Karyn couldn't quite put her finger on it. She had just returned from the mountains and met her friend Jane again, and they were going to discuss something the next day, but what? She had no idea they were going to discuss. Karyn could vaguely feel a sense of importance around the idea, but perhaps she was just imagining it. Something about a blue tree branch... but there wasn't a plue tree branch anywhere on the school.
Jane claimed to know nothing about it, and finally Karyn decided to ignore it. Until, that is, she got the email a week later. It looked like spam, but when she deleted it it reappeared a second later. She deleted it again and a large message box popped up on her screen saying "Karyn, you have to read this".
The third time she deleted it, she heard a loud voice yell in her ear "Read this! I mean it!" Even though it was a library computer with no sound cards, and nobody had heard anything strange.
The fourth time, Karyn opened the message. It was the strangest thing she ever saw.
"I hate to not be able to give you more help, but I'm needed in another realm and I can only stay here long enough to send you this message. I'm the grandfather of your friend Jane--or Jon as she was once called."
How silly, thought Karyn, but she kept reading the message. It was eerily compelling.
"Before I left for the other realm and 'died', I sent Jon a powerful magic item--a wishing stone. With this he could wish for an unlimited number of things, except that already wishes made could not be directly reversed. It was a powerful item, but I was sure that Jon would make a good owner. I wasn't wrong--until he triggered the failsafe.
The failsafe was a special spell on the wishing stone. If the wielder was in danger of grievous bodily harm, it would act to protect him. He wouldn't have to be touching the stone; it would only have to be near him or on his person. And he wouldn't have to say anything; it would pick from his subconscious any unspoken wish that might save him.
A gangster named DeMorrell turned Jon into a woman and tried to rape her, and the failsafe went off--Jon didn't have the stone, but in Morrell's hands it was close enough to trigger the failsafe. But like the stone itself, the failsafe doesn't always pick the most straightforward way to do its job. The night before Jon had been captured, he was dreaming of unlimited wishes, of chaos and nirvana, of disaster and magic. The failsafe tapped into that dream and interpreted it as a wish so he could be saved from his fate. And so Jon became a being of chaos and magic, with the power of unlimited wishes, completely draining the rock in the process, something that would normally never happen.
I'm less cynical about the human race than some and I do believe that some humans can ignore the worst temptations of the stone. Jane is a basically good person. But as a goddess, she can fake being human, but she doesn't really think like one, and even a good person with the lack of humility of a goddess can do a lot of bad things that I'm sure I don't need to list for you.
The important part is not to convince Jane to put her power back in the stone, though it certainly couldn't hurt, and you might want a better failsafe this time. The important part is to return her to her human personality. To make her realize that she isn't a goddess even if she has the powers of one. This is your task as her friend, Karyn.
I've attached a small bit of magic to this message. Print it out and keep it on your person. As long as you do, anything that Jane does to you will only have the effects that you let it have."
That must not have been the only magic in the message--because Karyn found the message completely believable, as if that was also magic. She printed out the message and paid the 10 cents for the copy, then folded it, slid it into her pocket, and headed off to look for Jane.
