two wishes free

Lena was twenty-two, blonde, and carefully put together in the way people become when they know cameras are always watching. Her hair was the kind of pale gold that looked expensive even under cheap student-flat lighting, usually worn loose or in a high ponytail that framed a face made for close-ups: high cheekbones, full mouth, eyes that could switch from soft and inviting to sharp and calculating in a second. She was tall enough to stand out, slim in a way that still had soft curves, and she knew exactly how to dress those curves for maximum engagement. Thin tops, short skirts, the occasional deliberate flash of skin that stopped just short of getting her account flagged.

She studied media and communication, but the degree was mostly a background prop. What she really did was build herself online. Posts, stories, carefully timed thirst traps that never quite crossed into full nudes, lifestyle clips that made her life look effortless and desirable. The numbers were good. Not famous-good yet, but growing. Still, likes and comments were never enough. She wanted the kind of attention that stuck. She wanted to be the woman men thought about when they closed their eyes. The dream. Not just another pretty face in the feed.

It was her friend Mia who gave her the voucher.

“Go,” Mia had said, laughing, pressing the crumpled card into her hand outside the campus café. “Old woman in the backstreets near the station. Does tarot or whatever. I got it as a joke gift and I’m never going to use it. You could make content out of it. ‘Influencer gets her future told, you won’t believe what happens.’ Easy views.”

Lena almost threw it away. She didn’t believe in that shit. Crystals, energy, destiny — all of it felt like something desperate people clung to when they had nothing real going for them. But the idea of a short, slightly mocking video series lodged in her head. She could film the visit, cut it with reaction shots, maybe do a follow-up where she “tested” the predictions. Content was content.

So she went.

The place was exactly what she expected: a narrow shopfront squeezed between a closed kebab place and a phone-repair kiosk, heavy curtains in the window, the smell of old incense and dust. The woman inside was older than Lena had pictured, thin, with sharp eyes and a mouth that looked like it had forgotten how to smile. She didn’t stand when Lena entered. She just looked her up and down, slow and unimpressed.

Lena didn’t bother being polite.

She dropped into the chair opposite the small table, phone already half-raised as if she might start recording at any second, and spoke in the bright, slightly bored tone she used when something was beneath her.

“So. My friend gave me this voucher. I don’t actually believe in any of this, just so you know. I’m mostly here for the content. But go ahead. Tell me my future or whatever.”

The old woman’s expression didn’t change, but something cold settled behind her eyes.

“If you don’t believe,” she said, voice flat and dry, “then I don’t need to waste my time telling you a future you already think you know.”

Lena’s smile tightened. The polite influencer mask slipped for a second.

“I have a voucher,” she said, sharper now. “I paid—well, my friend paid. You’re supposed to do the thing.”

The old woman looked at the crumpled card on the table, then back at Lena. A thin, humourless breath left her nose.

“Fine,” she said. “Instead of the truth that is already so obvious, I will grant you a wish.”

Lena blinked, then laughed—short, disbelieving, almost mocking.

“two wishes! Alright. First: I want to be the dream of anyone. Second: I want my dreams to come true.”

She sat back, still half-smiling, as if the whole exchange was already content in her head. The old woman—something closer to a nature witch than any gentle fortune teller—did not smile back. She simply closed her eyes, placed both thin hands flat on the table, and concentrated.

The single bare bulb above them flickered once. The air in the small room thickened for half a second, heavy and charged, like the moment before a storm breaks.

Then it was over.

The old woman opened her eyes again. Nothing about her face had changed.

Lena waited. When nothing more happened, she let out a soft, contemptuous scoff, pulled out her phone, and filmed a quick, mocking story right there at the table: the dusty curtains, the unimpressed old woman, her own raised eyebrow and the caption already forming in her mind—Scammed by a ‘fortune teller,’ classic.

She stood, didn’t bother saying goodbye, and left the shop with the same confident stride she had entered with.

Outside, the afternoon light felt ordinary again. Lena checked the footage, added a laughing emoji, and posted it on the walk back to the station.