Micharosa: One Month Later

Micharosa looked around the library, smiling to herself. It had been a month since she had last set foot in here, but it felt like a lifetime ago. Of course, in her new life, she had quickly discovered that there were far more books than could ever fit in this library, perhaps even the whole castle. Still, the smell brought back a flood of memories.

She ran her fingers through her hair as if to remind herself that she had left this life behind. Her new life in that new world was simply marvelous. The friends of the boy she had traded places with had been a bit confused at first, but once she began to mimic the way they walked, the way they spoke, they accepted that she was Mike. It helped that physically, they were so much alike, and that was not the only similarity.

"Even the names." She mused, shaking her head. Mike was just a character she played. When she was alone, she remained Princess Micharosa, albeit a princess who wore trousers and played sports.

"You!" She turned from the shelves and smiled sweetly as Mike stormed toward her. Stormed was not quite the right word. Even in his anger, she could see a month's worth of deportment taking hold. He flounced toward her, hands held delicately out to the sides as if ready to curtsey at a moment's notice, the skirts of his dress swaying.

"Hey!" She said, her polite smile turning into a grin.

"You simply must swap us back."

"Now, now, princess." She teased, eyeing him. "It's only been a month. You said you wanted to be a princess for a whole year!"

"I did not!"

"You sure? Can you even remember?" She giggled. "Then again, judging by how your friends think everything brightly colored is for girls, you're probably dying from all the lessons and bubble baths and dresses." Mike glared at her.

"We are switching back."

"Gotta hand it to you. You have the command voice down perfectly." She smirked. "But how do you propose we do that? Even if we switched clothes," she smiled. "In fact." With a twist of her wrist, Mike stood before her in an exact match of her clothes. He stumbled a bit as he had to instantly adapt to wearing scuffed up sneakers instead of his kitten heels.

"Wait." Mike stammered. "You mean, you are letting me" he looked at her, tears of happiness welling up in his eyes.

"Go check yourself out in the mirror." She pointed to the ornate silver mirror across the library. Mike did not need to be told twice, but as he approached, he saw his reflection and his heart sank. Micharosa followed behind him at a leisurely pace. "You see the problem?" She said with a smile. "Clothes do not make the, well man doesn't seem quite right here, does it?" Mike tried to speak, but his words got caught in his throat. "You can't walk anymore. You mince and prance. I bet you would go maybe five, ten minutes with your friends before you tried to curtsey out of habit."

"I could break the habit." He murmured. Micharosa shook her head.

"That's the difference between you and me. I play Mike the boy like a character, but can slip back into" she cleared her throat and returned to her royal voice. "Princess Micharosa at an instant." She returned to her Mike voice, monotone and a bit deeper. "Can you be Mike again?"

"Yes, I can." Mike replied. She smiled knowingly.

"Prove it." Mike tried to focus on walking like he used to, but it felt so unnatural. He had been mincing and flouncing from sun up to sun down for a month. He groaned, feeling tears well up in his eyes. "Oh, don't feel bad." Micharosa said. "Like I said, the agreement was for a full year. It's been a month."

"Truly only a month." Mike mumbled. Micharosa undid her spell and he returned to his dress, tiara, and other accoutrements of princesshood.

"Exactly." Micharosa smiled. "So you've got eleven more to try to remember how to be a boy." She tapped her chin pensively. “Let’s see, your nightgowns are less frilly than your dresses, right?” Mike, mortified, nodded. “So practice walking like a boy every night, right?”

“But… the hours of deportment will surely undo it.”

“Eh, you’ll figure it out.” She smiled, pleased that he could not even seem to stop speaking with a princess’s proper elocution for a second. “Give me a pretty curtsey.” She wondered if MIke would try to curtsey like an awkward boy. Perhaps he did, but a polished, perfect curtsey had been driven home for the last month. “Yeah, eleven months.”

“Eleven months?”



“Yep. I’ll come back then,” he tried to protest. “Per our agreement! If you’re still behaving this… this princessy, I’ll just have to assume you want to stay one forever.” Barely holding back tears, Mike tried to plead with her, but she jumped through the portal. Back in Mike’s room, she fell onto her new bed, laughing. Like Mike’s old friends liked to say, he was screwed! “Totally screwed.” She mused.