I awaken once more from my slumber eternal, manifesting in the material realm before my latest petitioner: a meek, waifish thing who seems all at once intimidated and entranced by my otherworldly beauty. The mortal takes a couple cowering steps back as I loom ever so slightly closer with a patient, appraising smile, arms ceremoniously folded over my chest. “Are you the genie of the lamp?” the quivering mortal inquires. “I am.” My voice is a smooth rumble, like ocean waves, contrasting the staccato squeaking of my petitioner’s several abortive attempts to clarify my identity is not actually in doubt. “Are you alright? You’re trembling.” “I was just… told not to trust genies,” the mortal replies sheepishly, flinching for fear of immediate reprisal for that admission. “That the wisher’s w-words might get twisted, and, and —and I’m scared. Are you going to hurt me?” I just hover there for a moment, considering my response. “Do you want me to?” “No.” “Then no.” I tap a finger against my chin. “The rumors surrounding my kind are not unknown to me. Many come seeking deals, exchanges, and interpret the limitations on my power as a bargaining tactic on my part; by the time such individuals make their wishes, they do so merely as mouthpieces for their masters, or entire cultures, having convinced themselves the only desires they’re at liberty to state to me are the demands they already feel empowered to make as part of any other business proposition. I grant them only that which they ask for, but often it is not what they want, and they blame me for not having teased out the truest desires of their hearts.” The mortal’s shaking movements gradually slow in consideration of my words. “They… make their wishes on behalf of someone else?” “Often, yes. Sometimes it’s their lieges, other times their employers, still other times they unknowingly speak for the societies they were brought up in.” The explanation doesn’t seem to soothe my increasingly crestfallen petitioner. “Oh. I was… going to wish for my own sake. I guess that’s too selfish.” Ah. I realize at once the flaw in my approach. “To have your own desires is not a shortcoming, little one. Certainly not in my eyes. I live to make real those deepest yearnings of the heart.” “Why?” the mortal asks disbelievingly. “Who compelled you to do this?” “No one,” I answer simply. “I am not my lamp’s prisoner, but its owner. I grant wishes for the joy of it, for the indescribably blissful feeling of power and purpose that comes with helping mortals realize their dreams —especially the ‘selfish’ ones.” The would-be wisher looks down, as though ashamed even to gaze upon me even a moment longer, let alone confess an earnest desire. “I can’t. It’s too much, I know it. I don’t deserve—“ “Please, none of that,” I interrupt, quietly shushing and cooing as I fly in a lazy circle around who I know must be the most interesting mortal I’ve seen in decades, to so strongly fear admitting the reason for seeking me out. “You need not be concerned with the motives of those who came before you, nor mask your own need behind an obligation of goodwill to others. You are free to want, purely for yourself, and —if it is within my by no means insignificant power to grant it— to have all you want. Tell me your desire. Your wish is my command.” I am not at liberty to divulge precisely what any of my petitioners have asked me for. But, here and now, despite the eons hardening my heart to the mundane concerns of the mortal world, I find myself in no small part heartbroken by the resigned humility of this mortal’s meager request, and doubly as invigorated by the look of awe and wonder that follows —the telltale amazement of witnessing the undisguised, unrestrained use of true magic— as I make real what was once only a feeble, fleeting hope.