The crescent moon smiled over the slumbering populace of Agrabah, though in one dilapidated hovel, near the piers, someone was wide-awake.
"Eden? Eden!" Dhandi stared deep into the pink bottle. Soon enough, Eden, the green-skinned djinn, smoked out of her bottle, yawning and with a mud mask plastered on her face. Removing cucumber slices from her eyes, she looked down at her young charge, sleepily.
"Dhandi," she yawned, "I thought you said you were tired and you know what they say, 'early to bed'..."
"Yeah, I know," Dhandi smiled warmly at her genie. "I couldn't sleep."
"Oh," Eden, with a shake, swiped her mask off and hovered closer to the young girl, "you having a bad dream?"
The girl shrugged. "I just can't fall asleep."
"Well," Eden grinned, "let's see what we can do about that, suga." She turned into a rather buxom grandmother. "How about a story, dearie?"
"Actually," the girl crawled up into her genie's lap, "what if I tell you one?"
"All-righty then," Eden reverted to her normal curvaceous form. "Shoot."
Dhandi giggled quietly as she drummed her fingers against her scrawny leg. "Oh, I got it," she exclaimed. "It's kinda old, but it's a good one."
"Oldies are always goodies," Eden grinned. "Like me!"
Dhandi smiled. "Okay, um, a very long time ago, before there was any people in the world, even genies, Allah wanted to make people, because he felt lonely."
"Hm, good," Eden whispered, as she ran her fingers through her mistress' coarse brown hair. "Go on."
"So he created creatures from light. They were the angels. Then he made the genies out of fire."
"You bet your buns he did," Eden remarked, licking her finger and pressing it against her thigh, producing a hiss.
"Then he started making people out of clay," Dhandi continued. "Some say that people were going to have wings."
Eden chuckled quietly. "And I bet you would have touched to sky seventeen billion times."
"Yeah," she grinned. "But then one of his helpers started to get jealous of the people that Allah was going to create, so he started messing with them at night, made them all ugly and gross."
"That's not nice of him."
"Nope and one night Allah stopped him. He asked 'why do you do this'. His helper replied 'how do you know he won't be bad, like some of the genies are?' Allah became mad at him and sent his helper away to the bad place. He hasn't spoken to him since."
"That's kinda sad."
"Yeah," Dhandi sighed, sliding out of Eden's lap, "but that's kinda how some things are."
Eden looked at her charge uneasily. Sure, Dhandi was not exactly the most forlorn of Agrabah's orphans. As far as she knew about her, she kept an optimistic view in spite of all the strange things that happen in the city. Heck, she nearly freed Eden so she could be with her big blue beau, the Genie of the Lamp. However, she couldn't help but think that her little girl was feeling the stress of poverty and that she didn't have a family. A real family. It wouldn't be long until she started asking about how her body was changing as she would grow older or even if she was ready to head out on her own as an adult. If she would even be an adult.
"But there are good things too," Dhandi said. "Like you." Breaking away from her worry, Eden smiled as she leaned towards the child.
"Oh, you sweet meydele," she cooed, picking the girl's dirty cheek. "You're making me blush."
Dhandi playfully swiped away her hand, only to have it grab at her nose.
"You feeling better?" Eden asked. Dhandi nodded quickly. "Good, now go to bed, 'kay?"
Dhandi crawled on to one of the few massive overstuffed cushions that decorated the sparse hovel and curled up. Eden floated over to her and pulled an intricately detailed rug over the slumbering form.
"Goodnight, sweetheart," the djinn whispered, planting kiss on the child's forehead. Dhandi softly squirmed in her sleep as Eden, in wisp of smoke, sucked back into her bottle.
Meanwhile, the moon was also shining down on another insomnia-struck person that night in the Citadel in the abysmal Land of Black Sand.
Trudging with several volumes of ancient texts, Mozenrath slumped against the wall of the library, breathing heavily. His normally pallid and slender face, sucked in even more, now resembled a cadaver with his now wispy white curls framing it. He had been worse for wear since he returned to his lands, thwarted once again by that accursed street rat.
"Master sick?" Xerxes, his eel-familiar hovered next to him.
"No, I'm at the peak of health," Mozenrath sneered, sarcastically. "Just get me a staff or something." The eel swam through the air and towards a smooth black rod, decorated with red and gold pentagrams. He wrapped his razor jaws around it, flying awkwardly while trying to hold on to it properly.
His master sighed.
"If only that street rat hadn't fought back..." he seethed, grabbing the rod and vigorously shook Xerxes off. The eel tumbled in the air as he floated back into a straight line. His master, on the other hand, wobbled violently upon his legs as he fell forward upon the ebony table and now sprawled on it, books flung to the other side of the table. He cursed silently, slamming his bony fist. Xerxes swam to his master, sniffing his turban. Mozenrath suddenly grabbed the eel by its throat and pulled it closer.
"Have you found it yet?" he snarled at the eel, its face turning blue.
"Gauntlet found not yet," Xerxes rasped, struggling to breathe.
"Find it now." The grip upon the eel's throat loosened and Xerxes scampered away. Mozenrath looked at his hand. The gauntlet that had covered his hand of clean ivory bone had been lost since his last encounter with Aladdin, when he had tried to take his body. He had less time now since then and even without the gauntlet upon his hand, he could still feel it draining him. He was dying, sucked dry just as Destane had cursed him before his demise.
He reached for the tomes and began to flipping through them.
"No," he muttered as he read the musty pages. "Tried it...failed...Allah, no..."
His eyes focused as he read the title- Reanimation through Construction. His dull eyes glistened as he read the page intently.
"Has potential," he said, "but I don't have enough time. Unless..." He flipped back three pages. His mouth formed a predatory smile.
"Master!" Xerxes rasped, "Gauntlet found!" Mozenrath looked up, his tired eyes revealing deviousness.
"Good, Xerxes," he managed a horrible grin. "Prepare for tomorrow. We're going shopping."