Summary: H.P. and Sanderson take the bus to a small town in search of the genies in Genie World, who are behind in their paperwork.

Characters: Sanderson, H.P., assorted genies

Rating: K+

Prerequisites: None

Posted: October 8, 2016

63. Entire World (Shortly after "Anti-Poof")

Wednesday October 8th, "2008"

Year of Breath; Autumn of the Frozen Planet

Emotionless and monotone as he often liked to imply he was, Sanderson couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief when H.P. fell asleep with his tall forehead against the speckled window pane, his pen still clenched loosely in his liver-spotted hand, one sleeve of his purple sweatshirt rolled up to the elbow. Nothing calmed the boss down like having paperwork to do (even if he'd been straining his eyes in the pale blue light of the otherwise dark bus). Though Sanderson prided himself on his patience and tact, the number of times this morning he'd had to long-distance order obscure food cravings and then ping in stacks of plates and plasticware was beginning to make him want to eat his tie. Actually, a nibble of it was already missing from the very bottom.

They'd taken the slow, smelly Fairytail Transit across the clouds- on paper because they wanted to save cash. Officially that wasn't the only reason (or even the main reason). It was an interesting situation altogether; the Head Pixie refused to dish out answers for his unspoken anxiety directly, but Sanderson had deduced ages ago that pinging while pregnant made him nervous. And if there was one of those very few things that H.P. did not like to prod at with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole, it was that he'd never admit to the way he turned very snappish when he was in second trimester. Nearly emotional, if one could imagine that…

Thus, even though Sanderson could have pointed out that, given the mountains of yellow lagelyn bills and green coins lying about back home, in the long run a bus ride was going to save them about as much cash as a sneeze, and even though just off the top of his head he could have summoned from the archives a thousand different articles parading solid proof that the pink magic used for teleportation, shapeshifting, or (heck) floating had not been found to have ill-adverse effects on nymphs in utero, all at the single swirl of his star-tipped cellphone… he refrained.

Truth be told, Sanderson wasn't in the most fantastic of 'moods' himself. They'd been flying in the bus due north for precisely three hours and nineteen minutes, and still he had yet to shake off the prickling thoughts of a certain blonde-braided, violet-winged damsel in a silly blue and green pom-pom hat who liked to dawdle near the base of the Bridge to Pixie World in this weather. And specifically, how much he regretted not hurling that clay pot of Jardine's daisies down after her.

Tut, tut. It didn't matter how many times the Pixies filed restraining orders; those slimy, butterfly-winged damsels thought they were King Nuada's gift to drakes, slinking up the purple Bit Bridge to go wandering through the streets of Pixie World. Swiping pens. Picking pockets. Raiding sugar stashes. Pinching cheeks. And brushing eraser shavings on the clean tiles- don't even get him started…

Last night, some smoofing idiot (not pointing wandtips, but his name began with an 'L' and ended with 'wood') had decided to set little Rosencrantz on sentry duty. On purpose. And Rosencrantz had, rather predictably, fallen asleep again. Coincidentally, Longwood had vanished around the same time. Sanderson and Wilcox had curled up on the couch, one in pajamas and one in purple rabbit fur, partially watching "The Wizard of Oz" for the three thousandth time and partially watching the door. Waiting.

Even more coincidentally, after the stroke of midnight, the company vice president returned to their room soaked in will o' the wisp magic. Blonde-braided, violet-winged, silly-blue-and-green-pom-pom-hat magic. As much as Sanderson could be squicked out by Idona's interest in him, it was very insulting. She'd (understandably) nursed a crush on him for a very long time, and now she turned and smooched Longwood again? What a two-timing snatter!

It wasn't that he wanted Idona to like him. Illegal cross-class relationships weren't his style, and neither was the harem life. He just… didn't want her to like anyone else. And, Longwood had come back without the key to their apartment, because of course he had. Idona only kissed in exchange for keys and security codes and access cards. Who knew how many copies of it she was running off now? Getting the locks changed and ensuring they stayed that way was going to be more annoying than it had to be.

So that had been this morning. It wasn't fair. The evidence was there. Rosebud on guard duty, him slipping away, the vanishing keys- it all pointed to one thing. Longwood beckoned the wisps intentionally. So many pixies had fallen in the past (the fact that they hadn't died or come close to it was irrelevant) because Longwood had allowed them in. Worse, he was actually fond of them. Like, in a gootchie-goggling type of way. There was data. There was proof.

So why wouldn't H.P. demote him? Better yet, fire him? Better yet better yet, disown him and cut their ties for good? Sanderson didn't understand it. Correlation didn't equal causation, his crown. Longwood was obviously putting the Pixie race in danger. Danger was bad. He was doing a poor job. He needed to be punished. And he certainly didn't deserve the jingling star on his pointed hat!

Sanderson smothered a groan and pushed one wrist through his hair. Maybe he had it all wrong. Maybe the boss was his usual level-headed and task-directed self today, and he was the one who needed this paperwork vacation out in the field in… Where was it they were heading, again?

Right. Mudlip, Minnesota. Sounded like a pleasantly dull and boring small town. After spinning a blue pen several times through his fingers, he passed another forty-five minutes sketching contract outlines along the underside of his left arm.

Back in Kansas, the rain had still been coming down like rice on the head of some sorry Fairy who'd approached Pixies Incorporated in search of divorce papers. The city itself (if one could call six skyscrapers - two of which were apartment complexes - a sugar bar, a bank, a parking garage, a laundromat, a saucerbee stadium, a golf course, and a grocery store a city) may be above the clouds, but try telling that to the whipping winds and chilled air, or that plucky sound of raindrops against the Bit Bridge.

He looked forward to visiting clearer skies, in the sun. The sun was useful. The sun was good. The sun warmed faces, nourished crops, and shattered the soft kiss of deadly snow. No one liked the rain.

"I miss the dull gray rain," H.P. said wistfully, gazing out the window.

Sanderson cracked one eyelid open to confirm that this statement was indeed voiced by the newly-awoken Head Pixie and not some figment of his imagination. Then, pushing his shades closer to the bridge of his nose, he slid down in his scooped brown seat. There were three reasons he couldn't argue with that logic.

The floating bus tilted forward and plunged below the cloudlevel, all at once filling the dark bus with streams of natural lighting, even if it was mostly from the moon. Backpacks and duffel bags jarred up and down in the aisles. One slid all the way to the front. Sanderson nudged his briefcase with his foot and tightened his grip on his armrest as their ride leveled out again.

"Mudlip?" he asked dully.

"Mudlip," the Head Pixie answered dully.

The bus dispatched them above solid Earth soil, beside a row of jagged train tracks. The sky glinted pale purple, swirled with pinks and oranges. Like home. A signpost, a bulletin board, and a wooden box the size and shape of a rabbit's hutch all guarded the only distinct walking path across the dirt. A bit further on, where the path melted into a paved street, crooked buildings stretched lazily long and low. Leviathans peeping above the waves of a pebbled ocean. Fluorescent lights gleamed behind dirty window panes.

The Head Pixie poked out his tongue as he descended the last step to solid ground. His wrinkled wings rearranged themselves beneath his sweatshirt, the apexes still peeping out from beneath and brushing at the backs of his knees. "Yes, this is the place. The taste is repressed, but I'm picking up traces of roasted almonds, burning marshmallows, and overcooked french fries."

"I never doubted for a moment, sir."

As Sanderson finished speaking, fuzzy rain began to patter on their sleeves and hair. The instant water touched his beloved cowlick, it drooped over like a Jacob's ladder and splatted between his eyes. There it clung, one low curl in an 'S' for his name. Sanderson considered caring, then chose not to. Instead, he stuffed the hand that wasn't holding the briefcase into his pocket, fingering a tattered napkin decorated with rhymes as he buzzed his wings.

"Is it true that a genie's kiss will drain your magic for a week?"

"Mmhm. In a sense." H.P. set a hand to his waist and frowned up the street. "Technically, it would overload your system and fritz all your lines off. It's twenty minutes until death from there if you brought no Fairykind companions, as genies can't give you SHAMPAX. Thus, I would advise against engaging in the practice. If you do get knocked out of commission, then I'll just be flitting home to the Kansas skies without you."

Sanderson, as per usual, refrained from stating the obvious: that H.P. wouldn't get far without the bus pass. Sanderson rarely relinquished that pass for this very reason.

The Head Pixie flared his collar and began walking along the dirt path towards the town as the bus fishtailed into the air behind them. "Welcome to June, with its warm drizzles and sour smells of livestock carried in on the wind."

Nod. They didn't make small talk as they went - that wasn't exactly the Pixie way - but Sanderson read too much in his boss during those two minutes anyhow. The straightening of the shoulders. The constant brushing down the front of his purple shirt to remove the wrinkles. The preening of his hair, fluffy white curls folded behind the ears. Regular removal of his glasses to wipe squirming droplets from the lenses twice against the inside of his left sleeve.

Wordlessly, Sanderson withdrew his cell phone from the inner pocket of his jacket and pinged in a gray umbrella. "You didn't need to do that," H.P. said, flicking his hood over his star-tipped hat as Sanderson bobbed closer.

"It's worth it, sir. You must be presentable."

"Yes, which must be why you dressed me in this ridiculous human child costume."

"Sir, you know why you have to wear that now. Perhaps if you had worn it the last time you swung by Dimmsdale to pay a visit to Harrington and Buxaplenty, Denzel Crocker may not have caught you with those ani-"

"Denzel Crocker cheated. That was a lucky swing of a butterfly net and it won't happen again. Who even brings butterfly nets to a middle school dance?"

Sanderson suppressed a dry chuckle.

"We're nearing the thick of the town," H.P. said as the Fairwood Market came into view up ahead, low and white and wooden. "It's time you changed too."

After handing his boss the briefcase and the umbrella, Sanderson flicked open his starpiece again and pinged himself into human form, or something like it (no lungs this time- the plan wasn't to let any real humans get close enough to find out he didn't have a beating heart, or bled in rainbows). Tall stature, thin shoulders, square jaw. One more ping, as an afterthought, and he found himself spinning another gray umbrella through his fingers. He popped it open. His wasp-like wings, because it was easier, he'd shrunken to nubs rather than dissolving them entirely. They twitched against the small of his back as he pocketed the flip phone and trailed - on wobbly feet - between fields of cow-nipped grass on H.P.'s equally-wobbly heels.

A few moments later, H.P. paused at the top of a small rise and said, "Hm."

"Sir?"

"These are the coordinates we were given. I can taste the genie magic permeating the air even in the rain. But this can't be right. Fairy World is brimming with Fairies. Anti-Fairy World with Unseelie. Our one single city is small, but unquestionably populated. Even Anti-Pixie Isle has the decency to look as though magical beings live there. But this?" He turned a full circle, aimlessly gesturing with his umbrella. "This is a basic, old-fashioned human town looking like a page out of the Year of the Splattered Snowfall. It's full of humans. I'm astounded this place even has electricity and running water. Forgive me for expecting that beings with all-influential cosmic powers would choose to roll in riches instead of scraping through poverty. Is this any way to welcome the Head Pixie?"

"Norm says it stunts their magic once they shake off their lamps, H.P. In that state, they can't affect the universe any more than we would be able to without springboarding off a human's wish."

"Still, to think they're living among dirty, nosy humans when there are perfectly good cloudlands a Bridge away…"

Sanderson waited patiently until H.P. had kicked a rock and given up fuming. "Genies usually stay on Earth since they breathe ultraviolet light-"

"Yes, and all the suns in the universe fall on the first plane of existence with the black holes and Abracatraz. Earth is on the second. The cloudlands rise higher, blocking out more and more UV rays as one ascends the Bridges into the higher planes and leaves the suns behind. I know. Don't think I don't know! I'm the one who taught you this."

"Erm, H.P., you're attracting attention."

Very few humans were wandering the streets at this hour and in this weather, but Sanderson had picked up several curious glances over the last few minutes they'd been exploring. Small towns were, after all, close-knit, and their clothes and faces unfamiliar. Belatedly, the pixie realized that when he'd gone into human form, he ought to have changed from his suit and tie and into something less conspicuous. He screamed, "I work for a rich big city corporation and I enjoy being mugged" from cowlick to square toes.

Well, too late for it now. Cars careened around corners fast enough to spray waves against the brick walls on the far side of the street. Dripping umbrellas swished through the air, bobbing like birds. Beneath the overhang of a pottery store, three rather scruffy hobos hunkered in plastic chairs around a fire blazing in a green barrel, coldly sizing them up. An ax lay embedded in a tree stump nearby.

Yep. Definitely should have ditched the suit.

"But is this it?" H.P. asked impatiently, oblivious to their gazes. "If I had been born a genie, I either wouldn't be living in this hole, or I would have made use of those train tracks and turned it into a respectable manufacturing town, at minimum. Take advantage of the Great Lakes and the Hudson River for shipments- it isn't as though that's a long commute, honestly."

Sanderson pulled the umbrella even lower over his head, clinging to the handle with both hands now. He swallowed. "Sir, you're really attracting attention to us. You know we can't risk second glances."

"Of course, that's right. Let's go track us down some genies, then." He twisted around on the heels of his sneakers and began walking towards what appeared to be the widest street this side of the town- a path that would take him directly past the two hobos sitting in the chairs. Not that he seemed to notice, or care.

Sanderson barely had time to think, Weren't there just three of them? before the umbrella snapped shut around his head. A wide palm smacked him from behind. His face bashed against what seemed to be a brick wall with a resounding crack. Just as he threw the umbrella away, a smoky navy blue tail snapped around his body from the elbows down and constricted. Sanderson's eyes bulged behind his shades as he coughed up a burst of warm magic. Thick arms tightened around his neck from behind. The world shrieked with radio static as the lines connecting him to the Big Wand's energy field began to fritz. Six curled fingers sunk into his windpipe, and two thumbs into the dip at the back of his neck.

"Well, well, well."

At least, that's what was probably said. Hard to tell for sure through the screaming asflkdjfslkdjfskld noise. The fingers tightened.

"Welcome to Genieworld, Fairy. You're a tad outside your jurisdiction, aren't you?"

"Ih-" Sanderson squeaked, clawing at his throat.

H.P. whipped out the laser cannon core in his forehead and fired off a hot blast of pink- Sanderson caught that out of the corner of his eye. The beam seemed to burn a hole at the shoulder of the brown trench coat the genie wore, but it fizzled out when it came in contact with skin. Absorbed by a being who possessed far more magic.

"Go easy on him, Jasper," one of the hobos called, snuffing out a cigarette by grinding it into his hip. "He's just a pix. Can't you smell the cinnamon? They reek of the stuff like satyr intestines."

The pressure started to ease up, but only one finger at a time, leaving Sanderson to cough and hack. Bitter and sharp, the genie finally withdrew and tucked his hands in his pockets. Sanderson fell to the pavement, his human-esque disguise flickering uncertainly around him.

"Then we're in the right place, and you're our genies," H.P. guessed, in a tone that probably sounded fairly neutral to the untrained ear, though it dripped with disgust to any pixie. Blearily, Sanderson raised his head as the navy-tailed genie slithered back to his companions by the chairs. Wherever the rain hit the bare skin at his neck and forearms, it steamed.

Now that Sanderson knew what to look for, he could definitely pinpoint the three figures as the sources of smoky-tasting imprints in the energy field. Tails curled out from the bottoms of their trench coats, which at a second glance were much thinner at the waists than they really should have been if their wearers were human. The damsel who stretched out and interlocked her fingers with Jasper's had a scarlet tail. The orange genie chewed a sprig of grass or wheat and almost never stopped scratching at the wiry red hairs on his chin. An orange hick, of all things! What a waste.

And, now that he was looking, Sanderson could even spot a fourth genie. A yellow child sitting quietly in the barrel of crackling fire, her tail poking out a hole in the side. Because where else was she supposed to be?

"I plead Pinewater v. Shadewind on the grounds that I didn't recognize you in the circus-reject clothes," the navy genie snipped at H.P. "That's a thing I can do to avoid the 'attacking a neutral party on Earth soil' fee, isn't it?"

"I'm not sure I should let the fine slide. Your companions seemed to recognize the pixie imprint easily enough."

"Nice going, Henry," the red genie muttered to the orange (Henry- his name was Henry).

"Sir," hissed Sanderson. That was no way to start this conversation.

As for Henry, he got up from his plastic seat and leaned against the fire barrel, arms folded. The flames danced off his dark glasses, but Sanderson figured that behind them, he was checking the Head Pixie out up and down. "Tch. What's shakin' with that colorful getup, tater tot? You smell like a mermaid and look like a fairy. I thought that was against your kind's customs. Bit of cultural appropriation then, isn't it?"

H.P. flipped down the hood of his purple sweatshirt, revealing his floppy gray hat for the first time. "It's a disguise I wear sometimes when I visit populated Earth locations like your cute little Mudlip Town. When I wear this, humans tend to pass me off as an equally-human child."

"Uh-huh. And you expect me to believe the humies thought you were a kid even when you got all those wrinkles on your face?"

"Yes, actually. Principle of Observation. So long as I'm coated with the magical dust particles that regularly gather on my skin like sweat, they saw only what they expected. One glance at my small size and childish clothes, a tall human adult obviously accompanying me, and they usually don't perform a double-take."

Jasper grunted. "We have to wear trenchcoats."

"It's a very nice coat," Sanderson said sincerely, finally reaching for his umbrella and getting to his feet again at last. He shifted closer to his boss, one hand in his jacket.

"Still. Something here seems fishy." Henry picked a fingernail between his soot-stained teeth. "I ain't sure your costume's much of a disguise if'n it goes and reads 'We're Pixies' all across the front."

"That was to prevent your friend from confusing us with Fairies and jumping us."

"Seriously, Henry," said the red genie, "stop talking."

H.P. cleared his throat as the orange genie glanced sharply at her, snapping the bit of straw in his mouth. "I was informed that Mudlip here functioned as Genieworld, USA division."

"Spot on, bucko."

"Good." He set the briefcase down between his feet. "I'd like to get this over with as soon as possible. Did you gather all your fellows as I requested, and where can we go to find them once we've finished with you?"

The red genie smiled thinly. "You're there, gray."

H.P. paused. "This is it? This here with just… just the three of you? You can't tell me this is your entire world."

"Four, but otherwise, 'fraid so. Name's Tansy."

"Tansy what?" Sanderson asked automatically, inching in Henry's direction.

"Tansy, daughter of Michellene."

"Genies don't have surnames," H.P. remembered then. He stared down at his briefcase, presumably trying to decide if he was annoyed that he had brought so many extra forms along for no reason, or if he was glad that there were only four genies in, well, "Genieworld, USA" and therefore that the job would be over with quickly enough so complaining wasn't even worth it.

Henry turned his head then. "Does your friend have a problem with me?"

As all eyes zeroed in on him, Sanderson smoothed a few wrinkles across the front of his suit, inwardly and physically kicking himself in the ankle. "My apologies, Mr. Henry. I, um, didn't realize I was staring. It's just that… you're orange. I've only met one other orange magical being in the last 253,000 years of my life, so I'm a little starstruck."

'Orange' was an understatement, really. Henry's tail glittered soft persimmon. Even with the prospect of paperwork hovering on the horizon, Sanderson had a difficult time focusing on his task and not on how pretty the Genie magic would look on his hand in field-sight. He'd never scrub the dust that palm again, or if he did, he'd brush it off into a little jar for the shelf in his office. That would make a good sugar bar story. Maybe even get him a free Mountain Dew, or at least a Coca Cola at Ivory Wand and Comet Blood over in the Oklahoma skies- "You'll never guess where I found an orange- Here, take a whiff of it and then look me in the eyes and swear it doesn't reek of genie".

"Sure." Henry moved away just before Sanderson's fingertips could touch his tail. "Let's get this census-taking business done. I'd like to get out of this awful rain before next week."

H.P. followed the genie as Henry retreated beneath the overhang. "Sanderson, you can take Jasper and the yellow. I'll deal with Henry and Tansy."

"I was thinking I-"

Up went the eyebrow.

"Er… I mean, of course, sir."

The yellow damsel had climbed halfway out of the barrel now, and her hand slipped across serrated metal. She yelped and buckled forward. Out of complete knee-jerk reaction the pixie made a grab for her before she could hit the ground. But he dropped her as soon as they came in contact.

Right. Barrel of fire.

"She's bleeding lava," he sputtered after that, holding his hand flat by his side and repressing every instinct that screamed for him to shake it out in the cold air.

"We do that." Jasper settled back into his plastic seat and pulled the yellow genie into his lap. His fingers drummed against the trench coat in the place where his knee would be. "Now, how does this get done?"

"You take these sheets," Sanderson said, pinging a clipboard and stapled stack of papers out from the briefcase near where H.P. hovered, "and I take these ones. Answer those questions, and alert me if you're having trouble understanding them."

"And our personal information is kept private?"

He nodded. "Generally speaking, yes. Put simply, only trusted fingers will be getting their hands on these, and they won't be used against you in any manner."

"Are you 'trusted fingers'?"

"I like to think so, yes. I can list all the exact details of the system if you care for them."

Jasper let out a grunt and scribbled out approximately two sentences on a line. "Don't bother. This late, in this weather, with all this stuff to skim, I'm not in the fezzin' mood. Remind me, why are you making us do this?"

"Freed genies, while they do emit a high-frequency pulse in the energy field, are actually rather difficult to track down and maintain tabs on, and we technically don't consider en lamp genies as 'people' any more than will o' the wisps and trolls for reasons that I presume you, having lived in a lamp once yourself, view as obvious. We didn't know you all here had shaken off your lamps, or else we would have shown up sooner. As free genies, you are honorary Fairykind citizens, and with your apparently long-standing 'Genieworld' refuge becoming an officially-recognized establishment for the first time, it's expected that you will contact us when you receive any new, recently-freed arrivals."

"So you're just randomly stalking us, basically."

Sanderson lifted a brow. His wings itched. The town appeared deserted now as the rain began to sweep down harder and faster beyond the lip of the overhang, and he wished he could shrug off the lanky and awkward human shape and revert to the size he was familiar with. But to the genie studying the papers, he droned, "The census data gets used by the government and plays a role in determining healthcare services, tax benefits, lineages, danger areas, population density, storm warnings, where alerts ought to be sent if there are major disturbances ringing through the Fairy force, et cetera, et cetera. Perhaps most importantly, since we were told that you were given permission to become your own, ah, 'Genieworld', you'll have official representation on the Fairy Council, and we're supposed to help you register to vote. Elections are held every fifty-thousand years. The last one occurred in the human year 1768, Summer of the Coiled Thornbush, so you have awhile to go yet."

Jasper stared at him over the fire barrel, hooped earrings glinting. A muscle in his cheek twitched several times. Then a muscle in the other. "You do realize that genies are only active for a hundred thousand years before they go dormant, right?"

"I'm sorry. I can't fix that. I'm only following orders."

"You gotta be twisting my goatee," the navy genie muttered as he paged through paper after paper. Three of them even fluttered to the cold hard ground, which made the pixie bite his thin lip. "I really have to fill out all this smoof?"

"It's only two hundred questions," Sanderson said in surprise.

"And I'm not sure I know half of them. What's an area code and why do I need one? Where would I find out if I'm supposed to be paying a mortgage for hanging around this rumpled town? How can you expect me to know the responses to all these taxes and insurance questions off the top of my head? Is it your business to know how often I bathe? Do I really have to document my sex life?"

"I don't remember that question."

"It says 'fertility'."

"Oh. That's just, have you had any junior genies in the last thousand years."

"Hm." Jasper made a few markings and brushed away a yawn. "Gotta 'fess up, but if there's something I do miss about the old ball and chain of being tied to a lamp, it was my ability to gong up money and stacks of completed paperwork any time I wanted it. Okay, I gotta ask. What's up with the 'Can you climb stairs' question?"

Sanderson shook his head and returned his attention to his own clipboard. "You're acting like I wrote this thing. It's an official government document. I'm just the messenger." He actually had written most of it, but he saw no reason to bring that up now.

"I feel like it's a deliberate jab at our people anyway."

"… Simply out of curiosity, how often do you bathe?"

"In water, in lava, or in carbon tetrachloride?"

"Never mind." He turned his attention to the yellow genie, still curled quietly in Jasper's lap. "I never got her name."

"Anne. Mine and Tansy's daughter."

"She's your daughter?"

"Yes?"

Sanderson kept his mouth shut, because… surely they knew that a blue genie and a red one wouldn't produce a yellow? They had to. Wasn't his business anyway.

Only… it was. When he glanced down at the first page of the forms, his pen hovered over the line that read Father.

Tansy had apparently heard this part of the conversation, because she leaned in from the neighboring chair, her eyes glowing like chips of coal. "Is something the matter?" she asked, syrup-ly. Sweetly.

"Nothing at all. I was working out the spelling of 'Jasper' in my head." Sanderson copied this information down delicately and hopscotched his way through the paperwork in the hour and a half they were there. The rain sang and moaned intermittently. Eventually, he did win permission from H.P. to shed the human-like skin. Blue ink stained his square fingernails. The moon crested and began to set.

At long last, when the storm was getting colder and beginning to blow sideways, the pens went down. Sore necks leaned back. Exhausted hands rubbed drooping eyelids. The pixies waited patiently as the genies took a moment to complain about the task and thank embers that it was all over, and then he and his boss gathered up the completed documents. The copies for the official Pixie records would follow later, as would the triplicate filing, if it actually came down to that.

Clicking and scraping the teeth in the back of his mouth, H.P. raised his head. His lavender eyes glittering like hornets behind his glasses. "You all checked 'Other' on the obligatory question of whether you're members of the Seelie or the Unseelie Court."

"Guilty," said Henry, swapping that bit of wheat he liked to chew on from one side of his mouth to the other. His orange tail coiled around three legs of his chair. "That's what we are. No such thing as anti-genies to be had, and we have no part in your little 'trooping shining throne' and 'solitary buttery spirit' labeling conventions."

"I didn't even list an 'Other' option. Did you seriously waste your great cosmic-rending abilities to add a perfectly-printed box to this question?"

"Yep," came a dull-voiced chorus that could have given a pixie shivers. And, well, it kind of did.

H.P. balled the document slightly in his left fist. "I see. You're not supposed to do that. This is a document printed on chesberry paper. That's a magical tree. Magic doesn't affect magical objects, so you can't use magic on it."

"You can't," Tansy said.

Jasper upturned his palms, then let them fall against his chest.

The Head Pixie puffed out his cheeks and swelled his chest, as he tended to before he burst. But then his eyes locked with Sanderson, and from there slid down to little Anne, sleeping on her back on the pavement, boiling drool leaking onto her wrist.

He simply rolled his eyes.

That was really it, then. H.P. straightened his hat, pulled up his sweatshirt hood, and thanked them all diplomatically. The genies dipped their heads.

Then, dull gray umbrellas unfurled, the two pixies took to the dirty pebbled roads and trotted off to catch a long bus ride home.

A/N: One time it was the middle of the night and BookwormGal and I got talking about our respective favorite muses, and for some reason we both really needed "small town Genieworld genies and miffed pixies whose high expectations have been crushed now all squabbling over paperwork together" to be a thing.

If you haven't yet run across BookwormGal, let me just tell you that she's a fabulous writer (for many fandoms) with a seriously great 'fic here on FFN about Norm and Timmy and a super-precious innocent little eight-year-old girl and the power of friendship and family love. Plus, y'know, there are Anti-Fairies and Pixies teaming up in it and I'm always here for Sanderson accidentally playing a role in screwing up the entire universe.

This is the 'fic that actually made me change my opinion about Norm from vague interest but dislike to honestly growing fond of him, and that doesn't happen often with me. It's called Never Had a Friend Like Me, it even has a sequel/spin-off, and is definitely worth checking out!