"Can you make something appear from nothing?"
Sul sat there quietly for a longer pause than usual, I wasn't sure if I had offended the D'jinn or not before it finally spoke. "I can bend light and make the illusion of something being there that isn't, if I altered a persons perception so they could even interact with it. to the outside observer they would not seem right in the mind though... however to make a building requires more than simply willing it to be, it requires materials...time and...for lack of a better word power. Each act draws from the surrounding energies, uses and transforms materials at the basic level as needed. If I so chose to I could change the floor here to gold and the air into ice. The repercussions would however cause unpredictable weather, or other unexpected things to occur. I would also be rendered into a state similar to unconsciousness for a time if I were to do something that complex."
"That was a bit more of an explanation than I expected... So why couldn't you change the food I had here into something edible?"
"Time mostly. The food that was originally here contains compounds I have never encountered and it would have taken much too long to decipher how to remove them and keep the nutrients in the food, it was simpler to recreate your currency. I had to use some of your clothing to do so as the cloth it was made from was very close to the makeup of the papyrus used."
"So...how would you describe your abilities? A manipulation of the atomic structure of substances?"
"I do not believe even the most powerful and intelligent of my kind ever truly understood how it works.....The best word could be from one of your kinds. Magic, as I recall. It's a harnessing of the energy of the world, and we simply reshape it."
"So even your people don't understand it..." I sat quietly poring over my notes for a bit. "So the tales I told you.. what at your most powerful, what are the absolute limits that a D'jinn could or could not do?"
"Limits....We cannot change history. What is past is past, it is done and over, we cannot bring the dead back to life what makes a person them is gone.. reanimating the body....the results are....I do not want to speak of shades at this time....Only the angels are able to return a lost spirit to the realm of the living and they closely guard that secret, with good reason I think." At the subject of reanimating the dead Sul's eyes narrowed and looked as though it were staring into the past with a haunted visage, it sat there a time before I spoke again, my voice breaking the silence seemed to bring the D'jinn back to reality.
"Anything else that you cannot do?"
"....ah..yes. While a D'jinn can do so, it is something of an unwritten law among us that we cannot change a person's mind... force them to be something they are not."
"Brainwashing?"
"...I am not familiar with that word."
I spent a few minutes explaining the concept of brainwashing and "re-education" to the D'jinn, and Sul seemed genuinely horrified that we can and would do such a thing to each other.
"Yes... it is like that....We refuse to do such a thing."
I sat for a while again and Sul returned to watching the history channel as I mulled things over, my curiosity starting to grow. I found myself intrigued by the magic and powers Sul had spoken of, my mind beginning to think of what my second wish might be, though other questions nagged at my mind as well, particularly about the Midnight war, as well as "shades". So many questions so little time.
