He breathed deeply, trying not to look at himself too closely. He was still himself for now, and even if the continuing changes made him no longer "he," whatever pronoun Jon used would still stand for the same person. Or a better one from the experience.
He left the head and looked out into the rosy early sky. "Red sky at night, sailors' delight," he said, remembering an old nautical saying. "Red sky in morning, sailors take warning." But this world was pretty much empty, with nothing to worry about. Maybe the emptiness itself was why he paced the deck outside, feeling the cold wind through his t-shirt. The wishing stone lay locked in the cabin, and for once he felt glad it wasn't in his hand. He didn't know what he'd wish if it were. Answers? Instructions? A life? Whatever he asked for would seem like cheating. Still Jon wandered to the locked cabinet, opened it, and made one wish before putting the stone back.
Karyn woke to a wonderful smell. She came up from the bedroom and found Jon in a mess of broken eggs, spilled batter, and surprisingly perfect bacon. She grinned and pointed to her whiskers until Jon touched his own and found eggshell there. She sprawled into a padded wicker chair, making her tail vanish even though there was room for it. "Busy?"
Jon dished out pancakes. "Yep... oh no, we didn't finish our lesson plan!"
"We were busy." Karyn pulled out the big Land of Things... guidebook and consulted the almanac. "One more night with the moons full together, then thirty-five days till the next conjunction."
Over breakfast they sketched a lesson in raft-building. "We didn't even make the school building yet," Karyn said. They'd planned an elaborate half-submerged structure it would take a wish to assemble, unless they had plastic and rivets handy.
Jon said, "Why don't we make the parts, and have our students build the thing?"
She shrugged.
On choppy seas, a dozen otters surfaced and called silly things up at the boat. "Hey, sea monkeys!"
Jon looked up from the table. "Already?" He went out to the railing, waved, and said, "We'll be right there." He went back into the cabin, ruffled Karyn's ears as she passed him going out, and took the stone from its locker. Too much to do, he thought, and his head was filled with ideas about things to build, things to name. He climbed down into the water with the stone and began wishing great sheets of plastic into existence on a little raft beside the boat. He floated at the surface, mesmerized by the endlessly blue horizon.
The otters watched him. Karyn broke from a conversation with one of their new students and noticed Jon with the stone. "Why'd you bring it down here?" she asked.
"Eh?" he said, distracted. Had she not interrupted him, things would have gone differently because...
