[centre]Disney Fairies: A Winter's Tale

Chapter One: The Missing Pixie Dust[/centre]

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"For goodness sake, Terence!" came the low, gutteral growl of a large fairy whose accent closesly resembled that of a human scotsman.
He was holding a clipboard made of several small leaves all pinned together by a thorn to form each page and was irritably pointing at page three.
"I'm sorry, Fairy Gary" responded a much more slightly built male fairy with sandy blonde hair, the previously mentioned Terence.
"I just don't know where it wouldn've gone, the numbers must be wrong" 
"You wrote the numbers, Terence" Fairy Gary responded quietely through gritted teeth.
"Wha-? No, gimme a look at that" Terence said, taking the clipboard from Fairy Gary and going over his math.

By this time, the entire dust factory had come to a standstill, the conveyor belts, made from long blades of grass sewn together with thin vines and made to move by rotating twigs capped with acorn husks had fallen silent as the dust fairies responsible for bagging up the dust into the fairies' daily rations quitened down to listen to the exchange between the pixie dust overseer and his subordinate.

"No no, see" Terence pointed with utmost certainty at the clipboard "I gave everyone their exact ration, no special requirements for extra, the pixie dust tree is providing the exact right number of smidges... I don't see how we could be short" he insisted, going over and over the calculations in his head and rubbing the back of his neck nervously.
"Well we are short, Terence, three smidges short to be exact. That's one smidge for every week you've been handling this" Fairy Gary gave an exhausted sigh and fluttered away a few inches, rubbing his hands wearily on his chubby face.
"Look, Terence. You've never made a mistake like this before, that's why I let you handle the rationing this month but...maybe I should come back early, I've had a decent rest since the mainland and--"
"No!" Terence insisted at once "No no no, I can handle it, I'll find out where the dust has gone!"
Gary sighed again and looked hard into Terence's eyes, they were sincere.
"...Alright" he agreed after several moments pause "But!" he called, catching Terence before he shot out of the door "If the books aren't settled by sundown, that's...well, I'll be very disappointed. No go on"
"Right!" Terence said, nodding affirmatively before dashing out of the dust factory at top speed, the wind he left in his wake causing the orange kilt Fairy Gary wore to blow up most embarrisingly, causing a giggling uproar along the factory line.
"Get back to work you lot!" ordered Gary, struggling to hold down his kilt before disappearing sheepishly through the slab of bark that served as the door to his office.

"Aww man, how am I gonna figure this out? I just don't know what coulda happened..." Terence muttered to himself, straightening the little acorn shell he wore as a cap and ruffling his hair in concentration as he poured through the pages. 

Fairy Gary was right, they were missing three smidges, a little bit here, a little bit there to add up to an entire three smidges! This was disasterous, without that dust, other fairies would struggle to perform their work and with one missing cog in the massive clock that formed Pixie Hollow's preparations, Fall could literally fail to arrive on time. But it was more than that, really. In truth, three smidges would certainly cause a hiccup in production, but it wouldn't destroy the world, what it would destroy was Fairy Gary's faith in Terence, it had taken so much to convince his mentor that he could handle this job, he couldn't mess up.

"Alright, I gotta find out where this dust has gone, but where to start...ugh geez, I gotta find Tink, maybe she can help" with that thought in mind, Terence fluttered up into the air and set off at once for the home of the little blonde tinker fairy.
"Aww man, no!" Terence moaned, coming to a halt in mid air and burying his head in the clipboard "She's over in the winter woods visiting Periwinkle..."
Losing his confidence and enthusiasm, Terence slowly fluttered back down to the ground and plonked himself dejectedly on a pebble just outside of the dust factory, resting his chin in his hands.
"What am I gonna do...?"