The car pulled to a stop in the parking space of the two-story apartment complex. It was a fairly nice apartment building, built in a rectangle with one side open to the street. The parking lot was placed in the center of the apartments, making it have a nice enclosed feel even for a city apartment complex.

Kixus stepped out of his car, now donning his thick coat. It was zipped up and a flap covered the zipper that was buttoned down across it so that no air could get in through the tiny zipper cracks. Kixus closed and locked the door of his car and placed his keys in one pocket while thrusting his hands into the separate side pockets that were made purely for the purpose of keeping one's hands warm.

"It's the little things in life," Kixus thought to himself, smirking as he walked up the stairs toward the second story where his dwelling was, basking in the thick insulation of the coat.

As he reached the door of his apartment, he took his right hand out of his pocket and rubbed his nose, which had begun to turn red again from walking out of the car that he was blasting the heater in. After feeling he had sufficiently heated his chilled nose, he placed his right index finger along the right edge of the door and ran it down swiftly over the locks. All at once, the locks clicked in unison and the door swung inward toward the apartment. Kixus stepped forward into his apartment and removed his coat as the door swung closed behind him, the three locks and single chain clicking back into their secure positions.

Kixus threw the coat towards the wooden coat hanger near the door. It missed and fell to the ground. Shrugging, Kixus took off his shoes and walked over to the thermostat and turned it up, quickly dodging his head to the side to avoid the small pebble that came flying across the room at him.

"It's too cold in here, and it's my thermostat," Kixus said.

"If you turn that thing up so much as one more degree..." asserted a high pitched voice from across the room.

Kixus turned around. "Fairy, it's been a long night... a shipment came in... and then this guy in the parking lot..." Kixus leaned his head to the side again, dodging another small pebble that flew through the air at him.

"If you call me fairy one more time..."

"I'm sorry... Supreme Lady Princess Highness Incredible Beauty Among Man and Beast and Nature Bellinia... how was your day of sitting in my apartment? I'm sure it was such hazardous task..." Kixus sneered at Bellinia as a small, well-aimed pebble bounced off his forehead.

Bellinia stood up from her tiny bed that she was lying on in the small living area that she had made out of the far corner of the room next to the couch. She arched her back and stretched out her translucent wings. She was about six inches from head to toe and her paper-thin wings reached out another seven inches on both sides of her, glittering a rainbow color as the light hit them. Her hair was a golden, thick blonde that flowed all the way down her back, smaller strands reaching the heals of her feet. Reaching over to the side of her bed she pulled up a small ball and chain. Taking to the air and flying with great speed, she charged at Kixus.

Kixus placed his finger up in the air, and as the fairy swung her mace at Kixus, a wall of green light was all that was struck. The absorbed hit from the small ball sent a ripple through the green shield emitted from Kixus's finger.

"I'll have you know that I made plants all over the city bloom today, and your damn mirror was harassing the hell out of me all day long when I was here... I haven't been able to sleep all day long!" shouted the fairy as she rushed around Kixus, looking for an opening to land a blow of her ball and chain.

"Oh, poor baby," mourned Kixus, "And couldn't you have just sparkled happy pixy dust all over everything and make it all better? Or can you not do that without your eighty hours of beauty sleep?"

"Fuck you!" shouted Bellinia as she made another pass at Kixus, who dove on to the couch, covering the couch in his shield and putting his hands behind his head. "If it wasn't for that damn mirror, maybe I would have got some research done, which is not what I want to do I might add! It's your damn research. You should be praising me every time you get home for doing any of it. I could be out planting and playing and sleeping. But your damn 'long days,' it's the same damn thing every time you roll in late like this. Leaving me to do all the reading and all the studies and all the observation. Fairies aren't meant for this you know."

Bellinia crossed her arms across her chest and hovered in the center of the room, giving up on charging at Kixus while he lay on the couch. Her eyes instead flickered now to the thermostat that Kixus was no longer guarding.

"Yeah, yeah..." Kixus muttered. "I thought you're suppose to be answering the mirror while I'm at work, not that you ever have." Kixus watched Bellinia eye the thermostat and grinned. "Go ahead darling..."

Bellinia rolled her eyes at Kixus and flew down, grabbing a small pebble off the wood table in front of the couch. It was the one that had bounced off of Kixus's forehead and fell into the mess of papers, fast food wrappers, and books that were on the table.

"You're gonna clean those little things up, aren't you?" said Kixus, eyeing the small pebble.

Bellinia stuck her tongue out at Kixus and tossed the pebble lightly at the thermostat. A bolt of electricity sparked as the small stone impacted the thermostat, and Kixus burst into chuckles. Bellinia sighed at the electrically protected thermostat, too tired to try and undo whatever Kixus had done to prevent her from touching it, and flew over to the couch. Kixus dropped the green shield that surrounded him and Bellinia sat softly on the arm of the couch near Kixus's head.

"So what's up with the mirror?" Kixus asked.

"Hell if I know," replied Bellinia, "Been making noise all day long, some kind of broadcast messages through out the entire world or something... hell if I know. Probably telemarketers or something."

"Telemarketers don't have magic mirrors."

" I know that! Maybe they were ancient telemarketers or something though... Back when there were more people with mirrors. Those messages sounded pretty old... like something trapped in time. And I couldn't just ignore them either. There was no warning and then the stupid mirror just started spitting out these stupid rants and would go silent again. I bet you probably broke it."

Kixus furrowed his brow, looking toward his room where the mirror was.

"That thing doesn't make a peep in months and now it's ranting all on its own... piece of junk. Is that even possible though?" mumbled Kixus out loud.

"Who knows," Bellinia said. "It was weird shit too... It was all in ancient languages. I didn't understand anything that it was spewing out. Oh... except that dwarf buddy of yours... Yeah... He would appear on the thing a few times and start ranting, but his voice was all scratchy. Couldn't understand him... but he was speaking English I'm pretty sure."

"Hmm... probably was drunk... or his mirror was acting up too. Either way, he can always wait till morning. So what did those crazy messages sound like they were in?" Kixus inquired.

"A lot of them were in really ancient elven from what I could tell... those were the bulk of them, no dialect that I could recognize though. And there were a few in... what sounded like vampiric. And then... I think... there was one in draconian," replied Bellinia.

"Dragon language..." Kixus looked as if he had become slightly more concerned at the mention of the long dead language. "No such thing... maybe you're right... just some dead messages from the past floating around in the air... probably all garbage."

Kixus closed his eyes and sent his mind deep into thought. Something bothered him. He had never once heard of a mirror acting without someone there to manipulate it. Even on the receiving end the mirror always required someone there to answer it. He knew that Bellinia was capable of answering the mirror, but had never known her once to answer it. Kixus climbed up to his feet and walked over to the living room bookshelf.

"What is it?" Bellinia inquired as she watched Kixus mull over the books.

Kixus just kept looking over the books, but was growing tired and found it hard to concentrate. He was soon back on his couch, balled up with his eyes closed, slowly drifting to sleep.

"Get the lights will you," Kixus muttered.

"Tell me," Bellinia glared at Kixus.

"It's nothing... just looking for a mirror repair manual or something like that. Now get the lights."

Bellinia flew from her perch on the armrest of the couch and clicked off the lights. Glancing over at the glowing wall clock she could see that it was already past two in the morning. She flew over to her dwelling in the corner of the room and tucked herself under the tiny covers.

Not long after she had laid her head down, a glow came from Kixus's room. A crackled and distorted voice called from the mirror in Kixus's room.

"Kixus... he... in the south... moving... I sent... he... and the Guild" crackled the broken voice.

Kixus dove off the couch and dashed into his room, but only in time to see the blurred face of a dwarf fade away into darkness. Kixus walked over to the now blank mirror. Standing over it, he waved his hands around it. The mirror glowed as it reached out into the world for another mirror, for the mirror of the dwarf that had appeared, but there was no response.

"Damn trick playing dwarf... probably drunk. He'd probably be the one to figure out how to make mirror open without having someone operate them," muttered Kixus. He went back to the couch to go back to sleep, throwing a sheet over the mirror as he left to block it from receiving any more random signals from nowhere.

He lay down on the couch, closed his eyes, and quickly drifted off.