“What a waste,” she sighed to herself as she looked over his body. His last breath just left him.

He wished for something so mundane. If he had lived long enough, he would have saw how pointless his wish would have been if it was real. Plagues came and went.

She should have tempted him with something more imaginative but she thought he would have died at any moment.

He was a decent man, perhaps not a righteous one but more upstanding than those that proclaimed themselves righteous. If he had that same heart but had been a priest or philosopher, maybe she would have been asked something grander.

She placed the limit on how many could be cured. He seemed to care about his family so she thought he might have chosen a world where his family was granted refuge but everyone else died or he and those near him suffered another tragic fate. Truly, he could asked that all illness be erased from the world and he would have been healthy along with all others.

If he had asked the impossible, she would have rewarded his hopes with catastrophe. If he had wished for the eradication of all diseases, he would have witnessed war. The wish for endless peace would have invited famine. Unfortunately, he accepted a world where he would still die before the next dawn, something so close to reality there was little to distort.

Still, she siphoned off what she could from him before the disease claimed him. If she could not have his despair, she would have to settle for his last sparks of happiness. She was a creature of fantasy, emotions were her food and drink.

She took what she could but he was truly content. What was contentment other than another flavor of acceptance? Little better than resignation. Passive and static.

There lingered little possibility she might have enough strength to wait out for someone to stumble upon her vessel, especially now that it was to be buried in that pit. Time had taken its toll, she was being found less often, it was fortunate she had been happened upon so recently after her last release.

She leapt into the pit. She noticed a familiar figure among the bodies, an older gentleman.

"So, you were brought here," she observed. "That was how I wound up with him.”

In a dark corner, hidden in the shadow cast by the mouth of the pit was her vessel. The rainbow colored crystal shined in her presence but as she reached out for it, her hand turned to smoke and failed to grasp it.

It was futile but it was worth a try. She could not touch or move her own prison.

There was a finality to this. The vessel had been lost before but who knew how many years would pass before anyone was foolhardy enough to wrest it from its vault of bone.

Once wise kings and many others tried to hide her and even locked her away in vaults. However, the very act of hiding something invited curious eyes and theives. If one wanted something to be truly lost, it had to be abandoned and forgotten.

She returned to the body and placed a hand over her chest. “As you said I was not friend or family. So, I will perform final rites. Be honored.”

She paused as she remembered the modern rituals for funerals and remembered the older ways.

“I miss the days when humans worshipped themselves, they were so much more imaginative,” she bemoaned. “I could have met someone with ambition, someone who wanted to become a god… but no, I got shackled to one of the many that worshipped a god that became human.”

She noted his smiling face. “What a boring man, he would have been happy if even just one other person was made happy in the end.”

She went out to gather wood. Maybe she should have offered to only cure a single stranger rather than him. That would have given him pause perhaps but she knew he would have still let himself die. Kindness was a part of it but he was also tired, he knew what he had accomplished with his life. If only the plague had not been so thorough, she could have at least then put his worst enemy’s life in his hands but who would have time to spend troubling a corpse collector.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

She said she was doing the final rites for him but it was also for herself.

Still, his outlook might have been a welcome change in the end. If she had to go, at least she did not have to listen to gloating like the prideful soul that bound her or some person who thought himself a hero. They could both pass on quietly while the world still clambered and raved.

She went back to the body and placed the wood under it. “That a deity would deign to see us meet, how ludicrous. If your god loved you, he would have never had us meet.”

She refused to acknowledge this as fate. It was mere coincidence. She had survived long enough for an age to pass, be forgotten, and be replaced by a new one. This was merely an inevitability.

It was not fair. He may not have wanted to live forever but she would not have minded true immortality. Still, what she offered was not eternal, the gods she knew died. Even that Redeemer the man worshipped tasted death. Nothing was exempt from that certainty, not even the stars.

The smile she saw both comforted and infuriated her. “Curse you. I can not be afraid, not after all these thousands of years, not after a mortal like you accepted it so easily after only seeing a few decades at most.”

She kneeled and repeated the words she let him imagine her saying, “Rest well. Unlike most, someday your wish will come true. One may never acquire riches, one may never see the world in peace.” She looked to the stricken city. “But this will indeed pass.”

She tented her hands similar as if in prayer. She knew the rites. As she might have hinted, she had met and tempted even a priest. The man wished for his faith to be spread across the world.

She set the small pyre she built beneath him ablaze. This was not an age of ghosts, it did not matter what happened to the body so she took the liberty to burn it. At least then, at least his ashes reached the heavens if his soul did not.

Her hands were dissipating as the prayer came from her mouth. She was returning to the vessel.

*****

She sat in a golden chair melded to the center of a circular onyx floor inlaid with a gilded web pattern. The floor was the only part of the structure that was not entirely solid gold. Her home was a glittering palace, theatre, and prison all in one. Surrounding her was a disheveled array of treasures. Just beyond the circle were pillars supporting a number of balconies divided into audience booths she was barred from with what less but golden cell bars. There was no ceiling, what she looked up to find was pure nothingness, a darkness deeper than midnight black but the place remained illuminated by its own brilliance.

The shape was constant but the size was not. Any attempt to climb it would find another floor to surmount.

Everything she ever gave another was collected with her. Whenever new treasure was added to the flood, the circle grew just enough that she could take a few steps before drowning in it.

All around her loomed crowns, swords, banners of nations that never truly were, statues of those that were lusted after along with idols to those that worshipped themselves, glass flowers, the skulls of enemies, replicas of palaces and fortresses with toy soldiers and staff to fill them. All the world’s riches and more gathered there.

Everything was beautiful to the eye but cold and hard to the touch. One was never meant to make a bed of metal and jewels. At least one wished for good food and wine but the food was wax, not that she needed to eat. There were books to read but what was there for her to gain from those?

Directly in front of her, propped against far more valuable things was a mural, one of a pair. Though its twin, a scene of a celebrating city, was still somewhere buried beneath everything else. Whether she knew it or not at the time, she exceeded her limit and granted two wishes.

A vision of the ocean kept her company. It was a simple wish, so easy to fulfill yet it marked the end of her.

Centuries passed and then a thousand years then more. Her gilded cage remained undiscovered. She understood why someone would not wish for eternity.

The process was painless as she had no life to lose. She was no more alive than the cart and shovels that buried her vessel along with the rotting bodies that now concealed it. That was why she was scared, all she had to face was nothingness while the drudge thought there might be something more.

She looked up at the darkness and called out to the one that the fool had been so persistent for her to be familiar with. “If you really are listening… Please let me die like he did."

Nothing she granted was ever real so she asked for nothing real in turn. All she wanted was a delusion. A hope that there was something more to all this.

She wondered if there was anyone who would grant her request. She provided so much for others, even if it was reluctantly. She had no one, not even herself to see her desires fulfilled.

As time passed, the floor began to collapse, the treasures sank into the hole like sand rushing out of a shattered hourglass.

The entire space began to crumble, gold peeling away to reveal wrought iron. The balconies fell and with them came the darkness.

“Even if it all happened in a dream…” she began. “I guess you really did save or condemn one person with that wish of yours, just one person, me.”