Disclaimer: I own nothing but Thalia and my own free will. Sometimes I wonder about that too… Am I being mind-controlled? Is my mind being constantly read? Am I being studied by the government? Sometimes I think defiantly at whomever might be reading my mind, "Ha. You will never understand as much as I do about my own head, no matter how long you study me! Because I'm still smarter than you!" I wonder how they'd react… but anyway, I digress. Onto the story we go!

Six Years Ago

A new girl showed up at school. This would have been considered ordinary, but for the fact that it was the middle of the school year. Nobody showed up at this school in the middle of the year. If it had been a rich prep school, maybe, but this was just an ordinary public school, right in the center of the poorer section of town. The new girl had blond hair and blue eyes, and was unusually short for a fourth grader. She was smart, too – she had to be, to be in the advanced class. Word had it that that her mother had practically stalked the director of the advanced program until she would put her daughter in, because the girl was too smart for her old teacher.

One of the unfortunate things about being transferred to a new school halfway through the year was that by this time, cliques had already been established. Everybody hung out with their own group, and nobody else. They all avoided strangers, who might upset the ticking order. This meant that New Girl was stuck by herself at recess on that lonely first day.

Of course, when an advanced third grader with deep, reddish – brown hair and brilliant green eyes walked over to New Girl, heads turned. Everybody pretended not to be watching, to be busy with the play equipment or something, but nobody was really focusing on their games. They were all watching Different Girl talking to New Girl. New Girl smiled at something Different Girl had said, and Different Girl helped her to her feet. They walked away to meet up with Another Girl, and spent the rest of recess pacing the full length of the field. The watchers turned back to their pointless games and conversations. She was no danger to them; she'd been inducted into the Unpopulars.

A few weeks later, New Girl, whose name was Thalia, Different Girl, whose name was Audrey, and another girl, redheaded Mckenna, were walking together under the shadow of a cloudy day, discussing something Thalia was holding in her hand.

"I'm telling you," she was saying. "I think it's about us, or people like us." The object in her hand, upon closer inspection, was a little book she had gotten from her aunt two years ago, but hadn't bothered to read until recently. The cover showed three girls, who looked remarkably like the three of them, staring in awe at a rainbow - glowing Stone. 'Avalon' it read, in curving, curling, colorful handwriting.

"But we don't have magical powers," Mckenna pointed out.

"Maybe we just haven't discovered them yet!" Thalia pulled something out of her pocket. "I was in my backyard yesterday, and I found this." She held the rainbow-striped stone up to the book, as if to compare them. The three looked from the stone to the book, looking for all the world just like the book cover. It looked nearly identical – except for one thing.

"Yours isn't glowing." Apparently, Audrey spoke too soon, as it flared to glowing life. "Cool!"

"I want one!" exclaimed Mckenna. Thalia grinned and turned the pages of the book until she found what she was looking for.

"Of course you do, Mckenna – or should I say, Kara?" The girls read the description of Kara's first encounter with Emily's stone.

Of course, the girls weren't really the three mages on the cover, but to their young minds, that seemed to be the only answer. Actually, their resemblance to the famous mages was simply a coincidence, but to a child encountering magic, there are no such things as coincidences. Consequently, the three made many incorrect assumptions in the future, when Audrey, and later Mckenna, found her Stone.

Two months later, the three girls were standing hand in hand in the center of their school's field. Recess had ended hours ago, and the girls were dimly aware that they would get in trouble later. But that didn't matter right now. What mattered right now was that a dark, silky, shimmering portal was opening up before them. Somehow, they knew that they could not let this portal open, whatever happened. Thalia glanced at her two friends, and suddenly had a vision of a future where they were apart, and had forgotten the magic they shared. She shivered, horrified at a world without magic and her friends. She nodded wordlessly to them, and they raised their braceleted wrists defiantly to the sky.

"For Avalon!" If you'd been there, you would have seen three beams of beautiful light, one ice blue, one vibrant green, and one red-gold. You would have seen the portal shatter, heard an unearthly screech, heard three very earthly screams. You would have felt a wave of pure force tear past you, with a ripping sound. You would have felt the ground shake. Then you would have heard compete silence. You would have no memory of the whole event.

The three girls got to their feet.

"Oh no! We're late to class!" one of them said. They rushed into the little outbuilding that was their classroom. Lying on the dead grass were three shattered stones, unnoticed amidst the littering of gravel.