“Make your offer,” the stilled sea insists.

“Tell me your name, guardian.”

“Only if you tell me yours first,” demands the ocean whose waters act like sand or dough.

“You know I have no true name no more.” I could poke it. The water. I doubt it will bother the guardian enough to be worth a breath, though.

“And why would I trade mine for naught?

The same song over and over and over. The landscape changes, so does the appearance of the guardians, but this one sounds to me a bit like the first. Children of Ilucaris, they have an inherent purpose. They know no misery, no tragedy. And men think that by imitating them, they will find happiness. Nonsense. They know no happiness as men conceive it. Their content is alien to humans, can drive them envious and mad. They can make them jealous of even their name.

“You were human once, guardian,” I say, almost sure of my words.

The water frolics around me, little spikes like a train of stalagmites circling my feet at a snail’s pace. “No. Don’t insult me like that. An ape I never was. I learned their tongue, I spoke their words. And I flew across their cities as I did so.”

“Well, allow me to be blunt: you want something shiny, then.”

“The idea your species has of mine is insulting. We magpies are much more than seekers of colored mirrors.”

He doesn’t need to know that I was thinking of crows instead of magpies.

“But you are not a magpie anymore, and I no man.”

Silence. The sea doesn’t know how to answer, or has taken offense to my words. A wave rises in the distance, slowly, as a curious crocodile stalking an animal it had never seen before.

“So would seem to show the available evidence.” The guardian hums, little waves forming circles, as raindrops would when falling into a puddle. “Still, I sense in you the vices of men, undying as you are, yet dormant. Your divine attributes repress them, god. I think it would be interesting to rouse a few of them.”

The sea has no means to grin back at me, but I can imagine a titanic magpie doing so.

“I have no need for greed. After nobody can a shapeshifter lust. There remain no crackling embers in my soul that could reignite the fire of my wrath. No meal can stir the dried out well of my gluttony. I suffer no exertion: sloth is alien to me. I suppose I could envy men: they can effortlessly have that for which I yearn for. As for pride… I am a god.”

“And I am an ocean,” the magpie states, proudly.

It’s plain to see that this guardian is not like the previous one. It wants something particular from me. What. The ghost of uncertainty looms over my psyche, and I find the feeling scrumptious. The liquid at my feet furrows; knife wounds; upside down dorsal fins of a shark leaving a cast behind.

“State your price, Magpie.”

“Let us barter, god. Show me a shiny, so to speak, power you are willing to part with. Delight my oh-so-inferior bird brain, if that would gladden you.”

“There’s no need for mockery, guardian. I don’t think less of birds than I do of men.” I sit upon the calm surface, not before sidestepping the depressions in it. “Men in general don’t foster ill thoughts about birds.”

“Liar! Liar!” The ocean caws. It sounds like the bird it once was now. “Liar…” It mewls now. I think he just had a serendipity, a realization of what it wants from me. “Give me your lies, god! Scintillating rings of pyrite incrusted in cubic zirconia!”

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“Beg your pardon?” I blink out of surprise. What is this creature… or landscape… asking for? “Do you want a ring.”

“The ring is a metaphor. A lesser lie, if you will. But I want the juicy ones. I don’t want your powers worthy of a god: I have no use for them! But it would delight me to strip you out of a treacherous tongue. I want your capacity to lie.”

This mix of relief and abject dread is something I haven’t felt in a long time. I shiver at the thought of being deprived of this skill so early on my descent. Is this nervousness? Is this what a caretaker feels whenever the object of care dies after weeks of agonizing pain? I expected to give up my capacity to define abstracts, to declare what’s wrong and what’s right, to have an unimpeachable judgement by virtue of changing the rules of the game whenever I would need to. A power that I may need to give a lot of use to if I render myself unable to tell a simple lie.

“Would you consider taking anything else?”

I say in a serviceable tone. “I am not much of a liar. You would be scamming yourself by asking for something so worthless. I wasn’t lying when I said men and women don’t consider most birds a plague. You are protagonists of their banners, nest betwix the lines of their poems. Your wings ring in their minds as synonyms of freedom. Men wish they could fly.”

“Nonsense!” The sea shrieks, causing the water to quake as if land it were. “Flying is tiring. We could have had hands, but we got wings instead. We are forced to get by using our beaks and legs. This limits us. You have wonderful prehensile appendages capable of fashioning wood and stone into wonderful trinkets! Trinkets that can even fly! What right do you have to envy or admire us, sons of apes? Liar!”

“Believe what you will. Do you wish to propose another deal? It wouldn’t satisfy my justice-seeking soul to rip you off this badly.”

The ocean laughs, and the raucous bouts traverse my body like a shockwave. “Rip me off? I lose nothing by allowing you to descend to the next floor. Yet you give away your attributes, one by one, your very self picked apart, a jigsaw puzzle carved out of a deity, all for nothing but for the promise of death. Who is swindling who?”

I snap my fingers and the world goes red. Far above us hydrogen and helium have gathered, ignited by a nuclear spark. They are still pretty far away, yet I don’t have to fear: I can defend myself and this diary against the infernal heat of a newborn star if there was the need to make it come and crash down.

“How near do you think I need to bring it for you to not swindle me, then? I don’t know how being an ocean feels, but boiling away, or even turning to plasma, cannot be a pleasant sensation.”

Loom, loom. my little star, so that nobody shall wonder what you are.

Is the sea squirming? I want to see it squirm.

“Cornered, aren’t we? Distressed enough to threaten a guardian. How wonderfully your creation hangs above us, god! How it shines and rages with the strength of countless wildfires! I am a Child of Ilucaris, adoptive, but child of hers still. Kill me and you will find yours truly again in another floor. And then you will be weaker, with way fewer tools to weasel your way out of giving me what I want. But acquiesce to my demand now, and you get rid of me, Unnamed one.”

I value my capacity to lie. It is bound to prove itself far more useful than the power to fabricate a star and command it to crash down on my head. Yet I cannot kill this guardian without setting myself up for failure.

I snap my fingers once more, and the red giant fizzles, its mulish heat soon following.

“Anything else, magpie. Please. Give me an option, choose something more or less valuable, and let me choose.”

The sea goes mute, impossibly still. I’d swear it froze solid, if I didn’t knew better.

“No.” The guardian said, calmly. “I know what I wish for. Accept or attack or turn back; there’s no bargaining with me. You, god, are in no position to force so.”

“What if I sit here and wait for you to change your mind?” In suggest, making myself smaller inside my cape, the arms clinging to the body to look humble.

“To test my patience is to assume I have a need for anxiety. We are both immortal, we can behold each other forever and a while. You shall bask in my magnificence, and I’ll bask in yours, and we both are going to come out just as stubborn as we are now and here. Meanings are timeless for those who can decree time is meaningless.”

The guardian refers to the meaning of his (or her, I cannot know a priori if this was once a male magpie) negative. That is as clear as the waters underfoot.

Waters over whom I pace restlessly, from side to side. “Parakeets are my favorite bird,” I blurt out, “their tranquil chants soothe my busy mind after a long day at work.”

“Parakeets are noisy nosy ugly things!” says the one who in life sounded like a snake’s rattle.

I keep on pacing. I have too much to say while I can. “I regard office workers as the most fortunate of men: their jobs are exciting, and make them feel needed.” I make a pause and turn one hundred and eighty degrees. My index finger raises as I shake it. “My name is Wilarden Anserducary and I want to live!”

“Now that is an obvious lie, unnamed one.”

“You are pink.”

“I am not! Quit your senseless yapping.”

I freeze in place, lower my shoulders, exhale. I have so many lies to tell. And I won’t be able to express them anymore once the deal is struck. So, even if it displeases the guardian, I shall shout them all out now. I’ll write again when I am done.