"They vote on things that affect all fairytale beings, like what happens if someone quits or commits suicide, or revealing that magic is real to the general public, or Christmas getting earlier each year and invading Halloween."

"Oh boy, politics, my favourite thing." Politics is not his favourite thing. "Do you know who's most likely to oppose going public? Are there parties that tend to agree with each other?"

"Mother Nature is going to be the most powerful opposition, she is unhappy about how many humans there are to begin with."

"I can sort of see where she's coming from, if she's directly harmed by climate change or species going extinct or something. I wonder if I can sell her on post-scarcity being easier on the environment in the long run." He also has vague ideas about large human populations emigrating to space, but they're too unformed to talk about.

"Ah, no, she aesthetically prefers pure and untouched nature. She's still really pissed about Scotland."

Bruce prefers pure and bug-free climate-controlled buildings, but to each their own. "I wonder if she likes plants specifically or if she'd enjoy a trip to the moon."

"Well, she can go to the Moon any time she wants to."

"Nice. Is that something specific to her or could I learn it too?"

"I mean, she asks the nymphs."

"Oh, so there's a species as well as a one-off person for each holiday?" He tries to imagine what sort of species would match up with Death or Father Time and comes up blank.

"Sometimes, not always. Death is just Death."

"That makes sense. So, where and when does the Council meet?"

"When a meeting is called by any of its members, but probably you should try to do politics first? --I'm trying to think who you should meet first. Jack O'Lantern is great but he's a lot."

"He did sound that way. Maybe the Easter Bunny? She sounded pretty cool too."

"Might be a plan. I will schedule a meeting. --Or Death. You would like Death, I think."

He hesitates a moment, then says, "Yeah, sounds good. By the way, how much, er, scheming and backstabbing and similar do fairytale beings tend to do? On a spectrum from 'everyone is generally decent and collegial even when they disagree' to 'one of those TV shows where everyone is constantly plotting against everyone else'."

"Not very much? We mostly don't affect each other very much. For the last thirty years the most important disagreement has been about Christmas expanding and threatening Halloween." 

"I'm honestly not a big fan of that myself; Halloween deserves its time and arguably so does Thanksgiving. Is that something that will stop on its own if my desire for it to stop is genuine enough or is it someone's deliberate decision?"

"It should stop on its own if you genuinely want it to."

"Well, here's hoping I'm not a hypocrite. Anyway, scheduling a meeting with Death. Does Death have an email address? Are we inviting them here?"

"We can invite her here. The elves can talk to her."

He's nervous but it would be insane of him not to be, so, "Sounds good."

And then he spends the next few days learning his way around the North Pole (successfully) and trying to memorize the names of as many elves as possible (unsuccessfully) and reading up on development economics (effectively but slower than he'd like) until his appointment with Death.

"Hello! Funny seeing you here. I thought we had an appointment in Samara."

Bruce lets out a short, tension-releasing cackle. "I have been telling myself every fifteen minutes this morning that I would not make basically that joke! Welcome to the North Pole."

"Welcome to being a fairytale being! Love what you've done with the place, by the way."