One fine summer night, a baby laughed for the first time. The baby's laugh floated out the window and crashed into a white dandelion. The seeds spun off the dandelion, each one making a slight laughing sound. They floated together for a while and went off to the ocean. Floating over the sea, the laughs were separated. The last one, floating at the back of the seeds, was blown back and separated from the others.

It took a long time for the laugh to get anywhere. For a long time, it was blown about by the ocean winds this way and that. But finally, it was blown to a small island. It landed on a small purple flower on the island, and there, in the flower, the fairy was born.

It was a tiny little thing, a baby fairy with wisps of black hair on its head and pale, pale skin. It shivered, for it was a cold night. It had tiny blue wings on its back, which were vibrating trying to keep the fairy warm. The wings were filled with streaks and spots of color, and they looked like butterfly wings. The fairy had bright green eyes, and it began to cry. If some of the other laughs it had floated with before it had become a fairy had landed on the island before this one, they would hear the baby's cries and come to get it.

As luck would have it, though, the fairy would not, in fact, be taken by its older sisters or brothers to the warmth of their home. A strong wind had come to the island, and it plucked the flower from where it had been growing and blew it away. The baby fairy, who weighed nearly nothing at all, was taken with it. The poor thing was much to young to fly, and it could only cry as the flower was blown out to sea.

The fairy was at sea for the second time, but this time it could know what was happening, for it had been born. It cried and wailed as the flower was blown over the sea. It was a good thing the wind was so strong, for if the flower had fallen into the sea, the baby would certainly have drowned.

Soon, the baby grew tired and fell asleep in the flower. The winds blew on, and soon, the flower was floating over an island. At that moment, the wind stopped. The flower, with the baby fairy inside, fell to the ground with a bump. A moment earlier, and the fairy would have fallen into the ocean before the island. A moment later, and the fairy would have been past the island and would have drowned in the sea.