...Aglethal pondered her life decisions until this point. They had all seemed so very organic and natural to take; the sorts of things anyone would have chosen to do. Marriage. Children. Family. Career. She smiled. Stepping onto the ramp leading up to the elevated stones of the causeway, her thoughts paused briefly on the precision of the roadway's construction. The stones of the raised walkway were flattened and smoothed meticulously, fitted together so closely that rainwater could find no seam large enough through which to flow. They instead employed specially designed channels that shunted the massive amount of tropical rainfall that fell daily through cleverly concealed runoff slots. The slots emptied into brilliantly designed boxes which had been filled with layers of charcoal, sand, gravel, and stone. This filtered the water quickly and thoroughly, and it was gathered in an aquifer near the temple of Tláloc, the masked god of rain and fertility. The stones of the causeway itself had been dragged almost four miles. This walking path, this road; this causeway, was her project. Oh sure, her husband the king had gotten all the credit for it, but she had given him the idea. The command. To build! She had compelled him to have the concentric web of causeways built of the pink granite mined from under the red salt deposits of the dormant volcanic fields so prevalent in the area. She had created a thousand jobs; provided the livelihood for a thousand families. Well, her husband had. She sniggered to herself, bowing to a wealthy citizen faux respectfully, to hide the look of scorn she could not keep from crossing her face. Her husband's subjects were increasingly fawning and servile over the course of the last twenty seven years. Of course they are! Aglethal crowed silently. She had been cultivating that reflexive obeisance, surreptitioously, for decades. Several laws had been passed banning specific language toward the royal family, for example. A very precise amount of time after those laws had been enacted, Aglethal stepped forward. In a great show of solidarity with the populace, Aglethal very publicly derided the laws that she herself had pushed to encode. Riding a political wave of populism that she herself created, the queen beseached her husband to change the vile laws, a request he was only too happy to oblige. So, instead, a new law was put in place. Rather than being illegal to speak badly about the royal family, it became illegal to not speak well of the king and his family. And boy, did the King's Justicars delight in enforcing that law.

The Justicars had been another of Aglethals's ideas. A special police force who are only answerable to the King himself, their methods had become more and more direct. More and more brutal. Just as she had planned. The extended life her new patron had gifted her with had been allowing her the luxury of comfortably watching the fruition of long term plans. It was exilhirating, and she was hungry for more self fulfillment through construction projects and public works. Aglethal looked up; she was at the massive doors to enter the earthen mound that her husband had built to cover and protect the wellspring his people worshipped as a god. It was so important, it needed to be protected quite severely, in fact, and the reason for that was fairly simple; the water genie.

Daolmecc the water genie was, in all actuality, no genie at all. He was an anomaly. A happy happenstance. Serendipity, if you will. Daolmecc was, for all intents and purposes, the fairy godmother of the surrounding peoples. He loved nothing more than inviting good fortune and blessings upon his friends and neighbors, revelling in their joyfulness at the abundance he could so easily provide them. He danced with water spirits in wild abandon, shedding rainbows to delight the eye, and crystalline shimmers of tinkling sound that ring pleasantly just within earshot. The cycles of rain and sun were wild and free, there, dancing together to create a blessed abundance on Teotachetlan Isle and, water being what it is, the surrounding islands as well. The people of the empire multiplied, and were fruitful, and brought about many great innovations in construction and precision stone craft. They dove for pearls, and ate hogs wrapped in big banana leaves and slow cooked in cloves and fruit juices. They made cloths of cotten, and threads of hemp and coconut fibers. They fashioned soft grasses to their clothing to comfortably protect their hips and legs. By tradition, they used pigskin for leather, and sharkskin for carpentry tools, and obsidian for weapons, and baked unleavened bread with flat stones washed smooth by the sea. Their way of life was simple, growing beans and corn together with squash in cultivated plots, but their grass huts had graduated from improvised contrivances to stone foundationed structures. Public squares all boasted people-made mountains of stone they called 'ziggurats' in their gutteral version of the common tongue. Causeways were well on the way to connecting the farther flung villages to the capitol with a web of masonry raised three feet above the aqueducts and fields of the lowlands. All of the people could travel to the capitol at will, stopping for the evenings to eat and drink at protected waystations stocked with long lasting foods and a spectacularly maintained well full to bursting with Daolmecc-blessed water. 

Aglethal smiled warmly as the intricately gilded bars of the eighteen foot tall gate glided open silently. Made of shaped metal; a rarity in their civilization, they were perfectly counterbalanced and could be opened with the push of a finger, if it were unlocked. Sliding sideways into the wall, the gate itself was a wonder of artisanal innovation, and (if she did say so herself) magical excellence. Built for strength as well as beauty, the gate couild withstand the force of an army of men if locked. Or, one genie so powerful it could wipe out every man, woman, and child in a hundred mile radius with a temper tantrum. She had her people to think of, after all, and it was important that the people saw her husband the King as the true power behind the throne.

The people had never entirely trusted Aglethal. She was a self-professed witch, after all! But the King doted on her as a wife. He loved Aglethal very much; she was a good wife. Very sensuous. He loved her much more as a wife than he ever had as a step mother. His other two wives were, of course, Aglethal's allies and partners in witchcraft and dweomerwork. His last two other wives. The other fourteen of the women in his hareem had died mysteriously. Aglethal laughed at the thought. She had barely even needed to do anything...just drop a little charm here and there. They had done each other in, happily. 

Aglethal stepped through the ziggurat's doorway, into a hallway carved into the squared-off mound of hard packed dirt and gravel. The slanted outer walls were made up of large stones, fronted with adobe bricks and finally skim-coated with limestone, but the vast bulk of the structure was made up of loam mixed with clay and sand in a very precise proportion. Rooms within were literally dug out, secured with fascia, and ceilinged with support trusses. The hallway she was walking down echoed loudly as her footsteps marched purposefully down to the mechanical access room. A spiral stair wound its way down from there to the original wellspring, which was by then walled off, dammed, and metered. It had been making Daolmecc miserable, and she hated having to approach the poor creature like this. But it was all necessary for the good of her people. Her husband's people. She found the blue skinned genie sitting forlorn in a little garden of levitating Flumphs, which disappeared with discontented little pop!s of air at her approach. But Daolmecc was delighted! Aglethal was one of his very favoritest people on the island, and that was saying quite a lot. He loved so many people! Aglethal had been exceedingly nice to Daolmecc, though, always asking after his health and bringing him gifts of pistachios, and cinnamon bread sticky with honey. She had not disappointed this time, either! She caused a table to appear out of thin air, and Daolmecc filled the room with fireflies to light their dessert. When they were done eating, as per usual, they sat back laughing and chatting, picking at their teeth with thin splinters of wood. They laughed about the rainfall, and smiled at each other's childish wishes for lives full of adventure and fulfilment. And then, finally, she got up to leave, and with a smile presented to Daolmecc a special little laquered box. It had a bow and a little note that had been signed by all of the children of the local village. Daolmecc loved children. The note read, "Roses are red, water is blue, the sun is shining, and we love you!" It had obviously been inscribed by an adult...perhaps a teacher, or an educated parent. "Each child in the village laughed into this vase," read another note, written in a much more practiced hand. Aglethal's! Daolmecc was overjoyed! He looked up at her with sudden childlike glee. "You got me a present!" He crowed, dancing around in a little pattern he had been taught by a sailor who just called himself Cap'n Hans. A dance step called an Irish Jig. "A present, for little Daolmecc!" Aglethal laughed, clapping her hands together delightedly at her friend's cavorting. She let him revel in the purity of his joy for a moment, then gently enjoined him to open the box. Sliding the shiny laquered top out of the slot it sat in, Dolmecc's breath caught in his throat as he beheld the most beautiful bottle he had ever beheld nestled within amongs cushions of silk. A full cubit long, it had been carved from a single piece of pale rose quartz, resembling nothing so much as a large perfume bottle, with a flared stopper that was shaped like a large gemstone mounted atop a translucent quartz stopper. The stopper was sealed with what looked to be black paraffin wax. Daolmecc barely even paused to remove the wax before he had the stopper out of the pinkish crystal bottle, holding it up to his ear as if he could hear the gift of the children's laughter. Aglethal watched, mesmerized, as the primordial creature broke down into his essential components, and disappeared in a swirl into the confines of the bottle. Wasting not a moment, she scooped up the vessel and stoppered it, whisking a half burnt black candle out of her robe's sleeve and igniting it with a quick word. She dripped the melting wax over the head of the bottle and its stopper, sealing it shut once again.

She stood, and looked deep into the bottle for a long time, almost as if she was trying to see something within. Then, with a shrug, she turned and strode back to the spiral stairs, tossing the sealed bottle over her shouloder to land with a splunk! in the deepest part of the ancient wellspring. Now? The people were all hers. And her husband's, of course! She needed to keep him safe, or her own biological son would be forced onto the throne, and that would be a real travesty, if that were to happen...