The gift easily took the prize as one of the most expensive, and odd gifts I had ever received.

A bird, as large as a parrot, with gold and orange feathers, in a metal cage as big as your average school table. It was a gift from my Uncle Julius when he visited from Egypt. He claimed that he had caught the bird near a tomb, and since my birthday was coming, he decided to give me the bird. Odd, considering that I, a teenage Singaporean schoolgirl, was probably the last person most sane people would give a large bird to. I had to beg for months just for my parents to give me an iPod.

Then again, I couldn't exactly call Uncle Julius sane.

He shaved his head and wore a wig, and when he got angry he started talking in a language I had never heard. He shaved his eyebrows when his cat died, and he always said things like, "By Osiris's beard!" or "Thoth would be proud!" He knew more about ancient Egypt than I thought possible.

Back to the story.

In any case, there I was, left with a bird in a giant cage. I was told that I would never have to feed it, which was extremely weird, or even give it water. No, all I had to do was buy a ton of firewood. Yep.

A week passed and one day I returned from school to find that Flamma, Latin for 'flame' and what I decided to call the bird, had dropped a few gold feathers.

That was not the weird thing. The weird thing was that when I picked up the feathers, they were hot. As in, hot enough to burn my fingers, and I swore I saw the bird smirk when I dropped the feathers.

I decided not to think about it.

Of course something even weirder happened.

Not one month after I got Flamma, I was woken up by the bird singing, which was weird on so many levels because she never sang, and not only that, I saw half a dozen pearls and diamonds drop from her beak as she sang, landing on the floor of the cage with metallic 'clang!'s.

That was just the beginning. Flamma then went and ate the stuff. Yes, my pet bird ate six pearls and diamonds that fell from her beak when she sang.

Things got steadily worse and weirder from there.

Flamma seemed tired, all the time, and more and more feathers dropped, but every time I tried to pick them up, this time wearing gloves, she snapped her beak at me and screeched. I asked Uncle Julius, and he told me to put the wood I bought in her cage, and the contents of the package he sent me. It was sweet-smelling, and I was fairly sure there was myrrh in there. He also told me to get rid of anything flammable within a one-metre radius of the cage. He then laughed at the pun.

Then on a warm October night, Uncle Julius suddenly turned up in Singapore, at my parent's request apparently.

He and my parents fussed around Flamma for about half an hour, and at midnight, when I was about to give up and call it a night, Flamma and the contents of her cage burst into flames.

To say I panicked would be an understatement.

I ran for the fire extinguisher, but Uncle Julius stopped me. "But Flamma's in there!" I protested.

My mother smiled. "You have not guessed? Flamma, as you call her, is the Phoenix. She is just going through her rebirth."

My first reaction was that everyone had gone crazy.

"It is true. Your parents, Uncle Simon, and I have been the caretakers of the Phoenix since ancient times. The Phoenix has kept us all young. My real name is Khaemwaset of Egypt, Priest of the Temple of Ra." Uncle Simon was my father's friend from England, a historian specializing in the Celts. He'd died just earlier that day.

I would not have believed it, had it not very neatly explained everything. My parents, Uncle Simon, and Uncle Julius were all historians, and all of them seemed to know literally everything there was to know about history, even things no-one should be able to know like exactly what the Emperor of China was wearing on the fifth of June, 1476.

On top of that, the way they spoke was... archaic, to say the least. Very formal and stiff, though they seemed to know every single insult and curse ever invented as well.

They also never seemed to grow old. No white hairs, no wrinkles, nothing at all. They looked like they were in their twenties. It got to the point that people routinely thought my parents were my siblings.

While we were talking the flames had died down, and there in the ashes, was a single, gold egg, studded with jewels and pearls. The Phoenix's egg.

The year is now 3677, and my parents, Uncle Julius, or Uncle Khaemwaset as I should call him, and I remain as the caretakers of the Phoenix.

How it worked was that my parents represented the Eastern fenghuang aspect of the Phoenix, Uncle Khaemwaset the oldest, the Egyptian bennu, and me the Western firebird, the form the Phoenix had taken on for the past thousand years. All three representatives were needed for the Phoenix to survive. It was like three parts of a person. Uncle Simon had died as he refused to represent the firebird anymore, and I was chosen to take his place.

The world has changed much, and I have had to change with it, but taking care of the Phoenix is worth it.

I wonder how my life would have turned out had I refused to become one of the Phoenix's caretakers that night. I would never have become immortal when I was twenty years old, I would have been sworn into secrecy anyway, and then I would grow old and die while my parents remained young.

Yes, choosing the become the Phoenix's caretaker is something I will never regret.