It wasn't the words "I wish" followed by some statement in English that activated the stone. Of course not, the thing drastically predated humans at all let alone the English language. The way it worked was that it required a confidence in a language of some sort, expressed by that language at a conceptual level, conveying a desire whose meaning and intent could in principle be understood by others who understood that language. But what really defined that? Why wouldn't it normally just work by thinking something, or wanting something and accompanying some sort of words to it, for instance, thinking the wish in English, or just desiring something while sputtering gibberish or grunting? The answer was that it required belief in its objective meaning to others. If one actually believed that others could hear their thoughts, they would be able to activate it by thinking the words. Or even just momentarily pretending they thought that, they might be able to do it. Alternatively, feigning confidence in a made-up language as being a language recognized by others would work as well, so Jon could invent a fox language that was comprised of phonemes, spoken sounds, that a fox could make, and if she followed her made-up linguistic rules and convinced herself that anyone else understood or in principle could understand that language too, that would do the trick as well. But just by gaining this concept of its operating principles, it was self-fulfilling just to think the wishes, as long as she was confident that others would know her thoughts from them being granted. Because knowing this was how it worked, now her thoughts would be made into reality, so now her thoughts really would directly convey objective meaning to others. It was only failing to activate from her thoughts alone before, by not thinking her thoughts would be enough. But once she gained confidence in her power to rewrite reality with her thoughts that would make everyone witnessing aware of what her thoughts were, her thoughts themselves became a form of language that were recognized by the object.
The words of Jon's thoughts almost seemed to tangibly materialize in the air around her. 'I will attain information on what my body will do with the passage of time. I see. Sarah was true to her word on that. Two weeks and it becomes male again but remains a fox temporarily, and another 12 days after that and I become human again.' She looked down at Karyn, still asleep.
'Karyn will become physically her original human female form again, but will retain her physical attraction for me as she had when we were both reversed-sex foxes. Karyn will be dressed in clothes of her usual attire.'
Jon roused Karyn.
She stretched and looked oblivious for a full five seconds before gasping, examining herself and saying “I’m back to normal! But you’re still, a fox,” a bit alarmed by the things she still very much wanted to do to the female fox before her. Jon sure was a fox, indeed. Hesitantly she continued. “But that’s ok, since I can talk, you just need to poop the stone out, and then I can...”
Isn’t she in for a surprise, Jon thought, and then continued with the speechless wishes. 'My body will experience time much faster than the spacetime around it until the time limit of Sarah's wish runs out and it once again becomes my former human male self, but my mind will slow down so that I don't experience all that time. I will be dressed in clothes of my usual attire.'
Jon was once again his former rather dashing human male self. But he didn't even need to bother to speak the wishes even though now he could.
“Whoa,” Karyn said.
“Yeah. I learned how to use the stone without speaking, exactly. The way I'm using the stone now, it also transcends the normal limitations from wishes. Being irreversible is actually just a side-effect of making a wish in the sort of spoken language the way humans tend to construct them, because the language usually conveys the concept of something being a certain way resolutely and then it's like continually making the wish forever, and that's why it can't be undone. We can go on with our lives.”
“Oh. Wow. So, you've really, mastered it. Is it still inside you?”
“It must be. I literally just changed you back before waking you up and myself right in front of you.”
“So happy ending then! Everything is back to normal,” Karyn said.
“Except Sarah's dead,” Jon said.
“Good riddence,” Karyn said bitterly. “All’s well that ends well!” she said with hate.
“I’m going to bring her back,” Jon said.
Karyn looked blankly into nowhere for a few seconds. “What, no, no way! Are you nuts?! You can’t do that!”
“Karyn, I need to tell you some things. When I was sleeping, I was able to meet her. She is trapped in a strange dimension inside the stone, and apparently someone who has the stone inside them, can visit that place.”
“Good. She deserves to rot in hell.”
“First of all, she's been in there for years now. Time is passing much faster there than here. She's also grown up. She's not the same nasty person we knew. How many people do we know as adults were probably totally different when they were teenagers? What do you think our own parents were like when they were kids? And how long do you think hell should be for, you know? Most religions that believe in that, seem to think it is, or should be, forever, but then they really only believe in hell to bully people into joining their religion and scare them from the idea of leaving, not to compel them to actually be good people so who cares what they think. Though the place I went to, it wasn't exactly hell, more like a sort of limbo. It wasn't, bad, there was no torture, no lakes of fire or punishment, but it was lonely. But do you really think people can't change after years, or decades?”
Karyn hadn't really thought of such an idea. That Sarah might not be a bad person all her life. No way, look at that unforgivable thing she tried to do! Jon and Karyn were never like that to anyone at any age. Evil teenager, evil adult. She's just manipulating Jon! That's what she does! Karyn was silent, knowing she probably wasn’t going to be able to talk sense into him. It was her opinion against him, but he was the one with the stone within him. But then she got an idea.
“No way Jon! She's just manipulative like always! And there are lots of people who died unfairly all through human history, better people than Sarah, millions of them, billions, do you want to wish them all back too? Don't you think they should be ahead of her in line, if you were to consider it? So, do you want the world population to go up to 50 billion?”
Jon stopped to consider that thought. He was expecting Karyn to just be irrational and unreasonable, except that actually it was a valid point. Before he wished Sarah back, wouldn't it make sense to consider others, who more deserved to live, first? Others who were better people, who died under more unfair circumstances. Like Anne Frank. Or any given person who was run over by some jerkwad that had no business being behind the wheel of a car. But Sarah had been killed in self-defense in a situation that she was 100% the bad guy in. Why should she really be first in line in front of all those others? Why should she get a second chance when none of them do? She's not even having a bad time in the afterlife anyway, living in that world where she can have anything she wants. And if he was to consider everyone who rightfully ought to be ahead of her in line, there wasn't room on Earth for all such cases, so why should she get to come back? Whatever else Jon might wish for, it made so much sense to just leave her as she was. The capabilities of the stone led to some quandaries. What really was the actual best way to make use of it?
After thinking about it, he sighed, and said “Karyn, we can't save the world. Or maybe we can. Shit, maybe we really can. Maybe I can bring back everyone who ever lived and died unfairly. But, we have all of time to do it in. For now, I think we should focus on doing the right thing in our personal lives. And we killed her. All those other people who died in history, we personally didn't kill all them. We didn't kill Anne Frank, we didn't shoot Abraham Lincoln, or JFK. But Sarah, that was us.”
“Actually it was me Jon, not us,” Karyn said. “If you’re not going to bring back Abraham Lincoln because John Wilkes Booth was at fault then you shouldn’t bring back Sarah because I was at fault not you.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t personally speak to Lincoln and promise to bring him back if I got a chance. I’m still personally involved with Sarah. Come on, you’ll like her, you’ll like the new her. Just think of it, you two could be friends, I’d like to see that.”
Karyn threw her hands in the air and said “you do what you want, it’s not like I can stop you.”
“I’m sorry,” Jon said.
“Not sorry enough apparently,” she said back. She grumbled as Jon’s face showed a look of concentration.
And then there was Sarah. And a middle aged man.
“What’s going on now? He doesn’t look like Abraham Lincoln,” Karyn said.
“He’s Dr. Hudson. Apparently my grandfather murdered him, they were working together at the archaeological dig where they found the stone.”
“We’re really back in the real world?” Dr. Hudson asked. “I don’t suppose you’d consider giving me a new body and identity?”
“That should be easy enough. What do you want?”
“Can you make me…. Japanese schoolgirl?”
Jon laughed at that, and said, “you mean just ethnically or actually in Japan?”
“Oh, in Japan. No offense but I’d like to be on completely the other side of the world from that thing. I guess when I die, I’ll end up right back at that place so please make it so I also am as close to immortal as possible, and maybe have an emergency way to keep in touch, but for the most part I really want to start fresh in something new and different and interesting to me.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Jon said. He then concentrated and Dr. Hudson shrunk by over a foot, and got younger and otherwise changed in appearance completely. “Is this good, Dr. Hudson? Or should I say, Mafumi?” Jon asked smiling.
“Yatta…” Mafumi said back, looking at herself, hardly able to believe after being a middle aged man so long that this was her body now.
“Have fun,” Jon said, and Mafumi disappeared.
“Sarah?” Karyn said.
“What?” Sarah said, looking down.
“I just wanted you to know, I tried my very hardest to talk Jon out of bringing you back to life, and leaving you in hell.”
“I, I figured, that would be likely…” Sarah said.
“But I forgive you for now.”
“R…really?” Sarah said.
“Jon says you changed. A better person. He was wrong about you before, when I first found you at your home and found him turned into a fox by you, I was about to beat your face in and Jon stopped me, so I asked him if you could be trusted and he indicated you could. And he was wrong. Because what did you then do?”
“I turned you into a reynard.” Sarah said, looking down.
“Yea… what?”
“A reynard. A male fox. A female fox is a vixen, a male is a reynard.”
“Oh. I did not know that.”
“I like foxes, and know a lot about them,” Sarah admitted.
The semi-innocence of it suddenly struck Karyn. She turned us into her favorite animal, and maybe actually was serious about having us be pets, and apparently was kind and patient to Jon even when he or she at the time misbehaved, enough to give Jon a positive enough impression to trick her into trying to convince Karyn to give her leniency. Even when she was being evil, maybe Sarah wasn’t really that evil. Karyn hadn’t actually considered that there was a lighter side to Sarah’s actions earlier. Basically being a pet to a good owner was like being a wife to a rich husband. Maybe she was going to leave them as foxes permanently but actually treat them well and give them a certain amount of freedom to run around. They might have even been given freedom and ability to live more complicated lives and the opportunity to do hobbies and other activities and inform their families what happened to them and interact with them. It potentially could have been kind of a curse but not really a curse.
“Well, my point is that, don’t mess it up. Don’t make me regret it.”
“Yeah. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Sarah said, looking down again. “Can we start over?”
“Hmpf. I can’t bring myself to hate you any more, for now. I can’t believe it, I’m friends with Sarah McMillan now. And you Jon…”
“What did I do.” he asked innocently, while Sarah was looking happy that Karyn had implied she was her friend now.
“It’s not about what you did but what you didn’t do. Not even when we were horny foxes. You, me, I want to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Is that a problem?”
“No,” he said smiling.
“Great. Now strip,” Karyn said.
“Wut?”
“We’re going to do what we should have done before,” Karyn said with thirst.
“What, right now, in the middle of the woods, with Sarah watching?”
“Don’t make me come between you,” Sarah said, coyly looking away.
“She can watch,” Karyn said. “I want her to watch.”
“Oh myyyy,” Sarah said in a George Takei impersonation, while Jon gulped.
Freddy had been driving for half the night and finally found the perfect remote camping grounds. At one point he was afraid he would be pulled over by the police, but they didn't, it was just some bitch cop driving 90 miles an hour, probably going to Dunkin Donuts or something, the typical cop attitude that the laws were for thee and not for me. At the camp grounds, he had anxiously looked around to see if there was anything that looked like it could even possibly be a security camera. The last thing he wanted was to leave video proof in someone's recorded feed that they could just call back on at any time in the future, to solve the mystery! But it looked like it truly was a wireless haven. And by that, he would mean, not just no WiFi. Wireless as in no electronics that connected to anything but satellites. Even his cellphone wasn't getting a signal. It was as if he had been transported through time and space to a mythical realm where cellphones didn't work. Such as the interstate running East to West through the entire state of Nebraska. He had searched the area. There was a lake. But he had seen too many cop shows to think that was a good idea. The body would just float and be found. Maybe if he weighed it down with rocks? No, then an arm or a leg would resurface. But then he found the perfect thing. An actual cave. With any luck, maybe a bear would find the body and eat it and leave nothing left?
It wasn’t as good as they were hoping it would be. It certainly hadn’t been as good or fun as the night before, when they were foxes.
Jon looked at Karyn and Karyn looked at Jon.
“So that’s it?” Karyn said. She was missing her reynard body now. She kind of actually felt, wrong, like this.
“You got a little, thing right there…” Jon said, pointing to his nose.
“Jon, your face!” Karyn yelled. Jon looked crosseyed at his own nose, as it extended forward. “My face, your face!” he said.
“Are you doing this?” Karyn accused.
“No, actually I teleported the stone out of my body and back home into its box after teleporting Dr. Hudson to her new life in Japan!” Jon said excitedly as his triangular ears popped out of the top of his head.
“Then why are we turning back into foxes?!” Karyn said, as she shrank a bit, her new tail wagging left to right.
“It, it must be, because…” Jon looked at Sarah.
“Because of my wish,” Sarah said. “Oh, nooo,” she said, laughing a little bit.
“I don’t understand!” Karyn whined.
“I think, Sarah, willou, owoaaff ttoooia explaaiinnnoou, ouuu,” Jon said, as she lost the ability to speak.
“It’s, because, when I turned you into a reynard, I wished that if you mated, it would be permanent. I guess I was kind of sloppy and didn’t say that it was only if you mated while you were still foxes. I guess if either of you ever mated, that is, had sex for the purpose of reproduction, or in a way that could lead to reproduction even if that wasn’t the purpose, you would be permanently foxes. I ruined any chances of you having kids as humans and put a timebomb in you that would go off whenever you tried, ever. Sorry about that.”
Jon looked at Karyn and Karyn looked at Jon. Once more, Jon was a vixen and Karyn was a reynard.
Karyn held his mouth open. So this was it now. He was permanently this way this time.
“I promise, I’ll help you two, any way I can.” Sarah began.
Jon was swishing her tail in a way Karyn found unbelievably sexy.
“Allow me to give you an open offer, whenever you want,” Sarah continued.
Karyn approached Jon, who looked back at him longingly and whined.
“…to be my foxes. I don’t know if what I did, will ever be, ok… yeah I guess I have a feeling you’re ok with it,” she said awkwardly, as Jon and Karyn rolled around on the forest floor, their big floofy tails intertwining. “I would also, be happy, to have, some of your kits, as pets, and give you whatever help you need, with… things.”
Jon and Karyn mated in various ways several times. It was so, so much better than when Karyn was a human girl and Jon was a human boy, for both of them.
Sarah helped them get home, and explained what happened to their families. At first they didn’t believe it, until she showed them the stone and what it could do. Jon used it to give herself and Karyn the ability to speak or make fox sounds as they desired, and Jon’s family had to accept that their son was now a vixen and Karyn’s family that their daughter a reynard, not to mention that Jon was pregnant with a litter of fox kits with Karyn the father.
They adapted, and enjoyed many things in many ways. Sometimes Jon and Karyn operated robot suits that looked and sounded like their original bodies, sometimes they joined some of their kits as Sarah’s pets, sometimes they turned others into foxes or other animals so they could join the fun, they even turned Sarah into a hermaphrodite fox herself for a few months at a time, and had her literally come between Jon and Karyn on many occasions. She was so happy to have some kits of her own, with Karyn the father, and Jon had a few litters sired by Sarah too, and after the fourth time, she decided to make it permanent.
One day, a few years later, Jon, Sarah and Karyn were all cuddled together in a bed, Sarah and Jon both pregnant, and Jon said, in her new high voice befitting a female fox but capable of human speech, “Does anyone else get the feeling we’re forgetting something?”
“Yeah, it seems like, maybe, something, but what?” Karyn said, as Sarah licked his face. “He he, cut that out,” he said as Sarah’s tongue got uncomfortably close to his eyes, and he licked her back.
“In other news, the corpse bandit killer is still at large,” the tv said. “Police have been trying to fit the pieces together, but the only clues the culprit leaves behind are the telltale…”
“Could someone turn that off? Where’s the remote? I don’t want to get out of bed…” Jon said. She got up and turned the tv off by paw. It was hard to use the remote anyway, because of their cute little fox paws.
“They’ll never get us,” Freddy said. “Isn’t that right, my love?” He said, lovingly gazing into the face of the mummified remains of Sarah’s original body. “What’s this, you’re jealous again? Who must I kill this time my love?” he asked his true love.
