Zoe was walking to the Spiked Pitt to meet up with her gang. It was a bit strange hanging out with them without Athena there, she was sort of the wise older sister of the group, always there to give a perspective that would change whole conversation. She was weird, but in a way that everyone had eagerly anticipated, now that was lacking from the group, and it had basically become a venting group.
Sabrina would vent about her family, her father in particular, and how abusive and mean they could be.
Zelda, being a cyber goth, would vent about the system they lived in, how it was unfair that they didn't expand their world view and evolve to include people like her. She felt the world was backwards, moving too slow for her tastes, which were on the cutting edge.
Zoe usually had a bad encounter with a jock or cheerleader and wanted to vent about that, though recently that had been improving. This was nice, but she found she had less to talk about all of a sudden, which caused a lot of listening on her end.
Had a lot changed in the past few weeks? Zoe didn't want to think so. She felt less bullied, but could that be so bad? Athena and her had really only hung out twice in that time, once for yoga, which she was improving at as well. She didn't know why, but she always was able to make it to Yoga, and now she was starting to want to go. It was probably the spell, she thought to herself, but she hardly minded something as innocuous as that.
The other time was to go shopping, which was both of their ideas at the same time. Zoe wanted to try and get Athena back into black gothic dress, as part of her plan to get the old Athena back, and Athena just like the idea of shopping. It hadn't worked the way Zoe had planned. Athena had tried on a few things but seemed distracted by her phone, and kept on acting like she had something important to share, but couldn't or wouldn't share it, and finding out what it was, and then the shock of finding out she had kissed Tom Wells derailed the whole project of getting her into that dress. In the end the only thing that was bought was a pair of Yoga pants for her, black with no pink stripe, and these fit.
Her friends were talking but she wasn't listening, and they could tell.
"Zoe, what's up with you?"
"What do you mean?"
"You've been hanging with a Cheerleader, doing Yoga, zoning out. I thought you hated those guys."
"What if I told you that one of the Cheerleaders on the team is actually a Goth, just playing the role of Cheerleader, and that we could bring her into the circle..."
"I'd say that's hilarious. Whose the girl?"
"Athena DeVires."
"Awww the little cute one? but she's so bubbly and adorable."
"yeah, well think of her in a black dress with lots of lace and a corset, and she's into magic."
"like wiccan stuff or the card game?"
"Witchcraft, and she's all dark and mysterious and bad ass."
" Sounds sweet. Never going to happen though. She's one of them... if your goal is to make her into some lady of darkness, it's going to take more than you got."
"I've got you, I'm telling you, we used to hang out, she's got that in her. I think we could do it."
"Yeah? How?"
At this point the old Athena would have quoted "And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you" and they would have stopped and thought about what they were going to do...but she wasn't, and they didn't, and what happened, happened.
