Author's note:
Inspired roughly by "The Wish Editor" from Infinite Worlds, but not written using that generator. This one's all me, for better and for worse! I truly am this obsessed/pedantic with em- & en-dashes and am nerdy enough to have memorized the requisite alt codes.
That night Jon stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours (but was really only 20 minutes), feeling his part guilty about Karyn's wish. It may have been her wish, but it was his stone, after all. And he also didn't want to admit that he actually rather liked her new breasts, though he did miss her old red hair; it was so much more unique than the cheerleaders and their many hangers-on. Eventually, though, he dozed off without any real productive thought beyond blithely hoping tomorrow would be better.
Karyn, by contrast, stared at the ceiling actually for hours. Her abrupt physical changes made every potential position she tried to lie in either uncomfortable or caused it to uncomfortably remind her of her foibles. Where Jon simply fell asleep with the blissful and ignorant hope of teenage boys everywhere, though, Karyn worked the problem before her—or at least, tried to. A sleep-deprived mind isn't necessarily at its best, of course.
"What we need is some kind of check on a wish, to avoid accidental ones and make sure we actually wished for what we wanted. Someone who could save us from all those verbal 'rough drafts'," she mused into the journal she kept by her bedside. Karyn had recently become taken with the idea of becoming a writer and the process was constantly on her mind; writing helped her think, too. At that moment, she followed the thought further and had an idea! An Editor! Every good writer has an even better editor behind them; she was sure she'd read that somewhere. Clearly what they needed was a Wish Editor. Pleased with herself, she finally dozed off only to be shaken awake a couple hours later by her alarm. Seeing the notebook and her sleep-deprived ramblings in the notebook, she called Jon and told him to meet her before school as soon as possible, because she had a fix.
The writings of a untrained teenager who should have been deep asleep hours before aren't exactly known for their clarity or completeness, of course, so she did her best to corral the stray thoughts into some semblance of order while she got ready for the day. Yawning through it, she drank at least one cup of coffee to wake herself up, maybe more—she wasn't particularly paying attention. Between the caffeine-induced mania, the distractions caused by the inconveniences of her physical changes, and her general exhaustion from the night before, she made progress, but not nearly as much as she thought she did. And so, when she met Jon at their usual spot earlier than normal to explain it to him, he was less than convinced.
"Okay, so. You made the wish yesterday to change the branch to be blue, and then you couldn't change it to red, but you could change it to a darker blue, right? You edited the wish, in a way. And when I made my wish about, well... all of this nonsense," she gestured disgustedly at her torso and hair," that was kinda like a rough draft, see?"
Jon simply nodded, bleary-eyed. It was way too early in the morning for this, and Karyn was way too energetic for him to follow. He loved seeing his best friend so excited about her hobbies, but couldn't she have waited until he'd actually woken up? What did this have to do with the wishing stone? "Karyn? Two words: De. Caf."
"John, that's one word," she grinned while he just smiled and nodded, truly a walking sleep-zombie. Just how does he manage to do that and get anywhere in the mornings? "Anyway, that's not important. What is important is that what we need is a 'Wish Editor'! That way we can clean up those messy 'rough draft' wishes before they're made!" she said, giving such grandiose emphasis to the title that even deep in his early morning brain fog, Jon could feel those capital letters, even without Karyn practically doing jazz hands. Karyn could be weird, sometimes, but at least she was pretty while she did it, he thought, not really paying attention to what she was saying.
"Come again for Big Fudge?" Jon mumbled with a grin. He had no idea what she was talking about, but clearly thought himself the funniest person ever, especially this early in the morning.
Karyn just rolled her eyes at the predictability of her best friend. He was a real goofball of a friend, but at least he was her goofball friend. "Jon, can I have the rock? I need to make a wish." Karyn said eagerly, reaching for the rock in Jon's outstretched hand before his still-mostly-asleep brain caught up to what was going on.
"Huh, what? Oh, yeah. Sure. Wait, what?"
She eagerly snatched the rock and rattled off with impressive caffeine-driven speed, "I wish that we had a wish editor that could edit our wishes before we make them to ensure they're polished, accurate, and what we meant to say before we actually make them!" Here it comes! This is gonna fix everything!
Finally waking up enough to realize Karyn was making another wish, Jon tried to follow what she was saying and failed miserably, "Wait. What? What's a 'Wish Editor'? Karyn, what are you doing?! It's way too early in the morning for this; I don't understand."
As if in answer, a beautiful woman with blonde hair and high cheekbones that spoke of Scandinavian ancestry appeared. Her ears had the vaguest point to them, like an elf—or more likely, some variety of pixie. The violet cats-eye glasses on her face and the loose, but elegant bun of long blonde hair on her head mixed with that face to give the impression of a Viking woman of a distinctly literary occupation. Belatedly, Jon and Karyn noted that while she was certainly very tall, some of that height came from the fact that she floated primly about 3 inches off the ground. Holding a notebook and a long, elegant quill pen in one hand, she extended the other first to Karyn and then to Jon as she introduced herself.
"Greetings! My name is Astrid, and I am very pleased to have been assigned as your Professional Wish Editor! We're going to do such wonderful work together, I'm sure! Now, let's establish some ground rules, shall we?. First, someone such as yourselves must make a wish holding the wishing stone. This much I assume you already know, but clarity and precision are important, as you know! Also, know that while I was summoned here by young Miss Karyn," at this, Karyn beamed like the sun with pride at her creation, "I am nevertheless bound to the stone, rather than to either of you. I will edit the wishes of anyone who holds that stone."
By this point, all sleepiness was gone from Jon's mind, and he had never felt more awake—or alarmed. Just what did Karyn create?!
"Then, having made your... rough draft wish, as young Miss Karyn called it," Astrid continued, "I will edit the wishes before they manifest into reality. Do not fear that I will irrevocably overwrite your Writer's Voice, of course. I am your Editor, not your Writer. As such, I am permitted only to make minor modifications to your wishes. You may rest certain that the wish remains fully yours, even after I have altered it."
At this point, even Karyn began to look somewhat uncertain. Modifications? Alter the wishes? Why did that sound so... ominous? As she pondered the implications of that word, Jon voiced the question both of them were thinking, "Wait. What do you mean... alter the wishes? You're going to change our wishes?! Why would we want that?"
Astrid smiled a genuinely warm and inviting smile as she answered, "Why, no, of course not! As I said, it is important you retain ownership of your Writer's Voice, of course; all wish-makers shall retain full ownership and authorship of their respective wishes. No, you should think of me more as a copy editor, but for how that stone interacts with reality: You provide the raw wish, and I polish it, and then the stone implements the final version as if you had spoken that instead of your less precise or clear wish." With this last, she waves a hand in dismissal. It's not that your wishes are bad, of course, it's just that they could be better, she seems to convey. She looks down over her glasses as she continues, lending additional emphasis and gravitas to her clarifications. "In my... significant professional experience, most wish-makers don't seem to actually understand what their wishes actually mean until they see them granted, so my job is simply to smooth that process for both wish-maker and stone. To maintain your authorship, I am bound to make no more than three alterations to each wish made. So, you see: They truly are still your wishes. Now, shall we begin with a demonstration? I find those to be so much more... illuminating than dry descriptions of minutiae. Who will go first? The young lady? Or the young master?"
She looks back and forth between the stunned teenagers who appear to have been struck dumb. The stone rests lightly in Karyn's hand, but she doesn't seem to remember holding it. But who will find their voice to speak up first?
