Itty Bitty Living Space

Chapter 2: Damien

"How cool would be it to find one of those humans and wish for our cutie marks?!" Scootaloo buzzed, as she and her friends cleared out of the schoolhouse and began walking down the dirt path that led to the rest of Ponyville.

"Yeah.  Too bad ya heard Miss Cheerilee, though.  She told us that none a' them humans have ever bin found.  Seems like they're just made-up critters used in stories..." Apple Bloom told her friend back.

"Yeah, but I can dream, right?" Scootaloo shot back.

"Look, we're not gonna get our cutie marks by sittin' around and waitin' for some magic wishing-thingy to show up and give 'em to us.  We just gotta do it the good ol' fashioned way!" Apple Bloom argued.

"We've got a long weekend ahead of us right now.  What's on our list of activities for tomorrow, Apple Bloom?" Sweetie Belle chipped in.

"Let's see, we could try an' get our swimmin' cutie marks again!  But if that don't work, we could always try an' our treasure huntin' cutie marks near the shore of the lake!"

"You really think there's treasure near that quiet old lake?" Scootaloo asked incredulously.  Nothing interesting ever happened over there; it was a quiet and peaceful spot.

"Yeah!  Granny Smith once told me that the lake and the beach there were once part a' of the Everfree Forest when she was just a little filly.  There may be loads a' stuff buried there waitin' to be dug up!"

"I found a few bits buried on the beach when I went there with Rarity once!  This could be the perfect opportunity to get our cutie marks!"

"If you say so!  I'm in!  We start our latest journey for our Cutie Marks this Saturday!" Scootaloo remarked, putting her hoof down.  Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom put their own hooves over the top of hers.

Apple Bloom got home later that night, opting to hang out with her friends for a couple more hours.  Applejack and Big Macintosh had already completed the chores for the day, and so now the entire Apple Family was relaxing within the farmhouse.

Granny Smith was humming to herself in the kitchen, while Big Macintosh helped her.  Applejack sighed happily from the middle of the living room, her body resting on the couch, her long day of working out in the orchard done.

Apple Bloom was at the foot of the coffee table, a sheet of paper and a few crayons scattered over the place as she hummed happily while she drew.

Applejack watched her with a smile on her face, though she was perplexed over what her little sister was drawing.  Usually when she got her crayons out, she would draw an apple tree, or a plow, or something else that she would see on the farm.  What she was drawing now definitely wouldn't be found on the farm.

In truth, Applejack had never seen anything like what the youngest Apple was drawing.

"Hey, little sis!  Uh..... what'cha drawin' there?" she asked, now suddenly curious.  To Applejack, it looked like a weird-shaped fancy bottle, with a plume of grey smoke rising out of the top.

"It's a human's bottle!" Apple Bloom said excitedly.

Applejack's mind ran in circles.  She knew it was a bottle, but she had never heard of a "human" before.  And humans had bottles?

"A whut now?  What in tarnation is a human?"

"Oh, we learned about them in class today.  They're called humans!  They're a real weird monster told in old stories!" she told her sister.

Applejack's confusion deepened.  She didn't normally have patience for such stories, though there was one that she had never even remotely heard of.

"Miss Cheerilee brought in a fake human bottle, and told us all 'bout them!  Apparently, humans have some really good magic, and they're able to grant wishes for any pony who becomes their master.  At least, that's what the stories say..."

Applejack narrowed her eyes.

"Not sure ah really like them creatures all that much, with their fancy-schmancy wish grantin' and magic.  Don't they know the value of good ol' fashioned hard work?  Goin' around grantin' wishes just means tha' them there "humans" are jus' lettin' ponies take the easy way out..."

"They ain't even real, Applejack!  They're just made-up creatures..." Apple Bloom told her sister, her voice fading to a hesitant whisper.  Why was Applejack so upset over this?

Applejack climbed to her hooves, giving a stern glance towards her sister.

"Good.  Ah don't want y'all ta think you can just get rid of a problem by just wishin' it away.  If you want somethin', you gotta work hard for it!"

"Our family built this farm by the sweat o' our brow.  Not by wishing fer it like lazy ol' ponies!" Applejack continued.  Now Apple Bloom understood.  These wishing creatures cut into the very traditions that her sister held very dear.

"What are they teachin' you in school these days?" Applejack grumbled to herself, and Apple Bloom felt her mood get soured by her sister's outburst.  She felt it best not to mention these creatures in front of her sister from now on, but it wasn't like they were just going to run into one right out of the blue.

Genie: An Autobiography

Hello, my name is Damien Wexcombe III, but it's not like my last name matters at this point, so just call me Damien and be done with it.

Now at this point, you're probably wondering what I am, right?  It's simple, I am a genie.

Well, technically I'm not.  I was a human before all of this.  It's just that the world of Equestria gives me god-like powers on an unbelievable scale.  Here's the kicker: all those powers have to be used in the service of a so-called master.  When I was summoned here about 1,200 years ago, I was confined to this bottle along with the others, and am forced to play by the rules with my powers, which I'll get to in a little bit.

Yes, there were others, by the way.  About fifty of them.  If you want to know what happened to them, please refer to my follow-up series, "Genie: How We Got Here".

Essentially, I'm a genie, or at least how they are interpreted in Western societies, at least.  Here's my routine.

Pony finds bottle.  Pony rubs bottle.  I pop out.  Pony gets three wishes.  Pony uses three wishes.  I go back in bottle.  Rinse and repeat.  I've even got the ghostly tail.

Anyway, by now, you may be thinking to yourself that it might be fun to leave your old, boring lifestyle as a human and go gallivanting as a genie in Equestria.  Well, don't kid yourself.

Having this job means you deal with a lot of selfish ponies with their selfish wishes.  Not once has one of my masters wished for an attractive female companion for yours truly.  Hey, this dick isn't gonna suck itself, y'know!

Excuse me, I was just reminiscing over a long-lost lady genie that I was once fond of.  God, she gave such great he..... uh, never mind.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that granting wishes gets old really fast.

But while we're at it, why don't I talk about my crib?!  Well, it's about the nicest 8 X 4 inch bottle you'll ever come across, and I've spent over a thousand years in it as my living space.

How did I handle it, one might ask?  Well, in a variety of ways.  One of my friends told me that you'd be able to spend an eternity cramped up like this if all you had was an Xbox and a limitless supply of Doritos and Mountain Dew.  So, I tried that for a while, but it didn't last because... well... I'm not that pathetic, y'know.

After a few years, I think I started to go a little bit crazy.  What pretty much amounts to solitary confinement will do that to someone.  But, after a few decades of insanity, it sort of went away.  At that point, it seems that my mind and body were so far removed from a human's that it didn't really matter anymore that I was in a situation that would drive a person insane.  Equestria changed who I was intrinsically.

And so, here I am today!  I'm still a little bit crazy though...

Damien grit his teeth as he stopped typing.  He clacked his fingers against the old-fashioned typewriter that he loved using, before he shook his head and scrapped the entire thing.  Why did he decide to write his memoirs if no one would read them?

He leaned back in his chair, looking around his "living room".  The gold plated, jewel-encrusted walls of his bottle may indicate a life of luxury, but this place was as much a prison as anything.

He stared down the hallway towards a golden door at the end.  His "Hall of Fame".  He kept records and memories of his previous masters in there, all 7,563 of them.

"Huh, what to do?" he asked himself.  Suddenly, a loud rumble rocked his bottle, forcing a few things from their shelves and rattling the walls.

"Guess that answers that question!"

"Girls, come quickly!  Ah think ah found something!"

Trying to get their swimming cutie-marks had turned out to be a gigantic bust, once again.  But, there was still hope for the Cutie Mark Crusaders to find something valuable and earn their treasure-hunting cutie marks.

Apple Bloom was stunned when she had actually found something like this on the beach of the Ponyville Lake.  It was so pretty.

She moved some more dirt out of the way as Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo rushed over, dropping their picks and shovels immediately.

Her mouth grasped a handle as she hoisted the metal object out of the earth, and held it aloft with her hooves, her two friends staring at the country filly in awe.

"What is it?"

"It's so pretty!"

Apple Bloom regarded the bauble in front of her carefully.  It was about eight inches in height, and seemed to be plated in gold, of all things.  It had a decorative skinny handle out of the left side of it, while the neck of the bottle was encrusted with what looked like emeralds.

"Looks like some kinda fancy bottle..." she said, the gears turning in her mind.  She felt like she had seen something similar to this object not too long ago, but where?

"I know.  Isn't that kind of like the thing that Miss Cheerilee brought into class the other day?" Sweetie Belle piped up, still in wonder of the bottle.

"Hey, you're right.  It looks just like one of those human bottles.  But this looks like the real thing instead of just a replica!" Scootaloo agreed.

"But, Miss Cheerilee said that humans were just made-up critters used in stories.  And why would this thing be buried underneath Ponyville Lake?  Still, it looks like it migh' be worth a lot a' bits..." Apple Bloom said, rubbing the side of the bottle.

The bottle shook.

"What the?" Scootaloo asked suddenly.  Apple Bloom's mouth went dry as she saw the bottle react to her touch, and butterflies fluttered in her stomach.

She clutched onto the bottle tightly as a wispy, white mist rose from the narrow opening in the bottle.