There was a unseasonable rainy night and this Saturday morning Temperance found herself in need to find a raincoat.
Maybe is in this box? No, those are books. And a ring. She takes the ring to put in a jewelry box. Absently trying it on.
There was a unseasonable rainy night and this Saturday morning Temperance found herself in need to find a raincoat.
Maybe is in this box? No, those are books. And a ring. She takes the ring to put in a jewelry box. Absently trying it on.
"Very little control over what kind of world. You might land somewhere dangerous, or in some kind of compromising position - like inside a secure area. The travelling might hurt you. Or it might be very obvious to observers that something big and magical happened. No guarantee there's civilization around. Stuff like that."
"Aww," she pouts, though, only a little. "I guess the other wishes could cover some of that, but at a cost. Probably will think about it some."
"No rush. Just keep in mind that I am a genie. I can most assuredly twist your wish around on you."
"Okay... I will try not to antagonize you and think carefully about my wording. Or maybe go on-line, I am sure there are groups dedicates to that. Hey, are you the inspiration to the Aladdin story?"
"Well I can't tell for certain, but it seems possible. Alternate worlds are weird as hell, though."
She giggles. "Wild. Okay, I need to put things away." She indicates the forgotten groceries. "Do you want to be put in front of my laptop to watch Netflix?"
"Oh, so it is the twenty first century again, good. Sure, just put on a long movie, it's better than empty space. I can do little things myself, actually, but I'm feeling sulky right now and I'd rather not."
Temperance nods and sets him up with the laptop and a "seat" made of stacked books to give him a better view of the screen. Then asks about his tastes in movies. Hers are fairly eclectic and include romcoms, adventure fantasy movies and documentaries about the challenges of space colonization.
There is plenty of those in the internet. Shocking.
Temperance eventually pokes her head in and asks if everything is alright.
There is now a smoky-semitransparent... Guy, lounging on the couch.
"These are pretty dumbed down and sometimes wrong, but what do you expect?"
"I am not sure, having a lot of big surprises lately. Also, hey, nice putting a face to the voice!"
"Oh, cool. Does this means that you are not inside the ring? I have been assuming it was a Dream of Jeanie situation when you said trapped."
"I am the ring," he says, flowing into it. "And yet I can project myself and do a few cantrips for free, more or less. Nothing permanent, nothing very big."
"Huh, I guess that is less claustrophobic than what I was picturing, but still what a weird use of divine power."
"Gods are vindictive assholes who are under weird restrictions themselves. At least those ones were. I haven't met any for a while."
"I guess it isn't that different from most powerful people - non-magical powerful that is - from history. Still, sorry for your stuckness. I guess wishing to meet a friendly god would be as hard as to find a good world to move into? Or fall under the wishing-for-more-wishes restriction?"
"I'm not going to cooperate with you on anything god-ish. I want nothing, I mean nothing, to do with them."
"I am currently fighting the impulse to talk about everything even remotely related to magic, including other worlds. But I don't want to make you feel," she waves her hands, "trapped?"
"There's no helping that in the long run. And I don't have - I don't know hard rules or anything, just things about what I can do, and what other sorcerers I've seen can do. I haven't seen one in a long time though, it's been a lot of middle age knights and then 17th century Japanese peasants and middle class bureaucrats and then, you know, the 20th century. Over and over again and then back to middle aged stuff for a while, to the point where I figured out I'm going between worlds, probably."