Jon eyed the stone on his desk like a problem. There it was, clearly a wishing stone, yet it was not granting any wishes.
He wished for 1000 dollars, a flash, then nothing. He wished for his desk to turn blue, a dimmer flash, still nothing.
Was he doing it wrong? Clearly it had been working before, Karyn was an obvious example, but suddenly it had stopped, what's more it seemed stalled, like it wanted to work but just wasn't. It didn't make sense...why the flash, which had signaled a wish being granted before, but no result? What was more worrying was the fading flash that came with each wish he made, as if it was running lower and lower on power.
It was warm and wet in his hand...as if it was sweating, if he could take it apart and work on it like an engine he would have, but that's not how this worked. If there were rules to this, he didn't know them. Maybe he was the problem, maybe what he was wishing for, maybe how he was wishing, Jon had no way to know. But he did have a way to test.
He knocked on Zoe's door. "What do you want?" said the young rebellious little pain in his ass. There was a reason he had made the wish about siblings, Zoe was moody, jealous, hard to get along with, and loud. He had no doubt he had her back and that she had his, but there would be an eye roll to go with it and a score kept, it was like she fed off conflict. Jon just jumped into it.
"Grandpa left me a magic wishing stone but it's stopped working, can you look at it maybe?" Zoe looked at him and at the stone, then back at him. Jon had essentially turned to the one person he thought might know something about magic in the same way a grandparent turns to a grandkid to teach them about email, except this was magic. The thing was Zoe didn't know much more than Jon did, she had a friend that pretended be magical in Athena, still...She snatched the thing from Jon's hands and slammed the door in his face with a coy smile.
Jon pounded on the door "Zoe WAIT!" Jon couldn't hear, but he saw a flash from beneath the door. Jon franticly pounded on the door! "ZOE"
His mother called from downstairs "Play nice you two!!"
Another flash beneath the door. Then another. Jon was about to break the door down, when it opened. Before him stood Zoe holding two halves of the stone.
"So...for sure a cool thing...but I think I broke it." Zoe semi apologized.
"ZOE!!" Jon cried in shocked upset.
Then mom showed up.
