The Brass Butterfly

"What happened? Matt?!"

He lifted his head slowly, his head splitting with a headache and the world was a trembling thing as it came back into view. He put a hand to his forehead, disoriented, "I'm ok. I'm not sure."

Sara blinked. His voice didn't sound quite right, and even though it was still fuzzy, his face looked...odd to her.

"Are you hurt? I'll call an ambulance..."

"No, no, I'm fine...Except for a headache. What the hell happened? And what's wrong with my voice?" He put a hand to his throat and Sara looked down.

She rubbed her eyes. Her vision was getting clearer, but it wasn't making any sense to her. She blinked once, twice, and stared.

"Matt? Do you have...breasts?"

He blinked at her stupidly for a moment then looked down. He stared motionless for a long moment, then carefully reached up and cupped them to see if they were real. He felt the give of his own flesh, and the sensitive tingle running through them that yes, they were attached. "Oh...my...god..."

Trembling, Sara reached over tentatively and gently cradled one. They felt warm and heavy, and very alive and real. The emotion of all this hadn't quite hit her yet. "Umm...Hon? You might want to check everywhere."

He nodded dumbly, mouth hanging open in shock before he slipped a shaking hand down in the front of his sweats.

The next few minutes were taken up with blood curdling shrieking, hysteria, and general mayhem. Sara pulled back and stayed well out of Matt's way as he went through just about every swear word in the book. Matt couldn't even put into words the overwhelming amount of emotions he was feeling all at once. He just felt that if he didn't get his freaking out over and done with right off the bat, he was going to lose it completely and permanently. He didn't feel physically sick or ill or injured, but the shock of being in a completely different body was enough of a trauma that he thought he'd have to get some serious emergency psychiatric care. That is, if he didn't think it would result in being put in an I-Love-Me jacket and a padded room for a long while.

Sara just sat there and let him...her...burn down to heavy panting and shivering. When he'd finally composed him...her...self enough for her to do so, she put her arms around Matt's shoulders and her new girlfriend suddenly turned and gripped her in a tight, desperate hug. It felt alien to her, her arms around a delicate ribcage and a slender set of shoulders. A face now softer and more delicate buried into her neck, and soft breasts pressed against hers. Matt's personal features hadn't changed so radically you couldn't tell it wasn't the same person as he/she was moments ago, but what had changed was profound.

Sara took a deep breath. Inwardly, she felt calm and she was going to keep it that way. There was a crisis, and she was going to deal with it. She'd worry about her own feelings later, especially since Matt seemed to be hysterical enough for the both of them right now. The problem was, she had no idea of what to do or what to say. She groped for the response that made the most sense, "Do you want me to take you to the hospital? Call the doctors?"

Matt clung to her and snapped, peeved at the calmness in her voice, "And say what? My boyfriend is having the gender identity crises of the century? They're not going to believe this!"

She sighed, reminding herself that Matt's usual response to anything stressful was sarcasm, "Then what can I do for you?"

Matt let her go, "I don't know! It was that damned box, something about it changed me this way!"

Sara looked around for it and found the box under the coffee table. It hadn't changed; it looked like it had before, except much cleaner. The both of them stared at it, neither making a move to pick it up.

"You think we should pick it up?" She asked Matt.

Matt shook her head, "I don't know."

They stared at it longer and Sara finally sighed and reached for it, "Well, we're going to have to pick it up sometime."

"Wait, maybe you should use a cloth first."

She took the cleaning rag and reached for the box. It lay passively in her hand, and they both peered at it. She turned it this way and that, and finally, she took the lid and flipped it open.

Matt gasped and tried to stop her, but it was too late. She flinched.

Nothing happened.

Matt stopped and gaped, "What the FUCK, Sara? After what just happened to me you just up and open the fucking thing?"

Sara frowned at him, "Well, SOMEBODY had to. I don't want to risk you going from female to dead! And there is more stuff on the inside, look."

Matt leaned over and looked at it. There was a stained red silk lining padding the bottom, and there were more Chinese symbols on the inside of the lid. Matt took it from Sara and worked the lid up and down a few times before finally shaking her head, "It's not working." She stared at the box for a minute, "Do you remember the name of that antique store? I think we need to go talk to the shop owner."

"Right now?" Sara asked, startled, and realized immediately that was a dumb thing to say.

Matt looked impatient, "Yes, dammit! We need somebody who can read Chinese! Help me up, we're going to that shop NOW."

"Wait, maybe we should leave the box here...I mean...we don't...we don't want whatever happened to you happen to someone else!"

Matt sighed, "Right, right, you're right. But we need to go talk to that guy anyway."

Sara put her arms around her and pulled her to her feet and they almost overbalanced. Matt had dropped a couple of inches of height and felt much lighter in her arms, "Are you sure you're up for this?"

Matt wobbled on her feet, "Look at me! I've got to go to work tomorrow, what the hell am I going to tell my boss? Or my mother? Do you really want to start introducing me to people as your girlfriend?"

Sara was starting to get annoyed with the sarcasm, but told herself not to react. She put her hand on Matt's arm, "First of all, I'll call your boss and explain you had to go out of town because a relative died or something. Secondly, your mother is still on her winter sojourn to Nevada to sit at the altars of Liberace and Blackjack. Thirdly, I would have no problems referring to you as my girlfriend."

Matt ran her hand over her face, "That will buy us some time at least, though if Mom—" She stopped and blinked, suddenly realizing what Sara had just said. "Did you just say you wouldn't mind having me as your girlfriend?"

Sara had said it without really thinking about it, but now that she reflected on it, she realized she meant it. It had been a very long time since she had dated another woman, but there was really no denying that Matt made a very attractive woman. She could still see the partner she'd had for almost five years there and she smiled shyly, "I won't say this isn't freaking me out...but...yeah."

Matt was completely thrown by this. "I--thank you. I don't know what to say."

"Let's get going before the shop closes."

It took several tries just to get Matt out to the car. Her center of balance had changed radically, and she had to sit down several times to keep from falling before getting the hang of walking with a new body. Sara drove as fast as she could without alerting the cops back into town, and searched out the alley where they thought they remembered the shop was at. They parked near the alley and found it was a mess. Where it had been swept clean before, there were broken bottles, old food wrappers, puddles of unidentifiable liquid, and a rusty dumpster pushed against the wall. There was no shop, just the back door to a Chinese restaurant.

That didn't stop Matt from checking the street signs several times and combing every alley within several blocks. They went into other shops and asked about the antique store, even showing them the receipt that Sara had had the foresight to remember. Much of the responses were in very broken English, but the gist of it was that no one had seen or ever heard of a shop being there. Matt was starting to get frantic again when they combed up the alley for the fifth time. "This CAN'T be right!"

Sara felt helpless, but she looked at the receipt and at the alleyway and said calmly, "The address says this is the place."

Matt leaned against the wall and buried her face in her hands. Even her hands had changed from being broad to slender, and they felt wrong against her face, "I remember this place, I remember the streets, but we MUST be doing something wrong! We checked the phone book in the restaurant, asked all the people who work around here, and NOBODY has ever heard of this place!"

She made a low moan of despair and slid her back down the wall, her face slumping into her arms propped up on her knees. Sara knelt next to her, putting an arm around her, "Why don't we head back home. I'll call the University of Washington and see if they have someone who might be able to read the box."

Matt nodded, emotions finally tired out and lapsing into numbness, "Thanks, Sara. I'm sorry I'm being such an asshole...I'm...I'm just doing my best just to keep it together right now."

"I know, and you're doing a good job of it. But lets get you home and settled for now. Until we know exactly what happened, why, and how long its going to last, you're going to need some rest and some lessons on how to be a woman."

Matt tried to cross her arms self-consciously, and had to reposition them a couple of times before settling them under her breasts. It was such a pathetic gesture, that it made Sara's heart ache. "What am I going to do? I don't WANT to be a woman!"

Sara nodded, "I know darling, but we're going to take it one step at a time. We'll go home, we'll call who we need to, and we'll go to bed. That's going to be quite enough for today. Tomorrow, we'll figure something else out."

Matt nodded, not having a better idea. "Ok."

Sara put her arms around the unfamiliar body, pulling her close and rubbing her back, "It's going to be ok, baby." Matt nodded mutely into her neck and held her tight as they huddled in the alley. Sara pulled her head back and made her look at her. Matt lifted her eyes, brown and liquid in a soft face, looking lost and alone. Sara pulled some of the blue bangs from her face. "I'll be beside you no matter what."

And then she kissed her.

To Be Continued...