I have a pet jaguar now.

I named her Jabari, meaning brave one, because I always come home to find her crouched at the door, waiting to pounce on my boots. Other than her unconquerable instinct to hunt humans, she is by far the easiest cat I've ever owned. She has no claws, no fangs, and only stands as tall as a squirrel.

Admittedly, adopting a jaguar is a tacky trend at this point. I'm catching the wave at the tail end, when it's as easy as rescuing a stray from the shelters. When the rapid evolution had just occurred, and all jaguars on the planet found themselves on the prey-end of the wildlife spectrum, owning one of these little devils had been a high luxury. But it took less than ten years before nearly every street in the country had a proud-posturing mini-big cat being walked on a leash.

We've seen now that this was likely the first of the ancient wishes to come true. As far as I can tell, it's the only one that has had a clearly positive benefit.

Following closely behind the rapid evolution of all jaguars came many sudden and unexplainable events like the torrential rainfall along the Tigris-Euphrates river system in the Middle-East, the appearance of an enormous fish in the Huang He, or 'Yellow River', of China, and the eruption of a previously dormant volcano along the east coast of Kenya.

Taken on their own, each seemed like an individual freak occurrence of nature. It wasn't until the resurrection of Sadiki, the ancient Egyptian, that we all pieced together what must be happening.

Sadiki's body coalesced from a scattering of dust outside of Cairo. The skeleton had formed first, discovered one morning just lying out in the open under the hot sun, and scientists gathered from across the globe to watch as the streams of dust carrying Sadiki's soft tissue slowly trickled in from the farthest reaches of the desert. Even the white linen outfit from Sadiki's burial had reformed, and until then, scientists were too cautious to get close enough to discover that this was not a modern human skeleton.

Sadiki, through the help of some very excited historical linguists, described a long and arduous battle for their health, and many prayers from friends and family for their full recovery. Their mother, in a slightly blasphemous taboo, even wished on a wandering star.

At last, all the individual anomalies could be collected into one theory. And this theory seemed to hold for many freak occurrences to come, like the sudden appearance of a land bridge across the Red Sea, trapping many cargo ships in the newly formed Great Red Lake.

When I'm out on my late walks with Jabari, I watch the first stars appear in the sky and wonder what the earth will look like when all the past millenniums' worth of wishes come true. I'd really like to see this planet after all the little changes catch up, see how society carries on with what will probably be a daily reshuffling of the laws of physics.

So tonight, I wish to come back like Sadiki, at least for a short while, in however far a future that may be. I'll try to remember tomorrow to wish for Jabari's safe return as well, as long as some other misguided wish from the ancient past doesn't wipe us out before then.

__________________

I'm on day 30 of a streak.

If you liked this story, the other 29 days are collected at r/FarFetchedFiction.

Thanks.