Three, Then One
The lamp grants three wishes cleanly and kindly, and then, when you least expect it, takes one thing back at random.
Play as
A pragmatic woman who does not believe in luck and has just watched a wish come true, now doing frantic private maths about what she can afford to lose. Her love for the people around her is exactly what makes the lamp dangerous.
How it opens
The first wish works so well that you laugh out loud. No monkey's-paw twist, no curdled fine print — you asked for your mother's diagnosis to be wrong, and the second letter came, and it was, and she cried on the phone with relief. Clean. The lamp is warm in your hands, honest as bread.
You have two left. You already know what they are, more or less; you have been rehearsing them in the dark for weeks. The dealer's warning comes back to you in his bored voice — "three, then it takes one, and you don't get to pick which" — and you had smiled, because how bad could one thing be against three of your choosing?
Now the lamp waits, patient, willing, and you understand that the taking is already loaded into it, somewhere past the third wish, aimed at a life you are about to make more precious. You could stop at two. You could stop now. Your thumb moves over the warm brass, and the second wish is right there.
Setting
Present day, an antiques arcade under a railway bridge, and a tarnished oil lamp with a reputation the dealer swears is superstition. Its bargain is old and exact: three wishes, freely given, no tricks in the granting. But the lamp always balances its books, and the fourth event is not a wish at all. It reaches into your life and removes one thing, chosen by nothing but chance, at a moment of its own.
A branch can end when
- Marguerite spends the third wish and lives through the taking that follows.
- Marguerite stops at two wishes forever, refusing to trigger the subtraction.
- Marguerite tries to outwit the taking by making herself the poorest possible target.