Tinkerbell was born the same way all fairies are born. A piece of a star, tiny as a firefly and often mistaken for one, lands on the center of a flower. The petals of the flower close around the star piece and incubate it until a young fairy emerges, new to the world and ready for work. Assigning work to a fairy is a very important process that occurs immediately after birth and fairies far and wide come to watch this milestone take place. While Tinkerbell's birth was the same as all others in it's origin, it's course took a completely creative path.

Her star piece came down normally. It landed in the center of a tulip, not a strange occurrence. What was so strange about Tinkerbell's birth was that while all of the other fairies of her age were blooming from their flowers in an array of bold colors and flashing lights worthy of a holiday to back it up, Tinkerbell was doing nothing. What took every other fairy in Neverland three months or less to do, took Tinkerbell a total of nine months.

The growers, those whose job it was to take care of future fairies in their flower stage, were worried that she would never bloom. All of the other fairies; watchers, changers, tinkers, and the rest; were growing impatient at the thought that their jobs would be delayed due to one young fairy. The fairy queen had assigned jobs to the new fairies, but none were allowed to go to work until the last fairy was born. For if they left the ceremony to start their young fairy lives, the queen feared that the unbloomed fairy would be behind the others and ostracized for it. 

The amount of time being taken out of their lives was not the issue. Fairies do not age the way humans do. It comes from inhabiting Neverland where time is slowed considerably. A human year is like a minute in the life of a fairy. This is where Neverland gets its name; from an outside view, life in Neverland is never aging, never dying, and never changing. The quickness with which humans age compared to fairies is why the human world has been called the Time Keeper's Kingdom by fairies old and new. Humans are limited by time while fairies are amused by it.

Though fairies do not have the same time restraints as humans, they do follow the flow of time as it applies to their jobs. It is the job of fairies to help with the changing of the seasons in the Time Keeper's Kingdom. Waiting for Tinkerbell to emerge would have been nothing to the fairies but it would have meant upsetting the seasons and the possible destruction of the Kingdom.

On one catastrophic occasion,  a weather fairy forgot to send warm winds at the end of the winter season for the northern hemisphere of the Kingdom. Crops couldn't grow and spring looked as if it would never come. Although the fairy eventually remembered to send the winds, it was too late. Many of the humans that inhabited the area had already died and the land had turned mostly to ice. The winds were no longer strong enough to melt the ice and change the seasons.

The humans had no choice but to adapt to this land known as the arctic, and this name became forever synonymous with freezing tundra. Many of the extreme weather conditions that the humans experience in the Time Keepers Kingdom are due to a weather fairy forgetting to do their duty. 

Perhaps time should have mattered more to fairies. While not aging, their duty to The Kingdom is time sensitive. But, most fairies are skilled at compartmentalizing. Work is one thing, care is another. The  feelings that fairies have for humans often results in less than honorable actions. Fairies live for work, but they also love rituals and ceremonies. In this instance, it seemed that ceremony was winning out over duty.

The fairies continued to put off their duties, well most of them still secretly worked half days, as they waited for the stubborn fairy to bloom into existence. It was an interesting sight to see fairies slink off into the night to get a half days work in. The newly bloomed fairies even went off to learn the inner workings of their jobs while Tinkerbell incubated. Of course, a half day is not a full day and the Kingdom payed the price. Wildfires raged in rain forests and monsoons flooded deserts. Worst of all, the poor little dodo went extinct without anyone noticing.

The elders started to worry that this fairy would be the first in Neverland history to never bloom and the Kingdom would be destroyed while they waited. Elder Parch'u, eldest of all the fairies, was just about to stand and ask the queen for a brief recess of the proceedings when the tulip started to shake violently.

This was unusual behavior for a birthing flower because fairies, being such coordinated and graceful creatures, normally had extremely fluid and beautiful births. Tinkerbell's blooming however, much like her life would be, was unusual and oddly uncoordinated. The tulip continued to shake while the gawking fairies whispered to each other worriedly. Then, as if lighting had struck the flower, it exploded sending sparks flying in all directions.

Shrieks could be heard coming from many of the fairies as they dived to avoid the sparks, and many of the elders jumped in front of the newly born fairies in order to protect them. When the malfunctioning fireworks finally subsided, a single young fairy could be seen sitting in the center of the tulip without petals.

Although her birth had been tumultuous at best, the fairy sat on top of the stem looking as serene as any newly bloomed fairy ever had. Her locks flowed down her back as she blinked her curious eyes and surveyed the scene. She stood and revealed the springtime green dress that she wore with slippers to match. The queen fairy rose up in all of her gloriousness. She had her short white hair in a bob, creating a stark contrast with her mahogany skin. The wrinkles on her face, the true sign of an elder fairy, added an air of regality to her appearance. 

"Your name is Bell!" Queen Esmintu stated in her song-like voice. The queen designates all of the names and jobs to the newborn fairies. She was chosen to be the queen based on her ability to sense the aura of newborn fairies and accurately assign them the perfect job and name.

"And you will be a tinker!" Esmintu continued amid gasps from the other fairies. It was unusual for a female fairy to be assigned the job of tinker. Of all the possible jobs, it is the most physically demanding and was often assigned to only the strongest of newborn male fairies. In fact, the only other fairy that had been assigned to the tinker trade during this particular cycle of young fairies was a strapping young lad named Elias.

Not only was she assigned to the most strenuous job, but she was also assigned to what most fairies considered to be the most boring type, a home fairy. When fairies are born they are assigned to one of five jobs and to one of five fairy types. The fairy types are animal fairy, human fairy, plant fairy, weather fairy, and home fairy. Each fairy type has five different job types which are: changer, tinker, grower, watcher, and solver.

Home fairies were known for being the least exciting type of fairies because unlike every other of the five types, home fairies never needed to leave Neverland. Animal, plant, human, and weather fairies all concerned themselves with taking care of the Kingdom, which made it necessary for them to travel back and forth between Neverland and the Kingdom on a daily basis. But, sadly, the life of a home fairy was confined to Neverland.

"Rise up Tinkerbell! Fly to the sky so that your fellow tinkers and fellow home fairies may welcome you!" exclaimed Queen Esmintu. Tinkerbell flew up from her tulip pedestal to survey the fairies watching her from below.

"Greetings from the Weather Fairies!" Exclaimed a voice that boomed like thunder. As Tinkerbell looked in the direction of the voice, she was dazzled by the extravagant outfits of the weather fairies with their hairdos modeled after the wind and the lightning, and their clothes in stunning colors as bright as the sun and as refreshing as the rain.

"We are the human fairies." Spoke a soft voice. Tinkerbell saw the human fairies with their appearances modeled after the style of the humans. They wore beautiful garments not native to Neverland and the female human fairies had their faces painted like Tinkerbell had never seen before.  It was as if their cheeks were rosier than even the freshest of roses and their eyelashes darker than the sky at night. 

"We invite you to grow with us! We tend to the plants." Another voice spoke. Next to the human fairies were the plant fairies in their uniform green outfits that made Tinkerbell feel that the obvious place for her was among these fairies. They covered their heads in ornate headdresses of flowers and fruits that made them look twice as tall as the other fairies.

"Dominance lies here with the animal fairies!" Not to be outdone by plants, the animal fairies dressed aggressively by covering themselves in fur and painting their faces to mimic different animals. Some of them were even crouched down on all fours, growling in unison. 

"We are your home." A strong voice said from behind Tinkerbell. When she finally laid her eyes on the home fairies her heart dropped. They dressed simply in brown fabrics and were almost invisible against the night background. Their hair was done plainly either up in buns for the females or cut short and close to the scalp for males. On their faces there was nothing that had not been there when they were born. Worse than the overall group image was the subsection of home tinkers that she saw in the back of the home fairies group.