This starts out as a fairy tale, but does not end as such.

Riding on a subway, Jane was squirming with self-consciousness. Shaking dark curls out of her eyes, she wiped her shaking, clammy hands on purple and black striped leggings, brushing her elbow against the heavy object that was swinging gently -- almost innocuously -- in her left hand jacket pocket.

It's so heavy, she thought. Would I be able to drink all of it?

Earlier that day, she had obtained a potion in a sketchy graffiti-infested alleyway from her great-great-grandfather, who was alive and well -- and a self-proclaimed wizard. In a smoky back room, he granted her the legacy of eternal youth, as was family tradition, and handed her a jeweled flask, commanding her to drink it before midnight. Drink it before midnight, and the greatest human desire falls -- easily, simply -- into her hands. She will have achieved what so many before her had died and killed to obtain.

And all at the age of sixteen.

However, on the subway Jane saw a man. It was Safura -- the man that she had loved for her entire high school life, who had spurned her advances with all of his long blonde-haired self-possession and charisma. Today was different. He sat beside her, imbued with a fresh and eager interest to get to know Jane.

Potential and what-can-be's stretched out like flourishing plains in her mind. His glowing green eyes spoke of the possibility of marriage, children, a wonderfully concise lifetime of happiness. When he left at his stop, he touched her gently on the shoulder. Jane stumbled out of the subway station in a daze. On the way, she took the flask out, glittering in the fluorescent light and -- her teenage mind glittering with untainted dreams and ivory optimism -- willfully dropped the flask onto the train tracks.