"Don't worry, Jon. Just sit your cute little but down here and leave everything to me." And with that, the girl with the necklace disappeared through the palm trees and over the dune.
Jon couldn't help but follow the little green triangle of Athena's rear end as she scampered away, and dropped her own identical green triangle on the bench of a picnic table. "Sit your cute little but down," she'd said.
Yes. Jon thought to herself, she did have a cute butt. So did Athena. Jon played back the image in her head of Athena leaving, and marveled at the very idea that she could know exactly what she, herself, looked like from that angle. Most people don't get to see themselves from behind that easily. It made Jon curious: what would a butt like that look like in a different outfit? What would Jon's own butt look like in a tight pair of jeans? In a skirt? Jon lost herself momentarily, thinking about different outfits she'd seen the original Sarah wear, back when she had been the only Sarah, and imagined herself wearing them. Imagined all the ways she could show off her own cute little butt.
"Jon!" a loud-but-not-too-loud exclamation pulled her out of her thoughts. Athena had come back, and she was holding a smooth, reddish rock. "Piece of cake, she wasn't even paying attention. But this thing is powerful. It was able to mask its own aura until I was super-close to it, and then the energy just went through the roof. No wonder it was able to do..." Athena gave a little grunt and gestured vaguely with her arms.
"Okay," Athena said after some mild gawking, "you seem to have some experience with this artifact. Tell me what it can do."
Jon breathed. "It can grant wishes, any wishes, to anyone who's touching it. The only limitation is that you can't directly reverse a wish, and a wish will only effect a radius of a few miles. Anyone who hears a wish remembers how things used to be, and everyone else just accepts the new reality, unless wished otherwise."
"That makes things tricky. If we can't reverse a wish, have you thought about how we can fix this?"
"Very carefully," Jon took on a solemn expression that did not fit well with Sarah's form. "I've thought of two things we can do now, but we should hold off on big wishes, in general."
"Yeah?"Athena's face subconsciously moved to match Jon's.
"First, you wish that no matter what changes happen, everyone will still be able to fill whatever role in society they used to have."
Athena nodded. "I wish that no matter what changes happen, everyone will still be able to fill whatever role in society they used to have."
"The other one might mostly be for me," Jon admitted. "Just a wish to make sure you could always tell people apart."
"That seems pretty basic. I wish there was a way that we could always tell people apart."
The two girls blinked. "Your name is written on you collarbone," Jon squinted at the other girl's neck.
"Yours too," Athena rubbed absently at her own marking. "I think it's tattooed on."
"Well, we'll know who's who now."
"If that's all we're doing, we should get out of here. Who knows when Sarah's going to figure out she's missing this thing," Athena hefted the stone. "Let's take my mom's car. She can find someone to bum a ride with."
And the two girls left the beach, hair blowing in their pink convertible.
