"You think I want to look like a Sarah McMillan tribute act?!" Karyn yelled and then hung up on him.
Jon threw his phone down on the bed and lay back in frustration. Karyn had called to tell him about the changes to her home life that her careless wish earlier in the day had caused.
The most immediately obvious had been apparent as soon as she stepped through the door. Her mum Bethany was now a busty blonde too, and from various family photos on display in the house, both seemed to now be traits common to women in the wider Black family.
Going up to her room, she'd found he wardrobe had changed quite a bit too. She still had some of her favourite baggy clothes but her wardrobe now also consisted of a variety of lower-cut dresses and tops than anything she previously owned and a wider variety of bras, larger of course, but also more that were focused on form over function. She also now owned far more haircare products than before, half of which she didn't really understand what to do with.
And, most troubling, she'd found references in her phone to a couple of past boyfriends that the old Karyn hadn't had. Although she thankfully seemed to be single right now, she was very disturbed by having boys who remembered relationships with her which she didn't.
And it was at that point that Jon had really put his foot in it.
"If you think about it, most of the girls in our class would kill for the hair and chest you've got by magic. So... Silver lining?"
She had not taken that well. He had just been trying to make her feel better.
His eyes drifted to the small wooden box on his bedside table which held the stone. There must surely be something they could do to make things better. The lid opened with a small click and then he picked out the stone and began turning it over and over in his hands. The reddish, slightly metallic, sheen on the surface reflected the light from his bedside lamp in interesting ways.
"Why do girls have to be so complicated" he whispered, the memory of the hangup still stinging, as tiredness welled up inside him. He lay down and, as he placed the stone back in the box mumbled, not really conscious that he was saying it out loud, "I wish they were simpler, easier to understand".
He rolled over, asleep before he realised anything had happened. Nothing obvious had changed in Jon's room, but all over town, across the rest of the stone's range, things had changed quite dramatically...
