Mom (Present me): Hello Lark.

Lark (20s me): Hey Mom.

Mom: Is that a butterfly necklace around your neck?

Lark: Yeah! I think it looks cute.

Mom (confused): Sure it’s cute, but I don’t own a butterfly necklace. I own a fairy necklace, but that’s definitely not my fairy necklace.

Lark: Oh yeah, it’s not one of yours. I found this in one of my memories.

Mom (stunned): Wait, one of *your* memories!? That’s impossible; I don’t remember a necklace like that at all!

Lark: Really? I mean, you know I’m telling the truth; I couldn’t have found it otherwise. Maybe you forgot about it?

Mom: Why would I have a memory of a necklace? I guess a girl I knew wore it or something.

Lark: Two girls you knew wore it.

Mom: Two girls I knew had matching butterfly necklaces?

Lark (surprised): No, there’s just this one necklace. You really don’t remember! Here, send us back to that memory so I can show you where I found it.

Mom: I can’t. I can only go to memories I remember.

Lark: Shoot. Okay, maybe I can send us…

(Several moments pass.)

Lark: Have we moved?

Mom: No we haven’t. It doesn’t work that way for you or your sisters — you’d have to walk.

Lark (annoyed): Oh, so you instinctively know what goes on everywhere, summon things out of thin air at will, and teleport yourself or us around wherever you please, but we can’t do any of those things?

Mom: It’s *my* head.

Lark (disappointed): Not fair.

Mom: Why not describe the memory to me? Maybe telling me about it will knock something loose, so to speak.

Lark: I guess I’ll try… It was back when we lived alone; no roommates. We were having a conversation late at night with a friend of ours who was a girl, and we were talking about names.

Mom (reflecting): Talking about names…

Lark: Yeah, she was wondering what her “guy name” would be, so we were brainstorming with her. We didn’t really come up with anything good, unfortunately, but afterwards she asked us what our “girl name” would be.

Mom: And we said it was Daphne. Because we’d already chosen that name back in college.

Lark: Just so. There was no brainstorming with us; we already knew what our “girl name” would be. At the time we moved onto another topic, so that was the end of it until we met again…

Mom (interrupting): …at that whiskey tasting! Oh my goodness that’s right! Didn’t we get to taste Johnny Walker Blue Label that night?

Lark: I think so; I don’t recall it being that remarkable. But our friend that night was wearing this necklace.

Mom: Oh yeah! She said she was impressed that we were willing to talk about that name stuff because most guys weren’t. She told us she had a thing for feminizing men, remember?

Lark: Yes I do — and do you remember what she did after telling us that? She took this butterfly necklace from around her neck…

Mom (wide eyed): …and put it around mine.

(A satisfied smile spread across Lark’s face.)

Mom (shocked): So when you said two girls I knew wore this necklace… *I* was the second girl!

Lark: Exactly! Sadly, I had no idea I was a girl at the time, but I do remember that it wasn’t the only time we wore that necklace.

Mom: That’s right, because she left it around our neck by accident and we wore it home! We told her we had her necklace the next day, and she said it wasn’t that big of a deal and we could return it whenever we saw her next!

Lark: Which wasn’t for a while. So we hid it in our nightstand drawer, although we got it out at least twice more to wear it around our apartment in secret.

Mom: Being secretive about wearing something around an apartment I lived in alone seems strange, but that’s how it felt. We imagined it was a magical necklace that had the power to turn the wearer into a girl. Our friend didn’t know about the magic because she was already a girl; it didn’t work on her. But it would work on us.

Lark (laughing): And I guess it did! That magic just took a while. Oh, and our name came up again too. That year she gave us a birthday card that said “Happy Birthday Princess Daphne!”

Mom (grinning): Hah! I guess that makes her the first person to call us by our real name. Heck, *we* wouldn’t even know that was our real name for another eleven years.

Lark: Heh, I suppose not. In any event, that’s where I found this necklace.

Mom: It isn’t even the first time you’ve worn it. In that case, it’s yours to keep… You’ve absolutely earned it.

Lark (smiling): Thanks Mom. I will.