After what felt like an incredibly long dream, the two were alone in the bedroom once again. They stared at each other awkwardly; neither knew quite what to say.

“Hello?” they said in near perfect unison.

Both of them cracked a smile. Each smile forcing the other to widen further until they both broke into a fit of laughter. Laughter at their current strange circumstance, laughter at the relief that they were still friends, laughter about just being young and alive on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

“I have no idea what’s going on,” Leah said humorously with a slow shake of her head as the laughter began to die down.

“To be honest, I don’t know either,” Zach said through a chuckle. He felt a pang of guilt upon saying it. In truth he probably had a lot better idea of what was going on than his friend did. He had the obvious context that his mother was an enchantress, and that among a large list of abilities that she possessed were abilities that allowed her to change someone’s sex and mess with their mind.

Although strange, he at least had a clear picture of the wacky occurrences that were constantly occurring in his life. On the other hand, there was no way of knowing what was going on in Liam’s mind. The fact he didn’t even know about the existence of magic probably further complicated the current situation he was in. At the moment, the only thing Zach could do was trust his mother and hope that she left Liam in a decent mental space in the midst of whatever it was she was planning.

“Um. I’m Leah I guess?” Leah introduced herself in a questioning way.

“And I’m Zach,” Zach confirmed, remembering when they had started their little mock conversation less than only half an hour ago nearly the same way. Zach wondered if his mom had been the one to instigate this in the first place. Had she urged Liam to have this dumb idea, the idea to pose as a girl that he could talk to? He was pulled out of his thoughts when he saw a tear drip down Leah’s cheek. “What’s wrong?” he asked, stepping towards her.

She took a step back, holding up her hands, “No I’m fine. I’m just really overwhelmed. I don’t know how to feel right now.” Her tears flowed freely as she stood there. She fanned her face dramatically with her hand in the same way Zach had seen so many girls do when they were either hot or crying. After a few minutes passed, she seemed to get a better hold of her emotions.

“So um. How about some cookies?” he asked simply, trying not to sound too awkward.

“God yes,” Leah said through a tired sob.

They each sat at the desk, with the plate of cookies between them and a glass of milk for each. Zach took the first bite, “They’re a little cold now.”

“I don’t care,“ Leah said hungrily. She dipped her cookie in the glass of milk and put the whole thing in her mouth. “They’re my favorite regardless of temperature.”

She looked pitiful with streams of remnant tears slowly trickling down her face and a mouth full of cookie, but he couldn’t help but admire her mental fortitude. Zach had no clue how would’ve reacted had he been randomly put in her shoes. Leah took a long deep breath and sat back in her chair, taking a quick bite of another cookie. A little bit of the chocolate smeared on her face.

“Ugh! This is so confusing!” Leah exclaimed, looking down at herself. A few crumbles of cookie fell on her lap alongside a couple tears. “I’m pretty sure I was a boy just pretending to be a girl a few minutes ago, but now I have…” she poked at the small bumps on her chest as if checking to make sure they were real, only then noticing her meticulously manicured fingernails. She held her hand up to show Zach, gasping with exasperation. “Now I’m like this!”

Zach didn’t know what to say. What could he say? He just decided to nod stupidly.

“I mean. I’m not crazy right? My head feels all blurry, but I’m sure I was a guy and we were hanging out and then,” she paused trying to remember exactly what happened, “and then Leah!” she said gesturing emphatically to herself once again. She quieted down a little bit, taking a deep breath. “I mean I feel like a Leah, like a girl, but I don’t know what to do with it. Your mom said to follow my feminine instincts? I don’t even know what that means.”

“Well…” Zach started unsurely, “I won’t deny that this is really weird, even for me. But if you say you feel like a girl now, then wouldn't following your feminine instincts just mean to do what you feel like?"

Leah’s brow scrunched up in an expression of deep thought, “Do what I feel? How I feel as Leah-“ She went silent for a moment, slowly nibbling at another cookie. She delicately wiped her tears as they ran down her face, each time getting distracted by the girly appearance of her hands. That then caused her to look down at the entirety of herself, and all of her new features. That cycle continued two or three times in silence as the two sat and ate cookies together.

“Feeling a little better?” Zach asked as her tears finally began to dry and her quiet sniffles subsided.

“A little,” Leah nodded. “Thanks.”

“I didn’t do anything though.”

“Just a general thanks then.”

“For what?”

“Just accept my thank you, okay?”

“Okay. You’re welcome?” Zach offered half-heartedly. “So….”

Leah waited for Zach to finish his thought, but he didn’t. So they sat in silence again, looking at different parts of the room haphazardly, neither one truly wanting to make eye contact with the other.

“Are you going to say something?” Leah asked finally.

“What should I say?”

She groaned, “Okay we started doing this in the first place so that you get more comfortable talking to girls right? You need to say something.”

“Yeah, but this will only really work if I see you as a girl.” Zach stated.

Leah seemed taken aback. “You don’t see me as a girl? What do you see me as?”

“My friend.”

For a moment Leah’s expression appeared like she was looking at the cutest puppy in the world. “Aww. That’s actually really sweet. But you know you can have a friend that’s a girl right?”

“I guess. I’ve just never had a girl as a friend before.”

“Well now you do. As much as I’m unsure about it myself right now, I can say semi-confidently that I am a girl.”

“If you say so,” Zach shrugged.

“C’mon. A toast to me being a girl,” Leah announced, holding up her glass of milk. Zach held his glass up to hers, clinking them together musically.

They each tilted their glasses back and began to gulp down the cold and refreshing milk. Zach stopped drinking when he noticed strange movement out of his peripheral vision. As Leah chugged, her little breast buds were actually swelling further, encompassing a wider surface area of her chest, and tenting her tank top ever so slightly. Going from subtly swollen bumps, to pert mounds that now filled the small bra that adorned her chest. She finished her drink and slammed her glass down triumphantly just as they stopped growing. Her breasts were still pretty small, but there was no arguing that his friend had an actual pair of boobs now.

“What?” she asked looking down at what Zach was staring at. She looked back up with fiendishly narrowed eyes. “Oh you’re having trouble seeing me as a girl huh? Give me a break.” She shoved another cookie into her mouth emphatically, a smile curving on her chocolate covered lips.

The next few minutes they spent idly trading small talk about how the weather had been recently or interesting world events. It wasn’t until they got to the topic of school and playing basketball did Leah’s memory get hazy.

“It’s weird. It’s like I have dreamy memories of being a boy at school, and playing on the basketball team, but I also remember being a girl too. I just don’t have any idea what I did as girl specifically,” she said, munching down on the last cookie.

“That must feel weird. It’s probably because you didn’t actually do anything as a girl since you’re just now becoming one.”

That would make sense,” she agreed. “I wonder who I would be in school then?”

Zach tilted his chair backward, “That’s actually kind of interesting, and it might help the whole talking to a girl thing if we actually figure out who you are as a girl.”

“That might be a good idea,” Leah said, rubbing her chin. As she did so, the small stubble that Liam had been so proud of not too long ago flaked off, leaving his chin smooth and hairless. “What’s on my face? ” Leah asked. She looked at the minuscule blonde bits of hair in her hand. “Eww it’s hair,” she realized, rubbing at her face and incidentally brushing off any surviving whiskers that may have been trying to grow there. She seemed completely oblivious to how symbolic of an act that was.

Zach didn’t feel a need to draw attention to it. They were both aware of what was happening to her/him more or less. “So do you think you would be on the girl’s basketball team?”

Leah shrugged, "I don't know. Maybe? I still like the idea of basketball."

"Want to try?" Zach offered.

“You’re going to fall,” Leah stated randomly.

“Huh?”

“Leaning your chair back like that is dangerous. You’re gonna fall.”

“Are you turning into my mom or something?”

Leah raised her eyebrow testily. “No, but maybe you should. Then you would have some common sense.”

“I’m fi-“ at that particularly well timed moment; Zach lost his grab on the table, causing his chair to fall backward and sending him sprawling to the ground.

“I told you,” she said, standing from her seat bouncily, “Let’s go shoot some hoops.”

‘That stupid freaky omniscient girl thing,’ Zach thought to himself as Leah strode past him. It wasn’t just a fluke thing during her massage session. ‘She’s definitely becoming a girl alright.’

...

Zach dribbled the ball expertly, weaving the ball between his legs before jumping back for a fade away shot. Nothing but net. They were out on his driveway now where he had a basketball hoop set up for practice.

Leah stepped out with her ball and began dribbling smoothly. She looked up and took an ambitious shot from the three-point line only for it to fall painfully short. Air ball.

“Huh?” she looked at herself confusedly, only just then seeing the state of her arms for the first time. They were slender and smooth, with barely any muscle definition whatsoever. “My arms. They weren’t always like this were they?”

“Maybe you should just try shooting from closer up,” Zach suggested, dodging the question. Both Liam and Zach had worked out endlessly to get the musculature needed to be competitive in their sport. In one quick massage session, Liam's had completely disappeared.

“I guess so,” Leah said, clearly troubled. She stepped up to the free point line and took the shot. It looked clean and went straight in. “Whoo!”

“You still got it,” Zach said, glad that his friend was able to make a shot. For the most part, it looked like his skill had persisted through this transformation, it was just his physicality that hadn’t.

Now that they were standing side by side on the driveway, Zach was able to see the things that had and hadn’t changed about his friend’s physicality. Zach was six feet tall while Liam had always been one inch taller on a good day. Now Leah stood about two inches shorter than him. Besides her shoulders, arms, and chest, her figure didn’t seem any different.

Her jeans however had continued to tighten and change consistency. They looked to be made out of some kind of stretchy denim material, skin-tight around her legs. The space her pants allotted for her manhood had decreased painfully. The bulge of it was clearly outlined on her crotch as the fly of her pants was shortening to mimic the cut and style of women’s jeans. Zach felt claustrophobic just looking at it. He also noticed that the waist of jeans had been raised so that they buttoned higher on the waist, right underneath the belly button as opposed to further down by the hips. Luckily enough for her, Leah’s shoes hadn’t seemed to change at all, they were the same old Nike’s she’d always worn as Liam, just maybe a little smaller.

Zach watched Leah go up for another effortless layup, “You want to play 1v1?”

“Definitely!” she said. Her eyes were bright with excitement; sweat glinting off of her brow.

“Ladies first,” Zach said, tossing the ball over to her.

“Um actually,” she said, catching the ball roughly. “Do you have a women’s size ball?” She held up her small manicured hand for Zach to see.

“Oh right. Yeah, I think I have one somewhere,” Zach said, running to get it for her.

The game started fairly smoothly. Leah was able to get a few shots off, and her technical skills were as good as ever, which meant she was still able to get around him. Zach still had a comfortable lead, but she was putting up a pretty good fight. However, Zach noticed something changed around the halfway point of the match. Leah had slowed down considerably.

She dribbled the ball in place just shy of the three-point line, eyeing Zach up and down. Her breathing was labored, and the bun Zach’s mom had styled was a tangled sweaty mess that hung loosely around her face. She started forward, eyeing the hoop and lining up the shot. Her form was beautiful with her shooting arm completely perpendicular to the ground. She hopped up, and let the ball fly. Zach’s hand came down swiftly from above, soundly stuffing her and taking the ball before it even got over his head.

She groaned and fell to the ground, “Ugh! What is going on? I feel like I’m getting worse!” She winced and tugged at the waistband of her pants, and these freaking pants and panties I’ve got are squeezing the living heck out of my crotch.” She took a peek down at her nether regions and looked away with a minor tinge of disgust.

Zach himself wouldn’t dare ask what Leah thought of her genitals currently, but he couldn’t help but be curious about her psyche. That was the main thing linking her to her original gender and the main thing that was preventing him from really looking at her like an actual girl.

“I feel exhausted. How are you covering so much area, Zach? Have you always been that good at defense?”

Zach shrugged, “I’m just playing normally. As you just pointed out though, your body is literally going through some type of metamorphosis, and you’re not exactly turning into Captain America.” He stooped to offer her a hand.

She took it gratefully, standing uneasily to her feet. “Good point. Aren’t guys supposed to go easy on girls or something?”

“None of the girls on the girl’s basketball team would want me to take it easy on them,” Zach said, looking down at her. It was at that moment that he finally realized what the key difference was, “You got shorter.”

“Huh? Holy crap you’re right!” Leah exclaimed, noticing for the first time as well.

When they had started, Leah’s new body was only about two inches shorter than Zach’s. Now she had to be four inches shorter than him at the very least, putting her at around five feet and six inches in height. That was a far cry from Liam’s original six feet and one inch.

“You seem really big all of a sudden,” she said, placing her back to Zach’s and marking the difference off with her hand. “That’s why I couldn’t get around you. My body is literally shrinking.”

“Seems like it. Technically you could still be a basketball girl. Your about average height for the girl’s team.”

“Yeah I guess, but I think I’m done playing for the day. I’ve kind of got other things going on,” she gestured down to her developing body. She lifted the bottom of her crop top up to wipe the sweat off of her face, only to realize that she was giving Zach an exclusive peep show of her blue bra and modest breasts. She immediately dropped her shirt, her face flushed. “Don’t look when I do something like that!”

“You didn’t really give me much of a choice,” Zach said defensively.

“Well the least you could do is shut your eyes or something.”

“I’m a guy. If someone flashes boobs in front of my face, I’m going to look. It’s a part of our biology.”

“Okay rule number one of talking to girls, never directly admit to her face how much you want to stare at her boobs.”

Zach chuckled, “Is that your official rule number one for me?”

“Undoubtedly. If you don’t have that kind of sense, then we have to start at the very bottom of the barrel,” Leah stated sternly. “Only girls can talk about boobs freely since we are the ones that have to carry them around all the time.”

“Didn’t you just get yours?”

Leah frowned, not saying anything in response.

“Okay okay,” Zach eased, realizing he hit a sore spot. “Duly noted, but wouldn’t that have to apply to when girls talk about man parts?”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“It just is. Show some respect would ya?” she said before adding in a mumbling tone, “Plus that wouldn’t even apply to me right now anyway.” She brushed her hand apprehensively over the bulge in her pants but pulled away from it immediately as if it was going to bite her. “C’mon. Let’s go inside and grab a bite to eat. I’m starving.”

Zach’s mom was flipping casually through a magazine when they walked in, “You two look like a pair of ragamuffins,” she commented, looking up from her reading. She adjusted her glasses on her nose. She didn’t actually need them, but she liked how they looked. She focused her gaze on Leah, “Oh honey. Your pretty hair, it’s all tangled.”

“Oh yeah,” Leah said, rocking awkwardly on her feet with her hands clasped behind her back. “Sorry about that Ms. Lindsay. I know you did a lot of work to um- pamper me. Zach and I just went out to play some basketball.”

“Oh that’s quite alright,” Lindsay said, standing from her chair. “It’s nothing that I won’t be able to fix. Did you two have fun?”

“Yep,” Zach answered tersely, heading straight for the kitchen.

Leah and Ms. Lindsay shared an empathetic look as if to say, “Boys” before they each followed him into the kitchen.

“You two are so sweaty. Is it that hot outside?”

“It’s not too bad, but it’s definitely not autumn just yet,” Zach said, getting down two bowls from the cabinet, and sliding one of them over to Leah.

“It’s just bad when you run your butt off to no avail. I had a pretty severe handicap out there,” Leah said with a huff.

“That’s what a loser would say,” Zach chided.

“That’s not very nice Zach. Leah is going through a lot right now. You should be more respectful to her.” Lindsay scolded. Leah stuck out her tongue at Zach teasingly to add to his mother’s stern words.

“So tell me. What kind of handicaps are you referring to?” Ms. Lindsay sat down on a stool at the snack bar and rested her chin on her folded hands leisurely. Leah took a mental note of the way she crossed her legs so elegantly when she sat.

“Well for starters I was shrinking while we played, so now Zach is way taller than me.”

“You’ll find that is a very common feeling for women in the world. Most men are taller, so your confidence as a woman shouldn’t be reliant on who the biggest is, because most of the time, you aren’t. It’s something you would need to learn to navigate,” Lindsay lectured.

“Yeah I noticed,” Leah said, casting an envious glance over at Zach. “But also, it’s just my body. It feels so weird. It’s like it’s doing things just to spite me,” she said, again looking down at the bulge at her crotch.

“That’s only natural. If it were a simple and clean process, you wouldn’t be getting the full benefit from the opportunity you’ve been given. However, I have a feeling things will start to feel better soon, especially after you wash up and get on new pair of clothes that aren’t stinky and sweaty,” Lindsay said with a quiet chuckle.

Leah blushed, motioning down to her crop-top and jeggings that had just about wrapped up their steady changes. “These are kinda the only clothes I have.”

Lindsay flippantly waved off the comment, “I’m sure that’s nothing that can’t be remedied. You two go ahead and eat. Just let me know when you’re done and I’ll take care of things.”

“The soup’s good mom,” Zach said casually as he sat down and began chowing down on his lunch.

“I’m glad you like it sweetie. It’s healthy too, especially for growing boys and girls such as yourselves,” she said with a quiet wink toward Leah. She stood from her seat and began making her way out of the room, “Oh Leah sweetie, what’s your favorite color?” she asked.

Leah thought for a moment while ladling a serving of soup into her bowl. “Blue,” she said with a nod.

“Wonderful,” the mother said, striding out of the room.

“Why’d she ask that?” Leah asked, sitting down next to Zach at the snack bar.

“No idea,” Zach said with a shrug. He looked up with a wry grin, “You sure it isn’t pink?”

“Shut up,” she said with an embarrassed smile, slurping down a spoonful of soup. It really was good, the perfect thing after strenuous activity. It was a hearty comfort food that soothed the body and soul. She felt the soup run down to her stomach where a soft pulse started to emanate throughout the rest of her body. Her abdomen got tight for just a moment before going back to normal. She shifted in her seat uncomfortably and looked down at herself, but there was no difference as far as she could tell.

“You good?” Zach asked, yanking her out of her self-observation.

“That’s a bit of a loaded question isn’t it?”

“No, I was just-“

She cut him off, “I know. I’m fine.”

Zach nodded, unsure if he should say anything else, but decided to anyway. “I was just wanting to know what you thought of basketball besides the whole shrinking thing. Did you decide if you’re the basketball type?”

“Oh right. Yeah. I had fun out there for sure. It probably would have just been more fun if I was playing against other girls for obvious reasons.”

“Yeah. You’ve always loved winning,” Zach said with a smirk.

“Guilty as charged,” she said, fluttering her eyelids innocently.

Things like that gesture were the types of things that Zach was most intrigued by while interacting with Leah. Besides the major developments that Liam’s body was going through, it was the subtle things that stood out having known his friend for so long. Nothing had changed about his friend’s face yet that Zach could tell, but the small changes in her expressions and mannerisms made that face seem eerily foreign. The way she quirked her eyebrows, the way her nose wrinkled, and the way she moved her eyes all had slight alterations to them that made the overall vibe of her face seem different even though it wasn’t. Heck, even her default resting face seemed different somehow.

She just seemed way more expressive than she had been as a normal guy. From her gestures to the inflection of her speech, it was all becoming uniquely girlish in an uncanny way. It was like she had been given knowledge about new expressions she never knew she could do, and was just now putting them into practice. Were girls really that different from boys in that many tiny ways? How many other miniscule differences were there that you could barely catch with the naked eye? It was actually incredible to think about.

“You realize you’re just staring straight at me right?” Leah said dryly, eyebrow fully quirked.

“Oh sorry,” Zach apologized, diverting his gaze down to his bowl.

“Do you do that often around girls?”

“Do what?”

“Space out,” Leah gurgled, slurping down the last of her soup. “You’ve always done it, but is that how you are around girls all the time?”

“I don’t know,” Zach admitted. “It just always feels like there’s something to think about or question in my life, and that just gets heightened around girls for some reason. Maybe it’s because of my mom, I don’t know.”

Leah didn’t respond immediately, looking at the doorway to the kitchen tentatively. “Um. I’ve actually been meaning to ask you…”

“About what?”

“Well, I’m still really confused about what the heck is going on. I mean we’ve established that I’m a girl, or at least that I feel like a girl and am in the process of turning into one too, but what caused that? Please just be honest with me Zach because I’m dying to know how this is happening right now. Do you know how this is happening to me?”

Zach gulped nervously. He had never once been put into this kind of situation before. His mom had made him promise at an early age that he had to keep what she could do a secret. He had never told a living soul in his life, but there hadn’t been a moment like this where someone had been left aware enough of the magic his mother used on them, “Um-” he hesitated, guilt welling up.

Leah leaned in closer, taking one last glance over at the door to the kitchen before she whispered, “Is your mom doing this somehow?”

Zach could feel the hairs on his neck stand on end. “Uh. Well. The thing is…”

“Okay! I’ve got a surprise.” Ms. Lindsay sang cheerily as she glided back into the kitchen with another one of her suspiciously well-timed entrances. “Put your bowls in the sink and follow me upstairs. You’ll love it.”