Two From One, Pt. 01

Chapter 1

As he watched the sunrise on the horizon, causing the brilliant golden spires of the city to twinkle like the multi-colored stars that had just retreated from the sky, the King couldn't help but issue a forlorn sigh. Even the flock of yellow and green dragons that passed by overheard shortly thereafter, off to begin their morning hunt for the red whales of the nearby purple sea, did little to lift his spirits. This particularly hurt, because the same sight had always delighted him as a boy, to the point where his father, then the King himself, would wake him up early so that he could witness it every morning.

Yes, his kingdom was a marvel unlike any that had ever existed before. Yes, its inhabitants - 112 different sentient species and counting - were the world's most educated, wealthy, and artistically brilliant. And yes, he, as King, had presided over an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity. But what good was it all, if he were alone?

No, he wasn't literally alone: he had his advisors, magicians, sorcerers, court eunuchs, scientists, philosophers, concubines, artists, diplomats, animal trainers (along with a full menagerie of exotic beasts from near and far), servants, cooks, and fools. But what he didn't have was a Queen.

Sure, he had tried to find a suitable match. He had even lost track of the number of princesses that had been presented to him, such was their number. But the smart ones, he had found, were too ugly, and the beautiful ones were just too dumb. And, though he was loath to admit it, being the ruler of such a diverse country, he just couldn't bring himself to look beyond the human race. While he was sure the elephant-headed Tarntarn people were attracted to one another, their physical appeal was quite lost on him!

Maybe he was too picky? The thought had obviously crossed his mind, and he was sure there were many others, even in his own palace, who thought the same, though they would never dare admit it to him. The King was not known to cruel or unjust, but that didn't mean they wanted to test his limits.

He also knew they likely blamed his mother. It's not like the notion had never occurred to him, either. She was, after all, considered to be, by far, the most elegant, gracious, intelligent, and comely woman to ever hold the title of Queen, at least in this Kingdom. Who could measure up to that? If only her native land hadn't been annihilated by the most recent wave of the Laughing Plague, he lamented! Maybe they could have provided him with a fitting mate, as they had his father!

Still, his search continued, and in the meantime, he did have his harem of concubines to satisfy his baser desires, even if they couldn't entertain him on any sort of intellectual level. Nor could he hope to sire any successors with them. No, the wars of the Third Age had made it quite clear that that was quite a bad idea!

His self-pitying was brought to a sudden halt by the sweet, unmistakable smell of the Prism Orchid. Of course, that particular flower having gone extinct some 500 hundred years ago, at least on this plane of reality, it could only mean one thing: a Djinn was about to manifest.

For many, this would be cause for alarm: Djinns were infamous for their mischievous nature. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the world that hadn't heard at least one tale of a hapless fellow who, encountering a Djinn, and thinking he had finally found some fortune in his miserable life, ultimately found himself ironically worse off due to their ever meeting.

One such story had always stuck with the King, first told to him by one of the aforementioned court storytellers when he was "becoming a man," as his father put it. It went like this, once there was a lonely man who, despite, everything thing he tried, just never seemed to have any luck with women. In fact, such was his incompetence in this area, that he had never had sex at all!

Naturally, then, when he encountered a Djinn, inadvertently freed from its lamp/prison by the man when he was rummaging through a pile of old antiques at a market, looking for a special trinket to woo his crush with, he had but one wish: to be made irresistible to women. The Djinn, and this was a particularly devious one, obliged, and turned him into a diamond-encrusted dildo.

And adding insult to injury, the next person to scavenge through the mountain of knick-knacks was a woman, and not just any woman, but the man's crush, who had yet again turned him down for a date only a few days prior! She found the dildo, and promptly purchased it - it was, after all, irresistible!

"Was he ever turned back?" he asked the storyteller, an old woman that had served his family for generations.

"Of course not!" she replied. "Silly boy - the man's crush had no idea her new toy was once a human at all. And it wasn't like he could make the request himself, could he, being in the state he was in?"

"Well, could he think at all?" he countered.

The old storyteller laughed. "Can your bed think? What about your father's throne? Do you think it sits there, deep in thought, while your father, in turn, contemplates atop it?"

The story had disturbed him, but, over time, it actually had come to excite him a little, too. In fact, he had added his own addendum to the story, imagining that the man's crush's eventually passed the dildo down to her daughter, then her daughter's daughter, and so on, until it was finally lost one day, its ultimate fate to be forgotten at the bottom of a buried treasure chest, or floating in some flooded sub-basement somewhere.

When he became King, inheriting his father's palace and all of his staff, he had even asked the Djinn- the very same one that was now in the process of manifesting herself, and that had sworn allegiance to his family centuries ago- if the story were true, and, if so, if the dildo could be retrieved.

He was disappointed that the Djinn, whose name he did not know, and never would, because names have power, and no Djinn would ever be foolish enough to reveal theirs, didn't know if the account was real.

'Well, could you talk to the other Djinn?" he had asked the spirit. "Maybe one of them would know?"

The Djinn laughed. "Do you think we have regular meetings? Like, a big conference once a year?"

He supposed not. And, despite some common misconceptions, Djinn aren't omnipotent, either. Still, he hoped he might find the dildo one day, and had even tasked some of his servants with keeping an eye and an ear out for it.

But why? At first, he thought, if it were to fall into his possession, he would ask his Djinn to turn it back into the man it had once been. Eventually, though, he realized that, were he ever come to obtain it, he would no such thing. In fact, he'd display it proudly in the quarters of his harem, and even demand that his concubine use it on themselves and each other.

Nobody else knew of this fantasy. And if they did, he imagined they'd be shocked by it, such was incongruity between this dark desire and his reputation as a kind, fair ruler. To some degree, he didn't fully understand the contradiction either

However, as the Djinn slowly began to materialize, line by line, the outline of a humanoid being beginning to make itself clearer and clearer, the King wondered if there was one who actually did suspect.

And maybe even understood.