"So, what's your name miss Fairy?" Alice asked, pouring Penny the Power Ranger and her cups of imaginary tea. Still, looking at the empty cup made Adam's mouth water.
"I told you, I'm Adam. I'm your brother."
Alice laughed and spun so she was upside down as she looked at him, "Heheh, you said that before. But you don't look like my brother. Is your name Thumbelina? She was a little person without wings, too."
"No! I'm not Thumbelina. My name is . . ." and just as her name was on the tip of her tongue, she stopped herself, because she was about to say something other than Adam.
"Your name is what?" Penny asked. The Power Ranger seemed very interested as she leaned in and put her arms on the plastic table.
"Is it . . . Tinkerbell?"
Adam shook her head. She had a name. A cute name all too perfect for a fairy rattled around in her head and wanted to be spoken. A name Adam tried not to recognize or acknowledge.
"Snap Dragon?" Penny asked.
"Goldilocks?"
"Pinky?"
Penny and Alice took turns guessing Adam's fairy name, and each new name made her shake her head, and honestly get more and more annoyed. She didn't want to say it, because saying it made it more true. It made Adam more of a real fairy. And Adam wasn't ready to admit she was a real fairy. But her annoyance grew and grew and grew until it was bigger than she was, and Adam knew the only way to stop them was to say her name.
"It's Dewdrop! My name is Dewdrop!" The fairy shouted at the top of her tiny lungs. She couldn't think of herself as Adam anymore. It was like every time she thought Adam, she replaced it with Dewdrop.
"Aww, Dewdrop, what a cute name!" Alice cooed. Penny nodded.
"Very appropriate for a fairy."
Then the scroll in Dewdrop's hand started to shake and glow and ask for attention, until it very nearly shot out and unfurled itself onto the table. An item on the list -- "Name a Fairy" -- glowed and then disappeared, the tasks below it moving up. She was suddenly one step closer to earning her wings and becoming a real fairy. One step closer to accepting this insanity and letting go of her old life. Dewdrop realized then that for as much as she might want to fly, if she completed this list she had a feeling, an unsettling pit of a feeling, that she would be stuck like this.
"Oooh, what's that?" Alice asked.
"It looks like a list." Penny commented, standing up and trying to inspect it. "But I can't tell. I can't read."
"I usually get my brother to read." Alice said. Then she scratched her head, "he usually bops me on the head."
"Sorry about that," Dewdrop said, wincing. But Alice shrugged. She still didn't believe Adam and Dewdrop were one and the same.
"What's it a list of?"
And then Dewdrop made a mistake. A terrible mistake she should have realized how it would go down. But she wasn't thinking, and she just told the truth, "If I do everything on this list I get my wings."
It wasn't until Alice inhaled sharply that Dewdrop started to realize her mistake, "OOOOH! Can I HELP?! I wanna help!"
Dewdrop should have said she had to do these things on her own. Or that she had to go some place secret to do them. Or that it was too dangerous for little girls. What she said instead was, "I don't think you can help me. Some of these are impossible. Like, this one 'Make a Prince fall in love with you.' Do you know any princes, Alice?"
Alice then shook her head quickly, "Uh huh!" And then she zipped off to the corner of her room, leaving Dewdrop to start to contemplate the errors of her ways and kick herself for telling Alice far too much. When her sister returned, she held a little rag toy just one strand of yarn taller than Dewdrop. It was a little fairy doll that once belonged to their mom. It was a boy fairy who wore a handsome Green tunic and pristine white tights. He had poofs on his shoulders, a crown on his head, and sword at his side. Alice dropped him in the chair beside Dewdrop.
"This is Cornelius. Kiss him and he'll fall in love with you and you'll get married and live happily ever after!"
Penny the Power Ranger heard that and clapped excitedly. "Can I be you Maid of Honor?"
But leave it to Dewdrop to bring sanity to this strange strange conversation.
"Alice, love. Real love, anyway, takes more than a kiss. It takes time and patience and trust and . . ."
"Kiss. Him," Alice said, shooting straight up into the air, halfway to the ceiling and crossing her arms. "Or I'll put you back in the bowl."
Dewdrop hastily leaned forward and kissed Cornelius.
She first kissed the fairy toy/fairy boy on the cheek, but at Alice's insistence, that was not enough. So Dewdrop set the rag toy in the plastic chair and gently, slowly leaned in and kissed Cornelius on his cloth lips. He was soft, kissable, and . . . warm? Warm like a person is warm. And Dewdrop backed away quickly. She looked on as Cornelius came to life. Not like Penny had, because Penny just stared to move. She remained a plastic toy. Cornelius' rag body melted away into sparkling light. But he remained there in his green tunic and tights, but fully flesh and blood. He breathed in sharply. The first breath in who knows how long and looked around in total wonderment. Then he locked eyes with Dewdrop.
"You have freed me from my curse!" Cornelius said, leaping into the air and spinning around. Penny laughed and Alice clapped excitedly at the spectacle. Dewdrop just looked on in bewilderment. She looked at the scroll still on the table and watched as a new item disappeared from the list. Then she turned and looked at Cornelius as he came back down to the ground.
"My amore, you are the most lovely fairy I have ever seen." Then he grabbed Dewdrop (who shrieked once again, but to no avail) as Cornelius grabbed Dewdrop and bent her backwards and covered her mouth with a deep, passionate kiss.
Amid this, there was a knock on Alice's door. "Alice, are you in there? It's mom . . ."
