It's lonely out there for a witch, you have no idea. I mean it's lonely believing anything, but for the more obscure ideas out there, magic, aliens, those fringe things which society "knows" to be fake, it's basically choosing to live on an island. That's what life was for Athena, but her family, mainly her "crazy" aunt Millie, who being fair had done time in a psychiatric ward at one point, supported her. It was her aunt who had given her the amulet of protection which she wore daily, as a ward against magics. Her parents didn't like her wearing it, they thought it had something to do with Millie's mental break, but that just made Athena want to wear it more. Millie always told her that magic could change the world, that the world was always shifting and it was good to keep your head straight, know what's what, and who changed what how.
It was always hard to explain magic though, to make clear what she believed and didn't to someone else. She would get asked all the time, by boys who were trying to flirt, by adults wondering why she was so dark and odd, by her friends who thought what she did was cool. They never got it though, they never understood. It wasn't that she was Wiccan, though that certainly fit some of it, and it wasn't that she believed too much in fantasy novels, and it wasn't that she worshiped Satan. She just believed in a magical world, that not everything was science, that out there, winds of magic, of reality bending power, of natural force and will, of soul and stardust, of ether and blood, existed and affected us. She didn't know how, or how to work with that, or even what to do about it. It was her island of belief, and she lived there.
One day, because her friend Zoe knew Athena loved magic, Zoe brought her a stone. Zoe said it was magic, or that her idiot brother said it was magic, and seemed really upset that it was suddenly missing. Zoe thought it was funny. Athena held the rock in her hand. She felt it's power. She felt its weight and smoothness, and she felt it through her amulet and her body. It seemed to speak to her, to ask her for desire, it seemed interested in her, to probe her thoughts, her soul even, to recognize her as something alike to itself. Athena resisted, rocking back and forth as she held the rock, her whole self engaged with this encounter, and the rock, in answer asked in her mind what she wanted, then turned back the veil of the world to her mind, showing her all that it could do, bring back the dead, create love, end and restart the universe. Stars passed her eyes, she saw whole worlds burn and be reborn. She sat in a classroom and saw that she was every person in the room, only to have them all age a fully life and die and the room age and pass on to the next epoch, but in that moment she knew the minds of all, and all their thoughts. In her hand the stone flashed, as if it had found what it was looking for, and imploded. Athena, who to Zoe's eyes had fallen to the floor moments after taking the stone, held her friend in her arms.
4 hours later Athena woke up in a hospital bed. The world had changed, she did not know how.
