"Why does she need Kira's tooth?"
The little girl was sitting on her bed in the RV, listening to her parents arguing outside. They tried to speak softly so as not let her hear, but Kira heard them through the walls nonetheless.
She heard her mother say, "Cal. She's sick, Cal." Sarah spoke with a desperation in her voice that Kira didn't hear often. Or ever. It didn't take long for Kira to know who 'she' was. She knew that her mother cared about Auntie Cosima the most, out of all her sisters.
"Now you want to take Kira in to harvest her?"
"I don't know, Cal. Okay? She's sick. Kira might be her only chance."
By now Kira had reached over to her bedside table and grabbed a string of her daddy's floss. He had taught her how to work the string in between her teeth. She hadn't really needed it until now. This time she tied a knot. Then another. And then she walked over to the doorknob.
She vaguely heard her father murmur, "Don't do this to our kid." Sarah sighed with defeat, and Kira tied the final knot around the knob of the door. Her mother didn't have to do anything to her. Kira would do it all on her own, for an aunt she barely knew. For an aunt that was sick, and dying. Because she had heard the way Sarah spoke of her little sister. With compassion, and pride, and desperation above all others to save her.
Kira let out a small shriek as she slammed the door. A sharp pain and the bitter taste of blood in her mouth told her that her plan had worked. She untied the tooth from the knob and looked at it. It hadn't even been loose, but the floss had pulled it out expertly.
"Kira?"
Heavy footfalls of her mother's boots and her father's sneakers told her that they had heard her scream. Sarah burst into the RV with Cal in suit, their eyes landing on their little daughter.
She saw the horror in her mother's eyes when she saw the tooth dangling from the string that Kira clutched in her hand. Her father looked at her with pure shock in his eyes. Both her parents were thinking the same thing. How could she have done this to herself?
But Kira had only wanted to help. So she held up the little string with her tooth attached at asked a question that she already knew the answer to.
"Will this help?"