him."
"It was worth a try. Bye, but I imagine we'll be meeting again some day...."
