"Wait! Don't do it!" A feminine voice with a lot of volume came from my desktop. This was weird. Then there was a rustling of paper from under the piles of junk on my desk and I was looking for a mouse when suddenly this disheveled, six-inch high feminine form popped out. There, standing before me on my desk, was a fairy. "Move your finger away from the delete button, please." I un-highlighted everything and just stared. It was official. I had cracked up, gone bonkers, was now really and truly a nut case.

I have always thought of myself as having some sort of mental illness or the other and that writing was both a manifestation of it and a way to relieve it. Hours spent composing depressing poems to show to my friend who would say, "Oh great. More depression," when I would show it to him. But this proved it. Not only that, but she was not, you know, beautiful and sleek and fine-lined like you see in the drawings. She was kind of a dumpy-frumpy in an almost-but-not-quite-sheer-enough sheer green gown that looked a little tight, but not a sexy, attractive, tight. She did have wings and what looked like a dime store plastic wand with a star on the end, like for a little girl's Halloween costume.

"Look. I'm real enough" she said, "go ahead and touch me." I reached out a tentative finger and she smacked it with her wand. "Not there!" I figured that if she was a figment of my imagination I could imagine what I wanted.

"I'm not a figment of your imagination. I am a real person, just with different genetic qualities from you. You must have some of The Blood in you or you wouldn't be able to see me. Nobody else can, so if you talk to me when others are around, they will think you're crazy."

"That's okay. I am crazy. But, if you're a real person then why do you look so familiar?"

She rolled her eyes at me. "Listen," She said, "The thing about all this is that when one of us gets tuned in to one of you, we take on features that you think are inspiring."

"But, why would you look like...never mind. Where did you come from?"

"Under that pile of junk right there. You might work better if you weren't distracted by so much clutter."

"My own thoughts and neuroses distract me. And now I have hallucinations. So, what are you again?"

"I am your muse. I give you ideas to write about."

"I already have ideas to write about."

"But you aren't doing it."

"Truth is, I don't think I write well enough. And some of my, er, ideas would be embarrassing to write about in front of a female."

"Hmmph. Like I never read anything like it before. You have more talent than that and besides, even if you wanted to write that, you could do better than 'his pulsing, throbbing this penetrated her hot, wet that.' You could make it real and believable."

"I'd be kind of embarrassed, too. I would feel funny letting someone read over my shoulder as I typed it."

"But I'm your friend. I may have some similarity to someone you know because when I tuned into your mind she was a part of it. I can modify my looks somewhat."

"Well, at the moment I am more interested in who you are and where you came from."

"Okay then. Put your hands on them home-keys, hotshot." And she waved her dime store magic wand in my face and muttered some hocus pocus mumbo jumbo. Suddenly I understood and began to write:

When man was first created, he was endowed with many gifts and powers. Each tribe of man descended from the original pair and went to many different corners of the Earth. The tribes each had some power or ability that would help them for their specific region. To try to gain more powers each tribe decided to intermarry with others, but instead of strengthening each other, they diluted both. The only thing they were successful at was sharing their wicked ideas with each other. They shared and shared until eventually the entire Earth was covered with wickedness that we cannot even conceive of or understand now. The ideas of good and using their special powers and abilities to help each other were gone. Only greed and hatred and murder filled everyone's mind. In the midst of all this, one man and his family stood out because they had tried not to be as evil as their neighbors were.

They were rewarded by being saved. In the eight of them were the various genetic codes that made up all the different peoples and powers. After the flood they were instructed to disperse again, and, had they obeyed, there would be many different races with many different powers that could have worked cooperatively, especially since they all spoke the same language. Instead, the wickedness of most of them made them want to stay in one place and work on one project instead of going to the ends of the world. They wanted to prove they did not need any power beyond themselves but all they did was get confusion for their trouble and pain and loss for their mighty power.

Some of the peoples who had wanted to do right, and had moved far away were happy they had at the time the great breaking had occurred. Thus, rewarded by their own virtue of obedience, were the races, called in various legends The Small Ones, The Little People, The Fairy Folk or the Leprechauns, sustained. As with most mythologies, the stories of these peoples were passed on and enhanced and expanded until they became, in the teller's mind, magical beings, with supernatural powers when in reality they were very natural, ordinary folk, with God-given talents and abilities that had always been the possession of mankind.

"Wow," I said intelligently, "so did you put that in my brain or did I invent all that or what?"

"That was the product of fact, lore and fancy, brought to life by your words. Just as The Creative Word had power to make something from nothing; you, in His image, have a creative word in you."

"So, what was the whole magic wand thing?"

"A bunch of hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo."

What would my friends say when I told them a person only a couple of inches tall had visited me? What would everyone say?

"I don't suppose you would show yourself to anyone else. Maybe one other person. I mean, people already think I'm crazy..."

"Well, that's good because if you want to be a writer you have to be crazy. No. I'm afraid it's quite impossible. I've already done too much, you know."

"Great. Just great. Oh well, O-bla-di O-bla-da. But I have a question, if you are just a person of a different race, what's up with the wings? They're very beautiful and lacy and all, but I don't know many humans sporting them."

She laughed until she snotted. I thought she was going to have an asthma attack. She started wriggling her arms around, pulling them inside her dress somehow. Soon there was a bra with wings attached lying on the floor. She laughed raucously, "Falsies! Hahahahahahahaha!" She blew her nose and caught her breath while I gingerly picked up the discarded article of clothing. Sure enough, the wings were part of the whole thing. I felt a little embarrassed, but she was having a good time. Finally, she said, "People in my race have always had a great sense of humor. You have a stereotype about us and we like to milk a gag as much as you." She stared intently at me for a moment, then said "Unfortunately most of the stereotypes about us and our cousins the Leprechauns are not true."

"So no wish-granting service?"

"No. No wish-granting service, no pot of gold, nothing. But I will try to encourage you and get you to write more and more."

Just then there were sounds of people beginning to rise to distract me.

"I have to go."

"But how will I find you? Will I see you again?"

"I can only tell you that this is an introduction, but I cannot promise if or when you will see me again. Just listen for my voice everywhere and write. Write, write, write, write and write. Don't give up. Only stop when necessary and write about everything. Hmm-bye."

I shifted mental gears as people started to get up and tell me things to do, but I know she's there. She's around somewhere and all I have to do is write.