The wish for a best friend failed. Let's be quite clear about that. The rules of miracles are clear, set down since the Golden Age began; push too far into impossibility, and instead of what you wanted (what is simply against all law for you to have) you'll get a hole in the world, and through that hole shall crawl monsters. Lilimund in her kindness softened the curse, gentled the beast's panic as best she could and woke up the seed of striving mind to true sapience—but that's just damage control.
Except...Chuubo looked at the hideous half-formed thing, badly concealed beneath a thin veneer of humanity, saw it in all its hunger and misery, and said Oh, you're perfect. I know you. You're like me; you're mine.
And the monster looked back at him, at the starveling last child of the Ash, at the kid so pathetic and broken that reality itself'd declared it was unforgivable hubris for him to imagine anyone might truly know him and yet still want him around, and replied You're me, you're mine. You're like me. I know you! I love you! Please keep me forever, so that I can keep you!
And arms reached out, and bodies curled close against each other, and hearts sang so loud that the song warped universal law around it; mine-to-me! All lovely, all holy, all mine!
So, yes; the wish failed, and failed in the worst possible way.
But with all the wrongness flowered into joy, you'll never convince either of them of that.
Fill: Chuubo's Marvellous Wish-Granting Engine, Seizhi/Chuubo
The wish for a best friend failed. Let's be quite clear about that. The rules of miracles are clear, set down since the Golden Age began; push too far into impossibility, and instead of what you wanted (what is simply against all law for you to have) you'll get a hole in the world, and through that hole shall crawl monsters. Lilimund in her kindness softened the curse, gentled the beast's panic as best she could and woke up the seed of striving mind to true sapience—but that's just damage control.
Except...Chuubo looked at the hideous half-formed thing, badly concealed beneath a thin veneer of humanity, saw it in all its hunger and misery, and said Oh, you're perfect. I know you. You're like me; you're mine.
And the monster looked back at him, at the starveling last child of the Ash, at the kid so pathetic and broken that reality itself'd declared it was unforgivable hubris for him to imagine anyone might truly know him and yet still want him around, and replied You're me, you're mine. You're like me. I know you! I love you! Please keep me forever, so that I can keep you!
And arms reached out, and bodies curled close against each other, and hearts sang so loud that the song warped universal law around it; mine-to-me! All lovely, all holy, all mine!
So, yes; the wish failed, and failed in the worst possible way.
But with all the wrongness flowered into joy, you'll never convince either of them of that.