The Manic Pixie

Shape

Moriah closed her eyes and dipped her head under the water, slowly. As she went under, her ears rang slightly like a bell, until she her ears immersed under the water.

 She heard the voices of humans speaking to each other in a foreign language. She felt plants covering her entire body. Prickled by other leaves. The temperature was hot. She could tell she was in the field where this mint was harvested. A human hand roughly tugged on the stem Moriah was embodying. 

"Whoa! This is one of the largest leaves I've seen in a while!" The human exclaimed to her coworkers. "Look how green! We sure lucked out this year."

Excruciating pain tugged at Moriah's limbs as if she was being severed from the rest of her body. She was being plucked from where she was growing.

Moriah's head shot up out of the water, back into her normal world. She let out a desperate heave. 

What a mistake.

Moriah didn't take into consideration the pain that may come with this shift. She didn't know she would be plucked exactly at the time she embodied a mint leaf! A mint had its whole life to grow, and she happened to shift at the time its life was ending. When she shifted into plants, she found herself underground, the dark beginning of the seed; the rosebud stretching out and growing; the tickle of a hummingbird drinking as she was an adult flower. Never the harsh pluck. 

Shapeshifting was Moriah's only skill as a pixie. She acquired this power slowly over time. With practice it is coming to maturity.

Which means Moriah is helping out her fairy godmother sister! 

Granting wishes. But only a specific kind. Her older sister, Genna has a whole staff of pixies who work to grant wishes. Genna gets all the credit. Luckily Genna gets all the money, which provides for Moriah's luxurious lifestyle. 

If a human wistfully looks out the window, especially a child human, wishes day after day and asks the fairy godmother that she wants to see a unicorn, it is Moriah's time to shine. This human kid would have to have a pure heart and soul and a promise to do good in the world (which is confirmed, since her future is already predicted by Wren, a different pixie.) Moriah appears as a sleek, white unicorn, just only able to glimpse through the trees as then disappear as if she was almost never there. But the child, and only the child saw the white perfect unicorn. Joy bubbles up inside the child and she tells her friends and family what she saw! Of course, no one believes her. It is possible however that a friend may be curious and hopeful, with an imagination and a longing to believe. The child will tell her friend that she wishes day after day that her fairy godmother will grant her a wish of seeing a unicorn. The cycle continues. It's mostly word of mouth, or pure belief. That is how Miss Fairy Godmother Genna continues her business.

Some kids will pray to a God or Goddess instead of Miss Fairy Godmother, which hurts Genna's business. However, there are just enough kids to believe, which creates a steady and lucrative diet of money to Genna. Moriah and Wren, among others, are Genna's employees; they earn a salary. Does it compare to anything Genna earns? Not even close. Who gets the credit? Genna! However, it has been like this for a long while, ever since Genna was trained and their mother passed away. Moriah was just used to it, as well as the other employees were used to working for a Fairy Godmother. 

Moriah is Genna's shapeshifter pixie.