Author's Note: A bit of a shorter chapter today. The next couple chapters will be regular length, this one just needed to be shorter. Enjoy!

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The minutes ticked by like hours. The girl paced around the living room, rehearsing what she was going to say to Andrea when she showed up. “Hi, honey, I’m a girl now, here’s a magical genie who took away my dick and my potty training. No, that’s stupid. Hi, you probably don’t recognize me, sit down and let’s talk. I found a magic bottle with a genie in it and I wished for her to make me a girl, but the genie takes away something every time they grant a wish and she took away my potty training and my name as payment. Ugh, better, but too much too fast. Fuuuuuuuuck me, man, what am I going to do?”

She had stepped into the kitchen and had the kettle on the stove for tea when she heard a knock at the door. Her heart skipped and she took a breath to steady herself before she walked to the door and opened it. Andrea stood there holding two pizza boxes, now a full five inches taller than the girl at least. Her chestnut hair hung in loose curls just above her shoulders. She was wearing a top that ended just above the navel and bright red sweatpants. The slender woman looked at the girl and said, “Oh, sorry, wrong house,” and moved to walk away.

“Andrea, wait!” the girl shouted after her. “It’s me!”

Andrea turned back and looked at the girl. “Have we met?” she asked cautiously. “I feel like I recognize you, and you know my name.”

The girl took a deep breath and looked up at the woman in the doorway. “Andrea, it’s me...uh…”

She paused, drawing a blank. Of course, she didn’t remember her own name anymore. Andrea looked at her strangely. The girl said, “Me, your…well I can’t say boyfriend anymore. Um, I guess partner? I’m not sure.”

Andrea frowned. “You’re not my boyfriend,” she said. “shshsh’s got about a foot of height on you and is considerably less female.” She looked past the girl and into the apartment. “Hang on, I was right, this is his place. Is he here? Are you his sister or something?”

“No, Andrea, I’m…aaaaaggghhhhhh! It’s hard to explain, come in please?”

She stepped aside and Andrea hesitantly entered the apartment. The girl shut the door and took the boxes as Andrea slipped her shoes off, hung her purse on the coat rack, then moved to the living room. She set her phone on the coffee table next to Sisu’s bottle and sat down on the couch. The girl set the pizza on the counter and moved to join Andrea, but at that moment the kettle began to whistle.

“Oh, sorry, one sec,” she apologized as she rushed into the kitchen. She took the kettle off the stove and poured the hot water into the two mugs she’d been preparing, one for her and one for Andrea. She turned around and looked at Andrea in the living room where she was holding Sisu’s bottle and examining it closely.\

“DON’T TOUCH THAT!” the girl shrieked. Andrea jumped, nearly dropping the bottle before gingerly setting it back down on the coffee table.

“Sorry,” the girl said, walking over and offering the tea to Andreal. “It’s…an antique. Here, have some tea. Ginger ginseng chamomile, your favorite.”

Andrea eyed the mug before carefully taking it from the girl. “Thanks? Uh, how did you know it was my favorite?”

“How many times have I made it for you? I even put a bit of honey in there.”

Andrea eyed the girl and put the mug on the table without drinking any. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” she said. “Who are you and why are you in shshsh’s apartment? And how do you know me?”

The girl took a deep breath and a sip of her own tea before looking up at her girlfriend. “Andrea, I know it’s going to be really hard to believe, but I am your boyfriend. I…I found something that made me like this.”

Andrea gave her a concerned look. “That's…look, I don't know who you are but you can't really expect me to believe that.”

“I can prove it,” the girl said. “Ask me anything.”

“Okaaayyyy…” Andrea said slowly, clearly not believing the girl. “What's my favorite color?”

“Easy,” said the girl with a grin. “Blue.”

“What's my favorite flower?”

“Snapdragons. Your family grew them in the back yard and they remind you of being a kid.”

“What's my middle name?”

“Maymie, named after your great grandmother.”

Andrea was thrown a bit at that. Only a few people outside her family knew her middle name, and fewer still knew who she was named after. She eyed the girl and asked, “What was shshsh’s and my first date?”

The girl smiled. “We went to see a movie at the Molly. It was supposed to be Howl’s Moving Castle because I’d never seen it, but when we got there it was sold out, so instead we walked along the river and got ice cream instead. You told me about your job, I told you about my family. At the end we took your car to my place. We told everyone it ended there, but you ended up staying over. We watched Avatar the Last Airbender all night and then slept together.”

Andrea’s eyes widened as the girl kept talking. It was all true, and nobody but the two of them could have known about what happened at the end. She stared, her mouth hanging open as the girl finished. The silence hung between them as she stared in disbelief.

“Andrea?” the girl said. “Are you okay?”

Andrea blinked, licked her lips nervously, and leaned forward to look closely at the girl. Those eyes…the bluest eyes she had ever seen…they were his eyes, no doubt about it. There was a telltale swirl in the right iris that proved it beyond any doubt.

“Shshsh?” she whispered.

The girl smiled back at her. “Hi, hun.”

Andrea fainted.

She came to a little while later, laying on the couch. She blinked a few times and looked around. She didn’t see anyone but heard something in the kitchen. She sat up, turned around, and saw the girl at the sink washing something. Andrea stared at her silently, not speaking or moving, just watching. After a minute the girl put the dish aside in the dish rack and sighed before turning around. She gave a yelp when she saw Andrea looking at her.

“Um…hi,” the girl said. “You scared me! Are you okay? You’ve been out for, like, twenty minutes.”

Andrea just stared. The girl shifted uncomfortably before saying, “Um…do you want some pizza? You must be hungry. I already had some…sorry, but I didn’t know when you’d be up. Sisu wouldn’t tell me.”

“You’re real,” Andrea stated bluntly.

“Uh…yep. Real as you are.”

“You’re shshsh.”

The girl winced slightly. “Yeah, um…about that. I’d appreciate it if you’d stop calling me that. I don’t…I can’t actually hear you saying it. Well, I can, but I can’t remember it. It’s gone.”

“What’s gone?”

“My name. It was a sort of bargain. I can tell you all about it. Can I sit next to you?”

Andrea looked at her, then scooted over to the right side of the couch. The girl walked over and sat gently down next to her. They looked at each other in silence for a second before Andrea spoke up.

“What happened? You’re a girl.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” The girl chuckled but Andrea just stared. The girl awkwardly cleared her throat before talking. “Um…it’s a long story. Well, see I went into some antique place looking for something for your birthday, right?” She paused and Andrea nodded slowly. “Right, so I went in there and I found this.” She picked the bottle up from the coffee table and held it up. “I thought you’d like it, so I got it. When I got home I popped the seal to see if anything was inside and…well…okay, don’t freak out, please.”

The girl opened the bottle. Immediately lavender smoke began to pour out. Andrea looked in shock as the smoke twisted and twirled around before finally coalescing into Sisu’s upper half, lower body still smoke, and wearing her usual attire. The genie took a deep bow in the air.

“Greetings!” she said with a flourish. “I am Sisu the Giving, genie of the bottle!”

Andrea fainted again.