***Author's Note***
This story is a companion piece to my earlier story "Wish Granted" and any stories in the "Wish Granted" series.
You don't have to read those to understand this story. They are all meant to make sense individually, as well as together.
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Aurélie prowled the massive garden that held flowers on its trees and its perfectly-trimmed bushes.
The night was a deep shade of indigo, illuminated by the crescent moon, and the cool air relieved her beige skin from its many hours beneath the sun, as her dark, fluffy curls cascaded down her neck.
It could have been calming. Romantic, even.
It wasn't.
Yet she must have been close. She had to be. She knew the legends. She'd discovered objects that defied logic, places that emerged overnight, the little things that wouldn't have meant anything, and meant everything for precisely that reason. The things humans were never supposed to notice.
But where was it?
She gently brushed through the plants around her, searching for something. Something that shouldn't be where it was. Something that should be there, but wasn't. Anything too wrong. Anything too right.
"Check the anemones." A woman's voice emerged behind her.
Aurélie was still. She breathed deep and quietly through her nose, and slowly turned to face the unknown voice.
And there upon a polished marble surface rested a woman, skin almond, eyes darker than even Aurélie's, and straight, black hair, that flowed to her thighs.
She wore a pearlish robe, which managed to be a little transparent, showing the curves beneath.
Aurélie said nothing, transfixed upon the woman.
The woman spoke again. "The anemones."
Aurélie tore her gaze from the unknown woman, and looked to the anemones.
She walked to them, and for a moment, nothing. Nothing until the smallest glow appeared.
She carefully reached her hand toward the glow, and palmed some sort of stone. She brought it up to her, and it still glowed softly, nearly the same shade as the anemones it had rested in moments before.
Aurélie looked at the unknown woman. "What... is this?"
The woman gave a sly smile. "A present you'll give to the one you're seeking. Now, come along. We'll have to take the long way."
"The long way-"
The almond woman dove into one of the garden's ponds, proving it much deeper than it looked as she disappeared completely.
Aurélie hesitated, but only for a moment. She wanted to see it at least once. To take in its surely hypnotic air. She wanted that more than anything else in her twenty-four years of life.
She took a deep breath and leaped into the pond.
The violent impact was not what she imagined. Her every inch was filled with an immeasurable pain. The waters were not waters at all. The pond was no pond. Or, at least, it wasn't like any pond she'd ever known.
It wasn't even like any place she'd ever known. It was more like an incomprehensible concept of a place, like smudged words on an ancient writing, but somehow... alive. Hungry.
Her body jetted further and further down whatever it was, finally discarding her upon what felt like cotton and silk and air simultaneously.
The intense pain before vanished completely.
"Oh, Devil's cock! I thought you were dead!" the woman from earlier looked at Aurélie, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, "Thank the rivers! Why were you gone so long?!"
"What? I- I haven't been."
