A/N: This is my first story (that I've published online, at least), so please be kind in your judgement of it.
The actual gods don't make an appearance until chapter 5 (and even then they're in disguise), so be patient, okay?
Disclaimer: I don't think there's anything 'ownable' in this chapter, so no disclaimer this time.
1. Prologue
I'm sure you have, at some point in your life, heard the phrase 'be careful what you wish for in this world, for if you wish hard enough you are sure to get it' or some variation on it.
The most common being 'be careful what you wish for, for you might get it', spoken by people who wished as hard as they possibly could and had never gotten their wishes fulfilled, probably.
Now me, I prefer the original saying.
I think the people who wished and wished, but never got what they wanted just didn't wish hard enough.
Now imagine this: a warm summer evening, a festival on the town square, a shy girl making a wish on a supposedly enchanted fountain.
Sounds pretty romantic, right? Well, that is where this story begins.
...
"it won't work, you know," I hear someone saying, a mean tone in their voice that I choose to ignore.
"you can wish all you want, but even magic can't make you pretty."
Beauty. As if I would spend my precious wish on something that trivial.
They might. Being pretty and popular means everything to them.
If they find a zit on their nose looking in the mirror during their two-hour-long morning rituals, they lose their minds, trying their damnedest to get rid of it and if they fail to do so, they call the school and say they're sick, just so their popular, pretty friends won't see them like that, won't realize that they're actually just human like everyone else.
Me, I get out of bed exactly fifteen minutes before I have to leave the house.
I take a five-minute-shower, I comb my hair, I put on my clothes – which I picked out the day before – and I leave the house just in time to catch the bus. No make-up, no endless fussing over my hair, no obsessively checking my face for irregularities.
I eat breakfast at the bus-station, an egg-sandwich and a bottle of chocolate milk.
No, I'm not super-pretty or popular, but I'm okay with that.
You couldn't pay me enough to live the life those girls 'enjoy'.
It just seems so unnecessarily stressful and miserable.
They're not allowed to have an off-day.
A bad-hair-day is a disaster, a fashion faux pas is tantamount to a federal offense and a single mistake – accidentally admitting to liking an uncool band, for example – is social suicide.
Well, consider me socially suicidal.
So no, I'm not wishing for beauty or popularity.
I'm wishing for the exact opposite.
I'm wishing that I could go back in time and tell my old self that trying so damn hard to be popular and pretty is not only a waste of time, it's a waste of energy, money and – most importantly – individuality.
I'd tell myself to listen to the songs I like, not the ones that happen to be popular.
To wear what I like to wear, not what happens to be 'in fashion'.
To buy the things I want, not the 'must-haves'. And I'd tell myself to never start smoking, do well in school – not drop out halfway through high-school – and to never, ever, ever go near that damn Peter kid.
I'd tell myself a million things, if I could go back in time. So I guess...I'm wishing for a time-machine. How cliché.
