The Italian Job

At the very least Simon expected the disorientation to be worse than the other times they teleported - he assumed there might’ve been a lot to do with momentum and distance involved. In any case, the sudden shift from the standing in the early-dawn hours of his kitchen to rolling down a grassy hill with Jessica was still jarring. He heard her let out a moan followed by a groan.

Simon reached under his girlfriend’s skirt to check the state of her pussy. Upon feeling the dampness in-between her legs and the shiver her body made from his touch, he sighed, focusing on her outfit and snapping his fingers to change out her underwear.

The blonde genie pouted and whined as her Master smiled back. He went about helping Jessica onto her feet while aiding her in dusting off the grass from her hair and clothes - both took a moment to look around. They must’ve landed in some garden or park close to where he wanted them to go. He checked to make sure everything else was undamaged before taking Jessica by the hand and leading her towards the exit.

He felt her tug his wrist softly,

“Master, why is there a fountain of a fat naked dwarf riding a turtle...?”

Simon raised an eyebrow before turning to follow her gaze “What do you mean….”

He stopped, blankly staring at the fountain of a fat naked dwarf riding a turtle on the side of a nearby building.

“Ah. Right. Um, maybe it’s a Medici thing?” he tried, earning an even more confused glance from his genie.

Simon took out the cell phone from his pocket and took a photo of the strange fountain.

He glanced over at Jess, meeting her confused frown with a smile, “I'm sending it to Kevin. I want to see how he’ll react...”

“Oh,” the blonde registered, “Without context?”

He nodded, “Yeah. I should get a pretty good reaction from that.”

The blonde rolled her eyes before she let Simon lead them down the paved path and outside the front of the large brick structure. The two teenagers then proceeded down the steps into the streets of the Italian Renaissance City. Jessica gasped at seeing Florence for the first time.

“Wow! Look at all the roofs!” she pointed up to the brightly colored red shingles and architecture in the light of the Italian sun.

Simon glanced down at his phone again as he looked at the address of the building he put into his GPS, seeing the Earth graphic now a series of street paths. Jessica nearly skipped on the cobblestone streets as they moved closer into the old city center. Her pleated black skirt bouncing along with her golden blonde locks with each step.

She stood on her tip-toes for one moment sniffing the air with all the smells that came from the open cafes and shops. The blonde genie now seemed more excited than Simon about this sudden trip abroad, where tourists and people walked the streets during lunchtime hours.

Sending texts and using data across the world would play havoc with his cell phone bill, but it would be worth it. Hopefully, their destination had a free wi-fi connection so he could stop using so much. Unfortunately, he’d probably have to wish for that to get fixed.

“Master,” Jessica’s eyes looked up at him as she stopped to stand cutely with her arms behind her back, “Why are we here?”

He stopped, turning to her with a smile as he held up the ring on his finger.

“Florence is an artisan city dating back to the Middle Ages, and it’s home to many jewelers and craftsmen. Your Dad could’ve taken your Mom to any number of jewelers in London, Paris, New York. A lot of places can make something like this, but the receipt was for a goldsmith in Florence.”

The blonde gazed at him curiously, putting the pieces together, “So…my ring, it came from here?”

Simon nodded, putting his hand down as he led her back on the path to the Jeweler’s shop, “I think so - I mean, that’s what we’re here to find out.”

The two teenagers continued onward down the road, closer to the bridges that crossed over the river, with the cathedral’s unique red-roof dome in the distance. Simon glanced back as his girlfriend continued to look around curiously at everything. It had been a long time since the auburn-haired boy was the one to take Jessica on an adventure of any kind.

“Master, isn’t there a lot of art in Florence?” Jessica asked.

He nodded, “Yeah. I read that there was.”

“I like art - I mean, I've always wanted to see a gallery of this stuff...”

He let out a laugh at her confession, “I know. I saw your paintings in the hall at school. Before that, you used to use my face as a finger-painting canvas, remember?”

The blonde glanced up to him curiously with her emerald eyes and then closed them as she remembered the image in her head. Simon stopped to see a smile forming as a giggle began bursting from the genie.

“Yeah, but you painted my face, too!” she reminded, “Your Mom came home, and Sammy ratted us out!”

He rolled his eyes at the memory, “Wasn’t that because you painted whiskers on her face to make her into a cat?”

“No! She was supposed to be rabbit!”

Jessica scoffed and began to look like her old self at that moment, flipping her hair from her face as she smirked at the topic of his sister.

“Sammy doesn’t like it when people are having fun without her. She gets all jealous! You should’ve seen her this one time at cheer camp, Tiffany took me to find some ice cream, and your sister got so upset we didn’t bring her any. So she brought ice cream for everyone else except us the next day!”

Simon let out a laugh as he thought of another memory of his sibling. Then, he suddenly stopped, his eyes squinting and his face suddenly scowling as he remembered how Sam unplugged the TV during a rank match with Kevin because they didn’t wait for her in the game lobby.

“She once cost Kevin and me an entire week of clan rewards because we didn’t wait for her to get back from the two of you getting dinner after practice…by unplugging the TV and stealing my controller…for a week….”

Jessica snorted as she laughed at the image of his sister and her best friend doing that, “Wow. Brutal.”

Simon sighed as his shoulders slumped, admitting another fact to the blonde related to that story.

“Pretty sure letting her game with us is how Kevin got a crush on her….”

“What!?”

Simon nodded with a slight smirk, “Oh yeah. He’s terrible at hiding it. Likes to mess with me about Sam being attractive, but he does tend to act differently with her around...”

“Man, what the fuck,” Jessica’s mind broadcast as she furrowed her brow with her eyes closed.

“Too bad for him. Tiffany and I were trying to set Sam up with Chris,” she admitted as they continued walking towards the goldsmith’s shop.

“Too bad for Chris that he let himself get dragged in with Brad,” Simon muttered under his breath at the mention of the linebacker.

Jess fell silent as he glanced back to the frown on her face, causing him to shrug and let out a sigh.

“Sam really wanted him to ask her out.”

Jessica stopped, looking surprised at her boyfriend and then smiling and pumping her fist as her mind cried out in triumph.

“I FUCKING KNEW IT! HA!”

“I knew she was interested!” Jessica proclaimed, now bouncing and looking at Simon as her new go-to source for information on the redhead.

Simon raised an eyebrow, “I mean she was... but ... Uh, Jess? He really screwed his chances up, though. Sam was distraught that he got involved yesterday. Even after I told her about him coming forward and turning on the others.”

He didn’t want to burst her bubble, but he knew what Sam said and felt after talking to her last night. She was still his sister.

“I kind of want to kick his ass like she does, too. He really upset her.”

Even if she was upset because of him, upsetting his sister was still a big no-no. Jessica whined and pouted as she kicked her foot in defeat, “Ugh, dammit.”

“C’mon, we’re getting distracted,” he tugged the genie’s hand as he smiled at her.

It was nice to have even the briefest appearance of high school topics serving as a reprieve from the task at hand. Simon turned to the blonde again as he moved back to let them walk side-by-side.

“I’ll take you to the art museum here before we leave, though. It should be fun.”

The Head Cheerleader beamed, “Okay!”

The two of them arrived at a newer-looking shop within one of the old buildings of Florence, nestled away and almost a block away from the famous bridge and tourist attraction of the Ponte Vecchio. Simon opened the door and let Jessica go in before him.

They walked past the other patrons, assisted by various staff members. Simon approached the front desk as he pulled the ring box out from inside his bag. Standing in front of him, the male middle-aged, slightly worn, short-haired Italian clerk, adjusting his glasses and looked up from his manifest.

“Ciao?”

Instantly Simon felt the switch in his brain flip as he waved awkwardly and smiled at the man at the counter.

“Hi.”

The Italian man raised an eyebrow at the sound of the young man’s accent, then patted his stylish shirt’s front pocket as he asked the boy his follow-up.

“May I help you?”

Simon smiled and nodded to him as he held out the box, “Yeah, we’re looking for the person who made this box about 18 years ago? It came from this shop according to the order history. We wanted to ask some questions about whether or not they knew anything about it.”

The man behind the counter remained surprised by Simon’s voice but inspected the box by taking it into his fingers and examining the craftsmanship closely. A smirk came to his face as he noticed a trend in the carving and details.

“And the ring inside?”

Simon held up his finger to show the man the details, but as soon as the merchant attempted to touch it, he pulled back out of defense. The boy nervously laughed as he gestured to Jessica next to him.

“I’m sorry. This ring was a gift from her, and I promised her that I would never lose it or I’d be a dead man. I can let you have a look, but can we make sure it stays on my hand, please? It means a great deal to her.”

The clerk glanced at Jessica, watching as her eyes remained wide and focused on his hand with a visible blush on her face, causing the Italian man to chuckle.

“Ah yes. I see. Very well then, please just let me have a better look on your finger.”

Simon held out his hand as the man held a magnifier to the golden band of the ring and the small but intricate carvings involved with it.

“Ah yes. Yes! I shouldn’t have had any doubt. I do know just the man that carved this. This ring and box are Gioiello’s work. I’d expect nothing else.”

The Italian Jeweler picked up the ring box again as he looked to them both and motioned them to stay put, “I’ll ask him if he remembers, but he is a very dedicated man. His orders are exceedingly rare, and he does not like to be disturbed. So please wait here. I shall return in a moment.”

“Okay then. Thanks.”

Simon watched as the man withdrew behind a door and upstairs to another part of the shop off-limits to customers. His brain flipped back as he turned to tell Jessica what was going on.

“He said the guy that made the ring still works here and that he’d be right….”

He stopped seeing the eyes of his genie gazing up at him, clearly aroused, as she bit her lip nervously. He raised an eyebrow, confused as his hand reached for the back of his head.

“Jess? What is it?”

She glanced away, then back up at her Master again, the look underneath her lip bite turning to a smile as she spoke softly as not to raise attention.

“Master uh, you speaking Italian is really hot.”

Ah jeez.

He rubbed his head nervously as he blushed, realizing that Jessica hadn’t seen him talking with his newfound abilities before.

“Jess, now probably isn’t the best time for that….”

The blonde genie’s face pouted as she stuck her nose up the air, “Hmph!”

“It’s still really hot!”

Simon again nervously laughed as she rolled her eyes at him, the Italian Jeweler returned to the two teenagers with a look of befuddlement.

“Scuzi.”

“This may seem most unusual for me to ask, but our craftsman does remember this work and would like to speak to you and the young woman personally. He is an older man, but he seemed quite interested. Will you please follow me?”

The man held out his hand as the young man looked to his left at Jessica and motioned her to follow with a look of surprise written on his face.

Jessica's eyes widened with nerves, but after a tentative moment she nodded and, taking his hand again, allowed him to lead her.

________________________________________

Both teenagers followed the man into the depths of the jewellers. They past a series of people worked at desks looking and sorting through various precious stones and jewelry in their inventory and both felt the curious glances as they went by.

The man led them next up an older stairwell that wound back and forth at 90-degree angles until reaching an apartment where the middle-aged man knocked before leading them inside.

A balding, elderly, but stoutly built man stood inside, wearing a buttoned red collared shirt, adjusting the series of multi-lenses on his work glasses and placing them on his head. His voice was raspy, and his walk was slow, but he smiled, holding the box in his hands.

“Rafael Gioiello, Sir Gioiello, these are the two who had questions about….”

The older man shoed the younger man away, “I have eyes still, Fernando. I can see who they are. Wait outside.”

The middle-aged man nodded quickly and departed after glancing back at the two foreign teenagers. The elderly man took a seat in a nearby chair slowly as he inspected Simon and Jessica closely. Then, let out a chuckle as he rubbed over the box with his thumb.

He motioned to the young blonde to come forward, “Bella. Per Favore. Per Favore.”

Simon smiled as Jess glanced between them confused, giving her a reassuring nod before letting go of her hand so that she could approach. Jessica stepped forward slowly and then knelt in front of the man as he motioned to get a better look at Jessica’s face.

Gioiello warmly smiled as he patted her hand, squeezing it as he looked at her fondly, “You’re as beautiful as the Venus who asked me to make this for her.”

Jessica shook her head and blushed, embarrassed, “I-I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

Her Master smiled to her, helping the old man translate, “He said you look like the Goddess who asked him to make the box.”

His filtering didn’t make the poor girl any less embarrassed as she stood up, curling her hands into her chest as she smiled to the old man, “Thank you.”

The old man then turned to the young man in the room, his eyes settling on him, “You are both too young to be asking me about this. However, as a man who is proud of his work and his client’s confidentiality, I must know what business it is for you to know. Why are you here? What importance is it of yours?”

Simon nodded as he switched back to the man’s native tongue, pointing at the box, “Your ‘Goddess,’ she had you make that for her infant daughter, correct?”

Simon directed a hand towards the genie, “This is her.”

The old goldsmith looked up again and let out a chuckle, “I had suspected as much. So you are Jessica, then?”

The mention of her name caused the cheerleader to nod slowly at him, still confused about what was going on. Simon walked forward and held her hand again, “I’m just the boyfriend and the translator.”

The man laughed at his honesty as he looked at them both with a smirk, holding the box and pointing it up to him.

“She looks so much like her. Very well, translator. Tell me why she is here and not asking the Goddess, herself?”

The smile faded from his face as he glanced at Jessica, a feeling of sadness coming from the topic itself,

“Her mother…disappeared…a short time after you finished making this and delivered it to Jessica for her birthday only this year. We were hoping you could tell us more.”

The man smiled sadly to the young woman, eyes becoming tender, “Ah.”

He immediately understood and then looked down at the box, shaking his head sadly as he looked fondly upon his work and the memory it gave them.

“Translate for me, young man. I shall tell her.”

Simon nodded, squeezing down on his genie’s hand as the grey-haired goldsmith looked to her and began to speak. The young man glanced at her as her eyes went back and forth between her Master and the ring maker.

The older man finished the first sentence as Simon took a deep breath and began to translate,

“Eighteen years ago, he was tending to his shop when a goddess like the Venus in the museum appeared to him. Holding a baby in her arms.”

Jessica’s eyes widened as she registered what was being said to her, looking at the craftsman and the box in his lap as he motioned to it, continuing to speak. Simon nodded along and kept a stoic face, occasionally squeezing her hand as he looked at her.

“The woman was easily the most beautiful he had ever laid eyes on, as well as the most mysterious. She was the patron of a wealthy foreigner requesting a commission for his and her newborn daughter. A ring to be made with a specific stone that she had brought with her.”

A specific stone? Simon had to turn back to Gioiello while raising an eyebrow and questioning the last point himself.

“Wait. You mean the emerald in the ring wasn’t from you?”

The man laughed and shook his head.

“No. The Goddess was quite insistent on the piece having the emerald she gave to me.”

He nodded back to the elderly Italian man to continue,

“He couldn’t refuse a request. The woman was almost divine in behaving and interacting as if she was an angel from another realm. Gracious and warm, but most insistent of completing this for you as her child. She asked for **** care and obsessed over every little detail, corresponding for over the months it took to focus on the work. Because of her, he put off all other jobs to complete it.”

“Months?” Jessica remarked in surprise, “For a ring and box?”

Simon turned back to the Italian Goldsmith with her question.

“Sir, why did it take so long?”

The man spoke to both teenagers again, waving his hand and scrunching his face as he described the various reasons it took the time that it had.

Simon’s brow raised as he listened before then repeating it back to Jessica,

“Your Mom spent a lot of energy asking and worrying about it, to have specific things and details that didn’t make much sense to him. The ring itself was the easy part. She asked only for the emerald and a series of symbols.”

Gioiello held out the box, pointing toward it and waving his hand, Simon again translating as he displayed it to them with his finger at the wooden and adorned case. Simon glanced at his genie,

“The box was the tricky part because she asked for a lot of details and specific gold furnishings and symbols as if your Mom was very superstitious. He even asked if she was trying to ward off some kind of evil spirits which made her laugh and smile, but she didn't deny it in the least.”

Jessica looked to her Master confused, watching as the man opened it to reveal the velvet furnishing inside where the ring had once rested.

“But, it looks like just a box. What does that mean?”

Gioiello sensed the confusion from both teenagers, letting out a raspy chuckle and pressing his fingers down in the indentation where the ring had once affixed itself.

“Watch closely.”

The two watched him as his thumb pressed down and forward into the velvet, causing the interior to make a popping noise, then pinching from the inside outward, he pulled the piece of red fabric out with its fixture to reveal the empty golden furnishing on the inside.

Simon’s eyes widened at the sight of various strange symbols covering and coating the inside of the ring box in gold leaf. His brain suddenly came to life. His eyelids flickered with his reaction to the new information, letting them flutter uncontrollably, an echo of a voice speaking in an unknown tongue entering his mind as he pieced it together with the symbols and markings affixed across the outside and around the box.

He snapped awake as his hand remained to clutch tightly to that of his genie’s. The young man’s eyes gazed at the box itself in awe, revealing its secrets to him.

That was it.

There was no doubt about it.

Except for one final detail. One that Simon needed to know, for himself, and especially Jessica. The thing that had shattered the cheerleader’s hope of being human the night before. It was another hypothesis, going off the evidence he had tried to piece together.

“Master Gioiello, I have a strange question to ask of you.”

The older man smirked and turned his attention to the frowning young man, as did the young woman in the room. Simon let out a gulp nervously as he asked.

“When the job was finished, did her Mother ask you to do anything peculiar or strange?”

A moment of silence passed by as the man closed his eyes, smiling and reminiscing at the moment clearly as he felt some fondness for it. As if remembering it like poetry. He was then nodding slowly.

“Yes. The Goddess knelt before me and made one final request when my task was finished.”

He covered his hand over the other, patting them, “She took my hands over the box and asked me to fulfill a tradition of her family. Once it was over, she gave me a kiss. The first I had felt since the **** of my beloved wife.”

“What did she ask?”

The older man smiled sadly, giving the box back to the young woman, holding her hands as he remembered how her mother had once held the old goldsmith’s hands, smiling at the young woman and saying the words.

Jackpot.

Simon’s energy spiked through his body as he could barely contain the feeling of accomplishing a goal and finding what one was looking for when it came to the box. The confirmation bias of being right making the natural high all the sweeter. He attempted to suppress the expression on his face as his voice trembled to speak to his beloved blonde bombshell, seeing her stare worriedly at what they were saying.

Her eyes widened enough to hold small plates in them as he told her what was said.

“Before taking the box, your Mom had Gioiello make a wish for her.”

Simon’s smile broke through his awe.

“A wish, for the box and ring to fulfill what’s inscribed upon them. She imbued the box with instructions for what she wanted it to do. She had him write out all of it for her.”

The young man smiled, announcing to the genie that he had found what they were looking for.

“Jess. She planned ALL OF THIS to happen on your birthday. She left us a trail! I think... I think we can summon your Mom back with this!”