Clara awoke in the early hours of the morning. It took her a few seconds to realise why she could not feel the soft mattress beneath her. She opened her eyes and lifted her head a little, so that she could look over her sleeping master. A smile crossed her face as she remembered the events of the night before, and thought about the position she was in now. This was something of a new experience for her. Clara was by no means a virgin; she had had three 'youthful indiscretions' during her college years. But this was the first time that she had ever woken up the morning after and not regretted what had happened the previous night.
She folded her fingers on Jeff's chest and rested her head on them, watching him sleep. She layed there in that pose for over forty minutes before Jeff finally roused, although to Clara it seemed like only a few moments. Waiting, after all, came as second nature for genies. Jeff made what sounded like a habitual morning groan as he began to stir. He blinked weakly a couple of times before noticing Clara, then his eyes were wide open.
"You've recuperated already? I must be getting rusty," Clara joked in a quiet voice.
"Well I wasn't going to tell you, but I
did
have to get up in the middle of the night and get a heating pad for my back, and my right leg's kinda numb," Jeff said with a straight face. Clara smiled and leaned forward to kiss him. Then she layed her head back down on Jeff's shoulders and he wrapped his arms around her.
"Can I use my third wish to set you free?" Jeff asked, staring up at the ceiling once again. Clara lifted her head again and looked Jeff straight in the eye.
"Would you do that?" she asked in a surprised tone.
"Well... Yeah," Jeff replied. At first Clara was delighted by this response, but then a sense of disappointment descended on her. Jeff
had
to give that answer, regardless of whether or not he meant it. Only a total asshole would've said no to a question like that.
"That's... very sweet of you," Clara said, trying to sound flattered. "But to answer your question: no, you can't wish me free," she said as she layed down once more. "Tukanni made it a condition of the imprisonment spell that the lamp's prisoner can't be wished out of their enslavement..."
"Wow," Jeff responded, once again wrapping his arms around Clara. "She really wanted to make sure her sister would never be freed, didn't she?"
"That's right," Clara agreed.
"Bitch!" Jeff said with an odd level of bitterness, considering that he was on the master side of the spell.
"That's the understatement of the millennium... or, rather, the last nine of them," Clara remarked. "The lamp was never designed to be an object of power. It's only intended purpose was to be a torture chamber for her big sister."
"You sound very sure of that," Jeff commented.
"I
am
sure of it. Tukanni could've just murdered Zhiasa, she certainly had the ingenuity to get away with it. The throne would've automatically passed to her. No, Tukanni wanted to make sure Zhiasa suffered. The evidence is all there; the taunting message in the lamp, the mural on the ceiling, which I'm sure shows Zhiasa bowing down to her sister... and the costume! Imagine how degrading it must've felt for a crown princess to all of a sudden find herself dressed in the clothes of a concubine; clothes that basically say to any male around, 'My body is yours, do whatever you want to me'," Clara pointed out.
Jeff remained oddly silent for a few seconds and when Clara looked up at him, there was a guilty expression on his face. She wondered if her little rant had made him worry about whether he had taken advantage of her last night.
"Oh, don't be like that!" she grumbled. "I enjoyed it very much," Clara said with a smile, which Jeff seemed to take solace in. "As a matter of fact, I haven't had that much fun in..." Clara paused as she recalled how unfulfilling all of her previous sexual encounters had been. "Actually, last night was, without a doubt, the most incredible sexual experience I have ever had!" she declared, immediately wincing afterwards. She hadn't intended to be so forward, but she had been caught off-guard by the truth clause of the enslavement spell.
"Really?" Jeff asked sceptically, as Clara's adamant tone had made it sound like she was over-selling the experience.
"Would I lie to you?" Clara asked sheepishly, as she raised her head slightly to look Jeff in the eye.
"No, I guess not," Jeff chuckled, realising now why she'd responded the way she did. Clara laid her head back down on his shoulder. Jeff began to slowly rub one hand up and down her bare back as he held her. It wasn't long before she felt completely at ease again.
"She made the lamp indestructible, as well..." Jeff said, sounding deep in thought.
"What?" Clara asked.
"Tukanni. She made it so that the lamp could never be destroyed," Jeff responded.
"Yes. She was determined to ensure that Zhiasa would spend eternity being enslaved. I expect the only reason Tukanni gave her amulet the power to release the lamp's prisoner was as a safeguard, in case she accidentally trapped herself in there," Clara theorised.
"Clara, do you think that Zhiasa was a sympathetic person? Towards the end of her imprisonment, I mean?" Jeff asked.
"Well, I wouldn't think she'd have much sympathy for Tukanni," Clara quipped flatly. "But in general, I would say she seemed like a very kind and thoughtful woman all through her life. Mind you, it's a biased view; I only know her through her own journal."
"So that's a yes?" Jeff remarked. A few seconds later, he broke out into an almost disturbing chuckle. Finding the sensation of Jeff's chest bouncing up and down beneath her somewhat distracting, Clara sat up. She could not help but notice the big silly grin on Jeff's face.
"What's so funny?" she asked him.
"We are so blind," he replied in an amused tone. Clara silently asked him what was going on in his mind with a perplexed expression. "Pretend for a moment that you're Zhiasa," Jeff began, the sense of rationality rapidly returning to his voice. "You've just found your sister's tomb, gone in and gotten the amulet. Now the first thing you'd probably do is take it back inside the lamp, place it in that little niche in the wall, and, in theory, free yourself..."
"Right..." Clara said in agreement.
"Okay, so now you're back in the real world as a free woman. You'll probably run over to hubby and give him a big hug, make a lengthy speech about how great it is to be free, and advise all the children in the room to stay in school and out of lamps..." Jeff said, prompting a smile from Clara. "But now what do you do?" Clara thought about the question for a second before Jeff continued. "Here you are with the most inhumane prison ever created in your hands, a prison that you've learned can not be destroyed. And now that you're free, there's nothing to stop it taking another victim. You've just escaped from an eight-thousand-year sentence in there yourself, you wouldn't want anybody to have to go through the endless nightmare that you went through. But like I said, the lamp is indestructible, and if you have any foresight, then you know that eventually somebody will find it and rub it, no matter how well you hide it. Then, perhaps after having a good think about what to do next, you remember that your entire life as a genie, including your search for the amulet, is chronicled in that little journal you left back in the lamp. And provided that you don't take the amulet with you when you leave the tomb, you'll have left the next resident of the lamp directions to their own freedom..."
"Oh my god..." Clara exclaimed in amazement.
"That's where it is, Clara, where it always has been! On the peak where two suns join as one!" Jeff passionately declared. Clara looked down into his eyes with an excited smile. She could almost see the feeling of accomplishment in him that he'd talked about the night before.