A few seconds later the door opened and I immediately recognized the woman from earlier today. She looked more than a bit confused by the sight of us. "Hi, can I help you?" she asked. Her voice was soft and a little high-pitched. It could be described as "squeaky," I suppose.
"I hope so," I answered. "Are we disturbing you?"
"No, not really," she said.
"Good, good," I said. "We would like to speak to you about what happened on the street this afternoon." This was certainly an odd introductory request, but I said this in order to see how she would react.
Her face immediately reddened and she looked terrified. "Oh, god," she said. "Are you from the police?"
"No, we're not," I replied. I guess I could have said that we were, but I thought that would just frighten her more. "But we do know what happened and we'd like to talk to you about it. I assure you that we're not here to get you into any trouble."
I would have wished her to accept that last statement if she had resisted. But she held the door open and said, "Please, come in."
"Thank you," I said as Bozantum and I walked into her modest little home. Her home was truly that as, judging by the living room, there was nothing about her house that stood out in any way. Cozy and unremarkable were two words that came to mind. But I wasn't here to play interior decorator. "My name is Chrystalia and this is Bozantum," I said to her.
She accepted our names without comment. "My name is Theresa, nice to meet you, please sit down," she said as she motioned to her couch. We sat there and she sat in a chair that faced the couch. She spoke first. "So did you...see what happened this afternoon?"
"I'm afraid we did," I said. Obviously Bozantum did not but he was smart enough to just let me tell the story and not interrupt with factual corrections. "But I'd like you to tell me what happened."
"I...I just don't know," she said as her voice cracked a little. "I was walking down the street and suddenly I felt odd. I looked down and I was naked! All of my clothes had just vanished! There were lots of people looking at me. I was so embarrassed and so scared. I think I started to shriek. And then...my clothes came back. I was dressed again. All the people who'd been looking at me just...went on their way. No one said anything to me. No one paid any more attention to me. I was still so scared, so I just started walking again as fast as I could. I was practically running. I didn't stop until I got home. Since then I've been worried that the police were going to show up and arrest me for indecency." She quickly wiped a tear from her eye. "It's been a horrible day."
As if I hadn't felt bad enough, I now felt infinitely worse. This poor woman had been living in fear of being arrested for several hours. "I'm so very sorry to hear that," I said. I needed confirmation of her experience. "So you remember that whole thing? You definitely remember being naked?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "That's not something I think you could forget, no matter how hard you could try."
Now I was worried. I thought for sure my wish should have made her forget what happened. Where did I go wrong? I replayed the event in my mind as fast as I could and I couldn't remember anything that I did wrong. Luckily I could take the easy way out. I wished to know exactly why it was that everyone on the street forgot what happened but she did not. The answer came to me instantly. The wording of my wish was for NO ONE ELSE to remember what happened. This meant everyone outside the wish itself. Since I was the one who'd made the wish, and she was the one affected by it, we were inside the wish and therefore "protected" from my wish for everyone else to forget. This made sense to me and let me know that the wording of my wishes needed to be careful.
I had the really important information that I needed. Now it was time to make amends. "Theresa, I'm sorry to tell you this, but the reason you were naked on the street is because I made you naked on the street," I explained.
"What?" she asked incredulously.
"Theresa, I have a power," I continued. "A power to do...seemingly anything. I'm afraid that in testing that power, I said and did something that was completely random to me, but unfortunately not to you. What resulted was that you were naked and then you were clothed again. I am very, very, so very sorry that I did this to you. I did not mean to embarrass you."
She just stared at me. I couldn't decide if she didn't believe me or if she wanted to jump out of her chair and attack me. "But how? How did you do that?" she asked. "Why did you do that?"
"As I said, it was an accident," I explained. "I did not intentionally pick on you at all. As for 'how,' as I said, I have a power. I'm afraid I can't tell you how I have this power. All I can do is demonstrate it to you if you do not believe me."
"Yes, demonstrate it," she said. "Just...don't make me naked again."
I nodded. I noticed that the color of her chair was a faded green. I wished for the chair to turn bright red. She immediately noticed the change and jumped out of the chair in shock. She looked at the chair and studied it carefully. She slowly reached down and felt the chair to make sure it was real. Satisfied that it was she sat down in it again. As a further demonstration, I made her television disappear for five seconds and then reappear. She was much less shocked and surprised by this second demonstration.
"Incredible," she said.
"Watch this," I said. I stood up from the couch. I decided to do something a bit risky. I wished that she would realize I was naked and that this was not something normal or accepted.
"Oh, my god," she said. She pointed at me. "You're naked! Wait...you've been naked the whole time!"
"That's right," I said. "I had made it so that no one would consider my being naked wrong or illegal or abnormal or anything like that. But since I embarrassed you in that way, I figured it was fair for you to realize that I am naked as well."
"But you weren't embarrassed being naked!" she protested. "You...you must want to be naked."
"That's right," I said as I sat down again. "I do want to be naked. So obviously this does not rectify what I did to you earlier today. That's why we're here. I want to make amends."
"How?" she asked.
"That is up to you," I said. "To put your mind at ease about his afternoon, the reason everyone on the street didn't pay attention to you once your clothes returned was because I made them forget what they saw. So we are the only people who remembers what happened."
She said slowly, "So...I'm not in trouble? I don't have to worry?" I nodded. She fell back in the chair. "That's a relief." I waited for her to speak again. "You'll do something for me in return?" I nodded again. "Anything?"
"No," I said hesitantly. "Not anything. I'm afraid I will not intentionally harm someone if that is what you want. That is the only specific thing I can think of myself that I will not do."
She pondered my offer for several minutes. I was going to give her all the time she needed to come to a decision. Then she began to smile. "How about this?" she asked.