Rumble woke up from his dream sweaty, disoriented, and with a painful hard-on between his legs. It took a moment for him to untangle from the blankets, the way they'd wound around him like an old pair of headphone cords let for too long in their own environment, and then another minute to disentangle from the fabric of the dream itself—soft pony bodies on every side of him, smiling and winking and worshiping and bending over to present themselves...

Rumble shook his head. The dreams had been going on for a while—usually the same, with minor details different. It always started with Rumble waking up in the morning and drinking a tall glass of milk that somepony had poured for him and left waiting in the fridge. He always drank the milk, wondered what it tasted like as he was tasting it, and then moved through the dark space between scenes suddenly into the next moment, harem on every side and body shaped and aged up from his normal, tiny frame. Flitter and Cloudchaser were there, Twilight and Pinkie, Princess Luna and Celestia... it seemed like every mare in Equestria was going to make at least one cameo before the dreams were over.

It had been two months, and they weren't over.

Of course, Rumble had hoarded the bottle, counting the drops at the bottom and praying preciously until the last time he'd polished the thing clean, and even then, only gotten a mild case of hiccups and noticed some mild swelling in his face and neck. There was no list of ingredients, or any label at all, and the smell was too mixed and salty-smelling to guess at what any of the components might be, to maybe mix up a homebrew concoction of his own.

No... when it came to magic like this, the particular, transformative, 'back-of-the-store-curtained-section' magic, the only pony to talk to was distinctly not a pony at all. A methodically rhyming black-and-white shamaness at the edge of the Everfree, as though her very location was part of the test to see whether or not you deserved to make a purchase. He'd gone once, when the light was out, sun up at midday, and still he'd felt nervous, hearing strange, unnervingly close growls from deep in the forest, and the perpetual sensation that he was being watched. Even making it to Zecora's didn't alleviate the tension much, until she'd given him a dose of rhymes and shoved the potion into his eager little hooves. Just like that, she'd helped him, a fairy godpony in the night. Maybe, if he was really that tiny and cute, he'd get lucky twice. And then he wouldn't have to be tiny or cute any more.

After he counted up the bits he'd been saving from his allowance for over a month, Rumble grabbed the empty potion bottle from underneath his bed and packed it in his saddlebag. Music would have been nice, to cover up the ambient crunches and baited howls of the forest... but sometimes, when there was somewhere you really needed to go, the only soundtrack you could get was the voice in the back of your head saying Just one more step. That's it. Then the next one. One more step. Good. Every time your hoof moved forward, you could give yourself a pat on the back, until you'd made it all the way to the destination.

With a last look back at his bedroom, his Wonderbolt bedding and sports-pennants hung on the wall... a poster of Daring Do, grinning as she stood in front of a large , MGI1 explosion.

Rumble shut the door quietly, wishing he was old enough to have his own lock. Maybe he'd just have to spend some more time out of his room for the next little while.

Once he'd gotten to Zecora's hut, the general sense of lurking predators in the faraway brush vanished (mostly), and even managed to keep his hoof steady, breathing calm as he knocked three times on the wooden door.

Waited thirty seconds. No response.

Knocked again. Knock, knock, knock.

Began to shuffle his hooves, looking around into the surrounding trees and wondering how far a timberwolf could run in the time it would take for Rumble to learn to fly. Then the door opened.

"Yes, one moment, please be patient, you've come to call while I was doing my baking..."

Zecora searched at eye-level for her new visitor, and, on finding nothing there, lowered her gaze to see if the local crawmice were playing tricks again. But there she found Rumble, a hopeful and desperate looking little grey colt, and suddenly remembered why she had gotten out of the habit of supplying unnamed, unlabeled, unexplained magickal potions to anypony who happened to come knocking with a set of sad eyes and equally sad story. A week ago she found Soarin' giving out hoots of his nasal-relief potion, claiming it made your head spin and funny colors pop up if you closed your eyes and held your breath after snorting some of the stuff up your nose. And while, yes, you could do that, Zecora had made the potion specifically to clear up Soarin's supposed nasal infection, and didn't feel like giving out the secrets of her favor buzz-up just because Soarin' had decided he wasn't really sick in the first place.

She studied Rumble with an appraising look, one eyebrow raised, the scent of whatever was in the oven wafting out the door and tickling Rumble's nose with the faint smell of cinnamon. Cinnamon and... garlic?

"Um," Rumble said, pawing at the ground with his hooves. "Hi."

"Ah, hello, my diminutive pegasus. What have you traveled this way to say to us?"

"Well, you uh, probably remember, I was here, a few months ago, about, uh, a potion to make me, uh, bigger—"

"Pause, my young thing. Don't have to finish. Do you mean that your colt-hood has been diminished?"

"No, uh, not as such, but I was hoping you could—"

"At your age, your youth should be free to finish, not spent on what might please the fillies." Zecora pursed her lips and looked down at Rumble, really down this time, the giant gap between a pony who was 'grown-up' and one who just wanted to be.

"Right, right, no, definitely, I agree... but I mean, your last potion, I mean, I don't know if you remember—"

Zecora narrowed her eyes even further, absolutely certain of every potion she distributed since her move to Ponyville. She had a ledger.

"You say you need another potion to increase your size, to where you might not believe your eyes?"

"Yes, that's right! In fact, if you could make it extra strong, I could just take a little more, and then use it to, uh, finally get on the roller coasters I'm too small for—"

Zecora shook her head slowly, eyes closed.

"The struggle of youth is a terrible subject," she said, her voicing lilting with aged wisdom. "But I no longer make potions for the general public."

"But you have to! When I came here last time, you said—"

"Please." Zecora held a hoof aloft, stopping Rumble mid-sentence, all silence, but for the burbling cauldron and soft hissing of the fire under the stone oven. "Take out thine hooves, and take out thy bottle." Zecora began to close the door. "This batch needs attention and I must not doddle."

"But—"

Without a 'slam', but with enough energy to communicate she wanted the contents of her doorstep very far away, Zecora shut the door, leaving Rumble on the front-steps, mouth half-open, empty bottle held in his hooves like a ticket to a closed-down theme park.

It took a few seconds to let go of the speech he'd prepared. Longer to settle on whether or not knocking again was worth it, and then finally to give up, hang his head, sigh, and turn to walk home the way he'd came.

But there was a noise still—that rumbling in the bushes. Was he going to get eaten just for wanting to come cop another wish-fulfillment potion? In his opinion, somepony shouldn't advertise their services if they're going to change their entire business model the next month...

Rumbling again. Closer. Whatever it was, it was definitely not ignoring Rumble anymore. It was following him, watching, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce...

"Greetings!" the yellow pony with a striped-hat said, popping out a bramble bush just to Rumble's right.

"Salutations!" the other pony said, popping up on Rumble's other side, cutting of any possibilty of escape that wasn't running full-on-screaming down the path and hoping his wings were eager to take their first emergency flight.

"Ahh!" Rumble said, and jumped, so startled he almost dropped his bottle, but managed to catch it clumsily before the thick glass hit the forest floor. Probably not to break, but better safe than sorry.

From their heads, two bodies emerged, suited in stripes to match their hats. 'Flim & Flam Curative Elixirs' was the sign on the wooden cart they wheeled out, with circus-style exclamations plastered all over—AMAZING! EXUBERANT! CURE ANY AILMENT IN ONLY A MOMENT'S TIME! FLIM AND FLAM'S CURATIVE ELIXIRS DEFY EXPLANATION, EXPOSITION, AND ALL FORMS OF REALITY!

"Good day, my young colt," Flim said, sidling up to Rumble and wrapping a foreleg around his back. "My brother and I were just on our daily constitutional through the ravishing Everfree estate, and we couldn't help—

"—but overhear your predicament," Flam finished, taking up Rumble's other side and squishing the colt inbetween himself and his brother. "And we're convinced that a double dose of Flim and Flam's EXPLICIT OVER-ENHANCEMENT syrup will set right all that ails you. You see, it's brewed from an ancient, Zebra formula handed down for generations—"

"—then reverse-engineered by us, under scrutinous testing and professional-quality observation," Flim added. "Nopony has been able to tell the difference in tests, before or after, and we're committed to the quality of our nebulous, wish-fulfilling product."

"Total satisfaction or your bits back—"

"—to all reasonable and legal definitions of 'satisfaction', hereby defined as—"

"—and this can be yours, for the low, low sum of ninety-nine bits plus regional taxes!"

"Ninety... nine bits?" Rumble patted his saddlebag, tallying the pony-bank savings he'd been storing from his paper route and allowance since the night at Flitter and Cloudchaser's. Money he earned as a little colt, that would be in someone else's hooves if he was big. And he wanted to be big.

"Does it last a long time?" Rumble asked, eyeing the translucent green liquid sloshing around in the stoppered bottle Flim and Flam had presented. He turned it in his hooves, studying the way the light seemed to refract through the glass and contents, glimmering like a light-house out in the middle of a bottle-green ocean.

"You may in fact notice prolonged and irreversible effects that are totally and one-hundred-percent part of the intended pharmacology," Flim said, turning a bottle around in his hooves to reveal the ingredient label. "And all our components are recorded under the full scrutiny of the Equestria Food and Substances association, which may or may not exist as of ten years ago."

"Perhaps our potential client would enjoy a sample?" Flam said, pouring what looked like a shot-glass full of the shimmery, crystaline liquid. "Just one sip and the vitals in your vigors and schnauser in your trousers will be raring to go." Flam offered the tiny glass to Rumble, who took it with his hoof shaking ever-so-slightly, spilling a tiny drop of the liquid onto the forest floor.

Flim dove for cover behind a bush as the drop hit the ground, but Flam stood steady, grinning and bracing himself as though a tornado were about to hit him in the face full force. The sound of a bird's mating call warbled through the woods, echoing off the maze of trees and foliage.

"Now, careful," Flam said, wiping a bead of sweat off his forehead. "That's quite volatile, so be sure to handle it carefully."

"Right." Rumble looked down at the glass in his hoof. It looked like he was about to drink a beer bottle melted down into a liquid.

But then there was Cloudchaser. Flitter. Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Spitfire, Mayor Mare, maybe, even...

With a loud gulp, Rumble threw the shot back. It hit the back of his throat and burned like a shot of whiskey (which he had also never had), making him cough and spit a bit as the fiery liquid burned its way into his stomach. Already, he felt sweaty and light-headed.

But... down there... he was growing, already?

It started out normal-ish, just like he was turned on ambiently and receiving the 'get hard' signal from a random part of his brain, content to visit spontaneous and awkward erections for the duration of his puberty. But even when it had reached full hardness, the point where he usually woke up either aching and desperate or sticky and wondering what shame smelled like exactly, his cock kept growing. He liked to call it a 'cock' when it was big, when he held it in his hooves and imagined sliding it into a sweet filly pussy spread out in front of him.

Wings, too. They were swelling, growing on his back, which was going higher up, as his legs began to stretch out...

"Wow," Rumble said, his voice shifted and pitched two tones lower than it had been a moment ago. "This stuff works fast." His features were hardening, condensing into the chiseled marble they'd been that night at the babysitter's, thoughts in his head turning and searing until they boiled up under the heat of his desire, and the plan, which had mostly been a list of mares, began to trickle into the forefront of his brain. "You said it was ninety-nine bits?"

"Ninety-nine for the first purchase," Flim said, grabbing the bits that Rumble had pulled out of his saddlebag and tossing them into a hidden compartment. "Each additional purchase may incur increased handling fees, tariffs, levies, ease-of-use optimization..."

"Please direct any and all complaints to Flim & Flam Incorporated Customer Support Desk," Flam said, hastily packing up the cart and throwing anything that seemed to be of value back into the various holding chambers, including a few fallen leaves and one of the bits Rumble had dropped while he was counting his money. Flam shut the cart, slamming doors closed on the top and lowering blinds to cover up the advertising slogans and pictures on the side. "Take care to enjoy your Flim & Flam Miracle Elixir responsibly, and do not operate or supervise the operation of any heavy machinery while under the effects of the elixir."

"Side effects may included prolonged, painful erections, intrusive thoughts of lust or violence, and the sudden and overwhelming sense that somepony somewhere is laughing at you for something you don't even know about."

"Thank you, come again," Flim & Flam said together, grabbing their cart and wheeling it back into the Everfree. Their heads bobbed among the brambles, then ducked, then vanished, leaving only the soft turning of wheels crunching over leaves and twigs in the distance. Then just Rumble, holding his bottle, feeling big and awkward and finally uninterested in paying attention to the timberwolves.

There was a list, after all.

Author's Note

1: Magic Generated Image.