Another of my "one-off cross-over' episodes, hope you like it! You should instantly recognise the characters...

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Chapter 101

Lilly and Tats have been working with Donald and Charlotte now for a couple of months, preparing to takeover the running of FI5. At the same time, Elida has been working on learning more magic, and with help from Sebby, improve her teleporting, although still not yet quite able to teleport into buildings with magic-dampening on them.

This week though, Elida is taking a complete break from any form of studying, and instead has volunteered to do the evening shift, covering general fairy duties - so not just doing tooth fairy work. She has actually really enjoyed it: it has been so refreshing to get back to 'fairy basics', fulfilling a variety of human wishes.

Tonight has been relatively quiet, so Elida has been sat in the office chatting with a couple of other fairies. Suddenly, her tablet beeped, to indicate a customer: the advanced systems were predicting that an 18 year old girl would be shortly making a wish.

"I'll take it" volunteered Elida. She pulled up the details: "Oh, shouldn't take long to get there, I'll be back soon!"

Elida put her flying coat on, and went off on her way... arriving at the target's home not long after. She ran up the detector app on her tablet: it indicated which bedroom in which house she needed to be, along with a countdown timer to when it was predicted the wish would be: 1 minute and 4 seconds, and counting... which was PLENTY of time for Elida to get there.

Inside the bedroom was a pretty 18 year old girl, sitting on her bed. She seemed to be a bit fed up.

"Oh, I fancy something creamy to eat: you know, I wish I had a nice slice of that disgustingly fattening cream-filled chocolate cake to eat!" said the girl.

"Oh, the girl has good taste" thought Elida. She prepared 2 simple spells: the first was to actually create the slice of cream-filled chocolate cake, the other was to plant the idea in the girl's mind that the suddenly appearing chocolate cake wasn't something strange, but maybe she had bought it earlier, and put it onto a plate ready to eat. Elida called up her wand (she didn't actually NEED it, but she DID enjoy using it!) and cast the two spells: the cake appeared on a plate on the bedside table.

The girl saw something out of the corner of her eye, and turned to see what it was - it was of course the slice of cake. As she saw it, she smiled (I mean, who wouldn't?), allowing Elida to see her lovely smile.

Her lovely metallic smile.

In fact, a smile with a rather larger than normal amount of metal.

Now, we have to remember a few things here: (1) Fairies just LOVE anything shiny anyway; (2) Elida is a tooth / braces fairy; (3) Elida actually LIKES braces. So Elida flew up in front of the girl's face, to take a better look at her mouth. Oh, wow, yes, it looked like her mouth was FULL of shiny metal! And when I say FULL I mean +F+U+L+L+!!

Suddenly the girl was looking around for some reason, then suddenly she was looking straight at Elida, although Elida didn't notice it for several seconds.

"Oh, hello there!" said the girl, smiling. "I'm guessing you must be a fairy - I didn't think you guys actually existed!"

To say that Elida was shocked was a MASSIVE understatement: whilst we know that it was possible for humans to see fairies in dream, they can't see them when they are awake. But it was pretty clear that this girl could see Elida!

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Chapter 102

Serena was up in her room: she was feeling a bit under the weather tonight. It was a combination of things: first of all, it was 'that time of the month', and her body wasn't feeling so good. Plus she'd been practising a LOT of dark magic the last few evenings, which was tiring in itself, but she'd also had a bit of an argument with her mum about it.

So, she was sat on her bed, about to drink a cup of tea she'd just made, trying to make herself feel better. "Oh, I fancy something creamy to eat: you know, I wish I had a nice slice of that disgustingly fattening cream-filled chocolate cake to eat, like what they do in that nice cafe in town!" said Serena.

She saw something out of the corner of her eye, and turned to look: there was a small plate on her bedside table, and on it was.... yes, a slice of that disgustingly nice creamy chocolate cake! Unsurprisingly Serena smiled. "Where on earth did THAT come from" she asked herself.

While she was looking at the cake, she saw movement at the edge of her vision, but when she turned to look, there was nothing there. Again, she looked at the cake, getting ready to grab it and eat it, when again she saw something in her peripheral vision. She kept looking at the cake, but tried to concentrate on what she could see... it was very indistinct, but rather reminded her of a very large dragonfly, flapping it's large wispy wings. It only took Serena a moment to realise that, whatever it was, it must be using some sort of magic to hide itself.

Well, funnily enough, one of the dark magic spells Serena had been working on with Sarah last night was a 'reveal hidden things' spell. So she quickly scanned her memories to find the 'little yellow sticky' that had the relevant spell on it: silently she uttered the words, and turned and looked at where the 'object' seemed to be: Serena got rather a surprise.

What she saw look exactly how she imagined a fairy to be - not that they actually exist. The fairy was something like 5 or 6 inches tall, dressed in a black t-shirt over another top with green and black stripes on it, and a short white skirt. Her hair was ginger, a bit longer than her shoulders, with a fringe at the front, and the back hair tied up in a sort of bun with a white ribbon. Her wings looked very much like a dragon-fly, wispy with green and black highlights. If she were a normal girl, Serena would have placed her as an older teenager, maybe the same sort of age as herself. On her feet she wore a pair of white trainers, and in her hand she held a small wand.

She seemed to be hovering no more than a foot from her, and she seemed to be looking straight at her mouth.

"Well, hello there!" said Serena, smiling. "I'm guessing you must be a fairy - I didn't think you guys actually existed!"

The fairy, who was clearly very surprised that Serena could actually see her, looked up at Serena and pulled away a bit. "It's ok, I'm not going to hurt you.... are you a fairy?" said Serena, smiling even wider at the little fairy's beauty.

"You can SEE me?" asked the fairy.

"Yes, I can.... is that a problem?"

"Well, yes... erm, humans aren't supposed to be able to see us fairies"

"Well, I can definitely see you!". ("Hey" suggested Serena's braces, "Maybe it's because you're a witch, another magical person??") "Maybe it's because I'm actually a witch? By the way, I'm Serena!"

"Hello, Serena: no, witches shouldn't be able to see us either, but that might explain why my suggestion spell about the cake didn't seem to work. I'm Elida by the way". Elida could sense that Serena wasn't an immediate threat to her, so relaxed a bit.

"So what sort of a fairy are you then? A cake fairy?"

"Don't be daft, there's no such thing as a 'cake fairy'! No, I'm a 'teeth and braces fairy', I kinda spotted your braces, and was sneaking a quick look before you ate your cake. To be honest, they are rather amazing, I've never actually seen braces anything like yours before."

"Well, these are rather special braces: they are made from a special metal, and are a bit more extreme than most braces. Want to take a closer look? Don't worry, you're quite safe here, no one will hurt you."

"Oh yes please!" said Elida, flying closer to take a look. Serena opened her mouth to let her get a good view. Elida looked into Serena's mouth, and could see not only the full-band braces, but also the expander, the tongue rake and herbsts... not forgetting the two lip bumpers.

"Oh, wow, yes, I see what you mean by being a bit extreme! So how come you can talk without a lisp? I mean, that's a LOT of metal in there!"

"A bit of a long story, let's see if I can make it simple: When I pledged to my coven, it was expected that, like everyone else, that I would pledge to follow the path of the light, but instead I pledged more for the light grey. It seems I'm described in a prophecy, destined to do big things, which mean I need to learn DARK magic: the braces special metal protects me from much of the effects of that magic. And they also stop me from having a lisp"

"I can't actually see much of your teeth, these braces seem to pretty much cover them!" Elida reached out her hand, and gently touched Serena's braces.

"Hello Elida, nithe to meet you!" said a voice.

Elida quickly pulled back. "Who was that?" she asked.

"You mean the voice that said 'Hello Elida'? That was my braces: they are sentient"

"Sentient braces - no way!"

"Go on, touch them again, I promise neither of us will hurt you"

Elida gently touched Serena's braces once more. "Don't be thcared, Elida, we come from a thpecial bit of metal that allowth uth to protect Therina from dark magic".

Elida giggled. "You guys have a lisp!"

"Tho would you if you were ath exthreme ath uth!" said the braces, making Elida giggle again.

"You know, I'm wondering if you guys, and the dark magic, are maybe why Serena can see me"

"Yeth, that's quite poththible I guethth, Therena ith a thpecial witch"

"Hey" said Serena, "I see you have a wand there: want to meet mine?"

"What do you mean, meet?"

"Wanda? Can you show yourself to Elida, please?". Wanda appeared in Serina's hand, making herself visible to the young fairy.

"Ooh, a fairy! I've heard about them over the many centuries, but have never actually met one." said Wanda.

"Your wand talks? That is a cool wand!"

Serena and Wanda looked at each other. "Well, you learn something new every day!" said Wanda, "Who knew that a fairy could hear me?"

"Her name is Elida" explained Serena.

"Well, hello there, Elida, I'm Wanda"

"Hello there, Wanda, you must be a very special wand. You know, I'm a bit of a special fairy too, maybe THAT's why I can hear you?"

"Ok," said Serena, "maybe that's it... so tell me about yourself.."

"Well, I'm Elida, it seems I'm a 'once in a generation fairy', I understand magic, and can do magic, better than any other fairy - well, apart from Zia that is - so I can do all sorts of magic that other fairies can't do, so that I can protect fairies and humans - and witches too - against any fairy who 'steps over the line'."

"You know Elida, sounds like we both have a lot in common. Hey, are you in a rush?"

"Ummm, unless an urgent call comes in, no... why?"

"Well, I think we ought to chat... and there's a rather nice piece of cake over there, and you're welcome to have a bit of my cup of tea too...".