The sprite slipped into her hand-bag, falling in between the small gaps of jumbled objects as she jostled it in her walk. When they finally came to a stop, the hand-bag was thumped once more, dropped onto a counter and going still. Slipping out from underneath a glasses cleaning cloth, the little sprite wriggled out into a gap between the clutter of the bag, looking up to see the opening, a large tear of light surrounded by strangely shaped objects. He put the tip of his thumb in his mouth and blew hard, causing his body to light up as he looked around.

The hand-bag smelt of citrus with the tinge of something sharp that stung his nose, coming from a little green bottle not too far from him. He shook his body a little to create more space, noticing small grains of random materials underneath his feet, most of it dust bunnies. He pulled up the glasses cloth and wrapped it around him, letting his head do most of the lighting.

He moved nimbly amongst the smaller structures, recognising that the only object leading most of the way to the exit was a journal, but it was standing vertical and he couldn’t climb up it. He climbed up and down on small objects trying to see a way to the top, finding some easy and some hard and at one point he found himself in a bed of receipts, not realising the paper would crumple right underneath him. There were a few bottles of sweet smells that he sat by for a while, almost lulled to sleep by them. In another corner, he found a collection of pens that he tried to pick up and place against one of the vertical journals to help him climb out, but they were too heavy for him.

After having slipped down many times, the sprite came across the wallet, sitting a little bit higher on top of a soft packet of tissues and a few scattered hair ties. He pushed open the wallet and sat down on it, looking at the shiny cards tucked away in its folds. One by one he took them out, fascinated by the ones with her face on it. Every now and then he looked up into the light in the sky, wondering if he would see the face appear there. He played with the paper cards, flapping and bending them, intrigued by their flexibility compared to the hard plastic cards.

He began dragging some of the cards over to the vertical journal, leaning them up against it and putting them around the smaller objects, creating ramps to make it easier to get to them. But after all of his efforts, he was no closer to getting out of the hand-bag and found that he really had just moved things around rather than making any progress. He pulled the little cloth around him tighter, starting to feel cold at the bottom of the bag.

The lining was soft but it only made it harder to climb, and he could feel the hard surface underneath him. He pulled some of the tissues out of the opened packet, building himself a little nest as he laid down, hoping to think of some way to get out. He tried climbing and he’d tried building, but he couldn’t seem to get up the book or the wall of the bag and nothing would stack well on each other. And then another idea hit him. He jumped off the packet of tissues and gripped the cloth close to him, hurrying over to where he’d seen the collection of pens, just remembering what he’d seen there. There was a rip in the lining.

The hole in the lining was only small, created by the pens poking at it over time, but he managed to wriggle through it. His joy was met with the leather wall of the outer layer, but he could feel air moving somewhere. He followed it, finding a number of small objects that had also slipped through the hole, some shiny things made of metal and others just collections of time.

When he came across the collection of spots letting air and light in, he tried to push out of them, but he was too small, the hole hadn’t been weathered enough. He pulled and pushed and wore it down, apologising to the face on the cards as it ripped it open, squeezing out into the bigger world, tugging the cloth free with him. He let out a musical hoot and stopped his glowing before darting away from the bag, not wanting to tumble in another one any time soon.