The alarm on his phone rang all too soon. Jon stirred, buried his face in the pillow, and cursed himself for not wishing himself back to the start of summer vacation. Would that've caused some horrendous temporal paradox? Ugh, probably. He felt his hand drifting towards the cupboard at the head of his bed regardless...
Then he stopped. Something felt funny about the way his chest moved when he stretched his arm out above his head. He shuffled around under the covers, and was mildly alarmed when the sensation was replicated across the rest of his upper torso. It felt like something was squashed between his ribcage and the mattress, like he'd squirmed around during the night and ended up lying atop his pillow, which sometimes happened - but it was right where it belonged, under his head.
And even when that did happen, he couldn't feel the pillow as if it were a part of him.
Now wide awake, he lurched to his hands and knees, and was weirded out even moreso when the mystery mass - no, masses - followed him up, lagging behind the rest of him noticeably and then continuing on after most of him had stopped, compressing against his chest slightly and then rebounding back down, repeating this sequence several times before finally settling into place below him. The motion wasn't really as wild and exaggerated as it felt to him, but it was so entirely novel that he couldn't help being hyper-aware of it.
In truth, Jon had a pretty fair suspicion as to what this all meant. He was a teenage boy, so the topic was never far from his mind; and it'd been bouncing around in his head a bit ever since Karyn's accidental wish. But why these things should suddenly be attached to him was another matter. Scrambling out of bed, he stumbled to the bathroom for a look in the mirror...
With piercing clarity, he recalled his wish yesterday. This had not been what he had in mind, dammit; but whether he'd intended it or not, there was a teenage girl staring back at him.
She was of average height, with tousled shoulder-length hair that was more golden-brown than the darker brown that Jon's had been, and a face that, on its own merits, was more "cute" than "beautiful," but mostly just reminded him of his mother's. She was modestly busty, not heavy-set but not conspicuously svelte; but her hips were definitely womanly - another trait from Mom...
For a long moment, she just stared. She felt like she should be more shocked by this; certainly, it was a staggering thing to look into the mirror and see someone else looking back at you, but it was less of a cosmic-scale existential crisis when she knew it must've been the stone's doing. Being able to classify this as an essentially rational result of known principles at work was pretty damn weird itself, but at least it wasn't like her entire reality had just been upended, any more than it already was.
Okay, so she knew that it must be the result of her wish - but why this? Why her? Er, him? Jon had realized right after making it that the wording was so damned ambiguous it could be construed in countless ways, but wouldn't it naturally be taken to mean something of interest to him? He'd certainly never had an interest in anything like this, he was sure...
Her train of thought was derailed when Zoe poked her head into the open doorway. "God, Joni, you better not just stand there gaping at the mirror all damn morning. Some of us're gonna need this bathroom, okay?"
She was a bit startled at the interruption, but at "Joni" - at the thought that this other-self in the mirror had a name, a history - her mind went into overdrive. She tried to keep abreast of the conversation while a million questions raced through her mind, but she could only dazedly mutter: "...what for?"
Zoe was dumbstruck for a moment herself, then sputtered and flushed hotly for another moment before she was coherent enough to respond. "Oh. My. Fucking. GOD. did you just say that," she hissed. "Did you take dense pills this morning? Do I have to spell it out!? It's my time of the month, dumbass! And I am sure as hell not doing it in the friggin' laundry room again, got it?"
The more Jon tried to parse the implications of that, the more supremely weirded-out she got. Zoe, for her part, seemed to interpret her sibling's mute bafflement as chastened agreement, not that it softened her mood any. "Gah, remind me to give you an ass-kicking once I'm up for it," she growled, and stalked off in search of breakfast.
Right, it was a school morning. Shit. That was why her alarm was set, and it was why there was a queue for the bathroom; they need to fit in their respective...
...um. Right.
Mind reeling, Jon shut the bathroom door and faced the mirror. It might've happened overnight, but from her perspective she'd only been a girl for about ten minutes; and now she was expected to shower as one!? She couldn't help but feel awkward about it, though it was hard to rationalize. She felt like an intruder at the thought of being in the room while a nude girl was trying to shower - but wasn't it different if it was her...?
Well, there wasn't much time to agonize over it. School mornings were busy in any case, and she'd already burned a fair chunk of time on trivialities like grappling with a fundamental alteration to her body, identity, and reality itself; she knew from experience that, as flustered as Zoe'd been, she'd be absolutely spitting nails if she had to choose between getting in a shower or being late to class. She turned away from her reflection and, with a deep breath, shucked off her pajamas.
It was surprising how much it didn't feel like a big deal once she'd done so. Jon would never in a million years have guessed that the first pair of breasts he'd see in person would be his own, but looking down at them from a first-person perspective, they just seemed like another part of her body, as did the mound between her legs, with its thatch of dark brown hair. She felt like she could boggle over that all day and all night, but she didn't have that kind of time; and so, she set the water running and jumped in the shower.
She kept running over it all in her head while she bathed, because it kept her mind off of wondering whether she should find the sensations weird and/or arousing. Was this really all her wish had done, turning her into a girl? Even if it was "interesting" to someone, it seemed a bit mundane for something that could warp the very fabric of reality; but everything seemed more or less normal otherwise.
Then again, what in God's green Earth had Zoe meant with that remark about the laundry room!? Was that really how women talked about such, um, "delicate matters" when they were alone with each other? She felt like an intruder again, like she'd born witness to Things Man Was Not Meant To Know; but what could she do? It wasn't like she'd meant to insert herself as a covert operative in the feminine camp, it'd just happened that way...
It was only when she'd finished showering and had just started toweling herself off that she realized her hair was one gigantic snarl. Dammit, that was what the conditioner was there for, wasn't it? If only she'd thought to apply-
And then there was a pounding on the door. "JONI!!!" Zoe barked, from out in the hall. "Lemme in the damn bathroom, NOW!!!"
Her tone of voice was a little rattling, and Jon felt compelled to wrap herself up and snag the hairbrush off the sink counter so's to de-tangle her hair without taking up the room any longer; she'd already opened the door before she realized that she'd only wrapped the towel around her waist. Zoe reddened a little, but didn't hesitate; she ducked inside and practically shoved her out into the hall, slamming the door behind her.
Mortified, Jon scuttled back to her room, shut the door, and tottered over to the bed, where she sat down and began yanking the snarls out of her hair. It was very strange walking with her new stance; she was sure the proportions of her legs had changed, and combined with her broader hips it felt entirely unlike what she was used to. It was like learning to drive a subcompact and then ending up behind the wheel of a '70s land-yacht. Well, okay, maybe not that dramatic, but again, the novelty sure made it feel that way. Were all women built like this...?
And ugh, she did need the conditioner; for what was nominally straight and not at all wavy hair, it'd turned into a freaking Gordian knot in the shower. She was still damp, too; once she'd gotten her hair more or less straightened out (mostly less,) she got back to her feet, unwrapped the towel, and got back to drying off. She was surprised at how comparatively sensitive her skin felt, and she ended up having to do more patting than rubbing, especially around her nipples; she wondered again if this was what it was like for other women...
When she'd finished (and after a moment's awkwardness at how she'd just classified herself with other women,) Jon turned to the next challenge, getting dressed. As far as the contents of her underwear drawer went, the panties went on easy enough, and she was a bit relieved to find that it was mostly stocked with plain, frill-less white; but it took her several minutes of fumbling to even sort of get a bra on in what felt like the correct orientation, and she boggled some more at how surprisingly normal and un-titillating it felt to "manhandle" (!?) her new breasts like that.
As she was rummaging through the closet, Jon heard the door to her room open. Startled and suddenly very aware that A. she was still in her underwear, and B. she was a she, in underwear "for her," she whirled around and only sort of stifled a yelp; someone else had entered the room.
It was a kid around Mikey's age, and at first she assumed it was Mikey; but this was pretty clearly a girl. Still, the resemblance was hard to ignore - similar face, same strawberry-blonde hair, same freckles, same eyes - and she found herself wondering if this wasn't him after all. Was she not the only person affected by her wish? That raised plenty of questions all by itself, but she found herself thinking about her own change in this context. Was this "the girl version" of her little brother? Was she "Jon Madison, XX Edition?"
"Mom said to tell you you're gonna miss the bus if you don't hurry up," her presumable sibling said. Yeah, there was no mistaking it - even her voice was familiar, allowing for the difference between a pre-adolescent boy and girl. Jon felt very weird at finding herself mildly fascinated by this; she hadn't meant to make her brother part of some demented magical experiment, but it really was something to see the end result and compare it against the version she knew. And if Mikey was this close, maybe she truly was her own gender-flipped counterpart, as well...
"Joni? Hello?" Not-Mikey waved a hand in front of her face.
"Ah, uh, right!" she said, remembering - again - that she was supposed to be getting ready for school. She still felt awkward about being seen like this, but her brother-turned-sister didn't seem to think anything of it. From her perspective, she supposed, it was probably normal, or at least not that weird...
Shirt, pants, and socks were trivial, compared to the bra; the cuts were different, and she felt a little awkward about how low (by his standards) the neckline was on even her more conservative tops, but it didn't take any real figuring out. The thing that surprised her most was how tight-fitting even "normal" women's jeans were; they hugged curves she wasn't even used to having yet. The pockets were a useless joke, but she'd known about that for ages, from hearing Karyn bitch about it; the fit, on the other hand, was something she probably didn't even think about.
"We heard Zoe yelling," the girl said, while she was working her way into the jeans. "It's that time again, isn't it?"
She sighed and nodded, still feeling confused over it. He'd been used to his sister's mood swings, but she was surprised by just how worked-up Zoe'd gotten this morning. Sure, it was unpleasant and mildly embarrassing - even he knew that much - but it'd never seemed like that big of a deal before...
"Is...is it really that bad?" Her little sister grimaced. "I hope I don't get all mad every time, when mine starts..."
"W-well, it's, uh, different for everybody," Jon stammered, cringing inwardly. He'd never expected to have someone turning to him for advice on this, and she found herself fumbling for words. "A-and, ah, you know how Zoe is. She's kinda always in a bit of a mood."
The girl nodded and sighed. "I guess. She just makes it seem like such a big deal - but you 'n Mom don't get like that."
"Yea-uh, no," she replied, feeling really awkward now; how on Earth was she supposed to fake her way through offering counsel on something that she not only had no experience with, but that wasn't even possible for him prior to this morning? She supposed it was natural that, in this reality, she'd be the big-sis figure for this other-version of her brother, but really... "I mean, uh, maybe not, but that's just how it is, you know? She can't help it, any more than we can, so...well, that's why we have to cut her some slack when, ah, 'it' rolls around."
Her brother-turned-sister nodded thoughtfully at that, while she got her top straightened out and pulled her hair through the collar. She ran through it experimentally with her fingers; it seemed tidy enough to pass muster, barely, and she didn't really have time to comb it out properly, not at this length. God, how did other women manage? Shaking her head, she started for the hallway.
"Uh, sis?" Not-Mikey called. "Your purse?"
Oh, right. That was a thing, wasn't it? Hence the useless pockets (or was that vice versa?) Feeling dazed again, Jon grabbed the article in question off her desk and hustled downstairs, where her parents were finishing up breakfast. She had just enough time to boggle over the fact that her father was now the only male in the house and grab a piece of toast with her grandmother's homemade guava jelly before dashing out the door and down to the bus stop as fast as she could manage with this unfamiliar new gait of hers.
