Jon woke up for the second time that morning when Karyn accidentally stepped on her getting out of bed. (Jon had slept on the trundle bed that pulled out from underneath Karyn's.) This was a new experience for both of them; Jon had never been stepped on by a tentacle before, and Karyn had never stepped on a slug before. Both of them were a little startled and freaked out by this, but luckily they were awake enough to get it sorted out without turning into a Three Stooges bit.
Slip-up aside, Jon was impressed by how well Karyn could move on her own; on top of not having a skeletal structure below the waist, her lower body wasn't a solid column of muscle like Jon's, but her tentacles were evidently strong enough to hold her a little ways off the floor, so she wasn't dragging her more sensitive parts across the carpet. The cecaelia-girl wasn't anything close to fast on land, outside of her wheelchair, but she managed pretty well, considering.
Getting dressed was another new-ish experience for Jon, since Karyn was evidently comfortable enough to do it in the same room with her. It was nothing Jon hadn't seen in the girls' locker room, but it was a little odd all the same. Still...thinking about it, Jon realized that she didn't have any more qualms about it than Karyn did, so she went ahead and dressed as well.
"Karyn," she asked, as she was pulling her shirt on, her antennae springing back into position as they made it through the collar, "about what we were doing last night...what do you think is going to happen, if anybody can...can just learn magic?"
Karyn thought about it for a minute. "...I dunno," she said at last. "I guess, for starters, it's not as simple as all that. I mean, we know it exists and we have advice from someone who actually knows how it works, and we still haven't actually gotten so far as to even do anything yet. So I think people are really gonna have to work at it if they want to learn it. It's not gonna be a thing where everybody suddenly gets this new power and goes crazy with it."
Jon nodded. "I suppose. And I'm sure that law enforcement will be learning how to counter it if anyone does. Still...I mean, do you think it's going to impact people's jobs? What if, say, someone can just...I dunno, magic food out of raw ingredients? And then all the cooks get put out of work?"
Karyn laughed. "Okay, you're getting a little absurdly pessimistic again. I mean, for starters, that sounds more awesome than intimidating. But...I get what you're saying. Still...well, again, I don't know that that's going to be that likely to begin with. Remember what Brittany said? The more out of its nature you try to make something act, the harder it is to sell it on the idea. I don't think you could easily convince a pig to turn into a glazed ham. And she said herself that they didn't use magic for stuff like farming. There must be some point where the job is simple enough that it's really not worth the bother of learning to do it via magic."
She shrugged. "But...well, yeah, things are gonna change, I guess," she said. "We can't just see magic reintroduced to the world and expect that everything's going to look exactly the same in a hundred years. Heck, even before what you did with the stone, things were always changing. A hundred years ago, nobody had TV or the Internet...a hundred years before that, the Industrial Revolution was still ongoing. All of that had some bad effects, but it was balanced out by some good ones, too. I think that's probably just how it goes. Probably in a hundred years from now some other thing would've come along that we don't even know, if you hadn't unleashed this. Things're probably gonna take a different path now, but I doubt it's gonna make things necessarily worse. If Brittany's right, and this was how things were supposed to go, I'd say it's more likely to make them better."
The slug-girl smiled. "Yeah, I guess..." Then she frowned. "Oh, I, uh...I saw about your hair, under the bed...I'm sorry you're stuck like that..."
Karyn thought for a moment, then remembered. "Oh, that," she said. "Yeah...it's a little annoying. But...eh. It's not that much longer than what I used to have. Besides, in the grand scheme of things, a botched wish could've turned out a lot worse than this. And once we get the whole Sun thing resolved, I'll have a chance to figure out a way to tweak it to be more to my liking." She shrugged. "Besides, it's my own fault."
Jon shrugged. "Well, yeah, but...I should've realized that you weren't quite realizing...I'm the one that handed it to you, after all."
Karyn laughed. "Oh, enough of that, already!" she said. "It's not the end of the world or anything. Besides, it isn't half the hassle your accidental wish got you."
Jon thought about it for a moment, then smiled. "Thanks, Karyn," she said.
Karyn grinned. "Any time."
