She never did want to be a dragon.
When the other girls spun stories, they gathered in a circle. One would begin slowly with a simple phrase to start the magic - something like, "Once, long ago. . ." or "It all began when . . ." The circle was the main thing. One person to tell. A few to listen, or many to listen, it really didn't matter how big the circle might be. When the story edged toward the end of the beginning, and merged into the beginning of the middle, a shadowy shape might appear in the air above the girls. And when that shape took form, great gasps of amazement flew from girl to girl. As long as the teller kept the story intact the images remained, or grew, or even got more vivid. The teller might even begin to see out of new eyes.
That was the most wondrous of all. Except Malificent was too skinny and too small to be allowed in the circle.
The other girls, with eager eyes and broad hips always stood so close together - and wedged themselves even tighter when Malificent approached - that Malificent could catch only brief strings of words on a straying breeze, or sometimes see the corner of an image way up high between the pointy ears of two towering listeners.
But, oh the beauty! Enormous lilies which made the sounds of bells as they nodded in the wind, thundering herds of grey horses passing through a waterfall which transformed them into milk-white unicorns, or the glowing colors of a sunset swirling itself into all the confections for a King's feast. Words like, "enchanted sabre" or "battle to the death" or perhaps "twinkling like all the stars on midsummer night" kept Malificent rooted to the spot just outside the circle where the older girls tolerated her presence - just barely.
Fairies grew oh so slowly. In three hundred years, Malificent still hadn't grown much. She could reach no higher than the waist of the shortest story teller.
Mothers did not take the opportunity to have babies unless the fathers returned from their knowledge quests when the comets flew through the skies. The coincidence of events was rare - centuries or often millennia apart. Malificent's own birth was something of a fluke. Her father returned home without the others, dogged by owls the whole way. He had forgotten the ancient rune stone and the fathers couldn't interpret the ancient signs without it. But since the comets flew on his arrival, Malificent was the only child born to any fairy family for many, many years.
Mother called her a miracle. Father called her Magnificent. In fact, her true name was Magnificent, but her first attempt to pronounce her own name went a little awry, and all the fairies had called her Malificent since she could remember.
It was hard to be the only child among fairies in training.
"Why can't you ripen the fruit evenly?" fretted her Orchard teacher.
"I can't reach both sides of an apple. My arms are too short."
In fact, Malificent's arms ached from stretching to the sides as far as they could reach, and she hovered next to a peach for twice as long as any other fairy. But without another five hundred years of growth, she would simply produce half-ripe fruits.
"How in the world could you produce such spindly mushrooms?" her Fungi teacher asked, with a scratch to the top of her head.
"Well, the dance calls for hips swaying. Only mine don't sway very far." Malificent hung her head.
"The only suggestion I have is to move in circles about the right size for a plump mushroom. See if that helps."
It didn't.
"Where have you put your wing-gloss?" her Physical Education teacher demanded.
Any louder shouting would have been audible to humans (fairies only hear small sounds like insects, breezes, and the running of sap in the trees.) Malificent quivered with fear. She knew that glossy wings were the one prevention for painful wing-cracking, injury, and grounding of all flying fairies. She was so small, she simply couldn't carry a pouch large enough to fit all her supplies, so she had left the gloss at home in her walnut shell. She had on an extra thick coat of gloss, but was too frightened to point that out to her teacher.
Malificent had to borrow wing gloss that day because there was a rain storm. She could have died from the embarrassment.