sultal's note: This story was inspired by the art of a DeviantArt artist Rapunzel-Magic-Frost. I noticed her page on DA bc haters were giving her grief, stating that her photoshopping images were "not art." But, guys her photoshopping skills are killer. Stunning. Flawless. I mean look at the image for this story. SHE MADE THAT. Like seriously! It's gorgeous.

She made a series of photoshopped images of Wendy as a fairy. Obviously I got excited, starting thinking, and asked if I could make a story based on her images. Thank the gods she said yes!

So, this story is inspired by the photoshop creations of Rapunzel-Magic-Frost. So pumped to be collaborating to make a story. Dudes- check out her work. Moral imperative.

keep writing.

p.s. : I had to watch the "Pirate Fairy" to research this story. Zarina is in it, along with blue pixie dust. I try to give a synopsis for those that havn't watched it, or don't care to. But long story short, I tried to put science behind the magic that I saw in the movie.

Chapter 1: Faith. Trust. And Human Pixie Dust?

No one knows exactly how Wendy turned into a fairy. But Zarina had her suspicions.

It all started when Tinkerbell exploded into her pixie dust alchemy workshop. It was a beautiful day and Tinkerbell was wearing her ugliest expression…

"I can't TAKE HER ANYMORE!"

Zarina jumped.

"No!" she gasped as Tinkerbell stormed by. A vial of pixie dust wobbled off the workbench. She dove, but the vial shattered.

"Tink!" Frantically, Zarina swept pixie dust into her smock. The dust diffused across the room, making her workshop levitate. "Tink! This took me forever to purify! Each grain was crushed with a robin's egg and bleached with starlight! Arrrgh! Tink! I put up a sign! Did you miss the whole Trespassers Will be Beheaded thing?"

Cupping pixie dust in both palms, Zarina rose. Positioning her hands, she hunched over a beaker and carefully sifted the sparkling dust between her fingers. She squinted. Dirt contaminated the magical dust. The pixie dust was ruined! Totally ruined!

Zarina felt little cannons banging her ribcage. She scowled. Sometimes Zarina wished she could go back to being a pirate fairy aboard the Jolly Roger.

Like all fairies, Zarina lived in Pixie Hollow – the heart of Neverland. It was a magical metropolis inhabited by fairies of every talent. Tinkerbell was a tinker talent – a fixer, a crafter, an inventor, an odds-and-ends-er. There were also the obvious fairy talents – Rosetta was a garden talent, Fawn was an animal talent, Iridessa was a light talent, Silvermist was a water talent, Vidia was a fast-flying talent, and Terence was a dust talent. Zarina, like Terence, had been a dust-talent fairy, responsible for nurturing, processing, and distributing pixie dust.

Pixie dust fascinated Zarina. Now, most fairies are fascinated with pixie dust, but only because they enjoy the sparkle. As a dust talent, Zarina wanted to understand pixie dust. She wanted to dissect the elemental properties, explore its potential, and unleash its power!

But according to Fairy Gary – the patriarch dust talent – that was asking too much. Unsurprisingly, when Zarina… "accidentally" stole blue pixie dust (the most potent of all dust) and created a minor disaster following a failed experiment, Fairy Gary banned her from dust keeping.

So Zarina left. She left Pixie Hollow and jumpshipped to the Jolly Roger!

Zarina smiled grimly to herself. It had been a flitterific adventure. True, she'd been ticked by Captain Hook, but with the help of Tinkerbell and her fairy friends, Zarina saved the day and was welcomed back to Pixie Hollow…this time as a pixie-dust-alchemy talent. Within safe boundaries (safe boundaries including brushfires, earthquakes, and the sky falling) Zarina was responsible for discovering the elemental properties and possibilities of pixie dust.

And although she was not allowed to manipulate with fairy talents – as she had on her pirate adventure – Zarina had to admit she was living the good life. Way better than being a pirate.

Still…

Zarina glared at the contaminated pixie dust. Swashbuckling and gizzard ripping were very attractive alternatives to reasoning with Tinkerbell right now…

"Tink look what you did to my dust!" Zarina pointed to make sure Tinkerbell saw. "You got dirt in it! The chemistry is off, the experiment is ruined! I'll have to start over from scratch! Scratch!"

Angrily, Zarina shoved the beaker. "Tink what is wrong with you?"

Tinkerbell turned. Her face was bright red.

Zarina would have loved an apology. However, apologies weren't Tinkerbell's forte. So, she reasonably hoped that Tinkerbell would just complain to herself, letting Zarina continue with her experiment.

That didn't happen.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE IT DIDN'T WORK!"

Zarina dipped tweezers into the pixie dust. Grinding her molars, she tried to concentrate on removing the dirt. "What didn't work?"

Tinkerbell threw up her hands. "I tried to kill her!"

Zarina stopped. "Kill? As in…kill? Kill who?"

"That…that…." Tinkerbell contorted, as if the word was too grotesque to say. "…that girl!" she finally snarled, cheeks hotter than flames. "That big, ugly girl Peter found behind the star!"

Zarina was still trying to process. "A girl? A human? A…child?"

"Yes!"

"And…you tried… to kill her?"

"YES!"

"Um, okay, wow." Zarina set down her tweezers. She faced Tinkerbell. "Why?"

"Because!" Tinkerbell crossed her arms. "She doesn't belong in Neverland!"

"Why?"

"Because I don't want her here!"

"Why?"

"Because!" Tinkerbell raised her voice. "Because she's stealing my adventures with Peter!"

"Okay." Warily, Zarina stepped back. Making sure she wasn't surrounded by sharp, pointy objects, she watched Tinkerbell from a safe distance.

"Well…um…Tink. Normally I would applaud your determination...but don't you think that's a little harsh? Maybe even a little, oh, I don't know…insane?"

Tinkerbell popped out a hip. "Not harsh enough! The big, ugly girl is still in one piece!"

"Generally that's safe and happy." Zarina said.

"My plan was so perfect!" Tinkerbell moaned. Joining Zarina she flopped on the workbench. "So, so perfect! The Lost Boys thought the girl was a bird. The girl flew into firing range. The Lost Boys shot her right out of the sky. She fell to the rocks below – "

"What happened?" Zarina gasped, engrossed with the story.

Tinkerbell's head popped up. She hit the workbench, making Zarina's ingredients jump.

"That stupid Peter Pan saved her! Right before –" again Tinkerbell hit the bench. "— the SPLAT!"

Zarina's mouth dropped. "Splat?"

"Splat!" Tinkerbell nodded, furiously flapping her wings. "It would have been beautiful! No more girl! No more missed adventures! No more Wendy!"

Zarina started to speak, then paused as Tinkerbell said the girl's name. It was pretty, but odd. Zarina started to mouth the name, working the syllables over her tongue. But Tinkerbell started to gripe, and Zarina tucked the name into the back of her mind.

"Um…Tink?"

"What?"

Zarina thought analytically. She really didn't know Peter Pan, and tried to avoid humans since her encounter with Captain Hook. But Tinkerbell's account of the girl's survival made her curious.

"Tink? Do you think Peter Pan would have been upset if the girl…um…went splat?"

"What?" Tinkerbell whipped around. "What kind of question is that?"

"Well…" Zarina inched a needle out of Tinkerbell's reach. "Well I mean he saved her. Right? Don't you think Peter Pan would have been kinda…mad if he found out you're the one that wanted to killed her?"

"Oh!" Tinkerbell laughed. "Oh he already knows! I told him!"

"You what?"

"Guilty as charged!" Proudly, Tinkerbell thumped her chest. "I don't like that girl and I want everyone to know! Especially Peter!"

Zarina gaped. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to be disgusted or impressed. "Tink! What did Peter Pan say? What did he do?"

"He banished me!"

"Banished? Oh Tink I'm sorry, but you seriously shouldn't go around trying to kill – "

"I don't care!" Tinkerbell spat. "Bring on the banishment!"

"Tink!" Zarina said, still baffled. "Tink you tried to kill a girl that Peter Pan saved! Think about it! You could be banished for ages!"

"Oooo! That's the worst part!" Tinkerbell grumbled. "Peter tried to banish me forever. But that big, ugly girl asked him not to banish me at all!"

Dramatically Tinkerbell clasped her cheeks. Speaking in a falsetto, she mocked the girl. "Please Petah! Not forevah!"

"Awww." Zarina smiled. "That's cute she wanted you to stay – "

"IT'S NOT CUTE!" Tinkerbell hopped up. "Thanks to her pity, Peter only banished me for a week!"

"Oh, that's good."

"Zarina that's bad!"

"Why?!" Zarina asked, head spinning.

"Because!" Tinkerbell grabbed the beaker of pixie dust. "Because in one week I'll have to go back and see that…that…"

Zarina raised a timid finger. "…girl?"

"GIRL!" Tinkerbell shouted. "AND WATCH HER STEAL ALL MY ADVENTURES WITH PETER PAN!"

"Tink!" Zarina interrupted. "Tink! Why can't you be friends with the girl? I mean she didn't want you to be banished."

Tinkerbell scoffed. She gripped the beaker between her hands. "Fat chance of that, Zee!"

"Then why can't you just tag along?" Zarina demanded. The sun was setting and she was running out of workshop time. "Share the adventure? You know what Silvermist always says: Sharing is caring, life can be fun – "

"—Water talent poems are really dumb!" Tinkerbell scoffed. "Yeah, no thanks! I'm not going to be a tag along!"

"Well, I didn't mean tag along." Zarina said, backtracking on her words. "I meant that you and Peter Pan have a weird friendship thing. I'm sure nothing would change."

"Puh. You didn't see Peter. The way he…looks at her." Tinkerbell sat. She was suddenly quiet. Unable to stop her wings from drooping, she rolled the beaker between her palms. "It's a funny look. Like…I don't know. Like she's the only one there. No matter where he is, or who he's with. It's funny."

Tinkerbell stared into the contaminated pixie dust. Suddenly, she slammed the beaker onto the bench.

"And that's not good for Peter! Looking at that girl funny all of the time! He could hurt his eyes! Ohhhh!" Tinkerbell raised her fists. "I wish that girl was invisible! I wish she was only 5 inches tall!"

"Well that is small." Zarina said, slumping exasperatedly at her workbench. "Even for a fairy."

"Well she – " Tinkerbell stopped. She stared at Zarina. "That is small. Isn't it?

Zarina rose. "Tink…" she said, watching lights popping behind Tinkerbell's eyes. "Tink, if you're thinking what I think you're thinking – "

"I think you thunk right!"

"What are you thinking?!"

"What do you think I'm thinking?"

"I think you better think your thoughts away!"

"We could turn Wendy – " Tinkerbell shouted. "—into a fairy!"

Zarina covered her mouth. "Oh no! That's what I thought you were thinking! Tink! Tink you can't –"

"We could change her into a fairy and she would be too small for Peter to see!" Tinkerbell squealed. "She'd be so small, and scared, and helpless and probably get eaten alive by a snake, or hawk, or snapping turtle or something! Oh Zee! It's brilliant! It's flitterific! YOU'RE brilliant and flitterific!"

"Me?" Zarina chased Tinkerbell. "This isn't my idea, it's yours! And Tink it's impossible! Humans can't be changed into fairies!"

"Sure they can!" Tinkerbell lifted the beaker. She shook the contaminated dust. "With pixie dust!"

"Pixie dust?! Tink that's – "

"You did it before!" Tinkerbell seized Zarina and flung her at the workbench. Excitedly, she shoved the beaker into Zarina's hands. "Remember? On the pirate adventure? You used the blue dust to make a different color pixie dust for each talent – pink for garden talent, orange for animal talent?"

"Well yes, but – "

"—and then you threw the multicolored dust at us and switched our talents? Remember? I was a water talent, Vidia was a tinker-talent, and Iridessa was a garden – "

"—Tinkerbell – "

"—why can't we do the same for a big, ugly human girl?"

"Because!" Zarina protested, "It's never been done before and I don't want my talent to hurt anyone again! When I stole the blue pixie dust to make Hook's ship fly, I endangered Pixie Hollow!"

"Are you saying?" Tinkerbell smirked, "You can't do it?"

That hurt Zarina's pride.

"Well of course I can do it!" Zarina retorted, scientific hubris overcoming her fear. "I discovered pixie dust alchemy, remember? And for your information, Tinkerbell, the pixie dust would have to enter the girl's blood. So she'd have to inhale it into her lungs!"

Tinkerbell scrunched her nose. "Huh?"

"Inhale the dust into her lungs!" Zarina said. "Blood flows by the lungs. Pixie dust grains are so small they just pass into the vessels! Duh!"

Zarina was on fire. Intelligence blossoming from her brain and to her mouth, she ranted to Tinkerbell's smug face.

"Once it gets into the blood, the pixie dust goes everywhere! It rewrites the body code – changes the life fingerprint. That is how I turned all of you into different talents! And that is how I turned you back! You just inhale a higher dose of different pixie dust to change back into your normal self!"

"But!" Zarina continued, ideas popping like popcorn. "You could only change a human into a fairy! You couldn't reverse it! A human is a human – there wouldn't be a human pixie dust to overpower the fairy pixie dust that turned the human into a fairy in the first place."

Zarina glared. "Not that you would know anything about that – "

"What ingredients would you use?" Tinkerbell asked.

"Humans can't fly so all you would need is dirt." Zarina snapped impatiently. "Because they're stuck to the ground. You'd also add other stuff to symbolize the human's personalty – "

"Dirt?" Tinkerbell took the beaker. She held it to the light. "Just like this batch?"

"Sure!" Zarina kneaded her eyes. "Why not? Why not?! While we're at it, let's add some poison berry juice and rose thorns to the recep – Tink? Tink?"

Zarina sat up. She searched the room. It was dark. The sun had set.

Tinkerbell was gone.

And the beaker of contaminated pixie dust was missing.

Zarina's heart exploded.

"Tink!" she called, flying to the door. The sky was plum and the stars were poking through. But Tinkerbell was nowhere in sight. "Tink! Tink! Tinkerbell! Oh no!"

Zarina raced to her workbench. Furiously she grabbed a notebook and started to write. Voice trembling, she orated each word.

"Human to Fairy Theory…steps…" Zarina's hand shook. Her penmanship was messier than usual as she tried to remember the recipe. "….step one….yellow pixie dust….crushed with 1 robin's egg in acorn crucible… consistency…crackly….step two…bathe for three nights in starlight or until bleached…step three…."

Sweat dripped down Zarina's nose. "….step three…drop on floor…lace with dirt…step four…step four….what is step four?"

Zarina closed her eyes. Head throbbing, she thought.

Then she started to laugh.

"Step four! Step four!" Zarina danced in the air. As she twirled, she remembered the one ingredient required to catalyze any pixie dust experiment.

"Blue pixie dust!" Zarina laughed, writing on her pad. "Blue pixie dust makes all dust stronger! It's the secret ingredient!"

Happily, Zarina added a flourish to her notes. "And that's the only ingredient Tinkerbell doesn't have! Blue pixie dust!"

"So why do you need blue pixie dust?"

Tinkerbell batted her eyelashes innocently at Terence, the sparrowman.

"Oh well I don't, Terence. Zarina does. And you know Zee…" Tinkerbell hid the beaker behind her back. "Work, work, work with a new idea every second."

Terence smiled. As a dust keeper, Terence had the most important job in Pixie Hollow: he distributed exactly one teacup of pixie dust to each fairy every day. Without him, fairies wouldn't be able to fly.

But, also as a dust keeper, Terence protected the pixie dust. Especially blue pixie dust. Blue pixie dust amplified the power and growth of yellow pixie dust, which allowed fairies to fly.

Yes, blue pixie dust was potent. And, when abused, dangerous.

And technically, Terence was not supposed to hand out blue pixie dust without the supervision of Fairy Gary, the head dust keeper. It was against the rules, cross your wings and hope to fly!

But…since Tinkerbell was asking…

Terence caved into the soft spot on his heart.

"Sure Tink. As long as it's for Zee I'd be happy to, um, since it's you and all. I mean, for you, er…well. Wait a second…"

Terence flew a little too fast to retrieve the blue pixie dust. And his face was a little too red upon his return, even in the blue glow.

"Here you go." Delicately, Terrance placed three grains of blue pixie dust into Tinkerbell's palm. He waited until her fist curled safely around them. "Zarina usually takes one grain, but I gave you three. Best to be prepared. Too much beats none at all."

Terence smiled hopefully at Tinkerbell. "Right?"

Tinkerbell smiled back. And as she smiled her anger started to dribble away, making room for a different feeling. After all, fairies are so small, they can only have one feeling at a time.

But it was not the feeling she expected. Instead of calm, or compassion, or even common-sense, Tinkerbell felt sad. Sad that she lied to Terence, the sparrowman sparkling with pixie dust and beaming like the sun. Sad that she tricked Terence into stealing blue pixie dust – the only ingredient she remembered Zarina using to make talent dust on their pirate adventure.

Sad that she was about to trick and lie again…to her best friend.

"Thanks Terence." Tinkerbell turned, unable to look Terence in the eye. "You're…you're the best."

Terence spoke as she flew away, but Tinkerbell could not hear. After all, anger was pounding inside every one of Tinkerbell's unhappy thoughts.