Chris was shocked, "You like it?"
"I never told you this, because I didn't see any point, but I always wanted a daughter. When I was pregnant with you I was hoping for a girl. When you were born that didn't matter. You were a perfect baby boy and I loved you just the way you were.
"Even so, seeing you here, like that, is like dream come true. You're beautiful honey."
Chris had never known any of this, "So what were you going to call me?"
Her mother smiled, "Chris. I was still going to call you, 'Chris'."
Chris figured that if she was going to fit in as a girl she'd probably need her mother's help, and spending more time with her mother seemed like it could be fun, so she asked, "What were you going to do with a daughter?”
"I never really thought about it. Go shopping I suppose, get a manicure together, watch movies ... anything really. We could go hiking, swimming, whatever you want. Oh! I know, I recently saw a DVD called belly dance for mother and daughter."
Chris blushed, she wasn't sure that she was ready to go from boy to belly dancer in one day. On the other hand, that might be something Alex would like. She imagined belly dancing for Alex, and Alex belly dancing for her. Both images seemed pleasing. Chris decided to tell her mother about she and Alex.
"I started dating Alex today."
"That's great honey. I always knew that you and she would be perfect for each other," the conversation went on, and Chris felt that she'd never been as close to her mother as she was now. It seemed strange that gender made so much difference. Almost none of what they talked about was effected by Chris being female now, but for some reason they never talked like this when she had been male.
Chris' father stayed away, but her mother told her that he would be fine. He just needed time to get used to Chris' new fashion sense.
When they had finished talking Chris went back to her room. Other than her clothing nothing had changed, everything was where she left it, and as she left it, when she had been a boy. There was comfort in this. Alex had convinced her to accept being a girl, but she would always remain Chris. The powerful magical necklace had proven that it could have changed anything in her room, but other than clothing it left everything untouched. From his childhood toys, to his computer games, to his pornography stash the necklace left these untouched, indicating that none of these things needed to be changed to make them hers.
Chris looked at the necklace.
When Alex had marched back into that store and demanded an explanation from the shopkeeper he had said the reason Chris couldn't be changed back to a guy was that this was her true form, or some similar corny sounding term. The gist was the the necklace had made Chris how she was meant to be. Chris had dismissed that, and Alex's earlier comment that maybe she had changed into a girl for a reason, but now Chris felt differently.
After only a few hugs, two kisses, one date and one sunset Chris was convinced Alex was her soulmate. If your soulmate is a lesbian surely you are meant to be female. If the shopkeeper was right about that, was he right about the rest? One of the things he had said was he drastically undervalued the necklace, that it was worth much more than the 20 dollars Chris paid for it. That Chris should be happy he got such a deal, and that the necklace had chosen Chris. Chris had certainly felt drawn to the necklace, the elderly shopkeeper could have asked for all of his money and he would have given it. If the necklace had compelled Chris to buy it, had it compelled the old man to charge so little? Chris felt confident the necklace was on her side, looking out for her interests.
The shopkeeper had told Alex, just as he had told Chris, that the necklace's story was too long to tell. Alex was not so easily brushed off and she got the shopkeeper to reveal excerpts of the story. The necklace was created a very long time ago via mystical arts long since forgotten, or some such. It was linked to the soul of the person it was made for, which now, apparently, resided within Chris. Again, or some such. It might also be that the soul in question had attained Nirvana and the necklace simply chose Chris as a replacement soul.
Either way, the necklace's first task was to make Chris's body match her true form, which apparently meant turning her female. Presumably changing her clothes was the necklace being polite. Having done that the necklace would never deviate much from that form. Which led Chris to a question, what constitutes much? The shopkeeper made clear to Alex that the necklace could still change Chris, but was short on things like how, why, and how much.
Then there was something else. In addition to the necklace's true value being well out of Chris' price range it Chris got the impression that it was far too important for someone as consistently average and boringly normal as herself. It seemed to have some kind of cosmic significance that Chris simply lacked. She had been a normal teenage boy, was she going to become a somehow remarkable girl?
Chris went to bed. As she lay in her bed she grasped the necklace's pendant and...