Bottled Dreams Ch. 01

"Henry, why don't you go ahead and pick out a souvenir?" I heard a mom say to her son while I lackadaisically listened from inside my bottle.

As a captured djinn, I had nothing else to do but watch humans from my safe and cozy, but horribly boring and prison of a bottle. My only hope of ever escaping such a cramped lifestyle was for a human to pick me up, rub the dust off, and remove the magical cork that sealed me inside. Alas, the odds of that happening to a bored girl like me were next to nothing. Yet, I watched this curious boy, who was probably around 20 years old or so, browse the wares of the store and nurtured a fool's hope that he would choose me.

"C'mon Mom, do I have to? I don't really like anything here," I heard him say quietly.

"What? You have to get something! How else would you remember our trip?" his mom replied.

"Do I have to remember it?" he said sarcastically.

His mom lightly smacked his arm with a scoff and I couldn't help but giggle in my glass dungeon. I always appreciated a guy who had a sense of humor. He quickly resigned to the fact that he had to choose something and scanned the various items around the store. Every time his eyes glanced past the shelf I was sitting on, I felt a tinge of excitement and hope. Even after countless decades, I still dared to dream of my freedom.

"Alright, whatever, I guess I'll take this antique bottle then. It has to be the cheapest thing here anyway," I heard him say with a sigh.

Of course. Ignored like always. They always go for the shiny, pretty thing. Oh well, I guess there was tomorrow to look forward to and--wait. Wait wait wait. Was he reaching for me? Whoa, hold on, was this really happening? His hands wrapped around my bottle and I was pulled down from the shelf. I was utterly dumbfounded. This wasn't a dream, right? I didn't finally go crazy? After a quick exchange with the shop owner who pulled me out of the sand decades ago, I was placed into some type of paper bag and carried out.

I was still in a complete state of shock. I hadn't moved from that spot in literally years. I felt elated but also terrified at the same time. I was stationary for so long that I forgot how it felt to move around so much. I didn't realize just how comfortable I became with my surroundings in that damn shop.

Not able to see where I was going, I had to rely on my other senses. It felt like I was moving slowly, then very quickly, and then I was stationary for a while. Not long after, I was quickly on the move again and then I had the very curious sensation of flying through the air. I had heard that humans figured out how to fly, but I never experienced it before. It was strange and even though I couldn't see, it was still exhilarating.

After what felt like several days of traveling, my bottle was finally pulled out of the paper bag and I was set on top of a desk in what appeared to be a small room. While I couldn't see anything during my travels, I was able to keenly listen in on what everyone around me was saying. It appeared that my new owner, Henry, was a university student who was on something called 'spring break' with his family. It seemed like the parents were some sort of wealthy merchants given how much they discussed the father's business. Supposedly, they were able to afford to send him to school with private lodgings.

Now that I sat on his desk in what appeared to be a bedroom, I finally got a chance to visually study my potential new master. He was tall, but thin and lean. I had the impression that he might be really cute, but he didn't know how to present himself. If he got a different hairstyle, wore nicer clothes, and carried himself better, I thought he could be very handsome. Appearance aside, he did seem very nice, kind, and apparently, very smart if he went to a university!

As happy as I was to be in new surroundings, I knew it was very unlikely that I would be released from my confines. In the centuries since I had been imprisoned, it appeared that humans had forgotten all about djinn and rarely checked bottles to see if there was one captured inside. He would not only need to rub the bottle but remove the cork as well, which was something I was sure he had no intention of doing. I sighed heavily to myself but tried to focus on the silver lining that at least I would get a change of scenery for a while.

While I leisurely lounged inside my bottle, I lazily watched Henry as he frantically picked up different books and placed them into a bag. I wondered if he was running late to a lecture and I started to secretly judge him for having such poor time management skills. However, when he flung his bag around his body, it grazed my bottle, and I slipped off the edge of his desk. With a shriek that no one could hear, I tumbled down and landed on the floor. After I collected myself, I noticed that the cork popped out from the impact and a jolt of excitement spread through my body. One step down!

Realizing that he knocked the bottle down, he turned around and picked me up. I eagerly stared at him from within the bottle, but I knew it was wholly improbable that he would rub it. Before placing me back on the desk, he looked at the bottle curiously and muttered something about it being dusty. When his hand moved closer to the bottle and began to polish it, I gasped in surprise. He was actually rubbing it!

If my jaw could hit the bottom of the bottle, it would've. Immediately, magical energies swirled around and imbued themselves within me. I was about to unleash myself from my confines and reveal myself when I saw him quickly turn around, and walk out of the room. A moment later, I heard a door farther away open and then close. Welp, that timing couldn't have been shittier.

Rather than making a grand reveal and entrance, I instead sat down in my bottle completely deflated. I was finally able to leave, but I decided not to vacate my cramped confines just yet. For a while, I did toy around the idea of releasing myself and simply waiting in his room. However, I didn't think a human like him would react well to a floating, ethereal blue djinn hovering inside his private residence. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to simply delay my grand entrance, complete with magical extravagance, until he came back.

The flow of time never really bothered me too much before, but now it felt like it was grinding to a halt. I felt like I was going crazy while I waited for him to return. Just how long was this lecture of his? Just when I felt like my mind was about to snap, I heard a door open and close. I was beyond excited to leave, but I knew I needed to time everything perfectly so he wouldn't panic.

Once he walked inside the bedroom, I started to slowly release myself from my glass confines. To him, I knew it would look like a steady release of multicolored smoke coming out of the bottle. He looked incredibly confused and while I continued to rise out of the bottle, I knew I needed to start the theatrics. I swirled the multicolored smoke around the room and then made it start to glitter and dazzle. Small fireworks quietly exploded within the smoke and I had some trumpets play a triumphant melody. Raising the intensity of the lights within the smoke, I slowly coalesced the swirling sparkly smoke into my blue, ethereal, djinn form.

Giving a light-hearted laugh, I smiled at him and finally spoke with what I hoped was a welcoming voice, "Greetings master! You have my endless thanks for releasing me from my confines."

After finishing my introduction, I gave a sweeping bow and had additional small, quiet fireworks explode behind me, lighting up the room in a dazzling display of lights that spelled out the word 'congratulations'. I looked up to see if I could gauge his reaction and I noticed he wasn't running away screaming, so that was encouraging. Instead, he cooly stood still and stared at me with a kind of blank expression on his face. Becoming a bit nervous at his reaction, I decided to continue with my introduction.

"I am a djinn, or what your humans have more recently called a genie. As a reward for releasing me, I am prepared to offer you wishes and I would be happy to grant all of your heart's desires. I am here to serve!"

I held out my hands, filled with gems and other riches while I continued to smile charmingly. Naturally, this didn't show off the full extent of my potent powers, but I learned it was best to start modestly with humans.

With my introduction now complete, I expected him to go down to his knees and thank me for this opportunity. Instead, he continued to stare at me blankly. Was my entrance not impressive enough for him? Did modern humans expect me to say or do something else? The longer I smiled at him without any reaction from him, the more anxious I became. I felt like I was starting to sweat, but I didn't dare wipe my brow. Wait, can djinn even become sweaty?

After a long pause, he finally spoke up and said, "Oh...well, this is cool and all. But I'm late for another class and I really just came by to grab a book I forgot. So...."

He grabbed the book and started to slowly turn to leave when I said in a shocked tone, "Wait...what?"

He gave me a small smile and placed the book in his bag before saying, "Like I said, I gotta go since I'm already super late. But like, this is super neat. It's great to meet you. I...umm...yeah, I guess I'll talk to you in a little bit?"

"Now hold on just a minute," I said flustered.

He started to walk out of the room while saying, "Bye Miss Djinn, don't go anywhere until I get back, ok?"

"Seriously?" I asked exasperatedly.

But only a moment later, he walked out of the bedroom and just like before, I heard a door open and close in the distance. There I was, in all of my djinn glory, and now completely alone. What the actual fuck just happened? Did that little shit really just leave even after I magically appeared and offered him wishes? I scoffed to myself, crossed my arms, and pouted while floating in his room. I couldn't believe it. In all my centuries I never had a master who acted like that before.

I restlessly waited around to see if he would suddenly return after taking a moment to process what happened. However, as the minutes went by, it seemed pretty clear that he actually went to a class. I was dumbstruck that he reacted so nonchalantly toward me. Was it because I was this ethereal blue mass? Maybe someone like him needed to connect with a djinn on a more personal level. Should I take on a human form? I hadn't done that in what felt like forever, but he might feel differently about me if I was a young and beautiful human. Might as well give it a shot!

The tricky part was that I had to figure out what to look like first. If there was one thing I learned in my time as a captured djinn was that humans, especially guys, had a wide spectrum of what they considered attractive in regards to girls. I knew that I should look similar in age to him and have a fairer complexion to match his pale skin, but in terms of everything else, I was drawing a bit of a blank.

I decided to investigate his room a bit more to see if I could get a sense of what kind of appearance he would consider alluring. I saw several pictures of what appeared to be his family, but while adorable, it wasn't very helpful. I noticed some artwork on his walls that depicted specific individuals or groups of people. Many of them were pretty girls and I wondered if concubines here were widely accepted and celebrated. Even though I was a little confused, I thought that this might be a good starting point for what he found attractive.

With magical energies swirling around inside me, I transformed myself into human form with a short and petite body. While some cultures appreciated a thicker body, he seemed to appreciate thinner girls who were in good athletic shape. Because of that, I made sure my thin legs were a bit more toned, along with my stomach. I gave myself decently sized, medium, perky breasts and a round, firm ass that appropriately matched the rest of my figure.

Even though I focused on physical features that should be pleasing to him, I also gave myself some features that I personally liked. I made my eyes almond-shaped with a teal color while also giving my skin a sort of olive tone to it. I gave myself long, flowing black hair that went past my shoulders that also had streaks of teal highlights to match my eyes. While I had a lot of hair on the top of my head, I made sure that there wasn't hair anywhere else on my body. I wasn't sure why, but I heard modern guys hated hair anywhere else on a woman's body.

Not knowing what clothing styles were popular here, I decided to go with what I considered a traditional look. I wore a gold-dyed button-up vest that covered most of my torso, but it had a deep-v neckline that showed off an enticing amount of my perky breasts. My pants were silky, loose, and flowed from my waist down to my ankles. Spotting a mirror in his room, I decided to check to see how I looked. When I saw my reflection, I smiled excitedly. I looked so pretty!

After doing a few different poses to check every single angle possible, my smile widened even further. No matter how I moved, I thought that I looked absolutely captivating. I was confident that he'd find me attractive, but I would need a lot more than that if I were to ever break free of my confinement.

Alas, this was my curse. Millennia ago, humans found us too unpredictable to have around but didn't have the power to actually kill us. Instead, they devised a way to bind us to objects if they ever caught one. It was King Solomon who decreed that I would be bound to this bottle and would be forced to serve any human who opened it. In a twisted sense of humor, they cursed me to be bound to this bottle until a time when my master would genuinely fall in love with me. They felt that since humans would always know how untrustworthy djinn were, no human would ever fall in love with one.

As the centuries passed by, I realized that humans, as a race, had short memories. Tales of djinn were seemingly lost to time and now humans even doubted that we even existed in the first place. As painful as it was to hear that our once mighty race was now barely even a memory, it did provide an opportunity. Humans were no longer prejudiced against djinn and therefore it might be possible for one to fall in love with me if they didn't have any preconceived biases.

However, what made the curse extremely difficult to break was that it had a time limit. From the moment I was released from the bottle, I had 30 sunrises for my master to fall in love with me or else I'd be banished back to my prison. Every new master brought hope, but every time I was met with crushing disappointment. Humans were more obsessed with the wishes I could grant them than anything about me. Yet, I never lost hope. Maybe Henry would be different. Maybe.

I decided to sit on his rather comfy-looking bed and patiently wait for his return. In the meantime, I started to daydream about all of the different possible reactions he might have when he sees me in human form. Just before I started getting bored, I heard the familiar sound of a door opening and closing.

My heartbeat quickened and I clenched my hands anxiously. I haven't been in human form for so long that I forgot what it was like to feel such strong, physical emotions. It was strangely exhilarating. Once he walked in, he immediately stared at me, and instead of a calm look on his face, he seemed surprised for once. His captivated eyes gave me a surge of energy and left my body a little tingly.

"Welcome home, master!" I said with a huge smile and threw my hands in the air where a bunch of confetti flew out.

My colorful and playful antics did not seem to excite him as much as I hoped they would. Instead of him giving me a beaming smile or being enamored with the display of magic, he simply looked at me with a stunned look on his face while dropping his bag to the floor. Did I look weird? Oh wait, was there something in my teeth? I was about to check them out when I remembered I just turned into a human and hadn't even eaten anything yet.

"H-hey. Seems like you weren't just part of my imagination after all. Sorry if I'm acting a bit weird right now, I'm just surprised and I also didn't expect you to look..." he began to trail off while his eyes continued to stare at me.

"Different? Human? I felt like you were a little too uncomfortable with my more djinn-like appearance, so I figured you might be more comfortable talking to human me."

As I spoke, I watched as his eyes started to roam across my body. Even though mind-reading wasn't a power of a djinn, it wasn't hard to know what was going through his mind by just watching his eyes. The more they studied me, the more passion I saw in them. I guess I made the right choice with my body design. However, I was a little surprised by how my own body was reacting. The more he stared at me, the more aroused I started to feel too. I forgot how alluring it was to be lusted after and how it felt to be so horny while in human form.

He finally snapped out of the daze he was in and said, "Yeah, I guess that umm...makes sense. Are you sure this is all like...real?"

"Of course I'm real, master! Like, super, totally, extremely real. You can poke or pinch me if you want," I said before stepping forward and outstretched my arms to him.

The closer I got to him, the more nervous he became. Thankfully, he didn't shy away from me or recoil or anything, which was encouraging at least. He studied me with a curious look on his face while he slowly reached out his hand towards me. He reached out a finger and with the briefest of touches, quickly poked my skin. Even though his touch was brief, it made my heart race. What was going on with me? Why was my body behaving this way around him?

He poked a few more times and the more he poked my skin, the deeper the desire I had to touch him back and I soon said, "Are you still not convinced? How about this then!"

I stepped up closer while throwing myself at his body and wrapped my arms tightly around him to give him a warm hug. He was so caught off guard that his entire body went stiff. Oh my, he was surprisingly cute when he acted so shyly! My head rested against his chest and I finally realized just how tall he was. After marveling at his height, I caught his scent and I was floored at how good he smelled. It didn't seem like he was wearing anything artificial that made him smell this way. Did he really smell this good naturally? I was impressed!

The longer we hugged though, the hotter my body became. Desire exploded within me and I was surprised by how aroused I felt. I tried to control my emotions, but I forgot how hard that was as a human. I didn't remember being turned on like this with any of my other masters. Why did I have this sudden urge to touch him even more? My heart was pounding hard against my chest and I knew I needed to do something to calm myself down.

Breaking the hug, I took a couple of steps back, and said with a slightly quivering voice, "There, is that...is that enough proof that I'm actually real?"

"Y-yeah, that uhh...definitely does it," he said with a slight chuckle and I saw his face turn red while he looked away from me.

I was happy that his body seemed to be reacting similarly to mine, but he quickly recovered and said, "So if you are a djinn, does that mean I get like three wishes or something?"

"Oh, so you already know how this works then? Yes, but I don't know where humans keep getting this whole three-wishes thing from. Was there a djinn that got famous years ago and swindled some poor soul by only offering three? Master, I've been locked away in that bottle for so long that I'll grant you as many wishes as you want! Well, within reason anyway. It's not like I can make you into a god or anything like that."