The Magic Shop - Chapter VI

Chapter VI - Mei's Explanation


"Oh god no," you say as your heart starts to race. You turn your head to look back at Brooke, who remains silent with wide eyes and her hand over her mouth in shock. "Oh God..."

"If you get pregnant, can we not swap back?" Brooke asked worriedly.

"I... I don't know!" You say, your voice cracking as though you're about to cry. "She never said anything about getting pregnant when we used the necklaces!" You look back down at your still leaking pussy, and without warning you start gasping for air. Realizing what's happening, Brooke jumps up and opens her nightstand drawer. You've become so worried so quickly that it triggered one of Brooke's asthma attacks.

Brooke shakes her emergency inhaler and holds it up to your face. "On the count of three you need to breathe in as deep as you can, okay?" Unable to speak, you nod your head as Brooke begins to count. "One, two, three!" She squeezes and releases the medication as you try to breathe in. Having never used an inhaler before, the medication tickles the back of your throat and you start to cough like you've just inhaled a whole cigarette at once.

Brooke gently rubs your back as you're finally able to catch your breath. "Are you okay?" She asks.

"No, I'm not!" You say, clearing your throat. "I don't want to be stuck as you... I don't want to be pregnant... I don't want to give birth! And I for damn sure don't want to be a mom!" You bury your face in your hands, trying not to cry.

"We'll figure this out babe," Brooke tried to comfort you. "We'll just go back to the shop tomorrow and ask about it, alright? Neither of us have to work tomorrow so we can spend the whole day there if we have to. We'll get through this," Brooke says.

You sigh and look over at her, a tear falling down your face. "Even if we were in our own bodies, do you think we're ready to be parents?" You ask.

Brooke smiles at you and wipes away your tear with her thumb. "I don't know, and I don't know if we ever would be ready. A lot of people aren't ready for it. But I do know you'll make a great daddy... Or mommy. Whichever," she smirks. You let out a small laugh and lean your head on her shoulder. "How long ago did we swap anyway?"

"Well, you got off work at 10:00," you said. "It's about a 25 minute drive home, give or take. And since *somebody* was so impatient," you say, stressing the 'somebody' and giving a playfully annoyed look, "we swapped less than five minutes after getting home. So just before 10:30... about an hour ago," you said, looking at the clock.

"All right then. So we don't officially have a problem until 10:30 tomorrow night. So don't worry so much, all right baby?" She gives you a tight hug and kisses your forehead gently. Somehow, you actually feel better, just having her there with you, holding you close in your time of need like you've done for her so many times.

"Okay," you say, forcing a smile.

After you clean up, you put on a pair of Brooke's panties and one of your old AC/DC shirts you gave to her (she stole), which covers your new body like a dress. Brooke puts on the clothes you were wearing earlier and goes into the kitchen to make a sandwich. She offers you one but you only shake your head - you're too worried to eat right now.

For the rest of the night, neither of you say very much, both lost in your thoughts. Brooke eventually falls asleep on the couch but you are unable to sleep while you overthink everything that's happened tonight. You take the blanket off your bed and cover Brooke with it, kissing her on your forehead as you do. It's strange, you think, being in her body and doing this, but she's still your princess and you'll be damned if a little body swapping is going to change that.

You decide to get on the computer and see if you can find anything on swapping bodies online, but mostly you only find fantasy swapping stories and TG captions. If only these people knew you were living out their fantasies.

It's about 4:00 A.M. when you feel yourself begin to fall asleep in the computer chair. As you close your eyes, an idea pops into your head. The bracelets! Mei said that they won't work if you get pregnant, that in order for them to work you can't be with child. You hop up off the chair excitedly and run into the kitchen. The bracelets are still laying there on the counter. Picking them up, you begin to wonder if you should use them on Brooke while she's asleep. You don't want the pain of the swap to wake her up. Besides, what if it doesn't work? Or even worse, what if it DOES work and you can't swap back after? You might end up forcing her into a pregnancy, stuck in your body, possibly forever. Deciding against it, you set them back down.

The magic shop doesn't open for another 4 hours, but you don't want to go to bed now and over sleep, so you decide to make some coffee. The grounds are on the top shelf in the cupboard. Brooke likes coffee but she typically gets it from Starbucks or another coffee shop, while you prefer the homemade stuff, so you put it up higher since she doesn't have to get to it that often. Now, in her body, you have to climb up on the counter to reach it. On your knees, you have to reach way above your head, and you feel like a little kid again in her much smaller body. Your hands are even so small that you have to grab the can with both hands to get it down.

You sit back down at the computer as the coffee starts to brew, and turn the chair to face Brooke, who is still sound asleep in your body on the couch. You close your eyes for what feels like two seconds, and suddenly you hear the coffee machine beeping to tell you it's done brewing. You get up, grab your favorite mug from the cupboard and fix your coffee.

When 7:00 comes around, you've almost completely finished off the pot of coffee, and it's time to get Brooke to wake up. She's typically a light sleeper, but since you're a pretty heavy sleeper yourself, you're not sure how difficult waking her up is going to be. You walk over and knock on the wall next to her. She turns over on the couch, but doesn't open her eyes.

"Come on baby, it's time to get up," you say rather loudly, trying to get her eyes to open. "Brooke!"

"Wha... Holy crap I had the weirdest dream," she says groggily, rubbing her eyes. You smile walk back into the kitchen, wondering how long it's going to take her to notice.

"Yeah?" You say, trying to deepen your voice so as not to give it away just yet.

"You had these weird necklaces... I became you, and..." Her eyes shot open when she realized what her voice sounded like. Sitting up, she began patting around her body once again, just like she had done last night right after you first swapped. She looked over at you in the kitchen. You flip your hair back behind your shoulder and wave at her with a little smile.

"The shop opens in an hour, and I'd like to be there when they open," you say.

"Oh... Oh fuck, that's right," she says, turning on the couch to put her feet on the floor. "Did you even sleep? How are you holding up baby? Come here, come sit with me," she says. You walk over to her and give her a kiss before plopping onto the couch with a sigh.

"No, I didn't sleep. I mean, I almost did, but I just couldn't... I've been thinking too much," you say, leaning on her.

"I can tell, coffee breath. Jeez, did you drink a whole pot of coffee?" Brooke puts her arm around you.

"Almost, yeah," you say. "I tried looking up stuff about body swapping online, but I couldn't find anything. Well, nothing useful anyway. Just a bunch of people that write stories about stuff like this. I had an idea, though, but I didn't want to go through with it."

"What idea was that? The bracelets?" Brooke asked.

"Uh, yeah, actually. How did you know?"

"Great minds think alike - and so do ours," Brook said with a playful smirk.

"Har har," you say, pushing her arm. "I was going to do it, but I didn't want to wake you up, and I didn't want to do it while you were asleep and have it not work, or have it work the first time and not the second time, you know?"

"I understand, but it was a pretty good idea," she says. "Like I said baby, we'll get it figured out, okay? Come on, we should get ready to go. Traffic is hell this time of the morning," Brooke said, kissing you on the cheek.

You get up from the couch and walk back into the bedroom. You change into a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt, not even bothering with a bra. Next you pull your hair up into a lazy pony tail, and throw on a pair of Brooke's flip flops. Normally Brooke would never leave the house looking like you do now, but since there's a very real chance this could be your body for at least the next nine months and possibly forever, you tell yourself she's just going to have to deal with it this time.

Brooke decides to drive this time since you've been awake all night, even though you were going to ask her to drive anyway. The trip to the magic shop takes a lot longer this time with all the traffic, but you still manage to make it five minutes before they open.

"Well, this is it," you say to yourself.

"Look at me," Brooke says. You turn and look at her, somewhat surprised by the command. "No matter what happens, we will get through this, okay? Best case scenario, we swap back tonight and this whole thing is over. Worst case scenario, we'll have to live out the rest of our lives as each other, and you'll die a little old lady with your pain-in-the-ass husband right by your side the entire time," she says with a little smirk. She grabs your hand and squeezes tight, which to your surprise actually makes you feel a little relieved. Of course, she would know just what to do to make her body feel better, you think to yourself. You give a sort of half smile back to her, still nervous about all this. "Besides, we won't know anything for sure for the next 14 and a half hours. So let's just relax, okay?"

"I suppose," you say. She leans over and kisses you.

"Forever and always, right?" she asks.

"Forever and always."

The car's clock rolls over to 8:00 A.M. and you both get out of the car. You hold Brooke's hand tightly as you walk across the parking lot and up toward the magic shop. You can see someone turn the open sign on through the tinted window, and you look up at Brooke, still nervous. When you reach the door, Brooke opens it for you and lets you in first.

"My, my, what a gentleman," you say, giving her a little smile as you walk through the door.

"Ah, you're back," you hear Mei say from behind the counter. "What can I help you with today?"

"Well, we umm," you say, not quite sure how to put into words everything that's on your mind. "I have some questions about those necklaces you sold me." Mei looks puzzled for a moment, then looks up at Brooke in your body and quickly realizes what you're talking about.

"Oh! Yes sir," she says, looking at you knowingly. "You have not broken one of them, have you?"

"No, the necklaces are fine," you say. "See, we uhh... We had sex last night, after we used the necklaces," you say shyly. "And we didn't use protection."

"Didn't I warn you about that?" She asks. Immediately you feel your chest tighten up, nervous for what comes next.

"No... You didn't say anything about pregnancy with the necklaces. Only with the bracelets... Which leads into my question," You say, your heart starting to race. Mei scrunches her face, trying to think back to the conversation yesterday. Suddenly her eyes widen and somehow you know what's she's going to say before she says it.

"Oh my... I'm so sorry," she says. Your stomach sinks. "I should have told you, I'm sorry, but it completely escaped my mind. There are so many magical items in here that do all sorts of different things, and my mind is not what it was 300 years ago," she says.

"300 years?!" you and Brooke both say in unison.

"Oh yes, you didn't think anyone would leave a 20-something girl in charge of all this, did you?" She says with a smirk.

"Well, you look great for your age," you say. "But still, what about the necklaces?!"

"I'm sorry dear. If you did happen to get pregnant, you will not swap back after the 24 hours is up. There is too great a risk that your girlfriend would permanently swap into the body of the fetus, instead of her own body. It's a safeguard, embedded into the magic of the necklaces," Mei said. You immediately feel tears welling up in your eyes. You turn and wrap your arms around Brooke, burying your face in her chest.

"But what about after the baby is born?" Brooke asks, rubbing your back gently as your tears begin to make spots on her shirt. "Couldn't we just put the necklaces on after that and swap back?"

"Unfortunately no," Mei says. "You see, when you swap bodies with the necklaces, it's not as simple as swapping the brains out of your head, or your bodies changing shape into that of the other. It's your souls that swap. Souls are a bit like jell-o, you see, and they take the shape of their containers - that is to say, your body. When placed into another container - another body - your soul takes the shape of that container. This is why body swapping works at all, because of the gelatinous properties of the soul. However, if a soul is not returned to its original container within 36 hours of the swap, it begins to 'harden' into the new container's shape. After 72 hours, the soul no longer has any gelatinous properties - it has completely hardened - and can therefore no longer be swapped into any other containers, not even its original one. Unfortunately, in all my time practicing magic, I have never found a way to reverse this effect, nor has anyone, to my knowledge. If you have become pregnant, you will both be stuck with your new bodies for the rest of your lives... And perhaps even longer than that."

"What about the bracelets?" Brooke asked. You can hear the worry in her voice now, even with your face still buried in her chest.

"I would not recommend using those for a while," Mei said. "Pregnancy does not always occur right away. Sometimes it only takes a few hours for the sperm to come into contact with the egg, and sometimes it can take up to five days. It can also happen at any time in between. You may be able to use the bracelets with success once, but if the sperm makes contact with the egg before you can use the bracelets again, you will be forced to carry the baby while in his body, and stuck with his body forever. Having said that, the sperm and egg may not connect until after you have swapped your bodies back." You take your head out of Brooke's chest, looking up at her and trying not to cry even harder.

"So all we can do is wait then," you say with a sigh.

"I'm sorry but that would seem to be the case," Mei said. "What time did you use the necklaces yesterday?"

"About 10:30 at night," Brooke says.

"Okay, I do want to help you, so here's what we'll do," Mei says. "Leave me your phone number, and I will call you tonight at 10:45 to see if you've swapped back. If you have your original bodies by then, you're all clear - although I would recommend staying away from magical items for a while. I'm going to dig around the store and see what I can find in case you don't have your bodies back by the time I call, and we'll go from there, okay?" Mei hands Brooke a pencil and piece of paper.

"I'm okay with that... Does that sound good baby?" Brooke asks, looking down at you.

"I can't think of any better options," you say, sticking your face back into her chest. Brooke writes down her cellphone number, and Mei puts it into her cell phone and sets an alarm to remind her to call.

"Is there anything else I can do for you?" Mei asks.

"No, I think we've had about enough of this place for a good little while," Brooke says, raising her eyebrows with a forced half-smile.

"I understand. I wish you the best of luck, and I will call you tonight."