A New Day

Victoria emerged from her bedroom still wearing the nightie in which she had slept (not having any other clothes) and drew herself up a bath. The warm water felt good against her sensitive, pale skin, and she spent a long time admiring her new womanly contours even while she shaved her legs and shampooed her hair. Once out of the tub, she applied her makeup just as Zoe had taught her the previous day, and spent what felt like forever blowdrying her hair (she wasn't used to its length). After wrapping a towel around herself, she stepped out into the hallway and knocked on Zoe's door (their mom was letting her stay home from school as well: someone needed to help train Victoria, after all).
"So how are you feeling today, sis?" she inquired with a smile.
"Like a new woman," Victoria deadpanned. "I don't suppose I could borrow some clothes."
"Can't you just, like, wish yourself up some new clothes?"
"I left the rock downstairs," Victoria replied.
"That was kind of dumb," said Zoe, opening up her door.
"Sue me, I'd just turned into a woman," laughed Victoria as she stepped inside.
"I'm afraid I'm fresh out of 19th-Century style dresses," said Zoe. "But I'm sure you'll find ''something'' you'll look good in."
In the end, Victoria dressed herself in a somewhat modern (but nonetheless Gothic ensemble); nylons patterned to resemble black ink on water, a tattered leather skirt and a tight black girl's t-shirt with a brass choker about her neck. Her breasts were bigger than Zoe's, so she wasn't wearing a bra (the shapes of nipples were plainly visible under her t-shirt). It wasn't as eloquent as Victoria would have liked, but next to Zoe the two of them looked, for the irst time ever, like what they really were.
Sisters.
They headed downstairs where Victoria, to her relief found her stone resting on a table.
"And how's my new daughter doing today?" her mom asked, catching her in hug.
"Never better," Victoria replied, surreptitiously palming her wishing rock. And it was true; she'd never felt better!
"We're going to go shopping today," her mom declared. "You look like you need a bra."
"''Mom!''" Victoria exclaimed half-jokingly. She appreciated the new closeness in her relationship with her mother.After several minutes though, she managed to go off on her own, on the pretext of needing to go to the bathroom.
There she stared at the stone contemplatively.
Now of course Victoria could have set herself up quite nicely for her new life as a female; a few wishes with her stone and she could have banished the last few vestiges of her former identity as a boy. She could have filled her closet with dark velvet dresses, redecorated her room just exactly as she now wanted it; filled it up with gothic fluorishes and dark fantasy artwork. Indeed, she could have wished that she was a Vampire Queen living in a Roumanian castle with a portal to hell in the basement.
But she didn't want to. Not because she didn't want these things, but because she quite sensibly realized that she could do it whenever she wanted to. Right now, she just wanted to see what life was like for a brand new girl. It was another way in which she differed from Jon. He never knew how to live in the moment.
The more Victoria thought of him, the happier she was that he was gone.
''I can't believe I wasted 16 years of my life as a male!'' she thought in disgust.
And so she made her decision. She was self-confident, it was true, but she still didn't know what it truly meant to be a woman. And there was only one way to find out; experience.
"First of all," she said, "I wish that we had twenty thousand dollars in the bank to help settle me into my gender."
After this wish was presumably satisfied, she continued, with a deep sigh. "Now I wish that, for the next month, Zoe, Karyn and I will forget all about this rock and that it will be stored in a safe place until I remember it again (at which point it will appear in my room). During this time, I want to go through my transition to womanhood in a natural fashion without any magical cheats."
She felt the rock grow warm in her hand and then it disappeared.
''What disappeared?'' Victoria wondered. She had the vague sensation that she had just been holding something in her hand, but she could not for the life of her remember what it was.
"I hope insanity isn't a side effect of GPAD," she muttered.