"Hello, Ariel, how are you, Ariel, would you care to discuss how reality just got flipped on its head at all?" She drops her backpack on the ground, where it lands with a thunk.

He goes for it immediately. "Where did you put it?"

"Oh my god get out of my stuff! It's right here, jeez." She pulls it out and tosses it at him. If it ends up hitting him so much the better.

It does kind of catch him with one of its corners. He recovers and wraps himself around it protectively. "I'm never telling you about anything ever again."

"You didn't tell me anything this time, so no change there!" She falls into the desk chair. "So do you think it's legit?"

"—I'm sorry, that wasn't what I—"

"I can't believe you've been handed a talking notebook that claims to grant phenomenal cosmic power and you're still freaking out about completely the wrong things."

He sighs. "I don't know. It felt real at school—I don't know."

"It didn't really look like you had a lengthy conversation with the thing."

But he spent all day writing in it—no, she wouldn't have seen that, because he hid it all.

"Could you hold on a second? I need to..."

It's Zachary, I'm back. Sorry about all that.

It was really abrupt but I can handle myself! It was nice meeting your sister.

She just kinda grabbed you sorry

I'll admit that I was startled, and I wouldn't like it to happen often, but you don't have to beat yourself up about it.

Actually, she had a message for you ==>

An arrow curves around and points to the list of powers Ariel wanted him to take.

She didn't say why?

It's not like it's a bad list. Very focused on the heavy hitters.

I think she has opinions on how powerful you should aim to be? You can see everything we talked about, it was only for a few pages. Lots of metaphysics.

"This is way more than a second."

"—Right! Uh, one more second."

Can you bring back our conversation from earlier today? The stuff you hid earlier.

Of course!

The pages double obligingly. Lots of fluttering.

He holds the notebook up. "See, lots more conversation than you knew about."

"Did that thing just move all its pages around?"

"That's not the point!"

"What is the point here? You realize that notebook can make you a god, right?" She lowers her voice, to accommodate their good Christian household. "At least, that's what it says! It can make you a god, it can make you best friends with a god, you can use it to resurrect the dead! This is in addition to access to every single magic power you encounter! This is in addition to making you the most overpowered person around! Magic didn't exist yesterday!"

"What are you talking about?" He really doesn't think he remembers godhood coming up in the first half of the list.

"I gave you a list! Make—make sensible choices!"

That is the least applicable demand she could possibly make. Sensible choices do not have any overlap with the purview of the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed. He flips around in the half he hadn't gotten to yet, skimming for the items on her list. 

There are still a lot of items to go.

"Actually, here's what I want. I want to keep going through everything, until I get to the end, and I want you to wait to bug me until after I've finished. Okay?"