"yay union membership" and "Under High Protection"?
"Yay union membership" is a short story about the founding of the first fairy union, trying to get better workplace safety and concessions such as sick days for the fairy underclass. It's the next in a series of short stories I'm working on that follow two young fairies who are figuring out adulthood, romance, and how to navigate an oppressive/racist system. The first two are "Magic & Motor-Cars" (which you can read on my website) and "Magical Mechanics."
"Under High Protection" involves a district that tries to secede from its nation due to political issues, realizes the rest of the country will use military force to stop them, and solves the problem by making a treaty with the dragons on the other side of the mountains. The dragons have a rather Roman Empire mentality, and they're more than happy to take this little territory under high protection, making them essentially a district of the dragon nation rather than their own independent country. This is not what they wanted but it's too late to back out now...