Omnipotent #OnceUponNow #JustWriteIt

A Beautiful Sunset

Aladdin woke to the sound of knocking on his front door. There could only be one who would wake him at this hour. Hopefully, Mavok hadn't accidentally caused another volcano to erupt, like in Pompeii. He was so brilliant, but sometimes his experiments were a bit... careless.

Lying in his bed, Aladdin took a moment to listen to the melodies that had surrounded him ever since he'd become a Djinn, or genie, as the modern world had recently started saying. Even after two millennia, the melodies never got tiring. No one else could hear them. Other djinn did it differently, but for Aladdin, the melodies were how he listened to the magic that permeated everything.

As he lay in bed, he checked his hunch. Sure enough, he could sense the particular wild melodies that came from Mavok. After sitting up and checking the time, he imagined himself next to the door, freshly showered and fully dressed. Carefully keeping the image in his mind, he listened to the melodies, picking out the particular strands of music that came from him and his clothes. He focused, then changed them. All of a sudden, he was at the door.

~ (0) ~

Thomas focused on the house several dozen yards in front of him. Yellow, with a small front porch, a two car garage, and what he'd heard described as a "Neo-Colonial style", it was as close of a copy to the house he'd grown up in as he could make. Despite the many flaws, from many omitted details to a couple entire walls missing, it would have been much worse if he'd tried to create a building he wasn't so familiar with.

He turned his attention from the building and onto the pulsing rhythms that had filled his head ever since he'd found the strange ring a few months ago and put it on. Searching in the direction of the house, he located the rhythms that somehow seemed to pulse from the building as a whole, despite him noticing smaller rhythms coming from the individual components.

He visualized what he wanted, taking care to pay attention to all the details, then quickened the tempo of the selected rhythm.

The house exploded.

It was consumed in an enormous fireball that filled the air with flames. He flinched as the blast reached him, shaking the ground and heating his skin. Fortunately, he was wearing earplugs, otherwise, he may not have been able to hear any more.

"OOOoooh YEAH!!!" his best friend, Timothy, exclaimed beside him. Tall, lanky, with sandy blonde hair, and an enthusiastic demeanor, Timothy had always been one for blowing things up. "How'd you do it? I can't even imagine what it would take to make something blow up like that."

Thomas smiled. To Timothy, it didn't matter so much that the real test was to see if Thomas could actually create the house and what the house would be like. All that mattered was that out here in the middle of Idaho, Thomas got to blow stuff up on a regular basis.

"I cheated," Thomas replied. "I didn't actually make the house blow up, specifically. Instead, I filled the kitchen with hydrogen and turned on the stove. Pretty great show, though."

He felt a slight twinge of guilt. He hadn't planned on blowing up the house, even if it wouldn't hurt anyone. Even after several months of practice, it still bothered him that he had the power to do something like that. What if he did it on accident?

Putting the thought aside, they continued to stare at the burning inferno for a few minutes. As it died down, smoke continued to billow from various pieces of wreckage as the fire burned them away. Fortunately, the boys had picked a barren bit of earth to run their little experiment, otherwise, the whole plain would have caught on fire. Thomas began to focus on the rubble, planning on changing it into lead to stop the fires, but hesitated. He'd already blown up the house, even if he hadn't planned to. Might as well end with a grand finale.

He concentrated on the rhythmic pulses coming from the various chunks of burnt wood and stone. Somehow he knew exactly what to do, even though he wasn't sure how. He slowed the pulses, changing them somehow, and turned the rubble into gold.

The sight still filled him with awe as he looked over the large area completely covered in the precious metal. As flames died away, no longer having anything to consume, the light of the setting sun created a spectacular glitter of a thousand bits of golden rubble. In the past, only the kings of ancient times could claim to have seen such a sight. And now Thomas could create it in a blink of an eye.

Thomas walked over and knelt down, picking up a piece of gold that looked like it had once been a shard of glass before being transformed. Even after several months of doing this, he still couldn't fully believe how easy it was to create this much gold. Again there was the disturbed feeling in his stomach. He could do as much damage with this money as he could with the explosion if he used it wrongly. He pushed the reaction down and got to work finding a small piece of rubble that he and Timothy could use to fund their next month or so of college. It hadn't taken long after the accidental discovery of this power for him to quit his job and start using the gold to pay for anything he might need. It had taken a lot of research to figure out how to sell it without raising suspicion, but it was worth it.

Putting the piece in his hand down, he reached down and grabbed a bottle cap sized piece of gold. Looking closer, he realized that it was, in fact, a bottle cap, probably from the collection he used to keep on top of his doorframe. He'd thrown the collection away years before, but it appeared that he'd subconsciously added it back as he tried to remember the details of the house well enough to make it appear. He shook his head at himself, amused that he could have forgotten entire walls of his childhood home, yet remember a collection that was not even there anymore.

He put the cap in his pocket, thinking it'd be a fun souvenir, and continued looking for a piece of golden rubble that would work for his needs. It couldn't be too large, like the glass, or too recognizable as something else, like the bottle cap. Otherwise, there'd be trouble. A rock would probably have worked best, but it was fun to sort through the golden rubble instead.

He finally found a small chunk of what used to be the front steps and walked back over to the truck, which Timothy had been getting ready for the hour-long ride back home to their dorm room on campus. The money they made from this piece of gold would not just let them survive another month, but would also let them do pretty much whatever else they wanted. No more ramen 4 days a week; no more boring Friday nights; no more stress of work. They didn't want to get caught, but, so long as they didn't start buying cars and the like, they were secluded enough that no one would notice their sudden change in lifestyle.

He hopped into the passenger seat of the truck, a red Chevy that Timothy's wealthy grandfather had gotten him as a graduation gift. It had been used for a year before he'd got it, but, as his grandfather said, buying used cars instead of new cars was the difference between the wealthy and the broke. Regardless, it was Timothy's pride and joy, and he probably would have kept it even if they hadn't decided to avoid buying big things.

As Thomas got into the passenger seat, he concentrated behind himself to see if he could feel the unique pulses that came from things made of pure gold. It was harder not looking at the object of his attention, but, straining, he felt the rhythm of the rubble, quickened the pulse, and, as they drove away, changed it. The piles of gold puffed into a clear smoke and faded away with the wind as they drove away.