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From: nostrumo@nienor.IN-Berlin.DE (Nostrumo)
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories,alt.sex.stories.tg
Subject: TG: To Love and To Cherish   by  Daedalus  (2/2)
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d
Date: 28 May 1996 15:28:28 GMT
Organization: The Testsite
Lines: 217
Message-ID: <4of62s$41v@nienor.IN-Berlin.DE>
NNTP-Posting-Host: tinuviel.home.berlin.de
Xref: news.primenet.com alt.sex.stories:156714 alt.sex.stories.tg:5087

Hi.

  This story proves once more that witchcraft is not what it ever
seems. I hope the author approve this posting. If not I could only
offer to send a cancel right behind the arcticle.

  As ever I DIDN'T write this story and haven't any claim on it. If
you have some usefull hints or some good coments, your mail is then
welcome. Flames, you know, they will be piped to /dev/null.

Enjoy the story.

Ciao
	Nostrumo

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> cut here with a sharp knife <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

2  _To_Love_and_To_Cherish_______________________________________by_Daedalus_


"So let me do it...  Just for the rest of the night.  Cross my heart!"

Joe slid his hands over his unfamiliar form.  "What the heck", he
thought.  "In for a penny, in for a pound..."

"I take it you want to drag me into that lair of yours..." he said
warily.

"Nope.  In your current shape and with your free consent, it shouldn't
be difficult.  Just relax and shut your eyes."

Joe complied and whispered, his voice almost too soft for Meg to hear:
"I'll trust you, my love." It was just as well that he kept his eyes
closed and therefore didn't see Meg's eyes filling with tears, despite
all Mary's ministrations.  She kissed Joe lightly on the forehead, slid
her finger along his smooth cheek and thought fiercely at the Circle:
"Do it, damn you!  Do it!  And better do it right!"

                                  * * *

She awoke suddenly and, after a brief moment of disorientation, quickly
scanned her surroundings for familiar signatures.

"OK, Amanda," she said, "You can stop lurking outside that door!"

She heard a double gasp - one from Amanda and one...  Her eyes flew
open meeting the gaze of the naked woman kneeling over her.  Her mental
shield flung up, she dived into the eyes of the stranger.  "Who!..."
Then her shield disintegrated in the shock of recognition.  "Mark!
Mark??  What on Earth?..."

Mark/Meg fell on top of her, sobbing with relief.  As Amanda walked
into the room, Joan snapped at her:  "This was YOUR idea, wasn't it?"

Amanda, quite unembarrassed by the sight of two naked female bodies,
moved a chair to the bed and carefully sat down.  "Yes, Joan," she
said.  "Welcome back."

The rest of the Circle slowly filed into the room.  Joan scanned their
faces and auras, straining her formidable powers of intuition in search
of pieces of the jigsaw of events, and gradually putting the pieces
together.  Then she closed her arms around the woman lying on top of
her:  "You let them do THAT to you," she whispered.  "For me."

"We had no choice, Joan," said Amanda.  "You realise that already.  It
was either that or you were Joe for good, with no power to wield and no
memory of yourself.  Mark was desperate to have you back.  As were..."
she paused very slightly, "...  all of us."

Joan held her eyes for a few long seconds and then suddenly smiled.
"Well, you have me back.  Now get out of here and leave me alone with
my husband!"

"Blessed be the Mother!" thought Amanda, her soul filling with
moonlight.  "Blessed be the Moon, and the Swan, and the Dancer.  The
burden of choices is taken from me!"

Joan kept still and watched the Circle to file out, and then kept still
listening to their departure, until the front door shut and her
awareness of the others told her they all left the house.  Then she
turned her attention to the woman in her arms.

"Mark," she said.  "Meg.  Darling.  How can I ever pay you back?" She
lifted her husband's tearful face and kissed him gently on the lips.
"You can be a man again tomorrow, but for now, let us celebrate as we
are..."
                                  * * *

It was morning.  It was breakfast.  Black coffee and croissants with
jam.

"Yeah..." said Meg licking the jam off her fingers.  "It was bad to
start with.  I nearly freaked out.  But then Amanda did that thing of
hers...  personality overlay."

Joan nodded.  "She is VERY good at that.  I take it she did the same
for me, to convince Joe he'd always been married to Meg?"

"Yup...  She said she could only embroider over what was there, not do
anything which would have worked against the personality imposed on you
without doing permanent damage.  But for me, with my consent she
manufactured a full female persona."

"I am sure she enjoyed that...  There's always been a queer streak in
Amanda...  How long did she keep you 'under'?  It could not have been
all the time."

"Well, I started remembering who I was and why I was, something like
half a year later, but Amanda didn't want to remove overlay in one go.
She just let it weaken for a number of months.  It was so gradual, I
don't really know when it evaporated altogether -- I guess it was a
year all in all.  Why?  You look concerned...  Was that dangerous?"

"Hmmm..  You could put it that way.  So you have been fully 'yourself'
waiting for an opportunity, for what, nearly another year after that?"

Meg thought about it:  "Must have been.  Doesn't really feel like that
long.  Time flies...  I nearly blew it at the end, though.  When we
gave you back your own shape and it didn't dent the Joe personality at
all, I nearly went to pieces.  Mary had to work hard on me to put me in
the right frame of mind for that last push." She poured herself more
coffee, her hands shaking slightly.  "I feel bad about it, you know...
About lying to Joe at the end...  If I hadn't been sure it was you,
just twisted into a strange mental shape..."

"Don't," said Joan.  "Joe is still here.  I remember being him." She
winced.  "I will always remember being him.  But what about you?  You
didn't have your overlay removed all in one go.  Amanda just let it
fade away imperceptibly, you say..."

"Yes.  It's a problem?  Yes?  I wondered...  I wasn't going to bring it
up, but..."

"Let me guess..." Joan took a big gulp of coffee to disguise her
concern.  "You are unsure whether you want to be Mark again.  I had a
feeling there might be something like that.  Your aura is just too
convincingly feminine."

"Well..." Meg blushed, "It's not as simple as that.  Yes, I am used to
this body now, and to being a woman.  No, I wouldn't mind being a man
again, though I may find it...  awkward for a while..."

Despite the concern, Joan was interested:  "So what is it, sex?"

"Er...  no...  Yes, it is different, of course.  Less driven, less
intense, more all-embracing, more of a flow rather than an...  act.
But I enjoyed it as a man just as much.  Differently, yes.  It's...
well, you know...  how shall I put it..." She was desperately hoping
that Joan would guess her meaning, and not laugh.  And Joan, being
Joan, of course did.

"It is the Power, then," she said in a quiet wonder.  "You were THAT
good at it?"

"Yes..." said Meg relieved.  "And yes.  Betty thought I was quite quick
learning that sex-change spell I worked on you..." She stopped seeing
Joan's jaw drop.  "Er...  yes?"

"Let me get this straight...  YOU WORKED THE SEX-CHANGE SPELL? ON YOUR
OWN?"

"Well..." Meg squirmed in embarrassment, "They DID provide the
shielding...  Was it taking too much of a risk?"

But Joan was screaming with laughter:  "You silly idiot!  It may be
only a fancified sex-change, but for a raw novice..." she shook her
head in wonder.  It was the same old lesson, of course -- no power of
intuition was any good if one fell for the lure of the obvious.  It was
so damn obvious that Betty and Anne must have been pulling tricks for
Meg behind the scenes, that she'd never stopped to consider the
automatic assumption, despite the showy embellishments of that
performance.  But once alerted...

Joan stopped laughing.  "Say, when did they realise you were a
wielder?"

"Dunno.  I think it must have been during the first few months, while
the overlay was still at full strength.  My memories of that time are
very hazy, but as I started to recollect myself, I was already able to
do some minor stuff."

"Which is why Amanda let the overlay merge into your aura...  Waste
not, want not.  Recruit your talents where you can.  Damn her!  I'd
probably do the same, but DAMN HER, DAMN HER ANYWAY!"

Meg flinched from her wife's vehemence.  "I think she was right," she
said defensively.  "I can't see how I would have managed otherwise."

Joan sighed.  "That as may be, but I'll skin her for this anyway!" She
got up and went to the window and just stood there for a long few
minutes staring into the garden.  "I'll miss Mark," she said at length.
"Though I'll have you of course...  I hope?"

"So you wouldn't mind?" asked Meg carefully coming up to her.  "After
all, I AM Mark.  I still am.  It's just that I am Meg at least as much
now."

"Oh, my love," said Joan turning to Meg and taking her hand, "Of course
you are.  I would know your feel anywhere, as I knew it when you broke
the spell.  You are yourself, even if that self has a different sex and
a different gender.  After what you've done for me, how could I
complain?" She grinned weakly:  "As long as you'll accept me as your
'lesbian plaything' of course!"

She wasn't at all surprised when Meg threw her arms around her and
burst into tears.

                                  * * *

In case you were wondering...  Naturally enough, they were happy ever
after.  Yes, if you insist, they both had kids and it is none of your
business who the fathers were.  Meg grew in power to rival Joan and
proved to be a bastion of strength in the Circle's deadly struggle with
the Adversary, as Joan had known she would.  But that, as they say, is
a quite different story.

End
