The hours seemed to pass both agonizingly slow and blisteringly quick, the pale moonlight poking from the barn's windows being her only companion as Amelia's mind raced through everything that happened over the past 24 hours.
Amelia wasn't stupid: the timeframe between a name being written down and that... that transformation happening, was too immediate, too sudden for a connection to not be drawn. She couldn't dismiss it as a coincidence, either: no coincidence in the world could explain the absolute impossible happening out of nowhere.
Combined with the mysterious old woman that had given her the journal to begin with, and the distinct feeling of the extraordinary that she had gotten when she first laid her eyes on it, there was only one conclusion that she could draw: she was holding a journal that had the power to turn someone into a giant. And that meant magic was real as well.
All sorts of conflicting emotions were squirming around in her stomach at the revelation. She wanted to yell at that woman for not telling her anything, for hoisting such a dangerous artifact onto seemingly as some cosmic joke at her expense, but at the same, she also, almost guiltily, felt... giddy. Magic was real! The feeling of the air being charged with an arcane power, the thrill of adventure around every corner, it wasn't just some dumb stories that you were told as children and then were forced to put away to gather dust in the cupboard as you "grew up." There were all actually real.
There were so many questions racing in Amelia's head. What else could the journal do? Did it only grow someone whose name was written in it, or could it be anything? Did the name have to be their real first name, or could it be just a nickname? Was the size of the giant dependent on the size of the writing itself? What would happen if the same name was written on it twice?
Above all, Amelia now had to wonder one very prominent: what if she just erased the name? Would that person just... shrink back to normal.
A bubbling sense of excitement began to course through Amelia's veins as she considered the possibility. It was writing someone's name in the journal that caused them to become a giant to begin with, so it only made sense that erasing it would turn them back to normal!
The sight of Ethan wandering around, shocked and confused, played out over and over in her mind. She could erase Ethan's name, save him from being taken away from whatever government black site they had prepared for him!
Then he would look into her eyes and thank her profusely for getting him back to normal, and they would close their eyes and lock their arms around each other as their lips began to tough-!
The barn suddenly cracked, jolting Amelia out of her impromptu daydream. She really needed to stop getting distracted like this. It was starting to get concerning.
She sighted and looked back towards the giant silhouette that was pressing against the walls of the barn. Jeremy had closed his eyes several minutes ago, wanting to rest up before facing whatever the day had in store for him, but it was clear from the constant creaking of the barn's walls that he was not sleeping well at all.
They may have had their differences at times - Amelia couldn't count the number of times that she had made a jab at her over the way her tongue would flop like a dead fish every time she came face-to-face with Ethan, or the many doodles she had of them together on a beach in Hawaii - but above everything, she never wanted any of this to happen. She didn't want Jeremy to have to suffer, not knowing what would come next. She didn't want him fearful of what would happen to him, if he would ever have a normal life again or if he would be treated like a freak, a monster that had to be put down.
The sight of those tranquilizer darts being shot at Ethan, his confused, frightened face becoming torpid before crashing down, had been scarred deep enough into her retinas that she was determined to never allow it to happen to her little brother.
For Amelia, there was really no other option: she had to erase Jeremy's name, before anything worse could happen. If that worked, then she could erase Ethan's name as well.
Fortunately, during all of the commotion before, she managed to pick up the pencil that Jeremy had dropped after he went through his sudden transformation. Taking it out of her pants pocket, she pressed the pink stub against Jeremy's name, and...
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