Negotiating Forms Be Careful What You Wish For chapter 6 by deleted_user

The attic dust, which had once smelled of neglect, now carried the intoxicating scent of my own skin—cinnamon and ozone. I couldn't stop moving, a slow, sensual exploration of my own limbs. My fingers traced the line of my collarbone, the sensation so sharp it was almost a taste.

“Would you cease that incessant groping?” Zara snapped from my old body. She was sitting on a trunk, my shoulders hunched in a posture of profound misery I recognized all too well. “It is undignified.”

“Dignity was a luxury of the old and dying,” I replied, my voice a melody I was still learning to play. I let my hands slide down, palming the full, heavy curve of my hips. “This is about discovery. For instance, I just discovered that the spot right here,” I pressed a thumb into the soft skin just inside my hip bone, “makes my entire leg feel like warm electricity.”

She looked away, a muscle in my old jaw twitching. “You are a squatter in a sacred palace, marveling at the plumbing.”

“And you are the evicted queen, shivering in a toolshed.” I finally stopped moving and faced her. “You said you couldn't reverse the wish. But you can grant others. I have two wishes left. So, let's negotiate. What can you offer me that is worth giving this back?” I gestured to the entirety of my new form.

Her eyes, my tired old eyes, met mine. A flicker of her ancient cunning returned. “I can grant you a body of your own. Not this one. A new one. A male body, young and vital, crafted to your exact desires. You could have everything you originally wanted.”

I laughed, the sound rich and foreign. “And spend the rest of my life knowing I had this and gave it away? No. The offer is insufficient.” I drifted closer, the floorboards a memory beneath me. “You need a better wish. Something I can’t get by just staying right here.”

Her gaze dropped to my hands, which had found their way back to the swell of my breasts. She saw the naked delight on my new face, the complete captivation with her stolen form. A desperate calculation was happening behind my old eyes.

“Fine,” she said, the word a bitter surrender. “A partnership.”

I raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Explain.”

“You give me back my body. I do not return you to your own. Instead, I use my second wish to create a new, permanent, mortal body for you. One of equal… appeal. And you remain here, with me. As my consort.”

The proposal hung in the air. It was a staggering compromise. She would get her divinity back. I would get to keep a version of this breathtaking physicality forever, and more—I would have her. Not as a master, but as an equal. The intimacy of the offer was as shocking as the theft itself.

I looked at my old body, seeing the genuine, desperate hope in its eyes. She was offering me a shared eternity.

What is your answer?