Raindrops keep falling...

It wasn’t that Simon had never held a woman in his arms. But he had never held a beautiful, naked woman in them. And whoever she was, she was quite beautiful. He had picked her up to carry her out of the burning folly but now he just stood there, staring at her. She had long black hair, bright green eyes, smooth skin, and a long, slender, but well-padded body.

“It’s me, Habib,” she said.

“I’m not Habib,” said Simon.

“No, I am,” she said.

“Who?” said Simon. He smiled down at her, she had the most delightful voice.

“I am Habib,” she said, trying to make things clear. “I’ve been turned into a woman. The stone, the wish, the lightning--something went wrong.” A tiny wrinkle formed between those beautiful eyes.

Simon sighed to see the slightest evidence of pain or displeasure on the face that went with his lovely armful. He lifted her up a big higher, holding her closer.

She lifted her arms and put them around his neck, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. And the most natural consequence for Simon seemed to be to fall in love with the beautiful woman he was holding in his arms. He did it without thought, without effort; much the way he had ended up carrying her when the Folly exploded.

He smiled down at her. “Huh?” he said.

“Are you listening, Simon? Simon?” He loved the sound of his name when she said it. He could listen to her talk all afternoon, ignoring the sound of the rain falling and the fire still burning behind them.

“The fire...” said Simon, half turning to look back. “We’ve got to get back to the hotel.” He glanced up at the roof of the Folly then strode out from under. The rain seemed to be doing a job on putting the fire out but he still wanted to get the beautiful woman in his arms to safety. And to his room in the hotel, the thought of which almost made him quiver like a tuning fork.

Habib kicked her legs and frowned but neither disturbed Simon’s hold on her. He moved quickly, out from under the burning roof and straight toward his own patio, ignoring the paved pathway that wound between rose bushes. In fact, he leapt over the line of greenery marking the edge of the picnic grounds around the folly. He leapt without thought or effort and continued on, smiling to himself because--because he had superpowers--and a beautiful woman in his arms as well.

* * *

The second Simon -- the one who had landed in the rose bushes when she had leapt away from the fire and the force of the exploding Folly had hurled her further than she had intended -- the other Simon, the female one, pushed mounds of soggy hair out of her face with one hand and felt of one of her breasts with the other.

“What the heck?” she said.

She felt of the other breast, just to be sure. They both seemed enormous and when she looked down, all she saw was pillowy boobies.

“Oh, crap!” she said. “I wished myself into being Power Girl!”

Something swooshed overhead while she was looking down. She looked up quickly but she didn’t turn around because the burning Folly caught her eye. Flames from the explosion of the central room had spread to the timbers holding up the patio roof. With the rain still coming down, it didn’t really look like the fire would get anywhere but something occurred to her; wasn’t she now a superhero?

“Hey! Maybe I should try to put that out!” She quickly stood up, the stinky mud of the rosebed clinging to her curves. The rain immediately began washing the filth away.

The rain seemed to be doing the job on the fire, too, but Simon stood in the middle of the rose bushes and huffed and puffed anyway, trying to produce super-breath to blow out the flames.

Nothing happened except she got a little dizzy from hyperventilating.

“Crap, crap, crap,” she muttered, glaring at the fire. The rain was really doing a good job of stopping the flames so super-breath was hardly necessary.

“Do I even have super-powers?” She looked down at herself again. “Besides the boobies.”

She pondered a moment. “I got blown out of a building by an explosion, naked, and I landed in some rose bushes. It’s raining in April in Tacoma. I’m not cold and I don’t think I have a scratch on me.” She beamed, running her hands down her side, slick with rain. She found no scratches or tender spots.

She stopped when she reached her ass. “I’ve got.... Boy, I’ve got a big.... Is all of that me?” She tried to turn around to look but, of course, she didn’t have that kind of super-power.

* * *

The Little World, as the Djinn called their pocket dimension between Earth and the original version of the Djinn realms, had mountains and lakes, forests and rivers. That it was not a whole planet was not readily apparent and each Djinni had a dwelling, modest or imposing as befitted his rank among the Djinn.

The Djinn are ruled by judges among themselves, not kings or nobles but leaders respected for their experience, wisdom and skills. The title of respect for such djinni is Hakeem and large important families may have one, each clan selects an elder to the post and the gatherings of clans select a tribal judge. All of the hakeems together select one of their member to be The Hakeem who serves in that post for as much as a thousand years.

“You knew the rules, Baghadu’ur. Changing someone’s sex, even by accident, even your own, is a forty year sentence of sanctioned powers,” The Hakeem of the Djinn said on the portico of his magnificent dwelling.

“But I didn’t!” protested the djinni who had told Simon to call him Habib but whose real Djinn name was Baghadu’ur. “Look, I’m still male!” He gestured at himself, his real self. Not the slender middle-aged accountant-type body he had showed Simon but his own djinni self; large, muscular, imposing and aggressively masculine.

The Hakeem quirked an eyebrow. “And your client?” With a gesture, the official judge summoned an image of Simon, the female Simon, standing in a rose garden in the rain, feeling her butt with both hands and looking mystified.

“That’s Simon?” asked Habib/Baghadu’ur. “Oh, dear. The wish turned him into...that? He looks like, uh, she looks like Power Girl with Barbara Eden’s face--only more so.”

The portico had a marble floor and colonnades that set off the view of the mountains across The Hakeem’s lands, farmed or him by lesser djinn. A lovely houri made sure that their silver-trimmed crystal goblets were kept filled with the mixture of peach brandy, citron zest and spring water that The Hakeem favored. The houri, young and beautiful as all houris appear, reminded Baghadu’ur/Habib of his client’s altered appearance and he turned back to the view of Earth conjured by The Hakeem.

The two very male Djinn contemplated the image for a moment. “Nice work, in a way,” said The Hakeem. “But this rule is for your protection. If your clients know that you will not be able to grant all their wishes for forty years, they will not be asking you to change your sex or theirs either. So many of them are filthy perverts anyway.”

“But... but...” Habib/Baghadu’ur protested. “My master, er, mistress, is going to need me now.”

“But!” said the Hakim. “But one of the sanctions is that you must stay here an entire Shabat before returning. So you cannot go back until sunset on Saturday.”

“It’s still Monday, isn’t it?”

The Hakim nodded. “And even when you go back, the other sanctions will be in effect.”

“I’ve never crossed this rule before, what are the other sanctions?”

The Hakim detailed the sanctions, it took some time but Baghadu’ur/Habib had almost a whole week to listen. They sipped peach brandy cocktails and ate spicy peafowl breast and other delicacies served by the beautiful houri while they talked.

* * *

Simon, the tall one with muscles, carried the woman who had identified herself as Habib toward the lower back entrance of the hotel, his private entrance into his little two room apartment with the shared kitchenette. Up the slope to the left, the second rear entrance of the hotel led into the two-story utility room attached to the kitchen on the main floor. Directly above Simon’s rooms lay the main dining room with it’s own outside deck, the floor of which was the roof of Simon’s patio.

Since it was raining in the middle of Monday afternoon, no one had been eating on the deck but two people had been munching snacks and enjoying the free coffee in the dining room. The big windows provided them with a view of the burning Folly but the heavy rain kept them from noticing too many details.

One brave soul with an umbrella ventured out onto the deck to get a better look. Lt. Colonel Edgar “Edge” Wyes, US Army, retired, had spent most of his career pushing papers in top secret think tanks in and around Washington DC, Brussels, Tokyo and Moscow but he had military training and felt that he needed to respond to what looked like an emergency. In his late forties, he had retired after twenty four years when he was passed over for promotion to full colonel due to budgetary cuts related to the winding down of military commitments.

Keeping himself fit for two decades in a desk job had become a way of life for the colonel, he ran two miles every morning and sometimes entered long distance races. Which explained the unnaturally bright orange tape on the sleeves and back of his windbreaker as he ventured out onto the rainswept deck.

Edge had a cellphone in his hand and had already dialed 911 to report the fire. Still talking to the dispatcher, he gave details on what he saw. “No, I don’t think anyone was in it,” he said. “This time of year, it’s pretty deserted. Wait, wait, somethings moving around down there....” He held the phone against his chest while he peered into the downpour. He could see movement but not identity and whoever or whatever it had been, disappeared almost as soon as he noticed.

“Maybe it was a deer,” he said into the phone. “We get a lot of them around here.” Then he stopped talking for a moment as he saw something else.

A break in the steady rain showed him someone standing in the rose garden, a person this time, he felt sure. Even on a dark and dreary afternoon with the lights from the hotel masked by the rain he saw something, someone... a girl? An even larger gap in the rain gave him a better look. A naked girl? A naked girl standing in the rose garden, her hands on her shapely ass, her back arched, her magnificent breasts clearly revealed -- and then the rain came down in sheets again and she was gone.

Colonel Edge blinked.

The phone was saying something to him, asking him something. “No,” he told it. “No, I don’t think I saw anything after all, just a trick of the light in all this rain.”

He listened a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll stay on until the firemen get here.”

Behind him, Mrs. Dumfries herself, the owner of the hotel, emerged from the dining room wrapped in a black nylon rain suit and carrying an umbrella with hand painted Japanese flower designs all over it. Her gray hair showed in a curly aura peeking out from under the hoodie of the rain suit and she had a phone in her hand, too. She had called the fire department directly, not reckoning a fire in an outbuilding on a rainy day counted as a real emergency.

She stepped up beside Colonel Edge, as near to the railing of the deck as either of them could get without touching the rain-soaked barrier. “There wasn’t anyone out there, was there?” she asked.

“I don’t believe so,” Edge lied. He knew what he had seen and he knew how to keep secrets.