With his parents gone and his sister, Penny, away at college, Danny anxiously entered his sister's room to snoop around at his leisure without fear of being caught.

He went right to her bookshelf searching for his Braldron IX video game cartridge that he was almost sure his sister had swiped from his room the last time she had the house alone to herself. Then again maybe his mom or dad finally carried through on their threat to ground him from his favorite video game after that prank he pulled last week on Jimmy Nellings, the little eight year old twirp down the block. Sticking gum on the kid's bicycle seat. It was only in retaliation for the little brat having done the same thing to Danny the previous day but even so the rotten little tattle tail, Jimmy, went and told Danny's mom about it and not too long after that the video game cartridge mysteriously vanished.

Penny's room was where mom and dad usually hid stuff they took from Danny when he was on restriction or grounded for one reason or another. It seemed like the last place on Earth a sixteen year old boy would ever look was in a pink painted room with a frilly white canopy bed and a closet full of girl's clothes, but Danny had wised up and discovered this was where mom and dad liked to hide his latest video game cartridge when he was grounded.

Sure enough "Braldon IX" was right there hidden behind a row of dolls and stuffed toy animals on the top shelf. He'd be able to play his video game after all but he'd have to remember to return it back to its hiding place before mom and dad got back home or he'd be double grounded for sure.

Danny wondered what other things were hidden in this room. A room he'd only been in a few times before and even then, only briefly. The smell of perfume and baby powder and skin moisturizer in here was pretty overwhelming sometimes. Even now he was almost ready to gag at how much hair spray lingered in the air in his big sister's room.

He decided to go ahead and open a window in here to let the place air out a bit. He pulled back the frilly white curtains and pulled back the heavy iron latch and slid the window open. Looking down over the red ceramic tiled roof from Penny's window, Danny saw the driveway below and glanced up through the still thick morning fog and saw the hazy blob of light that was the sun. The fog wouldn't burn off at least until around lunch time so he'd have plenty of time to play his video game before heading off to the park to play some baseball with his friends.

The cool morning air was a welcome relief to his perfume choked lungs and he just stood there for a long while just taking in deep breaths of fresh air and glancing about through the fogbank at the shadowy traces of cars parked across the street.

After a few minutes he turned his attention back to his immediate surroundings. Now seemed like the most opportune time to more fully explore his sister's room and see if there might be other things hidden in here that were his. If anything maybe he'd find an old diary of hers and get to have a chuckle or two reading it.

Her dresser was chocked full of girls clothes. Panties, stockings, bras, designer jeans and socks among other things. The stuff in here was mostly junk she had outgrown or things maybe out of style or things she just plain hadn't bothered packing to take with her to college. There were a few training bras in there which made Danny chuckle a bit. It was clear evidence his big sister was a bit of a pack rat as far as clothes were concerned. Her other bras in the dresser drawer were of much bigger size than the training bras.

Finding no secret stash of diaries or anything of any real interest in her dresser, he turned his attention to her closet. He opened the big French doors and was greeted with a wall of dresses and skirts hanging there all scrunched up and tightly packed together. Below was a sea of shoes set neatly beside one another in perfect pairs from pumps to flats to tennis shoes and here was even further evidence his sister was a pack rat for many of these shoes obviously no longer fit her but were kept here with the others just the same.

Her army of shoes were so well organized in tight formation that Danny dared not disturb them for fear his neat freak of a sister might discover someone had been snooping through her closet.

He saw a stack of cardboard boxes off to the right of all the shoes and turned his attention to that. He carefully reached in and lifted out a box. It was rather heavy and he nearly dropped it as he stumbled back from the closet and finally set it down on the end of the bed.

The box contained some old winter clothes. Mostly mittens, scarves, and sweaters but at the bottom of the box were some books and even a couple heavy empty flower pots. Nothing of much interest to Danny though, so he went and fetched another box from the closet. This one had some clothes from when his sister was in early grade school. Probably third or fourth grade. He wondered why she kept these at all.

He grabbed for the last box in the closet but it was too heavy to lift. He decided to go ahead and drag it through the sea of girl's shoes and face what consequences he may face later on.

He pulled the box out, dragging it out to the center of the room and opened it up for a look inside.

Inside were bags and bags of garden and river rocks and sea shells. He remembered his sister used to collect them years ago as a sort of a hobby before she got older and discovered boys and then that became her hobby, as the many posters on the walls in her room could attest.

He poured out a bag of seashells on the floor and discovered there were some coins and trinkets mixed in along with some old jewelry. That got his curiosity up and he emptied another bag of shells and found much the same. He emptied them all out one by one onto the white carpet making a horrible mess of sand and debris crumbs he'd later have to vacume up to cover his trail.

That was all there was, though. Just some seashells, river rocks, and jewelry. He picked up a big pink and white conch shell and held it to his ear to listen to the sound of the ocean. The shell rattled a bit as he moved it so he shook it and out into the palm of his hand dropped a tiny silver ring.

The ring had a small pink coral stone on top and strange faded writing along the inside of the band. The ring felt little cold to the touch. Almost nearly as cold as if he'd held an ice cube instead. The pink coral stone almost seemed to glow a bit through the tiny little cracks in the rock. He read the inscription aloud to himself,"For a little girl or if you're not, a gift of girlness from within this rock."

There were little hearts and flowers etched along the inner band bedide the strange words.

Danny was about to set the ring down but wondered where in the world his sister had obtained it from. "Certainly not a gift from mom or dad," he pondered aloud. "Or Grandma or Grandpa or even Uncle Lou."

He wondered if maybe the ring had been in the shell all along and his sister never even knew about it or if it had been part of the jewelry dumped in the shell bag with the conch shell. He chuckled as he re-read the part about "a gift of girlness from within this rock." He knew it implied that if a boy were to wear the ring he'd change into a girl but that was such an impossibility that he ruled it out right away as a joke. Even so he slipped the ring on his finger to validate to himself that it really was a joke.

Whatever boundary of nature or twist of fate or law of all that exists in the world which keeps a girl a girl and a boy a boy and keeps them apart throughout life in seperate and distinctive roles was lifted the moment Danny Sweet put that ring upon his finger. For instantly and even before the ring curse began transforming his body, Danny felt as though he'd passed through an invisible barrier, leaving his maleness instantly trapped on the other side and a strange new feeling of femininity overwhelmed his senses.

The ground trembled and a supernatural breeze blew upward from the carpet, scattering the seashells and rocks all about the room in disarray. A tingle in Danny's tummy grew downward through his belly to his crotch at the same time his maleness in his crotch shriveled and pulled upward and inward to meet and mysteriously conjoin with the tingling force deep within. A giddy weakness overcame him unlike any he'd ever known before and he rapidly shrank down and changed into a little girl - clothes too, for they were not exempt from whatever strange spell was doing this to the poor boy, and then, just like that, it was over.

Danny Sweet was now a little girl.

She sat there unconsciously tugging at the ring, trying to remove it. An action she began the moment the terrifying changes began to take place but it was useless. The ring would not budge from her finger. It was stuck there somehow by magic. It was stuck with her and she was stuck with it.

She couldn't help but cry at the helplessness of the situation. She was trapped a little girl somehow by this spooky, crazy old ring and took all her boyness away.

She pressed her little hands against the sides of her face, feeling her smooth soft pudgy little cheeks. Then she ran her fingers up through her auburn locks and glanced from shoulder to shoulder in amazement at the puffy white sleeves of her play dress. She took note of her shiny black flats she wore on frilly white sock covered feet. Her tears stopped as her fear of what had happened to her was replaced with feelings of amazement and an incredible sense of inner peace. Being torn so suddenly from raging teenage male hormones and dropped off in a little girl's body like this was an oddly relaxing sensation but none the less eerie going from somewhat horny teenaged boy to suddenly having absolutely no sex drive whatsoever.

Whatever magic did this to her left her memories completely intact except somehow severed or severely impaired Danny's mental connection to being biologically naturally attracted to girls. Now that she was a girl, and a little one at that, barely five years old from Danny's guess, her mental pathways, at least as far as sexual development was concerned, had somehow been reset - nullified. Perhaps it was part of the ring's design to protect and ensure the magic ring wasn't misused by some sick demented pervert. With sexual preference turned back to zero Danny would have to decide all over again... when the time was right and she was old enough of course.

She sat there for awhile, just tapping the ring stone, just tapping it lightly to see if it was done with whatever it had to do still, and then she finally stood up.