Once upon a time, a man found an ancient bottle and when he opened it up, out came a genie.
Now look, I think we all know how this story goes, right?
The genie says something like I'm gonna grant you 3 wishes and then wacky hijinks or terrors ensue.
Well, not so fast campfire friends because that is just one version of one genie story, also known as genie in the West.
Genie are a diverse race of invisible beings, forged of fire and air that can appear in whatever shape they please, and while many prefer to keep their distance from humans, their existence has always been entwined with ours.
Children might serve humanity in a family home or the court of a king.
They may fall in love with us and have our children, or they could even possess us and twist our minds towards sinister ends.
All of that is to say, genie definitely have a lot more going on than just granting wishes.
So when the man in our tale we're telling today happened upon a genie, the creature's opening words could have been anything at all, but unfortunately for him, those words were you're going to die.
Belief in genie goes back first farther than we know, though most famous perhaps as a figure in Islamic mythology.
