This Curse

This Curse - By Alisha Basso

Prologue

My best friend, Lucian, once asked me why I didn’t use my magic to solve the world’s problems. Why didn’t I use it to end suffering, or give everyone money, and comfortable homes? Why not use it to go back in time and make all the bad stuff that happened to us go away?

They were good questions, but the answers were simple. I had no desire to stop living my life, and I wouldn’t dream of taking life from others. My answers stumped him at first, and then I explained that without our experiences, the joy and the suffering, our lives would be pointless. If I made every bad situation go away then the thrill of overcoming obstacles would never fill us, the joy of achievement would be unheard of because everything was given, no one would have to fight to make their own path.

If I changed the past, then the future would be empty. We have to walk through our own story and move through what life gives us. Life gave me this power, no one else. I have to use caution I’m not God. Hell, I’m not even an angel.

So really, what right do I have?

His beautiful lips spread into a smile that turned my limbs to jelly.

“I’m still giving to charity," he had laughed, and I punched him in the shoulder.

He was a fine man, my Lucian.

A fine man indeed.