This story is intended to be wholesome and for most viewers. However…
*This story has transgender characters in it.
*This story has vague references to fictional abuse and mortality.
*This story has some mild profane language.

The Golden Edict: 6 Months Later (Part 1)

The “Unicorn Shake.” It was this brightly colored, fun-looking concoction of pastel pink, blue, and white. Did the server know Ariel was trans? It was set up just like the pride flag…

Nah, no one can probably tell, Ariel thought to herself.

It looked delectable. Ariel took a sip… And her face wrinkled.

Good lord, this is just pure sugar, she silently groaned.

She looked around. No one appeared to be looking in her direction. She twirled her finger around over the drink, which then began to shift to a darker blue. Condensation formed as the drink chilled from a lightly iced drink to a frozen beverage.

Being a genie had its perks. In this case, turning a horrible drink into one she was fond of, a blue raspberry frozen drink. She slurped the magically modified concoction down and slowly sank into her chair, swooning over the flavor. Crisis adverted.

You see, a genie is a spiritual being. Nutrition for Ariel was different now. It wasn’t about what was “healthy,” but rather what tasted good to her. Anything that lifted her spirits was good for her, anything she didn’t like was bad for her, disrupting her magic. Not that anything bad for her could kill her, as she was truly immortal now, but still, the pain and the messed-up magic wasn’t worth it. She used her magic frequently, to help those around her in subtle ways.

A man a few years older than Ariel noticed her display of magic and got up from his own table. He walked over to her… “Excuse me, mam?”

“Hmm?” she asked, muffled, still sipping her drink.

“Did I just see you change that drink just now?”

Ariel sucked up the rest of the drink in a gasp. “I-er-“

“Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. Agent Terrance, FBI,” he introduced himself. “Are you a witch or a genie?”

“Uh, genie,” she answered quietly, blushing.

Terrance sat down at her table. “You’re not the first free genie I’ve met, nor will you be the last. You seem kind of new, though…”

“I am… Been one for six months.”

“Is that so? You might not be registered in the Free Genie Global Database.”

“The what? That’s a thing?”

“It’s mostly for governments, so they don’t accidentally piss one off. Free genies are plenty powerful, and they aren’t always prone to being rational if they’re angered. So, we make sure everyone knows who they are, just so we don’t lose a country or a continent… If only Eris were here…”

“You know Eris?”

“I could ask you the same thing. She’s a regular contact of mine in the world of genies. I was supposed to meet her here today…”

“She’s my mentor. She’s the one who gave me the Golden Edict that gave me my powers.”

“Wait, an Edict?! You’re an Angelic Genie! I’ve only heard of them, never met one!”

“Well, then… You’ve finally met one!” Ariel replied, smiling.

The server came up to them. “Can I get you two anything?” she asked in a familiar voice.

“Wait, Eris?! What are you doing as a server here?!” Ariel exclaimed. “You told me to meet you here a couple of weeks ago.”

“I did. I just saw an opportunity, and I took it… Their usual girl called in sick, so I offered to fill in when I overheard." She looked over and saw Terrance sitting across from her. “Oh, Agent Terrance. You’re here too?”

“Of course. You told me to meet you here a month ago.”

Eris held her chin up with her finger as she looked deep in thought. “It seems that, by accident – or maybe cosmic interference – that I made plans to meet both of you here, same day, same time. Either ‘whoops’ or ‘all according to plan.’ I don’t know which…”

Ariel plopped her head down on the table. “How did I miss that you were serving me earlier?”

“I was wondering if you were paying attention. How was the drink?”

“I would say ‘too much sugar,’ but I don’t know if there was anything in it besides sugar!”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that. Sorry you had to go through that.”

“That’s because it affects genies to eat something they don’t like the taste of, right?” asked Terrance.

“As well as being reminded of emotionally painful things,” Eris answered. “It affects our spirits and thus our magic.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Anyway, Ariel, if you could, I know you’re not in the FGGD, so Terrance, if you could… I have a couple more tables to serve before the shift is up.” Eris walked away to the next table she was serving.

Terrance pulled out a tablet and readied a stylus. “Fun. Bureaucracy. Okay, Ariel, this is just a simple list of information about you. We like to have as much as we can, but you can give what you want.” He started jotting things down. “Okay, so we have Ariel… And you’re an Angelic Genie.”

Ariel nodded.

“Want to clarify your name?”

“It’s just Ariel Hope now.”

“Old life wasn’t good to you? If you give us more, we can connect accounts, manage information, get our facts straight… Some people that we assumed died instead became genies. It helps to know these things...”

Ariel thought hard about it. “My past is kind of painful… But if it will help you…”

Terrance nodded. He readied his stylus.

“I picked the name Ariel for myself even before I was given the Edict. I was - am - trans, and my parents threw me out the day I came out, my eighteenth birthday. On my nineteenth, I was declared dead by them despite still being alive. And if I hadn’t been given the Edict a month later…” Ariel winced as she recalled it all. “I would have died later that day.”

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry…” he said as he wrote it down. “I’ve been supporting a trans friend since they came out. I know for you saying your deadname will be painful… But…”

“You want to know, right?

“If it wouldn’t be too much…”

Ariel closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. “Joel Duke Arden-Smith.” A strange shimmer formed around her as the name elicited such pain, causing her magic to waver.

Terrance’s eyes widened as he punched a hole through his tablet with the stylus. “You-you’re…” He got up from the chair and offered his hand. “Allow me to reintroduce myself: Agent Terrance: FBI Organized Crime division.”

“Organized crime? Uh, what do I have to do with that?” Ariel asked as she shook his hand.

“I’ve been investigating your parents for years, pretty much since I got my position. I was tasked with keeping an eye on you, as it was thought you were in on the Arden-Smith schemes. Sadly, we’ve never been able to get hard evidence, and your disappearance a year and a half ago really threw a wrench into our investigation…”

“I knew my parents were wealthy, but every time I asked, they said ‘don’t worry about it.’ Not that their wealth meant anything to me after I came out.”

“Well, we at least know what happened to you. And that you know nothing. I’m surprised they kept you out of the loop, not training you to help them…”

“Well, shows how much I knew them…”

“But look at you; you’re everything you could have ever wanted! And you don’t have to worry about them any more now. I’ll make sure to make a note that…” He looked at his busted tablet. “Shit.”

“Hang on.” Ariel pointed her finger at the device, causing the stylus to pop out of it and rest in Terrance’s hand, and his tablet began to “repair itself.” When the last crack in the screen vanished, it popped back on, all the data he was working with back as well. “There you go!”

“That kind of magic is always handy, isn’t it?” Terrance asked rhetorically, looking over his better-than-new tablet.

“You have no idea. I had problems with my game controllers developing drift. With genie magic, problem no more!” Ariel said with a grin.

“I dated a witch once. She was a light mage, but what humans can do with magic is often limited regardless of the alignment. Technology usually falls outside of human magic practice.”

“Witches too?” Ariel asked, tilting her head. “What else is out there?”

“Pretty much, if you’ve heard stories about them, they’re out there. Genies, witches, merfolk, dragons… Heck, I had to go into the dryad colony of Grovewall, Oregon for an assignment once. I learned then that the forest people often pass for human even when they’re not trying. Friendly bunch, though; I regularly visit on my spring break. They’ve got some pretty spectacular celebrations in April.”

“Wow, I didn’t know there was that much magic out there… By the way, how did you just punch a hole through a tablet like that?”

“Oh, this thing? Budget cuts.” Terrance started flexing the tablet, making it creak, showing the cheap material it was made of. “I’m not exactly high-up on the ladder, so I have to make do with stuff that doesn’t even make it to the bargain bin… I think the company that made it didn’t even last for six months, pumping this cheap crap out. I’d like to point out it runs on eight double-A batteries…”

“You seem like a nice guy. Here…” Ariel pointed her finger at the tablet again, and it began to shift in Terrance’s hands. The outer layer morphed into metal with a polished sheen, and the screen shimmered as the material there changed as well. A recharging port opened up on the bottom, and Terrance watched, dumbfounded, as a new charge cable grew from the new port, in green.

“Holy… As much as I’ve seen my fair share of displays like that, it never ceases to amaze… By the way, how did you know green was my favorite color?”

“It is?” Ariel asked, tilting her head.

“Ah, you must have been subconsciously reading my mind. It’s something genies just do, as I understand it. You’ll get used to it.”

Eris had finished up the shift she took over and came back to join them. She was now wearing a more casual outfit. “Hey there! Shift’s over. How are things going?”

“I’m in the database, and Terrance has a new tablet!” Ariel answered gleefully.

“And I got a new piece of information in the Arden-Smith case. It ties up a lead we no longer have to pursue…” Terrance replied.

“Really? From Ariel?”

“You remember how I asked once if you could help track down their kid, thinking… Err…”

Eris realized he was tripping on the pronouns for a reason. “Ariel’s their kid?!”

Ariel nodded a little, embarrassed of the notion.

“I mean, there’s a thought that ties them to some anti-trans extremists, but we – as usual – never had proof. And unfortunately, even with what we now know about Ariel, there’s nothing we can do about it because she’s a genie.” Terrance sunk into the chair and lowered his head to the table. “Damnit, we know they’re up to something, but we can’t seem to pin them down…”

“Something will come up eventually… People like that can’t get away forever,” Ariel tried to reassure him. “And for my sake, I hope you nail them!”

“Think you could help?”

“I think it would betray my position as an Angelic Genie to use my powers to bring them down. It would make me petty, and I’m supposed to be better than that…”

“Honestly, with all the accusations around them, I don’t think the powers that be would hold it against you, but I can see your point,” Eris admitted.

“Anyway, Ariel, on your genie business, have you had a holder yet?” Terrance asked.

“Nope. I know who will be the first – but the time to meet her is not for another few months. In the meantime, I just do little things, train myself in the powers and knowledge of being a genie,” Ariel explained.

“Says the girl who ended up granting a trans boy’s wish to become a boy. That was quite a shift…” Eris noted.

“His life was better suited for a reality change, unlike my upcoming holder…”

“Your holder will be trans too?” Terrance asked.

“Yeah. It’s important to me, for reasons that should be obvious. However, my upcoming holder needs help transitioning, making friends, and dealing with bullies. It’s more involved than just making a life-alteration. I’m going to be an active part of her life for a while.”

“I wish you luck with that, my roomie probably wishes they had help with their transition like that. Eris, was there anything you wanted to talk about? I’m kind of on a schedule…”

“I was wondering how your case was going, but it seems I might have just helped you put a few pieces together instead!”

“Well then, I will be off. Good day, Eris, and good luck, Ariel!”

“Terrance, wait!” Ariel grabbed his hand and put something in it…

He looked at it. It was a blue fortune cookie. “Um, thanks?”

“Give it to your roomie. They’ll like it!” Ariel suggested with a wink.

Terrance smiled and nodded, then walked away. Eris finally sat down. “I could tell that cookie was filled with magic. Got something planned?”

“Protection spells. Good luck charms. It sounded like they needed it!”

“Just right off the bat, hear a little about someone struggling, and you jump straight in. I knew you were a good fit for the job!”

“Heh, thanks!”

“How are you feeling about your first holder?”

“Anxious, honestly. I don’t know what to expect…”

“Well, from personal experience, you don’t need to worry about their every whim and word. You’re free, so you have no obligation to grant their wishes. It’s why they’re a ‘holder’ and not a ‘master.’ A master has control over you; a holder merely holds your vessel until you say otherwise. But the heart you have? I think you’ll be fine!”

“Thanks. I hope she will feel the same way…”

END OF PART 1

By Erica Chrisman (CrystalSeaDragon44)