New Beginning 970

My bottle popped open. I whooshed up, like there was a rocket strapped to my back, and burst into a sparkling blue-sky day. I laughed and somersaulted through the air. A zingy breeze always makes me want to dance and sing.

Below, a smelly fisherman, ankle-deep in flip-flopping fish stared up at me. He clutched my bottle in one hand, and a mass of fishing net in the other. I guess he’d hauled my bottle out of the ocean.

“I am genie Zinnia. I will grant you three wishes, master.”

His jaw hung open. It looked like he had a row of crooked old-fence posts growing out of his gums. “Take your time and choose carefully.” I dived and corkscrewed around the mast of his boat. The breeze whipped my hair. The longer he took deciding meant more freedom for me. Once the wishes were granted, the spell would suck me right back into my dusty bottle.

A flounder struggled free of the net. "Master," it said, "I am a magical fish. Use your three wishes to spare me and my two brothers, and I will grant you not three wishes, but four! Four wishes!"

The fisherman rubbed the stubble on his chin. There seemed to be no downside. He ordered Zinnia to put the magic flounder and his two brothers back in the ocean. 

A deal's a deal. Into the water the three fish went, and a crestfallen Zinnia was sucked back into her bottle.

And to this very day the fisherman can oft be heard on the deck of his trawler calling out his wishes, refusing to acknowledge that he was flimflammed by a flounder.


Opening: JAS.....Continuation: Anon.