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The pen hadn’t been worth stealing

     The pen hadn’t been worth keeping, it was just a regular ballpoint pen with chew marks all over it from years of chewy thinking between note-taking. Yet here he was, looking under his desk and in his bag for the billionth time for the only pen he owned. Or, as it seemed to be getting clearer and clearer to him as the minutes ticked by, the only pen he used to own. 


He groaned and dug in his bag until he found a mechanical pencil. This would have to do. As he put pencil to paper, he heard a soft, almost bell-like giggle over his left shoulder. He looked, only to find the person behind him asleep, and behind her, a window, where a small puff from a dandelion flew by outside in the wind.


He shook his head, shrugging it off, and went back to his test- half marked in pen, half in pencil.


After the day was over and he was home, he dumped his bag onto the floor and rifled through the contents. Where was his pen? He had dropped it halfway through the test and had believed it had fallen into his bag, but that was becoming increasingly clear that wasn’t the case. 


The pen was gone to the void. 


That night, his dreams were plagued by bell-like giggles, falling dandelion fluff, missing pens, and fairies dancing in pools of pen ink. When he woke, he couldn’t remember any of it but could remember that it was weird. 


That day, as he searched his bag for his mechanical pencil, he came across his pen; still chewed, still just an ordinary, blue, ballpoint pen, but now, it had a few flecks of…glitter? Where did the glitter come from?


He shrugged. Oh well, his little sister probably found it and returned it to his bag - she was always covered in glitter, after all.


He turned his attention to the front of the room, absent-mindedly chewing on the pen as class dragged on, the bell-like giggling returning for a second, if that, before disappearing until he lost the next small thing.


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