She picks it up and turns it over in her hands.

"An oil lamp? It must have been down here a long time," she remarks. She buffs the surface with her skirt.

For a moment, the lamp does nothing particularly interesting.  For a moment.

The metal of the lamp begins to bend and buckle as if under immense strain followed by glowing and slightly floating away before orange-sparking clouds of purple smoke billow outwards, as if the very air were briefly catching on fire.  All this is accompanied by a great cacophony of noise, as if the wind were whistling through a thousand thousand leaves all at once.

"Aaaaah!" she screams. It seems like the appropriate reaction. Egresta ducks.

Screaming, notably, isn't very conducive to catching oil lamps that suddenly return to their regular in-atmosphere buoyancy, but before one might bounce and roll its way into the waters below..

Not quite a face, or a body, but perhaps the impression of the upper torso and beyond- coalesces from the smoke. It reaches out, catching the lamp and setting it into the boat, before - its not so much turning as being reshaped in its billowing - facing the sailors - more towards Satenag than Egresta.  The chaotic lightshow and sounds fade, leaving only what audio might normally be present, (though is screaming really normal?) before the cloud begins to speak.

"Oh, people, it has been ever so long!  Here, let me-" The cloud solidifies further, going from mere abstraction to the impression of solid form- not exactly a human, but something inspired by one - all its colors just hues of the same omnipresent purple smoke.

"Hello to both of you, I hope the screaming is intentional?  What can I call you two .." - the figure pulls some parchment and a pen from nowhere in particular - ".. and which of you rubbed my lamp?"

She stops and glances at Egresta.

"Ah, my name is Satenag," she says with a small bow. "And this is Egresta, my captain. I rubbed your lamp ... which I hope is not rude? Are you one of the fair ones?"

Egresta stands and claps Satenag on the shoulder.

"I see them too," she quietly reassures her.

"Sa .. ten .. ag and Eg .. re .. sta .." - it says as it writes something down on the parchment.

.

 ..

  ...

"Hm? Rude?"

The cloud seems to energetically but quietly spark and fizzle though not to the previous extremes. The figure becomes significantly more animate, gesticulating wildly and more obviously moving rather than reforming. "Why, it wasn't rude at all!  You, sir or madam or something else Satenag - now have the very important position of being my Master!  I now owe you three, count them, three full Wishes, to the best of my ability!  Not one" - it extends a finger - "not two," - another - " not four," - two more - " and certainly not fifty " - it extends another forty six, and then folds the fingers back down to a more reasonable three - "reality shaping, cosmically significant, terms and conditions applying wishes!" With this proclamation, smaller figures of similar look to the figure briefly appear and play celebratory music on conjured instruments before vanishing back into the purple smoke.

The figure solidifies again, having grown less defined during that previous display.  "Oh but where are my manors, I never introduced myself.  You may call me Eeferi, and I am your genie of the lamp."  It bends forward before straightening again.  "Any questions?"

"Uh. Yes, several."

She glances around for somewhere for Eeferi to sit, but the boat is sufficiently small that there's not really much space to be hospitable.

"As it happens, I am a woman, although I hope that won't be relevant? ... I guess maybe the first question I have for you is — when you say that you owe me wishes, what is that for? Freeing you from the lamp? I'm having trouble thinking of anything I have done that would have three wishes as the fair price."

Egresta tidies the last of the fish away.

"Also, would you be able to keep pace with the boat if I took us back towards shore?" she asks. "I think that one way or another this conversation is going to involve consulting with the others."

"Your gender might be relevant, though that's not quite my call to make.  The Wishes are for approximately anything you desire not all desires are grantable through direct Wishing, please consult your nearest genie on specific cases and though you could free me from this lamp, my powers would be greatly diminished - mostly illusions, conjurations, and shapeshifting, at that point. In terms of what you could Wish for .. the kinds of Wishes that usually get granted include wealth, " - a pile of gold bars and a towering feast hovers near the boat - "personal supernatural power, " - beams of red light momentarily lance out from approximately where Eeferi might have eyes, appearing to boil some of the water - " positions of authority over overs," - Satenag is dressed in fine robes and shining jewelry, held high on a platform by indistinct humanoid figures - " or changes to the fabric of reality," - Nothing appears to accompany this and then the various examples fade back to more mundane reality and purple smoke - " though do feel free to ask about what else I might be able to grant."

"Oh, no, this system is very unfair. The trade isn't really commensurate at all, but it is enforced by powers beyond my own."

"Ah, yes. Please keep my lamp on the boat if you intend to ensure that you've brought me ashore - I can handle the rest of my personal transport.  Or I could bring us there now?  Ooh, or what about making this boat the fastest craft for a thousand miles," - the boat grows wings - " or granting it the ability to make portals," - a vortex appears to open between the path in-front of the boat and a dense jungle, teeming with foreign life - " or maybe even direct teleportation?" - Again not accompanied by anything other than the wings and portal fading.

"Others? Oh, I would very much like to meet others! How do I look, do I seem ready for others?" They continue to billow purple smoke, though their visual definition is if anything less strong than it was earlier.

She is put fairly off-balance by this rapid influx of detail, but two points stand out.

"Is that really what people commonly wish for? That's ... how could they! That's unimaginative, un-community-minded, and unsustainable!" she exclaims. From her tone of voice, each of those is a stronger condemnation than the last.

She waves her hand, as though to wave away her own complaints.

"But that's not the important thing ... you're compelled to give people wishes? You can't choose not to?" she clarifies. "Because that sucks."

Meanwhile, Egresta expertly piloting the boat back out of the shallows and around one of the small islands that dots the lake. Satenag ducks out of the way of the boom when necessary with the unthinking ease of long practice.

When they round the island a distant village, comprised of straw-thatched cottages nestled between two hills, comes into view.

"Well, people are often Wishing for leverage over a situation that they cannot directly change with a Wish, and the classics often grant leverage." - Simple shapes and figures play out using a literal lever to push a boulder - "Community .. ah yes, some more community minded folks have Wished for a nigh unstoppable army to conquer the world in their name" - brief, goreless, colorless silent imagery of marching war - " or a nearly endless stream of worker-minions to reshape the world as they see fit." - similar imagery to before, but this time the army reshapes the land rather than fighting, though they still crush those who resist underfoot - "As for unsustainable, I'm not sure I see how one might make Wishes sustainable, as my Master only ever gets three, assuming they don't make some terrible mistake which prevents them from Wishing." As they explain all this, Eeferi slowly gets more melancholy and less energetic.

With sudden energy, and a temporary conjuration of binoculars - "Houses, land, civilization!  Oh I feel quite invigorated!"

Satenag slumps in the boat as well.

"I guess if there are serious restrictions on wishes, that could make sense," she observes. "But you mentioned wishes can change the fabric of reality — could I wish* that nobody anywhere would ever go hungry again? That's the sort of thing I mean by sustainable; a change that persists, instead of getting used up."

* Translators note: While I have done my humble best to render the preceding dialogue in English, it must at this point be mentioned that the language spoken in Southern Fishing Village is a rural dialect of Reformed North-Eastern Marnesi Trade Language. Among the various qualities that distinguish it from English is the fact that it marks case on the verb. Therefore, Satenag saying 'could I wish' cannot be taken to mean that she is wishing for linguistic reasons, quite aside from Eeferi's friendliness and ability to understand context. Likewise, the language marks quotes (with a different mood), which avoids another potential point of confusion.

Egresta purses her lips at the question.

"Don't forget they're being compelled," she points out.

Satenag rubs her temples.

"Ugh. Yeah, that's more important."

She's silent for a moment, staring at the water passing on either side of the boat, the reflections of clouds distorted by its passage.

"Eeferi — just because some power is compelling you is no reason for me to be complicit in it. If you weren't being compelled, is there anything that you would be willing to trade with us? Freeing you from the lamp in truth?"

Eeferi stays silent for a moment.  "You could almost Wish that, though it might not go exactly as you expect.  Do you want to include pets?  Do you want to keep the ability to eat?  What happens to all the farmers of the world who are suddenly jobless, or the feeling of hunger as opposed to the need? ... Wishes, though they are vast, are not exactly absolute.  Any future Wish could overwrite a previous Wish and no previous Wish may directly constrain a future Wish, and so one finds themselves with merely nigh unstoppable armies or almost no chance of needing to eat again."

"I .. some have made that same offer to me before, and none have ever kept their word.  I would want to be free to explore all the worlds myself, to see every sight, experience every thrill, meet all the peoples ..  But I would need to be free and weaker to do so under my own power, so far as comes to mind.  I've sometimes thought of bargaining for some other Wish for myself, but I don't know what I'd want while free until I'm free, and at that point - genies can't grant the Wishes of genies, and so it would be too late."

Satenag adopts a thoughtful expression.

"... that's maybe okay. You don't have to believe me, I don't think. Probably I should ask the organizer — they'd know, as a matter of law."

She shakes her head.

"Well, it might not quite be everywhere, but we can certainly welcome you to Southern Fishing Village, and introduce you to everyone while we're figuring things out."

The boat is not terribly speedy, but they're approaching the shore rapidly enough. They're close enough now for individual people to be visible — which also means that Eeferi is visible from the shore. There's a certain amount of running about, and people crowding onto the beach to spectate.

On approaching the shoreline, Eeferi goes for spectacle and flamboyancy.  Art and music and attempting to greet individually everyone present - including asking what they may call the others - and writing it all down. They're visibly active, moving with haste and urgency.

Egresta jumps out of the boat, and heaves it the last few feet onto the sand, splashing in the shallow water.

The scene on the beach is chaotic, the way that any attempt to simultaneously greet two dozen or so people would be. People are initially a little wary, but open up quickly when Eeferi greets them with good will instead of anything nefarious.

Satenag helps by pointing out and naming some of the shyer people.

"Mother!" one young woman cries, running up and grabbing onto Egresta's arm. "I was on the hill and I saw smoke from your boat — is everything alright?"

"Everything is perfectly fine," she reassures her. "We just have an unexpected guest. Anþasta, this is Eeferi. Eeferi, my daughter Anþasta."

"And organizer Penþa," she adds, as an older person carrying a ball of string jogs down to join the confusion, slightly out of breath.

Eeferi seems to calm down by perhaps a half a step and thanks Satenag for their help.

"Hello there Anþasta, I would hope there is nothing to worry about! I haven't harmed any sailing trips today, to my knowledge." - Eeferi continues to be made up of smoke which billows from the lamp.

"Ah, a person in charge of something.  Greetings, organizer Penþa."

Penþa nods respectfully.

"And greetings to you as well," they reply. "Eeferi, was it? In any case, welcome to Southern Fishing Village; we would be delighted to host you for dinner. Did Egresta pick you up on the far shore?"

Satenag shakes her head. "I fished them up out of the lake — over in the eastern shallows. They had been trapped inside an oil lamp; I have no idea how long it must have been down there."

Penþa absentmindedly fidgets with the end of their string.

"Well, it must have been a while ago," they speculate. "Because I'm certain I would remember if there were anything like this in the records."

"Before the founding?" Satenag whistles.

She picks up Eeferi's lamp and steps out onto the beach.

"I think we all have a lot to discuss, but maybe we ought to do it where we can all sit down," she says. She turns to Eeferi. "If that's alright? We can go sit in the courtyard and introduce you to everyone else as they come back from whatever errands they're on."

"Yes, you may call me Eeferi.  Dinner and/or a meet and greet in a courtyard both sound good to me, though I don't need to eat, if you would prefer to save on supplies."  In a quieter voice, whispered directly in Satenag's ear - "Given your responses earlier, I suppose you'd rather not Wish for a grand feast when you could workshop some Wish against going hungry in general.  Though if you want ideas, I can consider previously granted Wishes that might apply?  Though perhaps you'd rather I wait on that."

Satenag bites her lip.

"If you want to start thinking of suggestions, that would be helpful," she agrees. "But yeah, wishing for anything that's just a one-time thing would be really irresponsible of me."

The gaggle of villagers starts walking inland, past a garden where things are just getting into the swing of spring, and into a cleared area in between the houses. As they walk, a young boy with messy hair sees Satenag talking with Eeferi and runs up to them with wide eyes.

"Oh, there you are, sweetheart," she exclaims, pulling the boy into a hug. "Eeferi, this is my son Daskal. Daskal, this is our guest Eeferi."

Daskal has approximately two-hundred and sixteen questions.

"Are you really made of smoke? How can you pick things up? Are there lots of smoke-people? What about —"

"Let the person answer, Daskal," she admonishes. "And of course you don't have to if you don't want to," she adds to Eeferi.

"I enjoy the freedom to answer, I think."

"Well Daskal, let me first greet you.  Greetings, Daskal." - Writing - "Now yes, I am made of smoke, and magic, I suppose."

"Others..?"

"If there are others of my kind I did not make, I do not recall them, but I know how to form someone into one - and what restrictions that places.  You would be well placed to think very carefully about the consequences before deciding that is the path for you."

... well, that is quite possibly the most ominous thing their visitor could have said.

Satenag coughs into her fist. "Er. Right. Daskal, go ahead and ask your other questions; I need to talk to Penþa for a moment."

She pulls the organizer off to the side and has a low conversation explaining the situation.

"Can you turn people into other things? Like cats? Or turtles?" Daskal asks after a moment to digest Eeferi's first answer. "And if the only smoke-people are people you've made into smoke, where did you come from? The moon?"

"Changing the form of my Master is well within the power of a Wish - and though changing the form of another has been granted, it seems somewhat rarer to my memory."

"I cannot truthfully promise - as I do not know - there are not smoke genies other than myself that I did not make - and similarly I can say with honest I do not know my own origins.  Who could and would make something like me?  I recall no great sorcerer, a powerful spirit, or shining pantheon credibly taking credit for my creation."

"The moon?"  Eeferi laughs.  "What would she do, spin smoke as the rising tide?  I suppose such a thing is possible but I find it quite unlikely.  Let me ask you this: do you know where your kind comes from?  Do you remember a wandering star, a coincidence of magics, or a burning pool?  I couldn't say with certainty which of those if any made flesh and bone, could you?"

Daskal frowns in thought.

"Well, I think the oldest stories are about when we lived in the south, beyond the desert," he explains, in the tone of voice of a child repeating history learned at their elder's knee. "And there was a famine, so we learned to farm. And then there were too many people, so the Loka of the Lake led people here to make a new village, and then I was born."

He wrinkles his nose. "Some other stuff happened in between those bits. But I guess I don't know if we were anywhere else before we were beyond the desert."

"Yes — lots of other stuff did happen," Anþasta observes with wry amusement. "It was something like two and a third thirty-sixes of thirty-sixes of years between the founding of the Archive and the Loka of the Lake."

"Your people keep a great memory between millennia then.  That seems something to be proud of."

"This Loka of the Lake, were they a spirit, a human, or something else altogether?"

"Ah ... a human, I'm pretty sure? Or at least I don't think the stories mention otherwise, and I would kind of expect them to," Anþasta replies.

"Ah, so a title then, or a rare moniker-name."

"What else would you care to ask?"

"I have a question," Egresta interjects from where's she's walking just behind the children. "Earlier, when we were on the boat, Satenag asked whether you could make it so nobody ever went hungry, and you explained about Wishes not being absolute. If the wisher leaves something undetermined, how does it get decided? At random?"

"I would say it was random, if I knew that to be true.  The same for being decided by the mind of the Master, or the genie, or any other.  This is one area I do not know, other than that it is decided."

"... huh. Fair enough."

That was not among the possibilities that she had considered, so she takes a moment to silently think.

Anþasta glances back and forth between Eeferi and her mother.

"... could someone making a wish say how it should be decided? Like 'I wish for so and so, with any details I leave unspecified decided by what the recipients of the wish would most prefer'?"

"I've never been asked that before!  That's quite exciting."  Eeferi holds a ball of crystal up to their eyes, watching foreign lights and hearing sounds of Wishes gone by- most too fast for anyone else present to process.  As the ball disappears, they whirl on the spot, briefly a whirlpool or tornado before reforming.

Eeferi speaks with excitement, their form whips wildly with every motion. "I have no idea, none of my Masters have ever tried.  I suspect that it wouldn't work .. but I don't know!  At all!  Oh, but what if it did?  Wouldn't that be fascinating?  What happens if the very method specified to handle interpretation is itself underspecified?"

"I think .. I think someone would have to try it, before I know.  And maybe not even then.  This might be beyond me.. but hopefully its not?"

"Oh! So you ... don't know how things work because it's part of your power, you know because you've done this a lot before?" she clarifies. "Because that's really interesting."

"It also raises the question of why we haven't heard of this," Egresta notes. "Do you have any way of telling how long you were down in the lake?"

"There are many things I've known for so long, I don't know of a time I didn't know them.  Whether such core-deep knowledge is from experience, inherent intuition, or something Wished upon, I again do not know.  I don't recall a time a Master used some quirk of the rules I had no knowledge of to get one over on me, though perhaps that was simply luck.  I recall acting with belief that the restrictions upon me would apply to any genies I created before the first time I recall creating a genie."

"To my knowledge, the number of worlds is very large, and each place within each world is often very small.  Is it any surprise you haven't heard of my history, when I most likely wasn't here?  I think to know for certain how long I was in the lake, might take a Wish, but to my mind it was either a month, a minute, an aeon, or a day.  When there is nothing to do, I often stop tracking the passage of time.  That one is a gift from an old Master, I suppose."

Anþasta looks like she can't quite decide whether to be elated, thoughtful, or horrified.

"... and Satenag is your ... 'Master' now?"

"Yes, but it's not her fault," Penþa says, having been caught up on everything. "And as long as she does actually free them, she is not breaking any laws, making a fixed number of wishes first."

Penþa pats Daskal's hair. "Don't worry — your mother knows what she's doing."

"I do think I probably want some help figuring out how to word things, though," she replies. "Eeferi, do you have any general advice for wishing? Common mistakes that people have made?"

"Be sure of what you want, to the greatest extent you can.  Be mindful of the consequences and plan for them accordingly.  Write down your ideas first, before you even try your hand at wording - and on that note be very, very careful with your wording.  Maybe include one or more escape clauses?"

"The most common mistakes I've seen my Masters make include, in no particular order, Wishing for something other than what they intend to get out of the Wish, expecting their Wishes to be without consequences, getting themselves in a situation where they decide their best option is to un-Wish their previous Wish or Wishes, trapping themselves or someone they care about in a situation with no escape, not planning for the risk of a hostile interpretation of their words, recklessly saying 'I Wish' in such a way as to waste one or more Wishes - though this language seems to make that markedly unlikely, making a Wish which kills them - thus preventing their access to future Wishes, rushing into Wishing due to my or their excitement over an interesting facet of magic..  Shall I keep thinking on this or is that enough for the moment?"

"I think that's probably enough," Satenag agrees. "To start with, at least. But writing things down might be kinda tricky — Penþa, would you be willing to take notes?"

Penþa unrolls part of their ball of string and winds it between their fingers.

"Sure — I needed to record this for the archives anyway. I can take some scratch notes and then un-knot it to re-use," they agree. "... also, do you want me to call a village meeting about this? It sounds like having more help thinking of things might be better."

Satenag rubs her temple.

"You have a point. On the other hand, I can just imagine how long discussion would go on about literal wishes, considering how much people like to talk about crop rotation," she observes.

"We can start thinking ourselves, call a meeting, and then if we have figured it out by dinner the meeting can be a celebration, and if we haven't figured it out, we can ask," Egresta points out.

Satenag nods.

"Alright, I'll go blow the horn. It's just inside your door, right Penþa?"

They nod too.

Egresta goes inside one of the houses, emerges with a horn, and blows a pattern of blasts that echo off the hill.

The villagers confer for a moment, and then settle on "Known rules", "Wish results", "Risks", "Risk management", and "Other". The points that have been raised get divvied up into the different categories. People are mostly pretty enthused about Eeferi's pictographs, but Penþa does start weaving a net with some of the less-pictoral specifics for their own reference.

Once things are drawn out on the chalkboard, everyone thinks for a moment.

"Are there other rules that usually come up?" Anþasta pipes up. "Other than 'no wish may directly constrain a future wish'?"

"To my knowledge, there are quite a few!  I'll list some here, but we already know my knowledge must be incomplete, so I will not strive for completeness.  As the difference between knowledge and inference has been called into question, you may choose to doubt my words on the following, but it will be truthful to what knowledge I have.  I've never seen a successful resurrection of a full person except preemptively.  No Wish may change the rules of Wishing or Genies.  Each Master is owed three Wishes, though they may squander their chances at using them.  Wishes almost always cannot change the figurative hearts or minds of anyone except the Master or the Genie.  To gain the full power of a Genie is equivalent to becoming a Genie, and so turns the subject into a Genie (This comes with a lamp.).  Wishes that violate the rules fail silently, no Wish is expended, though so far I've been able to identify why in each case.  Wishes don't seem to include extraneous changes, but they can be fulfilled in a way more complicated than the simplest possible interpretation.  Wishes are not definitionally instant, though that's more a lack of a rule than the presence of one.  A Wish can free a Genie in theory and any Genies freed this way lose the majority of their power in the process.  Wishes to directly kill so far have not succeeded."

Everyone thinks about those rules for a moment, working through the implications.

"... okay, those seem to make sense, except the wishing to directly kill thing," Satenag muses. "You've mentioned wishes indirectly killing people, so that means that there must be some wishes that are possible indirectly but not directly, for some reason."

Anþasta waves her hand for attention.

"Wait wait wait — you said that you'd never seen a successful resurrection except preemptively. Has anyone ever tried for an indirect resurrection? If only indirect deaths work, maybe only indirect resurrections do."

"Some have Wished for variations on 'The power to raise the dead' and this Wish has sometimes succeeded, but the results are not resurrections in a useful sense.  Is there a known method of resurrection here, such that a Wish could facilitate a resurrection without performing one itself?"

She shakes her head.

"No, not that we know of," she replies. "Sometimes a prophet will get a shade of a close friend or relative who died, but they usually don't retain all their memories."

She clenches her fist. "But if there are really other worlds, and enough of them have magic like that that it makes sense for you to ask, then it's only a matter of time."

Egresta reaches across the bench and pats her on the back.

"That raises a good point, though — can wishes affect other worlds? If so, do you know of any that would have affected our world?" she questions.

"Sometimes Wishes reach across worlds and sometimes they don't.  It seems to depends on factors beyond the Wish itself- how connected can those worlds can ever be, how connected they are at the time of the Wish both seem relevant.  Not only do Wishes seem to default to only the world they are made within, if there is a world where magic is impossible, no Wish could ever change it, but if there is a world where magic is merely improbable, perhaps some Wishes could reach?"

"Well, any Wish that has impacted me is now at least indirectly impacting this world, but other than that .. few Wishes I know of are ever made to stretch beyond one world and into the next.  I recall at least one Wish made to grant my Master at the time 'the power to travel between worlds in full health rather than perish' - so perhaps they have already been here.  Another Master Wished that 'any treasure beyond all reckoning from any world be brought to my side immediately!'  They did not survive very long after that, though I recall little else of the aftermath- it was also their third Wish."

"Would you put 'inter-world portals' under 'wish results'?" Egresta asks. "I don't know that it will end up being the best thing to wish for, but if it's possible, it seems worth thinking about in more detail."

Satenag nods.

"Can I ... wish for more information? Like 'what would the effect of wishing for X be'?" she wonders. "I don't know if that's useful, either, because it cuts our number of wishes in half. But if we have to make a risky choice it might be worthwhile."

Eeferi draws a stick figure looking through an oval to observe a forest.

"You absolutely could Wish for more information!  You could get it on tablets, scrolls, books, memories, dreams or perhaps stranger thing still.  I don't recommend Wishing for it as memories though, large changes to your mind can be overwhelming."

"However .. Wishes don't always know the future.  You could maybe Wish for information about likely results, rather than certain information about what will result?"

"Okay, that makes sense," she agrees. "Hmm ... I'm not seeing any other questions about rules. Maybe we could shift to thinking about possible goals, other than going to other worlds?" she suggests.

There's a general shrugging and refocusing.

"And then we can figure out which goals can be combined, and how to order them," Egresta agrees. "... except I think that does leave me with another rules question. Can someone wish for two things at once? Like 'a flying boat and a blue dress'?"

"As far as I recall, to make it more likely a Wish will be granted, my Master should format their Wish such that it has the least things to do.  'I Wish for a grand statue and for everyone who sees it to experience awe at its majesty' seems like a Wish that would fail while 'I Wish for a grand statue that shrouds itself in an aura of majestic awe' seems at least more like a Wish that would succeed.  This is not to say conjoined clauses never succeed, but that they can be tricky."

"In the case of 'a flying boat and a blue dress', while I would expect it to work, I would perhaps suggest a phrasing similar to 'a flying boat carrying a blue dress' instead."

She rubs her chin in thought.

"So we're going to need to be clever about finding ways to fold things together," she muses. "Which will be tricky with your advice about keeping things direct and wishing for what you actually want."

Satenag, who has been ignoring this little back and forth, nods decisively.

"Eeferi, would you put 'no involuntary hunger' and 'no involuntary death' under 'results', please?"

Anþasta glances in the direction of the hills.

"... and 'no sickness'?" she suggests.

Relevant pictograms are added.  "What about voluntary sickness?  What if people disagree on what counts as a sickness?  Is a missing limb a sickness, or an injury?  What if someone just thinks differently?"

"Uuuuuuugh," Anþasta replies, slumping back against the wall of the house that her bench is sitting against.

"Can we just ... take 'no involuntary anything' as a given?" she asks the others, although she's mostly focused on her mother.

Egresta laughs.

"I'm willing to bet that our friend Eeferi will ask what we mean by 'voluntary' at some point," she guesses. "After all — people can sometimes make bad decisions when they're stressed or don't have all the information. And that doesn't even get you out of defining what you mean by sickness, anyway."

"Instead of trying to list all the kinds of sickness, we could just make it so people are all healthy instead?" she suggests.

"I don't think its any easier to say what healthy is," Daskal interjects. "Like with Kasil."

"Kasil? Additionally, what happens when small babies aren't old enough to know to voluntarily breath, or beat their hearts, or be taught things?"

"Kasil's one of the farmers. Their parents were really worried when they were little because they didn't come out like everyone else, and their parents weren't sure if they'd grow up right, but now they're grown and they like it, even though they ended up kinda short," Daskal explains. "I'm almost taller than them already. But they make really good cheese, because they put herbs in it."

Satenag sighs and pulls Daskal into a hug.

"Kasil is alright with it, but — not that it's very common in the first place — some people who come out mixed aren't. So it's not a matter of a body being healthy, so much as a person and their body being healthy together," she explains to Anþasta. "Which is part of what makes it almost more complicated than defining sickness. At least everyone agrees that the plague is unhealthy."

"And the point about babies is a good one," she continues, nodding to Eeferi. "Especially since they're the ones most likely for a wish for health to affect — most adults are pretty much fine, compared to babies."

Egresta looks thoughtful.

"If all the adults are healthy, though, maybe there won't be any diseases to pass on to the babies?" she muses. "I remember when the flu went around when Melhit was little, and mother had to keep him inside all day. He still fell sick, but if there hadn't been a flu in the first place ..."

"If the adults are healthy but the children have a flu, would the children not then pass it on to other children or adults later?"

"I think it would be a lot easier to keep children too young to understand the idea of 'not wanting to be sick' away from each other than it is to keep them away from everyone? The idea is that the adults would never get sick, so they couldn't pass it on," she elaborates.

"What of Rabies then, which spreads from person to animal and back again as easily as between animals or humans alone?"

"Well, babies aren't often where animals could get to them. But yes, you're right that it would not be a perfect solution," she acknowledges.

"Also, bats," Penþa interjects. "They can become rabid and are more or less impossible to keep out. There's a story in the histories from about five thirty-sixes years ago about them nearly wiping the village out. That's why there's still a law about reporting when bats establish a nest," they explain.

"Could we ... invert it, though?" they suggest. "As in, require an act of will to become sick, instead of an act of will to remain healthy. I do acknowledge that still leaves the problem of defining these things, but it is perhaps an answer to how to handle babies."

"Then I would advise being careful in what you make require an act of will, else you risk something important requiring constant attention."

"Oh!  What of decisions made while dreaming?  Are these acts of will to be followed, or something to be excluded?"

Anþasta groans.

"Can we just ... like, use the standards for contracts or something?"

She turns pleading eyes on Penþa.

Penþa strokes their chin.

"I'm not entirely sure they apply," they reply. "They're not exactly intended for this, and some of the standards are more about enforceability than something you'd want to incorporate into some persistent magic."

"What about a standard that's ... anchored?" Satenag suggests. "So, like, it doesn't take an act of will to maintain, only to switch. And then you could make the act of will requirement stringent enough to filter out babies and dreamers, but otherwise leave it open."

"That sounds like ... making the Wish itself into a kind of tool, or construct, or trained animal, or servant - a living thing that acts as requested of it..  But what happens when its given contradictory instructions?  And what if someone doesn't remember all the instructions they gave it, or wants to remove old instructions?"

"I don't recall ever granting a Wish so flexible before .. though I don't know of a reason I couldn't."

"Well, making it a person would be counter-productive," Satenag asserts. "Do you think you could tell ahead of time whether a wish would be more like a tool or more like a person?"

"I think that would itself take a Wish, or something able to predict them."

"... right."

Satenag falls silent, thinking hard.

"But previous wishes that weren't as 'flexible' haven't been people?" Penþa clarifies.

"If they were, they weren't able to act freely enough for me to find out- and the restriction against Wishing to change the mind of a person didn't apply to most Wishes made to counteract previous Wishes."

"Ah."

The adult villagers all exchange glances.

"Well, curses."

"So we would have to ... start with a wish to tell us whether the second wish is permissible," Satenag speculates.

"Better to have it select from an ordered list of wishes the first permissible one," Anþasta points out. "And then we can just produce a nice-to-have ordering."

"That leaves the problem of ensuring that the first wish isn't a person, though," Egresta points out. "Is that the kind of thing that can be specified as part of a wish? Like 'I wish for X, done by mechanisms that are not capable of self-awareness or reflection'?"

"I think that should work, yes.  If it doesn't work, at least then we would know better for the future."

That is not the most confidence-inspiring answer, but better than what she was expecting, which was "I don't know".

From there, the discussion devolves into a lot of quiet debate and speculation on whether it still makes sense to use the first wish to learn which of a list of wishes are acceptable, how sure they have to be that a person won't be created for it to be legal to use a wish, whether they even need a wish that is complex enough to make it a worry, whether communicating intent is even possible without a person involved to interpret, etc.

As they talk, a few more people trickle in — mostly from the direction of the hill behind the village, either down from the hill or from the road around the side. As they arrive, Daskal, who isn't particularly interested in the discussion, introduces them to Eeferi. Many of them linger, but those who don't mention that they'll be back for dinner in a little bit.

"... and this is Lhemur," Daskal announces, bringing over a broad gentleman. He has a few faded burn scars across his skin, made visible by the fact that he's only wearing a skirt and sporran.

"He's the smith," Daskal continues. "And he also tends the kilns and smokes the fish, but I like salted fish better."

"A pleasure to meet you, Eeferi," he offers, extending a hand. "I can see you've caused quite a stir."

"Likewise, Lhemur." - They extend a hand as well, solidifying somewhat in the process.  "I suppose I have.  I hope for the better, though."

As before, they continue to write each time they are introduced to someone new.

Eeferi's hand feels warm, like incense that was snuffed out in the last hour.  There's a hint of oil to the smoke, a fruity? Spiced? - foreign, definitely - scent that clings to the skin only as long as one stays submerged within it.  The solid skin is smooth to the touch, but leaves a fading feeling of having run one's hand through sand.

Lhemur twitches his nose, and does not ask to smell their visitor.

But he does go over to help carry things out once Okanel signals that dinner is ready.

It's early summer, and the first vegetables have come in, which means that there is a lot of food available. Dishes parade out of the kitchen and onto the serving tables along one side of the square less literally than Eeferi might be able to manage, but with the practiced ease of routine all the same.

Dinner is salad (some baby spinach; dark, slightly bitter lettuce; a lighter cabbage cultivar with frilly leaves; diced cucumber; and diced hard-boiled eggs, seasoned with vinegar), herby bread (baked with basil, thyme, garlic scapes, and some other early herbs), and fish from the lake roasted with more basil and a little bit of ginger.

(Okanel has been putting basil in every meal, because the cursed garden is producing entirely too much of it, and they don't want it to go to waste. A certain amount is being set aside to get incorporated into cheese, but the rest goes as animal feed.)

"You should feel free to serve yourself and have your fill," Penþa informs Eeferi in a quiet aside, as people are lining up with cups and plates to grab dinner off the tables. "It's summer, and we have enough to share."

"I thank you for your hospitality, Penþa."

Eeferi will carefully serve themself a small portion of each unique dish, before settling down somewhere near to Satenag.  Carefully, they move to taste each item..

.

..

...

..

.

"Thank you all.  It has been .. some time .." - they trail off.

Satenag looks a little alarmed at this display, not quite knowing how to interpret the billowing smoke.

"You're most welcome," she settles on, after a moment. "Here, have some more fish. You've got perch there, I think, but this one is bass."

"... Alright."

They recover much more quickly.

Dinner is a lively affair. While Eeferi is being quiet, the villagers are mostly content to leave them alone, but once they seem to have recovered a group of people get up and drag their benches over to include Eeferi and Satenag in their discussion.

"Rastenu has been catching me up," Lhemur adds, awkwardly trying to juggle a plate, one end of a bench, and a gesture of greeting. "On everything."

He pauses for a moment and makes eye contact with Satenag, before turning back to Eeferi.

"... are you still happy to answer questions, or would you like to talk about something else during dinner? We got a good deal on iron this year, so I've been able to make good progress on patching up the plows," he offers.

"Either would be pleasing - the opportunity to talk freely is refreshing."

"It is good to hear the repairs go smoothly.  What's it like, smithing metal?"

"Oh! Well ..."

Lhemur thinks about how to explain it.

"It's not really like other crafts, because you have to be very aware of the temperature of everything involved," he begins. "But if I had to pick a point of comparison, I think it is most like working with clay. It's not a very close analogy, though. Working with metal, you can't really just slap parts back together, unless you melt them down all the way. To smith something, you really need to figure out how to make the final shape by drawing or beating your stock, with a minimum amount of joinery. See, metal sort of retains ..."

And Lhemur launches into a long explanation of metal stress, the effects of temperature on different working techniques, the differences between iron, copper, and tin, and the problems of inventory management they cause.

Eeferi conjures imagery approximately matching whatever Lhemur describes- faint heat rises from false forge-flame and metal clangs quietly when struck with imaginary force.  "What's it feel like, when it goes smoothly?  What do you think about, as you work?"

He drums his fingers in thought.

"It's ... when it goes smoothly, it's a bit like running," he says after a moment. "Where you make sure you can keep up a steady pace, since you know it's going to take a long time, but once the hammer starts falling in rhythm, it seems to take almost no time at all."

He's finished with his meal, so he sets his plate and knife aside and engages with Eeferi's illusory forge.

"There's a movement to it," he continues, taking an illusory hammer, and showing himself shifting his body — just slightly — around the anvil to get the right angle for strikes. "Because you can reposition the metal, but it breaks the flow. And you can't hammer in exactly the same place each time, or you won't make progress — or you'll make it too thin, or brittle. So you kind of watch how the shape changes, and then have to move yourself into position to keep up with it without hurting yourself."

He sets down the hammer.

"And then when you have finished the hammerwork, and you're dealing with barstock or something soft and delicate ... it's slow, and smooth, but still with the same underlying power to it. Your strength the only thing separating the metal as it is now from how you want it to be. I honestly don't know of anything like it. I admit that I get pretty sick of making nails after a while, but I like drawing just as much as hammering, really."

"As for what I think about ... I mean, usually I'm thinking about the metal, right? But it's not in words — just the sort of impression of how its shaped, and how I'm changing it, this constant awareness that took me a long time to perfect. It almost doesn't feel like thinking at all, sometimes, but more like balancing on a boat, with your body moving in time with the waves without conscious thought. Although there are also things to keep an eye on, so it's never completely automatic. Like the number of pieces you've produced so far, and whether anything is melting."

He sits down, shaking his head.

"One time, when I was an apprentice, I got into that state of focus for probably the first time making nails — I hated nails at the time, because they're such common apprentice work. I think I single-handedly supplied the village with two years of nails that week — but I got into focus for the first time, and I completely lost track of how many I had made. I only noticed when the quenching bucket spilled some water on my foot."

"Nowadays I'm a lot better at keeping track of things. That's the half of smithing that they don't tell you about, though. A village like this doesn't have a need for a truly full-time smith, so a lot of my time is spent doing inventory management for the kiln, and the charcoal fires, and our various raw materials. Plus maintaining tools, of course. You'd be surprised how quickly tongs can wear out, if you're using them seriously."

He blinks. "... I'm sorry, what was the question?"

Satenag snorts. "I'm pretty sure you answered it somewhere in there," she notes.

"I asked, 'What's it feel like, when it goes smoothly?  What do you think about, as you work?' and you answered.  I'm glad you shared that, with me."

Eeferi holds themself ready to answer further questions, or even ask them, if the opportunity arises.

"Well, I'm happy to have satisfied your curiosity!" he responds. "I'm always happy to talk about smithing."

He furrows his brow for a moment, trying to remember what he was going to ask before being (pleasantly) derailed.

"Oh! But I had a question for you as well — Rastenu was telling me about the information you'd shared on wishing, and I noticed that you said some wishes were able to manipulate ... wishers and genies, when they otherwise wouldn't. Like, mental changes, I think you said. And I was wondering why wishes would affect genies differently?"

"I don't know why the rules are as they are, they seem to simply be.  Genies are almost always protected from interference or modification in their ability to grant Wishes, from which freedom from one's lamp at the sacrifice of the ability to grant Wishes is an exception; rather than sharing a person's protection from almost all mental change, of which Masters are themselves mostly exempted."

"I suspect the rules are meant to protect themselves and prevent certain outcomes, but I do not know what, if anything, they strive against."

"... huh."

Lhemur has not really put much thought towards what the rules of wishing might be trying to prevent, instead treating them more like natural variations in terrain, like the hills that mean there's only one place for a good, flat road out of the village.

"Alright then," he muses. "Thanks."

Lhemur's impromptu lecture has carried them through most of dinner. Tomatoes are handed around as dessert, and Penþa walks to stand on the steps of their house. People generally re-orient themselves in Penþa's direction and quiet down.

“I stand to call a meeting. There is a matter that must be heard,” Penþa announces, using the traditional opening words.

"We hear you, organizer," the crowd replies.

Penþa recaps the situation and what they've learned so far, for the benefit of anyone insufficiently nosy to have heard already from their neighbors.

"... and so we will be hosting Eeferi while Satenag is determining the wording she wishes to use," they conclude. "I hope you will make them feel welcome."

People turn in Eeferi's direction and click in an acknowledging, welcoming way.

"But for something so momentous, Satenag has asked for our help in working out what she should wish for and how she should phrase it. So I'd like to open up the discussion; I'll moderate. Eeferi, would you be willing to take notes for us again?"

Penþa looks for a place where Eeferi could put another blackboard, and eventually settles on a spot just to their left. The organizer's house, which Penþa has been proud custodian of for some time, was built with the assumption that people would sometimes come up on the step to be more visible during meetings — letting them look out over the sea of faces sitting on benches or blankets throughout the courtyard, past the overhanging eaves of the cookhall and serving tables to the side, and down the clear space between the houses to the lake beyond.

It's a familiar view, from years spent holding meetings to discuss things like land allocation, prices for trade goods, and the state of the food stores. Or from years before that as Curtel's apprentice, sitting on the step and weaving notes as fast as they could.

But the blackboard was a bit wider than the step, so Penþa gestures for people to make a bit of space against the weathered boards that make up the organizer's house, and the people who had settled down there agreeably shuffle back into the crowd.

"Certainly!  One meeting coming right up!" - They pause for a moment, glancing at the lamp from which they still billow - before their form decoheres.  There's a figure, but it does not turn when it moves - it is merely an impression upon the movements of smoke, whose position and bearing are occasionally different.

There's an energy now, a thrumming in the air.  The smoke, once billowing lazily with the wind, now spirals itself both inwards and out.  It forms into solid but plain stone walls [with brazier-lit exits] and a domed ceiling of darkly purple tinted glass keeps out both the sun and the feeling of wind.  The blackboard grows and self-sections, with individual fires keeping each part visible even as the light from the outside is lost.  Besides each citizen in attendance form chalkboards, chalk, cleaning rags, and sets of beaded strings.

Near Satenag, the lamp softly glows.

The villagers gasp, the sound echoing oddly off the newly forming walls. Penþa flinches, before regaining control of themself. Anþasta grabs the corner of the blanket she's sitting on and pulls it over her head, tucking herself into Đani's side. Daskal watches with wide eyes. Lhemur whispers to his neighbor that this might be a solution to the tong problem.

There's an echoing murmur of voices, as several people try to talk over one another.

Penþa whistles, the sound loud and piercing. The crowd quiets down. A few people poke their heads out from under blankets or arms.

"Thank you, Eeferi," they say. "Alright — maybe this will make clear the scope of what we're dealing with. As I said, I'd like to open things up to moderated discussion. Put your hand up so we don't all talk over each other."

"What about getting a volunteer to grant wishes, and freeing Eeferi sooner rather than later?" one of the outlying farmers — a prophet and a vintner — suggests. "I mean, a deal's a deal, but surely that would be fairer and let us learn what being a freed genie is like, and whether anyone else might want to become one, so that we can get more than two wishes overall."

"Is granting wishes at all like practicing a trade?" Anþasta's grandmothers ask. "Because if so, it might be worth freeing the volunteer first, so we have an experienced wish-granter to set things to rights if something goes wrong."

The figure standing at the 'front' speaks, their voice echoic and muffled.

"Even if it seems unto you as a kindness, it would .. be something I would regret, to not fulfill an agreement.  Even of those Masters I came to prefer I had never met, I still valued in a minority of them the pattern of holding to their word.  I understand, with every Wish I grant that is not my freedom, it is less likely that most Masters would free me .. but I have long been imprisoned, and I am used to granting Wishes."

"I have little experience practicing a trade, and so do not know firsthand, but from my knowledge, no.  The granting of a Wish is, perhaps metaphorically, a channeling of power into truth, the experience is abstract.  It lies beyond my knowledge of how I would perform an illusion of it.  Its an involuntary, reflexive thing, to my knowledge akin to the inevitability of fighting to breathe when drowning."

"Sometimes, it seems to me that I have power over the way a Wish reshapes.  Certainly, some have formed as I would have chosen them to, if they were my choice.  However, I recall times where the result of a Wish was not within my predictions - or preferences."

"Yet besides all this talk of what it has been like to be me ... I say this to those of you that would become Genie.  Please, understand, it is not like being a human.  That much I know quite well, for my own skill at illusions is grown through practice, and it is as changing many a foreign thing in ways strange and sometimes unexplained."

There's a general pondering, as people try to imagine what it might be like and how they might react.

"Alright, so even if there's no benefit to skill, we should still plan to use both of Satenag's wishes with Eeferi," Penþa concludes. "So that's one option — have a volunteer become a genie and then be freed, so we know what the process is like and can judge whether other people would be willing to become genies as well, or if there are obstacles to the process. But let's hear other ideas, or thoughts about ends to wish for, and not just means. Anyone who would be willing to volunteer for the experiment, put your hand up and I'll note you down as the next discussion happens." 

Lhemur speaks up.

"I think we might be planning for the wrong thing, honestly," he says. "Because it's like having metalworking tools — if some fraction of people are willing to become genies, and that works without other problems, we're going to continue having access to wishes. So it's not necessarily a matter of planning wishes that last forever on their own; we can plan for having an expanded set of tools for handling things."

There's a generalized murmuring as people chew on that thought.

"We still need to prioritize, and make sure we aren't left in a bad situation if the supply of wishes dries up unexpectedly," Bardamma points out. "Maybe turning someone into a genie only goes wrong one time in six — that still means we'll run out."

Another villager speaks up.

"Well, what if we wished for more ... tool-like magic?" they suggest. "So not genie magic, but some independent kind of magic that could be taught separately, as a backup."

"Are there other magics, maybe from other worlds, that you could bring here?" Penþa asks, turning to Eeferi.

"Worlds vary in what magics they have, in many forms.  Some magics function independently of life, acting as rules upon the world.  Others function in response to life, but only some of it, acting as rules upon select beings.  Notably, there are magics which each respond only to the will of people, and some of those only to some people and not others."

"Of its behaviors, magics I know of no Genie taking credit for have taken on many forms.  Some which come to mind as potentially relevant include long studied rules and sigils and contracts to treatise and bind spirits and minds or such; themes which repeat themselves, granting all who connect a repetition of the theme- such as fire or song; and the ability for large groups of people to quickly pass packages from one side of the group to another- though they would sometimes instead be dropped to the ground."

Okanel straightens up in excitement.

"Oh! We could sell off extra food to the winter lands in the summer, and buy fresh produce in the winter!" they note. "Or, or, do famine-offsets."

Penþa mulls the options over. "Interesting. What attributes do you all think we should look for, in potential non-genie magic to import?" they ask, addressing the crowd once more.

There's more general pondering, before Daskal stands to speak.

"That's the wrong question!" he says. "If we can bring things from other worlds, and there are genies in other worlds, and they're trapped like Eeferi is, shouldn't we be bringing them here and freeing them?"

Satenag nods in agreement.

"We don't know whether we'll be able to handle freed genies yet," someone else points out. "So we should definitely do that, but it should wait until we have some other things set up first, and a few freed genies of our own to welcome them and handle any problems."

"All of this is predicated on the idea that we will be able to find people who would volunteer to become genies," Anþasta points out. "Which we still don't actually know."

"It's a good point," Penþa acknowledges. "Can anyone here think of a reason why we should not proceed with having a volunteer become a genie, to see whether and how it works? Bearing in mind that we would still have one wish from Eeferi."

They spend a moment trying to figure out if there are things that they would want that require two wishes rather than one.

"Maybe if the first wish were, instead, for information about the likely outcome of the second wish, like someone suggested earlier," is the main objection.

The discussion goes around for a while, before Penþa calls for a vote. It narrowly passes in favor of having a volunteer become a genie, since that seems like the best way to know what path to take.

Penþa gestures to one of the older women of the village to come up and join them on the step.

She makes her way up, people respectfully clearing a path for her. When she has reached the step, she turns and folds her hands on her cane.

"I have been planning, as Penþa knows, to go for a long walk after the harvest," she announces. There are murmurs of regret and understanding throughout the crowd. "So it would be my honor to perform this final task, for the good of the village, my family, and the world."

Penþa claps her gently on the shoulder.

"Thank you, Naterta. Your choice will be remembered and accounted," they say.

"Eeferi — you mentioned that you had been asked to turn other people into genies before. Is there a particular wording you recommend? Or concerns specific to this wish that we should know?"

.

..

"I warn that this is not something on which I have been able to practice, for all I have firsthand experience of the results of Wishes I grant."

"Such a Wish is still the changing a form of another, and so has a rate of failure .."

" 'I Wish to as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible attain the talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power to as quickly, harmlessly, durably and costlessly as possible through an act of my awake and sound-mind-will grant (Begin double nested quote.)''attainment of the full power and true form of a Genie or a subsidiary copy of this talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power which the holder of which including myself can recursively revoke down subsidiary lines but that which cannot do the reverse''(End double nested quote.) to any willing individuals or masses I choose such that all this is implemented only in accordance with my untampered will.' "

"I make no guarantees that this Wish will be granted, nor that it succeeds at its goals, but I suspect it does as is desired, if it is granted at all."

Eeferi solidifies into focus before Naterta.  "I say to you now, that to be a Genie is not to be a human.  Your form will many things, and your perspective will be many places.  Sight and sound will be strangers to relearn, though touch will remain.  Your mind .. it may shatter.  It might not.  I have seen both.  It may take you a long time to learn how to communicate again - both in the giving of knowledge and the receiving of it.  The world may seem very alone, or filled with not but yourself - but those are both illusions of perspective."

There is a moment Eeferi pauses-

And then recedes.

Satenag silently mouths that wording to herself, trying to make sense of it. Her language does not handle nested quotes well, so it requires a slightly awkward turn of phrase.

"... I'm sorry if this is an obvious question," she asks. "... but what is 'which cannot do the reverse' doing in there? Making sure that people can't make someone from a genie into a human? I don't understand why you'd want to purposely exclude that possibility."

Naterta, for her part, thinks on Eeferi's warning. It is not the villager's way, to not think about a warning, even if it seems redundant.

She prepares herself, as well she can, for the feeling of being somewhere strange and uncertain. She plans out what she will do — as little as she can, she thinks, while she just grows used to the change in perspective. She reminds herself to be gentle, and calm, and that she is doing these things for the people she loves. And that in the worst case, where her mind is broken, and she is lost — that it is a lot more likely that it will eventually be possible for her to be healed than she thought it was this morning.

And when she has finished these thoughts, she gives a small bow in Eeferi's direction.

"I appreciate the warning," she says, sincerely.

"I admit a difficulty in finding a phrasing which points to the property I intended.  I meant that, for each copy of the combined talent-skill-knowledge-ability-power instance, that it can grant and revoke descendant instances without being able to grant or revoke ancestor instances, as an inherent part of the structure of the instances and Wish so as to not be vulnerable to the risk of combined independent clauses creating an ungrantable Wish.  I seem to have not succeeded in correctly saying such."

Eeferi nods at Naterta.

"Oh! Yes, I see," Satenag responds.

She mumbles under her breath for another minute.

"Hmm. What do you think of this phrasing: 'I wish, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, to attain the talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power to, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, through an act of my awake and sound-minded will, grant the following to any willing individuals or masses I choose, such that the entirety of this wish is implemented only in accordance with my untampered will: attainment of the full power and true form of a Genie OR a subsidiary copy of this talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power which can be revoked by a holder of a causally-prior copy of this grant, but not by a causally-posterior copy.'"

.
..
.

"That phrasing seems to work, though I now find myself considering two potential flaws.  The first, that you might only gain the ability to make Genies or the recursive granting ability to grant itself without the other.  The second, that your phrasing might result in any granting that occurs before another being considered causally-prior."

Satenag rocks back and forth, considerately.

"The former is easy to fix, I think, by changing it to say 'both of the following'; but I'm glad you pointed that out. The second one is trickier. Penþa, is there a word that means what we mean?"

Penþa shakes their head. "Not that I'm aware of. It's not exactly something that comes up often. Do we want to coin a new one?"

"Isn't it a bit like 'Ancestral'?" Egresta points out. "You could say 'power-granting-ancestral' and 'anti-power-granting-ancestral'."

"Maybe it's better just to use a full phrase?" Satenag muses. "Maybe something like '... which can be revoked by any holder of a power in the chain of powers that led to the granting of this power'?"

"Why are we trying to make it revocable, exactly?" Bardamma questions. "Just so that someone can't start using the power nefariously? Why don't you say '... which can be revoked by another holder of a copy of this power when such revocation would be legal under the laws of the Southern Fishing Village'."

Penþa waves their hands in negation.

"I don't want to be the sole organizer in the whole world who is responsible for handling legal cases related to power revocation," they point out.

"Maybe '... which can be revoked by any holder of a copy of this power when such a revocation would be legal under either the laws of the Southern Fishing Village, or any jurisdiction which the holder of the revoked copy of the power believes themselves to be subject to the laws of.'?" Satenag suggests.

"I'm not convinced getting laws involved in magic is a good idea at all," Okanel interrupts. "Because that sounds either very exploitable or like it will make our legal system overburdened and inflexible."

"Also that sounds like a great reason for people to convince themselves that no laws apply to them," Bardamma points out.

Penþa raises a hand to stop the discussion.

"So if this works, we are going to probably have more situations like this to figure out a general rule for," they begin. "But if it does work, we are also going to have more wishes to fine-tune things, so we don't need to pre-emptively plan for a criminal mastermind converting people into genies for nefarious purposes. Let's go with Eeferi — the relevant expert's — suggestion for revocability for now, and see if we can spot any other flaws in the current wording. Satenag, would you repeat it for us, please?"

"Oh! I think I know how to say it. How about 'I wish, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, to attain the talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power to, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, through an act of my awake and sound-minded will, grant either of the following to any willing individuals or masses I choose, such that the entirety of this wish is implemented only in accordance with my untampered will: attainment of the full power and true form of a Genie OR a subsidiary copy of this talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power which can be revoked by a holder of a copy of this grant that is one of the chain of grant-givers stretching from the original copy to this copy, but not by holders of other copies.'?" she recites.

"That appears to have the risk that a later holder could grant you a copy of their grant, thereby making you a 'holder of an other copy'."

Anþasta suddenly sits bolt upright.

"There should be a language for this!" she exclaims. "This is like trade negotiations, only moreso. There should be a specialized language for it."

Penþa pinches the bridge of their nose.

"I do not think we need to sit here and spend a year designing and learning a new language," they reply. "Even though I do agree that if wishing continues to be an important, common task, it would totally be worth it. For now — look, is everyone clear on what the relationship that we're describing here actually is?"

They scan the crowd. There's no dissent.

"Then by the power vested in me as village organizer, I hereby coin the words 'wish-power-diaspora-ancestral' and 'anti-wish-power-diaspora-ancestral' to describe it. I'll add them to the dictionary when we're done with this meeting. Anþasta, would you use them in a sentence, please?"

"I don't think that making powers revocable by wish-power-diaspora-ancestral power holders is a good long-term strategy," she obediently replies. "But I do think it makes sense to ensure that anti-wish-power-diaspora-ancestral power holders aren't able to interfere with existing powers, and I want to propose that we establish a guideline saying as much."

"Right."

Penþa turns in Eeferi's direction. "Are those words defined-enough for wishing purposes, do you think?"

"That construction appears to also include the interpretation of diaspora-ancestral powers which are against Wishes. Is there a way we can exclude that misinterpretation?"

"Not really — I mean, wish-power-diaspora-anti-ancestral isn't grammatical, and it makes the correspondence between the two words less clear," Penþa replies. "But it is the agreement of the association of speakers that gives things meanings. If you were to show those words to someone who hasn't been here to understand their derivation and meaning, they wouldn't really be meaningful. Not until we send out a dictionary update with the caravans."

"Can I just leave out the anti-wish-power-diaspora-ancestral part?" Satenag asks. "Say something like 'revocable only by wish-power-diaspora-ancestral grant holders'?"

"That could work.  Could you provide the phrasing you want me to consider?"

Satenag smiles ruefully, and repeats the whole thing:

"It would be: 'I wish, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, to attain the talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power to, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, through an act of my awake and sound-minded will, grant either of the following to any willing individuals or masses I choose, such that the entirety of this wish is implemented only in accordance with my untampered will: attainment of the full power and true form of a Genie OR a subsidiary copy of this talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power which can be revoked by and only by a wish-power-diaspora-ancestral holder of a copy of this grant.'"

"I don't see any flaws with it, at this time.  Thank you."

She nods, and then turns to see if anyone else has problems with this phrasing either.

"What if there's not one way to do it that is both least costly and least slow?" someone points out. "How does the wish pick a tradeoff between them?"

"The phrase 'such that the entirety of this wish is implemented only in accordance with my untampered will' is I must admit experimental.  If it works as intended, the answer to that ambiguity will be decided by what would most match what Satenag would decide.  If there is a specific ordering these should be prioritized on, I suggest deciding that and forming the phrasing to include such."

The villager in question adopts an expression of understanding and sits back.

"Well, if impossible wishes don't go through, there's no harm in trying with extra safeties first," someone points out. "So Satenag should tack on 'without any negative effects on my mind, body, or sense of self', and then if that doesn't go through, we can talk about exact limits to what tradeoffs are worth it."

Satenag rolls her eyes.

"Does 'I wish, without any negative effects on my mind, body, or sense of self, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, to attain the talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power to, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, and without any negative effects on their mind, body, or sense of self, through an act of my awake and sound-minded will, grant either of the following to any willing individuals or masses I choose, such that the entirety of this wish is implemented only in accordance with my untampered will: attainment of the full power and true form of a Genie OR a subsidiary copy of this talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power which can be revoked by and only by a wish-power-diaspora-ancestral holder of a copy of this grant.' still work?" she asks.

"I don't expect it to, as it could be harm to someone's body or sense of self to replace it with that of a Genie."

"Hmm."

Satenag taps her chin. "That makes sense. So that might not work. But if it's not going to make anything worse, there's no harm in trying."

She draws herself up.

"Eeferi, I wish, without any negative effects on my mind, body, or sense of self, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, to attain the talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power to, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, and without any negative effects on their mind, body, or sense of self, through an act of my awake and sound-minded will, grant either of the following to any willing individuals or masses I choose, such that the entirety of this wish is implemented only in accordance with my untampered will: attainment of the full power and true form of a Genie OR a subsidiary copy of this talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power which can be revoked by and only by a wish-power-diaspora-ancestral holder of a copy of this grant."

"Oh.  That didn't work .."

"Wishes can't directly put knowledge of operation of purely Wish powered magic in the minds of those who are neither Genies nor Masters."

Satenag blinks.

"Huh! So it failed for a different reason than we were expecting. Can you tell whether it would also have failed because people can't become genies without possible harm?" she asks.

"I don't know on that one, still.  It still seems possible to me, though."

She nods, chewing on a knuckle in thought.

"You said 'purely Wish-powered magic'," Anþasta points out. "Can you wish for non-Wish-powered magic? Like, wishing for a magical rock that gives out the ability, instead of wishing for it to be directly gift-able."

"... Maybe?  Is there something native to this world that can power it?"

Anþasta shrugs. "Not that we know of. Would trying to wish for it tell you whether there was or not? When you learn why the wish failed?"

"I think that would depend on the specific shape of the failure.  It would be prudent to shape such a Wish to minimize all other failure modes, so that only that one facet supports the possibilities."

There's a general nodding, as people think about how to do that.

"Well, even if it failed in a different way, we'd still learn something else," Anþasta points out. "But that does make sense. What about something like: 'I wish, such that the entirety of this wish is implemented only in accordance with my untampered will, without any negative effects on my mind, body, or sense of self, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, to attain a non-wish-powered magic rock that, when touched by an individual of their own awake and sound-minded will, knowing what the rock does, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, grants the full power and true form of a Genie without any negative effects on their mind, body, or sense of self.'?"

"Several concerns cross my mind.  Firstly, that seems as though it may require specifying in the Wish the option to draw upon forms of magic from beyond this world alone.  Secondly, such a stone could also be highly prized - wars have been fought for control over less powerful artefacts.  Thirdly, would a phrasing such that you could conjure such stones into being of a specified size, weight, shape, and durability with the desired properties make more sense?  It would reduce the rarity of such objects."

She nods at the practical concerns. Most of those make perfect sense.

"I think I'm confused. If wishes can draw on powers from other worlds, why would the original wish have failed because the magic was wish-powered?" Anþasta questions. "Is it that you have to wish for things powered by magic from other worlds explicitly?"

"You're correct to my understanding.  Wishes have a sharp tendency to avoid any interaction with other worlds unless explicitly instructed to. Wishing to change some aspect of 'everywhere' will usually have no impact on even very close worlds.  So, to have a Wish enact magic not from this world nor from a Wish, it would need to access magic from another world.  This risks changing those worlds in ways their inhabitants don't want, much as a wide reaching Wish risks changing this world in ways its inhabitants don't want."

Anþasta lets out an undignified squawk. "That's not what 'everywhere' means, though. The—"

Penþa cuts her off. "Thank you, Anþasta. I think we're maybe getting off track. Eeferi, you said that it was the knowledge of operation that the wishes could not provide. But there was nothing preventing purely wish-powered magic from being propagated. Do you think it would be feasible to wish for the same thing, but with the knowledge provided externally? Such as by a book, or by being taught by someone who already has it?"

"I believe that would work, yes."

"So we'd want to make sure that it was teachable in a reasonable amount of time, and that it doesn't, like, just bury us in more books than the Archive holds," Satenag muses. "So maybe something like 'I wish, without any negative effects on my mind, body, or sense of self, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, to attain the talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power to, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, and without any negative effects on their mind, body, or sense of self, through an act of my awake and sound-minded will, grant either of the following to any willing individuals or masses I choose, such that the entirety of this wish is implemented only in accordance with my untampered will: attainment of the full power and true form of a Genie OR a subsidiary copy of this ability and power, alongside a reasonably-sized book legibly written in a language that they understand containing all the knowledge necessary to safely use the granted ability and power, which can be revoked by and only by a wish-power-diaspora-ancestral holder of a copy of this grant.'?"

"Isn't it possible that then the book would be the thing that can be revoked?" someone points out.

"How would you revoke a book?" someone else asks, getting a shrug in response.

Satenag rolls her eyes again.

"So 'I wish, without any negative effects on my mind, body, or sense of self, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, to attain the talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power to, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, and without any negative effects on their mind, body, or sense of self, through an act of my awake and sound-minded will, grant either of the following to any willing individuals or masses I choose, such that the entirety of this wish is implemented only in accordance with my untampered will: attainment of the full power and true form of a Genie OR a subsidiary copy of this ability and power, which can be revoked by and only by a wish-power-diaspora-ancestral holder of a copy of this grant, alongside a reasonably-sized book legibly written in a language that they understand containing all the knowledge necessary to safely use the granted ability and power.'?"

"While that may work, it might be subject to the 'blue dress and flying boat' problem, where the book is not a structurally necessary addition to the granted copy."

Satenag runs her hands through her hair.

"Yikes. This is really hard."

"... and not the most efficient way to run a meeting," Penþa notes, seeing some people start to talk in low voices. "If just getting a wording down is going to be so difficult even once we agree on an effect, it might be worthwhile to split things up. Everyone who wants to contribute to wording, come over here, please. Everyone who wants to spend this time thinking about ideas for subsequent wishes, go over there. Okanel, would you keep things organized over there? Thank you."

There's a general shuffling as things reorganize.

"So if we can't wish for a book separately, because it's too contingent, we should focus on the idea that it should be teachable. I don't have the whole thing memorized, but maybe something like '... OR a subsidiary copy of this ability and power which can be revoked by and only by a wish-power-diaspora-ancestral holder of a copy of this grant and which can be safely used after being trained in the knowledge required to use a copy of this grant by another grant holder for a reasonable amount of time.'?" Egresta suggests, once everyone has chosen a group to work with.

"Would that fail because the wish can't guarantee that people are good teachers?" Anþasta asks. "Maybe we should see if you can wish for a power that just doesn't require knowledge to use."

"If it has no knowledge requirement, does it not then have the ability to be accidentally used without any knowledge of its existence?"

Anþasta bites her knuckle. "... maybe? How could you exert an act of will without knowing that you were doing it?"

"It's probably a bad idea to wish for an intuitive understanding of how to word wishes for maximum effect," Satenag muses. "But I kinda feel like someone with a hammer and no tongs."

Egresta wordlessly pats her on the arm.

"Well, we could say that the only knowledge needed to use it is the knowledge of one particular magic phrase, like 'And now, I make some designated willing targets into Genies, or give them a copy of my same ability'," Egresta points out.

"What, so 'I wish, without any negative effects on my mind, body, or sense of self, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, to attain the talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power to, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, and without any negative effects on their mind, body, or sense of self, through an act of my awake and sound-minded will, by saying the phrase "And now, I make some designated willing targets into Genies, or give them a copy of my same ability" grant either of the following to any willing individuals or masses I choose, such that the entirety of this wish is implemented only in accordance with my untampered will: attainment of the full power and true form of a Genie OR a subsidiary copy of this ability and power, which requires no knowledge beyond that of the magic phrase and which can be revoked by and only by a wish-power-diaspora-ancestral holder of a copy of this grant.'?"

"I perceive no structural issues with that phrasing."

Satenag smiles at Eeferi. "I'm really glad we have you on hand as a cooperative expert. I can imagine getting really frustrated if we had to learn these things by trial and error."

She checks to make sure nobody else has new issues with the wish. And then she repeats herself.

"Eeferi, I wish, without any negative effects on my mind, body, or sense of self, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, to attain the talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power to, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, and without any negative effects on their mind, body, or sense of self, through an act of my awake and sound-minded will, by saying the phrase 'And now, I make some designated willing targets into Genies, or give them a copy of my same ability' grant either of the following to any willing individuals or masses I choose, such that the entirety of this wish is implemented only in accordance with my untampered will: attainment of the full power and true form of a Genie OR a subsidiary copy of this ability and power, which requires no knowledge beyond that of the magic phrase and which can be revoked by and only by a wish-power-diaspora-ancestral holder of a copy of this grant."

Where once there was a cloud of smoke and an illusory building contained within, there now is not.

Smoke immediately floods out of the lamp again, to reform the environment as it was.

"... huh."

Satenag blinks. "I'm guessing that means it worked? I don't feel any different."

"Well, why don't you try it?" Penþa suggests. "Naterta, are you ready?"

She nods. "I am. It is my pleasure to be able to help."

Satenag gives her a shallow bow, dramatically points a finger at her, and says "And now, I make some designated willing targets into Genies, or give them a copy of my same ability".

"... I don't feel any different either," Naterta says, after a moment. "Not to doubt you, Eeferi, but did that wish actually work?"

"Yes.  Definitely.  It should have.."

Eeferi begins to solidify sharply.

.

..

...

"... should have? ... Is everything alright, Eeferi?" Anþasta questions.

"I know I performed a Wish.  I lost track of everything I was doing.  I don't understand why Naterta isn't a Genie now, that was what you chose, right Satenag, Master?"

Eeferi begins to whisper to themself.

"Eeferi, I wish, without any negative effects on my mind, body, or sense of self, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, to attain the talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power to, as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, and without any negative effects on their mind, body, or sense of self, through an act of my awake and sound-minded will, by saying the phrase 'And now, I make some designated willing targets into Genies, or give them a copy of my same ability' grant either of the following to any willing individuals or masses I choose, such that the entirety of this wish is implemented only in accordance with my untampered will: attainment of the full power and true form of a Genie OR a subsidiary copy of this ability and power, which requires no knowledge beyond that of the magic phrase and which can be revoked by and only by a wish-power-diaspora-ancestral holder of a copy of this grant."

They repeat the details to themself, over and over, occasionally skipping parts or repeating some.

"That's what I was trying to do," she agrees. "Although it didn't really ... I mean, none of it has felt like anything at all. Whatever power we design next should definitely come with some kind of feedback. That you've gotten it, and that it's operating."

"Okay, let's take this step by step," Penþa suggests. "Satenag, would you repeat the wish, but slowly, so we can re-think all the parts of it?"

She nods.

"The first part goes 'I wish, without any negative effects on my mind, body, or sense of self,'"

"... so could turning Naterta into a genie have had negative effects on you?" Penþa asks.

"Wouldn't that have made the wish not go through at all?" Anþasta points out.

"... maybe turning Naterta into a genie would have had a negative effect, but turning some other person wouldn't," Egresta muses. "So the wish as a whole is valid, but it doesn't work on Naterta specifically."

Naterta snorts.

"If not me, then who?" she asks.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Penþa interjects. They scribble Egresta's idea on the slate, and then motion for Satenag to keep reciting.

"'as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, to attain the talent, skill, knowledge, ability, and power to,'" she continues. "But I don't see how that part could have affected things without the whole thing failing."

They mull it over for a moment, before eventually agreeing.

"'as quickly, harmlessly, durably, and costlessly as possible, and without any negative effects on their mind, body, or sense of self,'" Satenag says.

"Okay — so would changing Naterta into a Genie have had any negative effects on her?" Penþa questions.

"Well, of course. Eeferi warned us that it was confusing and disorienting," Satenag immediately points out.

"Bah! I would have been fine," Naterta objects. "Better than remaining human, for sure."

Anþasta slaps her forehead.

"'Better than the alternative', doesn't mean 'no harm'," she points out. "What if it only works on people who genuinely wouldn't be harmed at all by becoming genies?"

Satenag bites her lip. "... that sounds pretty plausible." She turns to Eeferi. "You mentioned that becoming a genie came with a risk of your mind shattering. Do you have any guesses as to why?"

"As it has been described to me in the past, humans seem to experience their mind as a single track previous thought leading into current thought into next thought.  Genies .. are not so bound.  Roughly speaking, I am here forming sounds for you to hear.  Again, with explicit inaccuracy, I am here, forming the impression of my presence.  I am attending to the walls, to the ceiling, to the fires, to the slates and chalk and board and string and beads."

"As I have come to learn, humans seem to experience the world of a compound of many senses, each overlapping with each other to form one greater whole.  My direct experience is more of a kind of bouncing, a touch, an interaction of surfaces.  The translations of my experiences into more useful forms such as 'what does this object look like?', 'what sound is this person choosing to make?' or 'what does this food taste like?' are skills I am actively employing."

"... huh. Multiple perspectives, attending to different things at once ..."

She turns to Egresta. "Do you know who that sounds like?"

"... perhaps," she agrees. She makes her way over to the other group, and taps her mothers on the shoulder.

"What is it, sweetheart?" he asks.

She explains what Eeferi said, about the experience of being a Genie.

"I'm not sure," she replies. "It doesn't sound ..."

They turn and stare off into the distance.

Egresta waits for a minute as they make up their mind.

She pushes herself to her feet. "The wording — it won't work if it would cause any harm?"

Egresta shrugs. "So far as we know, mother."

"We'll do it," she agrees.

They walk back over to the other group. Penþa and Anþasta have gotten dragged into an argument about whether they should have aimed for 'acceptable' harm, instead of 'any' harm.

"Do you think it will work?" Satenag asks her.

Oskeli grins. "Of course it will work," he agrees. "Honestly, it sounds a bit like the other place, doesn't it? And sort of explains why making the jump is so difficult."

"And you're willing?" she double-checks.

Bardamma glances back at the other group.

"We are," she agrees. "Someone needs to do it, and if you're right, there's a limited number of candidates. And I'm sure we'll be fine — because if we weren't going to be, it wouldn't work."

"If it's anything like becoming a prophet, we'll do it no problem," Oskeli agrees.

Satenag takes a deep breath. "Alright then. Try number two."

She points at them, and says "And now, I make some designated willing targets into Genies, or give them a copy of my same ability".

There is a muffled 'pop', and a brass oil lamp falls to the ground where they were standing.

Egresta steps forward and picks it up, running her fingers along the surface in wonder. She remembers what Eeferi said, about sight and sound being harder, so holds it near her face, perched on her shoulder, so that her mothers will be able to feel around and tell who is holding them.

"If wishes don't come with extras, and wishing for the 'true form' of a genie creates a lamp — Eeferi, is your lamp actually part of your body?" Anþasta asks, once she sees that Egresta has her grandmothers in hand.

".. I don't know if it is part of my body or not.  That seems to be a reasonable conclusion, however, my lamp also functions similarly to a ball-and-chain.  Without it, I would neither be able to nor be forced to grant Wishes."

She purses her lips. "I see. Do you—"

She's cut off by her grandmothers making a sound something like a cross between a sneeze and chimney fire, little harmless sparks of light shooting from their spout.

Egresta startles, but then runs her hand through the sparks, in case that makes her easier to feel.

"Well, that's a good first step, but I think it's clear that Lhatis and the others need a period of adjustment," Penþa remarks.

They glance at the sky visible through the exits of Eeferi's illusion.

"... and it's getting fairly late. Let's check in to see what the other group has thought of, and make notes of what to do differently next time," Penþa suggests.

"I'll take mothers back to the house and sit up with them," Egresta announces. "Probably easier to interpret than people talking over each other."

They make a sort of bass rattle, but whether it is in response to Egresta's comment is entirely unclear.

"I recommend being careful with your wording, then.  It appears they already have a Master."

Egresta nods seriously.

"I will be careful," she promises.

She says a round of goodnights, and then takes her mothers out through the northern gate and to their house.

Penþa, meanwhile, shepherds the two groups back together and makes sure they're each updated on what the other group has determined.

"... which is why I think we need to change our strategy in two ways: one, wish for less complicated things, and two, wish for powers that allow for the exercise of human judgement."

"There's also the fact that we went for something complicated and indirect in the name of sustainability and efficiency," Kapan points out. "When if Satenag had just wished for someone to become a genie, that would have been simpler, and let us go from there. I'm not saying it was the wrong choice, but we didn't really discuss it."

"That's a good point," Penþa agrees. "Maybe we should consider adopting a practice where we first try a non-grantable form of any given power, and then later figure out how to extend it to grantability if it comes out right and seems worthwhile."

"No!" another person objects. "I mean, yes, sure. But that's not sufficient. The first thing we should wish for, for any given category of power, is to have the effects directly. Then, once we've done that, we can reflect and come up with a scalable solution."

"Meaning that the next thing we should wish for is immortality, because that covers a big chunk of ways that things could go wrong."

There's a generalized burst of discussion, as a previous debate from the to-wish-for group gets reheated.

Penþa lets the discussion run until it devolves into talking over one another, and then waves for silence.

"Alright, alright. Some very good points. Thank you, everyone. But it is getting late."

They gesture to some children, who are nodding off despite their best efforts.

"I propose we call the meeting here, go home to sleep in our beds, where we are very unlikely to die, and then reconvene in the morning — because I don't think working to the normal schedule tomorrow is likely to be very productive, compared to making sure we have really solid wish wordings. Does that sound reasonable?"

Nobody raises any objection, although a larger than normal number of people linger after the meeting to keep talking. The rest head home so that they can get an early start.

Penþa wipes their brow.

"That was chaotic, compared to the normal harvest coordination. I feel like we're going to have quite a time of it tomorrow," they remark.

"Eeferi ­— I just realized you don't have a place to sleep. Do you sleep?" Satenag asks. "And if so, do you want to come stay with Daskal and I? Or I think Penþa has a second mattress, for anyone who ends up being displaced."

"My time between Masters may count as sleeping; I generally stay aware of myself and my surroundings otherwise.  Separately, if you want me nearby, I recommend bringing my lamp with you - though I may end up removing my conjured building if you do."

Satenag adopts a thoughtful look.

"It's not really that I want you close by or not close by," she responds. "It's that I want you to feel comfortable, and I don't know how best to do that if you don't sleep. Would you like to stay in the square overnight? You could talk with people as long as they linger here, and be first to greet the early risers. But there probably would be a period before dawn when you'd be alone — everyone else does have to sleep."

Quietly spoken, barely above a whisper..

"... I am .. willing .. to extend my trust that none will .. abscond with my lamp if I stay, safer though it may be if you keep it by your side."

Satenag rubs her face with her hands.

"I feel like we are somehow misunderstanding one another," she replies. "It's ... good to know that you feel safe enough, I suppose, but that wasn't what I asked. I asked what you want to do. As in, what would actually make you feel best. If the thing that will make you feel most comfortable is for me to take your lamp and sleep with it under my pillow, I'll do that. You don't have to do any option in particular — I only suggested things in case you didn't have any idea what your options were."

".. I would like to stay, for the night."

"However, it would be prudent if I would know how to find you, if I would need to."

She nods.

"Daskal and I live in — oh, I can't really point through the wall. Here."

She trots over to one of the doorways in Eeferi's illusory construction.

"Daskal and I live in that one, second from the beach," she says, pointing at the appropriate house.

"I'll be there all night. Please don't hesitate to wake me up if you need anything. But I should be up a little before dawn, and I'll come back here just afterwards."

"Thank you.  I hope your rests need no interruptions, then."

"I'm not expecting trouble," she agrees. "Southern Fishing Village is fairly calm."

She collects a yawning Daskal, wishes Eeferi a good night, and trickles out with the other villagers who want to be well-rested.

The remaining villagers congregate in a smaller circle to continue their discussion. Normally, they'd light a small fire, but Eeferi's illusory light is perfectly sufficient to the task.

There is warmth here.  All one need do- is share it.

For their own part, Eeferi remains available to answer questions or provide suggestions.

Sometimes, they turn their visage to the sky, and wonder.

The discussion meanders back and forth. Mostly, they try to figure out how any potential immortality power ought to operate. There's a certain amount of contention between the people who want to come up with a wording that renders death impossible, and the people who want to come up with a wording that makes it reversible.

At one point a young man with close-cropped black hair leans back and regards Eeferi for a moment.

"What do you think, Eeferi? I'm guessing that genies have the can't-die kind of immortality; does first-hand experience give you any insights?" he asks.

"I think .. one should take care to never be trapped in an inescapable situation.  An unconditional immortal could be in enough pain, whether mental, physical, or emotional, to want to be mortal again - and also be incapable of making it so.  The freedom to leave any circumstance, no matter how apparently desirable, is one many of my past Masters have foolishly squandered."

That swings things in favor of the "reversible" crowd, and the discussion shifts to what the mechanism should be like.

"... so it can't just be one person with a power, right, because they need to be able to come back."

"But having a transmissible power in the first wish didn't exactly work correctly."

"Wasn't that just because it isn't safe to turn non-prophets into genies?"

"I don't think we know that — we just know that it was safe to turn one person into a genie."

They toss around a few more ideas, including having special resurrection rocks, having a transmissible resurrection power, having people just reappear, and other ideas along those lines. One by one, people head away to bed, until it's just Eeferi and Gamesa.

Gamesa is silent for a minute, collecting his thoughts.

"What kind of place do you want to live, once you're free?" he asks. "I mean," he gestures at Eeferi's illusory building. "You could live wherever you wanted, in whatever kind of house. So where would you choose?"

"Everywhere and nowhere.  I want to explore.  I want to perceive the stars.  I want to know every name and every face and never let them go.  I don't know who I am without these bindings upon me."

".. I want to know what its like, to not desperately want what you can't get."

Eeferi lightly chuckles.  "You know .. I think a good home neither traps you within nor disappears when you're distracted."

Gamesa leans back against one of the benches.

"That makes sense," Gamesa agrees. "I can't imagine what I'd do if I had to pay constant attention to keep our house standing. Things are better when they last. Do you know, I want to go and see the Archive some day? When you're traveling around, you should stop by and see it. They say it's as big as a whole city, just filled up with books. Years and years of history, stretching back to the first farmers. Great stone buildings, out in the desert where there's no risk of water ruining them. And the Archivists are always accepting new books and filing them and transcribing old books before they are lost."

"Well, I know now.  It sounds .. like something I would enjoy seeing.  I hope you get to see it and it fulfills what you need from it."

"I wonder how it would change, if the Archivists had Wishes?  Would they want to be quick enough to never miss a book?  Would they want it to fill itself?  What of indestructible tomes, or knowledge not from this world?  What of hidden knowledge, secrets that the keepers do not want shared?  It sounds .. I seem to struggle to find the words that seem accurate to how I feel of it."

"Well, I'm not an Archivist, so I can't know for sure. But ... the way the traders and messengers tell it, their mission is that our knowledge should only grow, and not be lost," Gamesa muses. "So I bet they would love indestructible books. But that's not the whole thing, right? Because the books do nobody any good if nobody can read them, or if nobody is willing to write their secrets down."

He waves a hand vaguely.

"So there's more to it than just accumulating books. You can send the Archivists a book, along with a letter explaining how secret it is, and they'll keep it secret for as long as you ask them to in the letter, before putting it into circulation. And they don't let anyone see the secret books until the right time. It sounds counterproductive — why would a society dedicated to letting people know things keep secrets? — but if they didn't do that, and if they didn't make sure everybody knew they did that, they'd lose a lot more books in the long run."

"Following the whims of others so that your own may be followed .. experience tells me it's doomed to failure, but hope strives to believe otherwise."

Gamesa shrugs.

"They've managed so far. But ... that's part of what is beautiful about it, and why I want to see it. Without wishes, nothing lasts, save those things that we put in the effort to make last. So the Archive only remains because so many generations of people have heard the story of it and said 'yes, that is a worthy thing for us to do'."

"... I don't know what things are going to be like tomorrow," he confides after a moment. "We spend so much time just maintaining what we have ... I don't know what we're going to do next. Maybe we'll all go traveling, and the village will be abandoned."

"You could bring it with you .. if you wanted.  There isn't actually .. there isn't a rule that exploration must be alone."

Gamesa boggles for a moment.

"Oh! Pick it up and take it with us? Eeferi, that's a brilliant idea!"

He starts thinking about how that would work.

"I guess we wouldn't really be pressed for time, so we wouldn't need to keep an itinerary. We could get to everywhere that someone wanted to see, eventually. Have you seen traveling villages before? I'm imagining a sort of giant cart, but maybe we want it to fly, actually, so that things on the ground don't get squished ..."

"Usually its a city, a castle, or a boat that flies.. though I see no reason a village couldn't fly too."

"That would be cool. Imagine if everywhere did that, though — how would you find anything, when villages can all take to the sky and come down elsewhere, like flocking birds?"

He yawns.

"... I am going to be a mess by dawn. Would you be willing to mention the flying villages idea to some of the others in the morning? I don't know how many people will want to go for it, but I would hate for the idea to be lost just because I sleep through the morning."

"Perhaps the Archivists could coordinate between the various villages."

"I have no qualms doing so.  Rest well."

Gamesa nods.

"Thanks. Goodnight, Eeferi. It was nice to talk to you."