Jon got to the top of the stairs just as a sleepy-looking Zoe poked her head out of her door. "Hey, why didn't Mom wake me up for school?" she mumbled.
Not wanting to lose momentum, Jon quickly answered, "No school, something weird with the sun, keep all the blinds closed for now."
"Wait, what?" Zoe asked, but he'd already gone into his room and shut the door behind him.
He grabbed the stone out of his nightstand drawer and plopped into his desk chair.
"I wish the sun was back to normal!" he said triumphantly. He was about to lean over and open the blinds when he realized that was a bad idea if the wish hadn't worked.
He sighed and said, "I wish I knew if the sun was back to normal." The stone flashed, and he instantly knew that it wasn't.
"I wish I knew why the sun isn't back to normal," he said. The answer was that it was outside the stone's range. But then what happened last night?
"I wish I knew why my wish last night managed to affect the sun." It surprised him a bit when the knowledge came back into his head -- there had been some sort of star alignment that was over now.
"I wish I knew when the stone will be able to affect the sun next."
Six months, he now knew. So unless he could figure something out, things would be awfully weird for the next six months. No going out during the day. The world would have to be nocturnal, unless they wanted to turn into someone else's sexual fantasy -- which may not have sounded all that bad, but it could be forever. He looked at the window with its closed blinds. Six months of not being able to --
Jon realized that one of the blinds was bent slightly, letting in a small patch of light. It extended right to --
On the back of his hand, the very hand that clutched the stone, was a small orangish/gray-speckled patch of sunlight.
Jon whipped his hand out of the patch of light, then practically leapt out of the chair, landing awkwardly on the floor. He thought it was too late, though -- he'd been sitting there for a couple minutes.
The question now -- who would be considered "closest" to him? His parents were downstairs, Zoe could have been downstairs or in her room, or maybe a neighbor in the house next door was closer. Jon felt his body start to shift...
(Some of this borrowed from Weirdoid's "Plaid Sun" episodes.)
