Jeremy exhaled slowly as his brush tip finished the lines of his signature “Jeremy Tacit” on the corner of the page. From the breast pocket on his shirt a little pixie popped out. She was small, with dark eyes, russet hair, and a deeply tanned body encased in green and orange feathers. She reached out a hand, a thumb and three fingers, to touch the wet bristles of Jeremy’s brush and then added her print to the dot of the “i” in his last name. 

After cleaning off her hand she perched back in his pocket as the two of them looked down at the painting, a beautiful close up of a fiery orange lily with a bee resting on one of the petals. Jeremy brushed a finger across the top of the pixie’s head in appreciation. She giggled, a tinkling sound like thin glass windchimes on a summer breeze, before she flitted in front of him and made gestures to suggest getting something to eat. 

“Sure thing, Winnie,” he said as he got up. 

They left the spare bedroom that was the painting studio and went into the open space that served as the living room, dining room and kitchen of the small two bedroom apartment. Winnie sat on Jeremy’s shoulder as he filled a cup of instant noodles with water and put it in the microwave before he peeled a clementine, setting a portion of it onto a small saucer for the pixie. Jeremy brought their food over to the couch where they watched an episode of an anime show, Winnie falling asleep moments after finishing her fruit with hands held over her tiny bulging stomach. 

Smiling, Jeremy scooped her up, dropped off their dishes in the sink, and took the pixie back to the studio where he placed her in the shallow dish on the desk that held her nest. It was made up of bits of fabric and small sticks she had gathered herself. Her favorite bit was a tassel of metallic threads he was fairly certain she had stolen from someone’s keychain and she curled up with it like a child would a beloved stuffed animal. 

While she napped, he went back to the couch to check apps on his phone. Their reels on Instagram were doing well, although a part of him was disappointed that the camera displayed Winnie as a hummingbird rather than her true nature. Still, people found Winnie adorable and the duo got a lot of likes and views on their content. Selling their art, on the other hand, was still a work in progress. 

After a while, Jeremy looked in on Winnie and found her on the desk surrounded by the bits of scrap paper he had cut down to a reasonable two inch size for her to draw on. She used her hands, dipped into a bowl of charcoal dust and traced lines and patterns. Jeremy saw that she was drawing a bird, a hummingbird or rather a self portrait of her glamor.