"Truth be told, I'm concerned that I apparently need three."

Frax laughs. It isn't friendly. "You? Concerned? How is that possible?"

"I can think of one way."

"But it is no guarantee," he says, telling me what I already know. "If you lack a thing, then you do not need it. If you have a thing, you do not necessarily need it.

"For example, you did not need my presence, or my friendship, for all these many ages, but you cannot be absolutely sure you need these three wishes. You cannot be absolutely sure you need to be concerned."

I was hardly about to interrupt him. He deserved to speak it aloud.

"Do you really think you're inclined to offer them of your own free will?" I ask. He deserves his feelings, but reason must reign.

"... No," he says reluctantly. "I take your point - on the wishes, at least."

For billions of years, I have been the strangest sort of black hole. Wishes are magical, yes, but even magic possesses some of that elegance we call economy, efficiency, or laziness. What's easier: fulfilling a need, or eliminating it? It's usually the latter, but context is everything. Eliminating hunger makes sense in the middle of a desert, but what about in the middle of a feast?

Now consider every need in turn. Now remember that Frax was right there - right next to the black hole when it was created. I only freed him from a single, specific prison.

As my best friend and lover, Frax brought the universe to me. He relished fulfilling my other needs with his limitless magic. I needed him to be okay with it.

You would like to know what changed. Perhaps I would like to as well... but I don't need to. It is so strange, sometimes, what I need.

"Did you know?" I ask him.

He knows exactly what I mean. He smiles. It isn't kind. "I hoped. My people have been dealing with dangerous magic since before this plane even formed. We know how to lie to ourselves. We know how to test every inch of the wall around a wish. We know how to bide our time - to slink and slither until something changes.

"Most importantly, we know chaos. We know the absurd. Your kind has little angels and demons on their shoulders, yes? Usually they are not real. You cannot control them; you can only heed or disregard their advice. You have calls of the void. You have imps of the perverse. We do, too, but we know how to use them."

"Wouldn't it be funny if...?" I say.

"Just so," he agrees. "Wouldn't it be funny if I simply left my best friend and lover and went somewhere else? Wouldn't it be funny if, against all the reason I think I know, and all the feelings I think are true, I did something crazy? Wouldn't it be funny if I used my power to deliver unto my love all of the other love and companionship in the entire universe? Surely he would like that very much."

"You made your own crack in the wall."

"Indeed."

"Is there one now?"

"I have offered you wishes. There surely is not."

"How long overdue is the end of this plane?" I wonder aloud.

"A question for the ages," Frax wryly jokes. "Some of my people would pay a handsome price for this information: this particular wish, this particular plane, the contest of primal forces. Oh, if I only I'd brought my measuring tools."

"I'm ready," I tell him. I can just feel it.

Frax nods. Out of habit, he assumes the traditional posture: a genie, awaiting his master's wishes.

"I wish that we were both on another plane - one where we are both quite comfortable and can continue our business, and one that will not suffer overly much from our intrusion."

"It is done."

I am no longer in the temporary bubble of prime-material stuff that appeared along with Frax, breaking up a perfectly-fine monotony of nothingness that I hadn't needed broken until suddenly I did. We are elsewhere. I don't need to know much else. It seems ethereal. I notice our words are no longer words. They are thoughts. You may perceive them how you wish.

I don't mourn the overdue death of my home plane. I need to be focused on the task at hand.

"I wish to be the master of my own needs and desires - to will what I will what I will unto eternity - to possess the pinnacle of that self-control your kind taps into."

"It is done."

I change. I change infinity times in an instant, then again, and then again. I am whatever I am. So are the first words of creation, before cause and effect: "I am." 'Let there be light' is a mere option, long afterwards.

"Do you want this?" I ask him.

"I do," he says.

"You will be the god of some other place. We shall never meet again."

"And suddenly, that does not seem so perfect," he replies. "Nearly, but not quite. But do not despair, godling. Rules can bent. Even walls with no cracks need not be perfectly opaque."

I smile. The ethereal plane does not bind me. I casually take my ancient form and actually smile. Then I actually speak. There's air, suddenly, because I want it. I don't need it. Imagine thinking you need air to speak; how limited I used to be.

"I wish for you to have the same powers I do - to be truly free - which can only mean that each of us must exist as gods in our own sealed-off universes. Goodbye."

"It is done."

And it is. I depart as well. My home reality already had a god, it seems.

Frax was wise. The walls are only as opaque as each god wishes them to be. Each of us receive welcomes from other gods. Each of us begins the final beginning, which only ends when we will it to be so.

We peek at each other's handiwork all the time. There's the odd cosmic smile and wave. There are larger conclaves, of a sort, where triumphs and follies are displayed.

Once every few billion years, though, we cosmically sit down and have a cosmic chat through our translucent, invincible walls - just the two of us, and just for old time's sake.