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The path bends and crashes head-on into a pixie village. The main road is paved with pebbles of pink granite, glittering in the sunlight and sulking in the shadows thrown by woven grass houses. One of the pixies stops for a moment. "Ahblah aespanyole? Sprek en zee doich? Speak English?"
"English, Pezzares," says a female voice from the house to the left. "I'm surprised you didn't just use magic and see that."
"Quit bothering me, Shellara! Can'tcha see I'm helping someone?" he replies. "Sorry about that, I think she likes me."
"I do not!" she yells. Pezzares grins.
"Well, just follow me. You've gotta see the fountain. Legend has it that it might be the Fountain of Tears, but we've never seen it affect anyone." He leads you down the granite street and around a couple of corners. As suddenly as the trail met the village, the road meets a square with a fountain. The pool is circular, and standing in the center is a unicorn, rearing up on two legs, horn vertical. The fountain water neatly arcs in a parabola up from the surface of the pool, right through the unicorn's open mouth, and down again, rising back up... huh? Water goes up off the pool from both endpoints of the arch, but it never crashes into itself: it merely goes both down and up the other side, trailing off and vanishing before it reaches the point where the other side rises out of the water.
Pezzares is grinning, amused by your wonder. "Ain't it somethin'?" he asks. Still amazed, you merely nod. "Here," he says, producing a cup from nowhere. "Have some." You take the cup, dip it in the pool, and drink. It tastes almost like a light syrup, and lifts your mood slightly. Pezzares is watching closely, then says, "See? I still don't think it's the Fountain of Tears, 'cause it doesn't affect anybody."
A rabbit, several times your shrunken height, flies by overhead. "Why don't any big creatures crush this place?" you ask. Pezzares thinks a moment before answering, as if pondering whether to release a treasured secret.
"It's magic. There's a force-dome over us that keeps things from stepping on us. We've gotta expand it soon, though, 'cause we've grown up to the edge of it... that's why the grass suddenly becomes village. But the Elder says that we have to expand by volume, so we can't get any bigger without being seen by most anyone that comes tromping through the meadow. I think we look like a... what's it called... a... mushroom! We look like a mushroom to the big creatures, but there's nothing that eats it, so we're safe." He glances at the sun. "Oh... I'd better be on my way. There's two forks to the North Gate path, and there's an East Gate over there. Come back sometime! We might've built something to see besides the fountain. Or not." He grins, and walks away down the street. Apparently, there is nothing of interest in the village besides the fountain.
Author's Note: It is the Fountain of Tears; it's just that the pixies don't cry tears of joy when they're intensely happy, and the full effect must be created by one giving it to another. If someone takes it himself, it's nowhere near as powerful. I should write a short story about this sometime.