There were a lot of rumoured ways to have your wildest dreams, all with just enough truth to them to spark hope in the lost. Wishing stars asked for nothing but a keen eye and pure heart. Genies needed nothing more than careful wording. Birthdays offered everyone the same opportunity every year.

Whispered wished offered to those methods were wasted on the wind. In the end there was only one method that I'd found in years of study that seemed to be true, seemed to be something that people like me could verify.

A wishmakers key.

I didn't know where they came from, or where they went once they'd been used, but Wishmaker's keys offered the simple promise, they would make anything possible. The keys could wrestle the laws of the universe and force them into a place where the user could grant their wish for themsleves.

Of course, in most cases, this meant the Wishmaker's keys faded away without having done much at all. Fairytales might have belabored the point, but it was true that most people's wishes were already within their reach.

You wouldn't even know if you wasted your wish, because you could, eventually, make it.

The rusted but somehow still glittering key on my desk tempted its spot in the lamplight. It whispered things, promised solutions to problems I didn't have, offered to make my dreams come true, even as the dreams that idly came to mind were things I could easily manage without the assistance of the key.

I didn't need a magical artifact to make me tea, all I had to do was walk downstairs to do it.

But the whispers didn't stop.

I made a quick note in my journal about the behaviour and took a look at my phone on the desk. It was well past the witching hour and I didn't have anything other than idle observations about the key I'd gotten my hands on this afternoon.

Well, the key I'd made myself destitute over this afternoon. They might have only been a way to unlock the doors of life, but keys certainly carried the price tag of catch-all solution to your every whim.

Of course, the key could help me get money. It could ensure that I didn't need to worry about that ever again. It could-

I shook my head and stared down the key, pushing the affected thoughts out of my mind. "Why do you want to be used?" I asked the antique brass.

All I needed to do was ask it formally and I could be sure that I would eventually get the answer...

I grabbed the key and put it back into the box that I'd bought it in, securing a key behind a lock. I was too tired to have something else trying to convince me of a solution. I needed sleep, and I certainly didn't need it to tell me how to get that.

---

I woke up closer to morning than the middle of the night, whcih wasn't hard considering that was when I'd gone to sleep. Dawn was just getting around to arriving as I sat up in the bed and stared over at my desk, and the lockbox on it.

Inspiration stuck at strange times, but usually I was at least awake for it.

I slipped over to the desk, putting on a housecoat on the way to make an attempt at modesty. Once I was sitting down I found a hairtie I'd left out last night and pulled my tangled hair our of my eyes.

Years had bled away as I'd burned the university's grant money on wish research. It had always been an easy topic to get funding for, afterall, everyone wanted to know what they could do to wish the worst parts of their life away.

I pulled the key out of the box and sat in the middle of the desk this time, leaving it between my and my well-worn sage notebook. I drummed fingers on the desk, and waited for it to talk to me.

For the first time since I'd gotten it, the key stayed quiet, waiting for me to speak to it instead of offering it's constant opinion on how useful it was.

The last thirty pages of notes from last night were a slow read, a mostly rambling mess that had come from the frantic idea that I'd finally found something that wasn't a placebo, but-

I flipped past the last notes I'd made to the first blank page and put pen to paper. Just when I was about to write I pulled back from it, leaving an ink stain on the page.

The key looked dull now, even in the waking light of dawn.

"Just another wishing star," I sighed to the key. That was the philosophy of the Wishmaker, it opened doors, but as it stood anything was already possible. It didn't matter what wish I offered the key, becuase even the impossible was possible if there was an artifact out there that could grant wishes, "isn't that right?"

The key itself didn't have a voice, it had always stolen mine by putting words into my head. That said, even voiceless, it laughed.