The newborn fairies were flitting in and out of kitchen cabinets and practicing their teleportations. Like all new lives, they ran in groups and played at the skills that would eventually prove important to adulthood. One at a time they stopped in midair, blinked, and vanished in a shower of tiny sparks, only to appear nearby in a perfect star-shaped flash of light. They played hide-and-seek and follow-the-leader in this way, appearing momentarily atop a pantry shelf next to a slouched bag of flour, then when the rest followed the light and soft noise of their teleportation winking out again to show up somewhere else.

Their small lights swooped back and forth in the kitchen windows. Someone walking through the back alley late that night might have taken the glow for a nightlight, or the faint green luminescence of an old oven clock. Had they stopped to peer across the short backyard and its rusting army of outdoor furniture, they might have supposed that fireflies were loose inside the house, bumbling at the windows and unable to get out.

The fairies did not consider the possibility of being discovered; mere hours old, they were filled with a joyous recklessness that would become maturity and wisdom by morning. For now, their small butterfly wings were scarcely dry and begging to be tested. Their delicate antennae picked up a cascade of wondrous sensations, which the fairies followed to sources around the room -- the muffled crunch of two weevils eating their lifelong path through the flour bag; the watery sheen of moonlight on a polished floor; the individual voices of grapes humming in 16-tone disharmonies behind the refrigerator door.

Like most young lives, they were still testing the limits of their abilities, and secretly hopeful that they would never discover an end to their powers. One challenged the others to follow her through a series of teleportations, and flashed in and out of locations throughout the kitchen as fast as she could manage. One moment she stood on top of the refrigerator, the next she curled up in a teacup, then she hid behind the trash can. The other fairies blinked about in her wake, sending out flowers of sparkling lights at every hop. They learned to sense where she would be next, in the same way her senses told her where it was safe to teleport.

She could not shake them, and tried to jump even faster. She blinked, vanished, and found herself reappeared inside a glass mason jar half-filled with dried rice. The jar around her momentarily flashed cheerily as another fairy appeared just outside the jar. She blinked and cast out her senses to the next place she could jump, but nothing happened. She hovered inside the mason jar, confused. More fairies from the game appeared in a little semicircle around the jar, looking in at her in confusion.

She blinked and nothing happened. She blinked and nothing happened. She couldn't quite feel a place outside the glass walls where she could teleport. Maybe she was too tired, or maybe the glass was somehow keeping her inside. She grew suddenly anxious and began beating on the jar with her tiny fists.

The other fairies watched her, unsettled and confused. Nothing in their brief experience told them what to do if another of their number was in trouble. They lined up against the glass wall and peered inside, their little hands resting on the curves of the embossed word "Mason" that wrapped around the jar.

The trapped fairy beat on the inside of the jar, but all the rest could hear was a soft, high-pitched tinkle, like a far-off bell. They did not know what to do, and they looked at each other anxiously before turning their eyes back to their imprisoned friend. Her antennae were wilting a little, and her wings were hanging down as if useless. Eventually she floated down to the bed of dry rice and closed her eyes. The other fairies began to cry tiny diamonds.

"What a sad story!" Susan says. She's cooking rice for an Indian dish, and we are suddenly both so depressed by my expository tale that dinner has come to a temporary halt.

"I can't help it," I tell her.

"Who are the fairies?" she asks.

"I think it's all my patients on the ambulance," I guess plaintively, "No matter what I do, I just can't help all of them."

"I think it's the nation," she says.