Too Many Wishes - Margaret's Wishes

Note: I had not intended to make a sequel to "Too Many Wishes" but one of my favorite people on the MC Forum, Merry Brooks, liked it. So, I asked her what her wishes would be and this is the result. I don't really know much about her so pretty much every actual personal detail is made up. Also, this is intended to be a freestanding story, not a sequel so you don't have to read the other one (but I would really appreciate it if you did.)

Note 2. Because this is dedicated to Merry, there is not much (whispering) sex (/whispering) in it.

*****

Abazeel woke in another dive of a motel. He rated this one three trash cans out of a possible five- the linens were almost worn through but reasonably clean, he did not stick to the bathroom floor, and was not terrified to touching his bare foot to the carpet. He was also grateful that the typical nighttime caterwauling so typical of these fine establishments was kept to a minimum last night.

He enjoyed is complimentary cheap coffee brewed in the barely functional coffee maker in the bathroom (and wondered for the millionth time why they keep putting them there? Who in the twelve hells thinks this is a good idea?) He took out the box of index cards and looked at the next one on the list. Margaret Rivers, residing in the suburbs of a medium-sized city in a northern state. He looked out the windows at the blustering snow hitting him several states to the south and became a bit worried if his junker of a car would make it.

Of course it would. The powers that be that condemned him to this hellish existence always made sure he could fulfill the duties of his curse, even if there was not a single shred of comfort or happiness in it. Oh well, once he got this one done there were several inches worth of index cards left. Sigh.

Abazeel was not a great genie. His cousin was a mighty djinn and regularly served royalty. His niece was famous for her role on an old TV show. He had to chuckle at the sheer balls it took for her to play a human playing a genie, and to commit to the role so much that she even had her human character age and pass. She was still drinking for free on that story wherever genies gathered. Abazeel sighed. He really didn't know where they gathered any more- it had been decades since he was allowed enough slack in his curse to socialize like that.

It all went back to a day that he was enjoying the warm Mediterranean sun and a fine locally made wine. The young man he was granting wishes to had asked for time to think about it and was scheduled to meet him here any minute. When the young mortal finally appeared, he was carrying a large satchel.

Once the small talk was over, the young man made his first wish. "I wish that no harm or revenge would befall me, my family and friends, or my offspring as a result of these wishes." An unusually wise wish, but not unheard of. Abazeel granted it with a small roll of thunder. "For my second wish, I wish that once these wishes were granted, you and your kind would leave me completely alone except as outlined in the third wish." Abazeel sighed. The foolish mortal could have combined the two wishes and saved himself a wish but it was not his job to worry about such things. He studied the excellent colors of the fine vintage as he made the sound effects once again.

"For my third wish, I wish that you would grant the wish outlined here." At this, the young man plopped a thick tome on the table. Abazeel glanced at it and began to flip pages. He broke out in sweat as he began to realize that each of the several hundred pages was covered in a very small but very precise handwriting. He got more nervous as he realized that the whole thing was written and punctuated as a single thought- a very, very long and complicated single thought.

The sky over Abazeel darkened and rumbled as he read more and more of the massive document. Granting wishes to all his offspring for nearly all time? Surrendering control of the details of the wishes to other people to sidestep Article 83, section 12A of the genie contract? (Abazeel now deeply, deeply regretted providing a copy of that for him without making him wish for it. He was going to hear about that lapse, but he had truly just been trying to be helpful.)

He had woven wishes for himself in as well- a reasonable fortune, success in business and with people, health and a long life, good luck in most things... Nowhere in the intricately woven document did he wish for anything that would invalidate it- no deaths, no thrones, nothing eternal or overly large, nothing that would reveal the existence of magic or genies. Where he might have revealed the presence genies or magic, he granted the genie the ability to change memories to cover- a loophole the genie high council had discussed many times but not gotten around to correcting.

By now Abazeel's head was pounding, and not from the wine. The dark sky was rumbling and winds were tearing at his clothing- while the youth on the other chair was untouched. Abazeel knew he was in deep trouble. With an agonized look towards the heavens, he granted the wishes and immediately vanished at the bidding of the council.

By the time he was back on Earth, he had been stripped of much of his power, and what was left was tightly monitored. He had been granted enough resources to fulfill his commitment to the man's wish when he was allowed to travel on Earth, and spent the remainder of his time serving the council in ways and in places that he really preferred not to think about.

All of this was long past as Abazeel tried to keep his 'rent a wreck' junker on the road in the developing storm. He was still a couple hundred miles from the new wisher's address and tried to keep from reflecting too much on the past. He had tried to hold onto the hope of redemption, but between the sorts of idiotic wishes most of the man's offspring kept making and the long-held anger of the council, that looked like less and less of an option as time drudged on.

He rolled up to an apartment complex in a suburb of the snow-engulfed city and went to the indicated apartment. The door was answered by a tall, somewhat heavy woman with a British accent. "Ms. Margaret Rivers?" Abazeel asked. When she nodded yes and corrected him that it was 'Miss', not 'Ms.', he cast a quick geas on her to trust him and to let him in.

The apartment was warm and tidy and Abazeel gladly sunk into a welcoming couch as she returned to her rocker. Miss Rivers was nearly six feet tall, appeared to be a 'comfortable' mid-fifties, and had had a vaguely aristocratic look in her somewhat plump features- which was just reinforced by her accent and her offer of some tea and cookies, which Abazeel gratefully accepted.

"I do not wish to take up much of your time, Miss Rivers, but I am here to grant you seven wishes." Abazeel said after setting his tea aside and seeing how uncomfortable she was with him in the small room.

"Oh... dear." She replied, obviously startled. Thankfully, the mild geas allowed her to believe that this was real and that he could indeed grant wishes, otherwise it would have taken forever to get to this point. "I... I don't know what on Earth I could possibly wish for."

The reply warmed Abazeel's heart. He knew a lot about Miss Rivers, thanks to his index cards and native powers. She had many, many secret wishes and nearly as many regrets. Well, not so much 'regrets' as occasional twinges over old dreams and missed opportunities. "I'm sure you have at least one desire, something you have wanted for a very long time?" He said warmly, giving her just the slightest nudge mentally.

"Could you really do that? Could you... no, I wish I looked like Jean Harlow" She said gathering up a measure of courage, then immediately breaking into a look of great longing.

Abazeel sighed. "I cannot grant that specific of a wish." He went on to explain how seven of her friends will be the ones that get to decide what each wish means and how it will be granted. Naturally, that lead into several other discussions- how her friends are chosen, what sorts of things she could wish for or not wish for, and so on. Abazeel sometimes wished he could make a 'Guide to Your Seven Wishes' booklet or something to get himself through these times.

He patiently explained that the fates would decide which friends got to define or mold each wish, that she could not wish for things that were too big or eternal- no unlimited wealth or ultimate power sorts of things. No wishing people dead or wishing to enslave another, and that making someone fall in love and the like was a form of slavery. It went on long enough for another pot of tea to be made and drunk.

"OK, I think I get the gist. So, I make the wishes and once you get the other person to tell you how to do it, you will make it so and things will change to match the new reality, correct?" Abazeel nodded and Miss Rivers took a deep breath. "Wish one, to be a natural blonde. Wish two, to be younger. Wish three, to have a smaller waist. Wish four, to be more self confident. Wish five, to be shorter. Wish six, to have a nice home. Wish seven... to enjoy a measure of fame. Oh, dear, I probably should have worked on the order of these better, shouldn't I have? And I seem to have completely forgotten anything about actually looking like her. Bloody hell- oh, do excuse me!" Abazeel assured her that things would work out and took his leave. As he was shaking her hand, she grasped his. "Please, Mr. Abazeel. Try to help the others understand that I really want to be like Jean Harlow." He promised her he would do what he could even as he knew how little leeway he was allowed.

The fleabag hotel he was booked in for the night was a step up- only two trash cans worth, and he settled in to determining how to reach the people on the list. Start with the ones nearby, or with those out of town? Usually he worked away from the wisher to get as far away from the the too-often unsatisfied client as he could, but he rather liked Miss Rivers and decided to work from furthest to nearest so he could meet her and see the results. He checked his balance to see if he could possibly fly or bus to the first person on the list, but of course, he couldn't and damned the council again.

It took days, and by the time he reached the retirement homes in mid-Florida, he was already pretty sick of the heat and humidity. But, the good news is that he was at the home of one Mrs. Abigail Penworth, long time neighbor to Margaret Rivers and granter of the first wish. The elderly woman opened the door and was hit with a version of the geas that would help bypass all the need for lengthy explanations.

We sipped more tea (this time, a cheap tea bag in contrast to Miss Brooke's much better loose-leaf blend), and the rather scatter-minded Mrs. Penworth had babbled on quite a bit. Abazeel was glad she got a rather simple wish. "As I mentioned, your job is simply to help us decide what Miss Rivers means by 'naturally blonde', and how it came about."

"Well, that does not help much, now does it young man? What shade of blonde? Do I have to decide how long or thick her hair is? It is just so confusing!"

"Would it help to have an image to work with?" Abazeel asked. When the nodded wearily, Abazeel used his cheap phone to pull up a picture of Jean Harlow in her youth. "I believe she had something like this in mind," he offered, glad he could flex the rigid rules this much at least.

"Oh, now she is adorable! She looks familiar. Is that Margaret when she was younger? Oh, of course it isn't, that's that actress. I cannot seem to think of her name. Well, I wish Margaret had hair just like that if that is what she wants." Abazeel prodded her a bit more, asking how she got that sort of hair. "Well from her parents, of course!' Mrs. Penworth snapped. "Of all the foolish things..." and she faded off into mumbling as Abazeel slipped away.

Margaret was working as a shift supervisor in a call center that handled a variety of accounts, mostly dealing with billing issues, when she felt something... like the bun of her greying black hair suddenly... exploded? She finished up the current call and got coverage to use the restroom. She looked at her hair amazed at what she saw. It was thick, shoulder length, and had a natural wave to it, and was almost pure white. She tugged on it and it felt thick and strong. She carefully examined the roots and they appeared blonde all the way down. Even her eyebrows were lighter- a soft brown color instead of the darker shade they were- it seemed that her complexion paled a bit overall as well.

Yes, the hair was still shot through with stiffer grey hairs, at about the same rate her dark hair had been, but this was glorious! It looked so much better than when she would try to dye or bleach it when she was younger. She peered at it again... it was! It was just like Jean Harlow's! She blessed Abazeel in her heart and went back to work with a smile on her face and in her voice.

As she worked, she noticed that her memories of her parents was... a bit wobbly somehow. Wasn't her da dark Irish? For some reason, she kept thinking that he had more Scandinavian blood in him, like her Swedish ma. Swedish? Scottish, wasn't it? That was silly, she was clearly of Swedish descent with that hair and slender body. She was just living in Scotland when her pa met her. She shook her head to clear the confusion and went back to work.

Abazeel watched carefully as the universe corrected itself- there was always a risk of some unforeseen element creeping in when you retroactively changed things like this. The Law of Unintended Consequences was the genie version of Murphy's Law and they kept a tight watch out for it. Margaret was apparently unaware that her taste for tea now included milk, or that she had lost a little weight- her new Scandinavian heritage granted her a slightly smaller frame than the previous Northern Britain version did. Overall, the ripples settled down satisfactorily.

The next stop was near Atlanta, and it took some work to find the right place. Her next friend was a cousin that tended to move a lot and Margaret had only Facebooked with the last few years. Abazeel found her living with some other friends in a small home in the outskirts of an outskirt suburb. He cast a geas on everyone in the house and invited himself into the party.

Gina Davidson was a party girl when she was younger, and still tried to live the rock and roll lifestyle as a bit of a burn-out. Abazeel tried to get her to focus on the issue at hand, but neither his geas nor his limited powers were enough to cut through her buzz.

"Younger?" The pushing-forty woman giggled. "That is pretty cool. You can really do that? Can you do it for me, too?" Abazeel told her that he was on a mission and could not do anything for Gina at this time, but if she was on the list, he would be back and help her out. "Damn. That sucks. If it's up to me, I would wish her to be... twenty-two, point two two two two two two..." She drifted off, singing 'two' over and over to herself. Abazeel figured she had used the last of her available brain cells and gladly exited the place, brushing himself off as he did so.

Margaret was nearing the end of her shift when the world spun for a moment. "That was weird." She commented to her co-worker as she cleared her station. "Oh well, good night!"

When she got to her locker, she reached in to pull out her well-worn but warm parka and was confused at the cute jacket she found instead. "What?" She looked around, making sure it was her locker and noticed herself in the mirror. For some reason, seeing the face of a tall young blonde in the mirror confused her, but she wasn't sure why. After all, she just turned twenty-two a few months ago. She fluffed her thick locks, her pride and joy, as she gathered her cute jacket and adorable purse and headed out into the winter. She felt another wave of confusion when she didn't see her old SUV before she noticed that she had parked her used little sporty sedan right over there.

On the ride home, she thought about stopping over at her parent's place for a while, feeling an odd sense as some ghost of a memory tried to tell her that they had both passed years ago. She shook off the thought and turned on a pop station, bopping along to the beat.

Arriving home was the last straw. it was her old apartment but it was decorated wrong. Where were the things she had collected over her travels, over what travels? She had not gone anywhere but Minneapolis and Milwaukee- well, and a school trip to DC. Her parents were young, blonde, healthy, dark haired and dead. She went to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of white wine, suddenly missing her tea kettle that always used to sit right over there.

With a shaking hand she called Abazeel. "What's happening? I'm so confused!" She started to cry.

"It was just a big change, Miss Rivers. It will be fine, I promise you. It's probably still a bit early there isn't it? Why don't you take a short nap? It'll help." Margaret sniffled and blew her nose, then finished the wine and took him up on his suggestion.

She woke an hour later feeling much better. She had the weirdest dreams of being an old woman, of moving to America as a young adult... at the age of five, of having worked at the call center she just started at for decades, and, sadly, of her parents having died long ago. Then, she remembered the genie and that they weren't just dreams, but that was OK somehow. When she was fully awake, she called her mom and they talked for an hour. The rest of the evening was much better for young Maggie and she went to bed happy.

The next day was her day off. Being one of the newest hires at the center, she got a pretty crappy schedule- her days off were Monday and Thursday, and she worked a bewildering mix of shifts, some back to backs, some splits, and more. It sucked, but she remembered from experience that people quickly got used to it and that she would start to earn better shifts soon. She fed her fish (wondering briefly when she got fish), did some laundry (thinking how odd it was that things she had never seen before would have been worn and dirty), and so on. The odd memory twinges tended to excite her as she compared new to old lives and she laughed aloud as the idea that her whole future was open to her again, and she still had five wishes coming up.

Karen was a friend from the new reality. She and Maggie had graduated high school together before her dad got transferred to Atlanta. She was wondering why she had let this rather shabbily dressed stranger into her parent's house, and she was wondering why that did not bother her more.

"A thinner waist, huh? That sort of makes sense, I guess. They used to call her 'Large marge', but even that was mostly because of her height, not her waist. It seems odd that she didn't wish for something like some confidence in herself, or maybe a hot boyfriend, or a killer body... or is that part of another wish?" She looked up inquisitively. Abazeel reminded her that he could not tell her too much about the other wishes. "OK, so, like maybe she is just thinner overall? She's really tall, so maybe like she should be more like her mom. She's not super-skinny, but she is pretty slender."

"So, she should have the same waist size as her mom?" Me made some notes.

"Well, yeah, and just overall be more shaped like her. Could you do that?" Abazeel checked his notes. In this reality, her mom was a tall, slender woman with about a 24" waist. Overall, she was 36-24-36, and Margaret right now was much thicker than that all over. He thought about the goal of looking more like Harlow and how the younger and shorter wishes might work into this. It would take some fiddling, but... He took his leave and hit the road again for a longish trip.