Sensing the situation rapidly spiraling away from his..er her control, she collapsed right here in the public square and started bawling, loudly.
"I don't want to be trapped in France! I don't want to be pregnant now, here or anywhere! And I want not to be this strange French woman."
And a familiar voice asked, "Jon, are you okay?"
It was Karyn. "I'm sorry. Let me help you up." She offered her hand.
I looked around. Back was the familiar skyline of my neighborhood. The paved streets, the modest two-story homes enclosed by white picket fences, the emblem of suburban America versus the miniature cottages and cobblestone roads of foreign Europe. Red hair still framed my field of vision. I felt lighter, lither, sprightlier than before. My sobs began to abate. I was back and things were back to normal.
I reached for her hand and she helped me up from the ground. I patted off any dirt that may have gotten on the denim skirt and white blouse that I was wearing. Again.
"I'm sorry," Karyn said again. "You're not pre..."
"I don't think so." I answered. "Not anymore, at least."
"When I wished you pregnant, I didn't mean for you... I mean that I was just joking. I guess I got too caught up in the moment. What happened to you? I mean you just sort of disappeared."
"I dunno," I replied. "I woke up as some lady in France in the dark of night. I was so totally frightened I don't know what happened. I think I wished myself back here." I brushed some stray hair back from my eyes.
"Well, fortunately it wasn't permanent."
"Yeah, well..." I hesitated. These wishes were supposed to be permanent. "Karyn, something's seriously wrong here."
"Well, if you're going to make such a crime out of some bad wishes..."
"No, wait Karyn! I think there's something wrong with the stone. May I have it back, please?"
Karyn placed the stone back in its box and surrendered both to me. I looked around for a place to put the trouble making object. Then I noticed a small handbag on the ground by my right foot. Must be mine, I mused. I placed the box in the bag, and slung it over my shoulder.
"Karyn," I started again, "I think there's something wrong with the stone. Let's go over all the wishes we've made today. Let me think. I wished that you had the boobs and hair you wanted. I wished I could be what I wanted. Then I wanted to be a bird!"
The image of a bald eagle wearing Jon's old clothes was all it took to break the somber mood. They both had a few good minutes of laughter.
Karyn continued, "Well, then I wished that you didn't want to be anything I didn't want you to be. Then I wished some people didn't notice anything weird, like a boy covered in feathers. Then you wanted to be Patrick Stewart, I wanted you to be a girl. Then I wished your clothes to fit."
"Then you wished I'd stay Willow permanently. And for me to stop whining about it. And for me to be pregnant."
"I don't see where you're going with this," confessed Karyn.
"The last wishes," I declared. "After willing me into Willow, you said, 'I wish that you could stay like this forever'! Then you said, 'I wish Jon could experience pregnancy, but without having the baby in the end of it.'. You said I disappeared after that wish. I became another woman! That should have contradicted with the wish locking me in this form."
"Well, maybe it didn't take effect," Karyn offered. "Maybe it's cancelled out by the 'be what you want to be' wish."
"I'm not sure. I still want to be Alyson Hannigan. That desire's probably stronger now than when you first cajoled me into it. Anyway I felt the wish take effect."
"Well, you seem to be taking this well."
"No whining."
"Oh...yeah. That's right."
We continued to think about this. And think some more. But no matter how roundabout we were in trying to tackle the mystery, we kept coming to these roadblocks. The wish Karen and I made about me being what I wanted, seemed to compliment each other, rather than cancel each other out, as it would seem it should. However, each subsequent wish appeared to behave less...rationally. The pregnancy wish should not have changed who I was, but it did. But I was able to cancel it by wishing to not be her. But I shouldn't have been able to. Anyway, the permanence wish shouldn't have taken effect, but something did happen after that wish. But it doesn't change the fact that I still want to be Aly, and that I have no problem with it. But even if the permanence wish did take effect, it shouldn't have been thwarted so easily by the pregnancy wish. Anyway, at no point in time did I want to be pregnant, before or after the wish. Which, in turn helped defeat the pregnancy wish. But if the permanence wish had already been defeated, why am I still Willow? And so on, and so forth....
Then it dawned on us...
