Dark Moon, High Tide

By Uniasus

Chapter 4 – Tooth Collection


"Where to, Toothy?" North asked, snow globe in hand. Tooth automatically looked to Jack for some cue as to where to go first. He however wasn't paying attention to her and was instead peering over the side of the sleigh to watch the landscape below. She shook off the feeling that she should be following Jack. North had asked her, the warrior Fairy Queen, and there was no reason she should defer to someone else.

"You were right about this being the time to collect teeth from the Americas. Let's start in Sao Paulo, the hours are shorter in the south right now, and then make our way north."

North nodded and then said the name of the Brazillian city before throwing the snow globe.

When they came out of the portal, Tooth had a brief bout of panic. It had been centuries since she had actually collected teeth, would she still be able to do it properly? One of her fairies flew up to her ear and chittered in it, telling her it was no different than directing her workers. Only, she was up close and could get some of the teeth too.

And to her pleasure, once she cleared her mind and felt all the teeth under pillows, it was as if she had never left. Her senses were sharp, her wings fast, and her energy level high. Tooth briefly looked at Jack, waiting for permission to start, but then fluffed up her feathers in a full body head shake. She was the Tooth Fairy and the leader of this task.

"This way!" she called out, heading towards the city block beneath them. "Three on this block, five in the one to the west, one the block south and two more the one south from that, none to the east, but there's a handful to the north." The Guardians spread out, each taking a block with the help of a few fairies.

Tooth wasn't entirely surprised to see that while Sandy, North, and Bunny each had two fairies, and Tooth herself had three, the other five of the fourteen Jack had rescued went off with him.


Aster had wondered for a brief second if Jack was aware of the odd effect his voice had on other spirits, which is why he had only ever spoken to the Guardians as far as he was aware of. He hadn't said a word to Pitch, and no one was around in 1968 to have overheard Jack's voice when he and Aster had first talked. It was quite possible Jack Frost planned to help collect teeth in silence, not wanting to run the risk of being over heard. He hadn't talked at all in the sleigh.

But Jack let out a whoop as he took off to grab teeth, fairies happily trailing after him and Aster noted he was using his less creepy voice. The one that didn't sound quite so ancient and far away, that for a lack of a better explanation Aster was labeling as belong to the younger of the two merging spirits. The voice that didn't make odd statements about being called or knowing things. The conversational tone.

As he mulled over the mystery that was Jack Frost, the spirit flew along side him as he was jumping from house to house. Four of the five fairies trailing him were holding teeth.

"I bet my group can collect more teeth than you, as I'm faster." he said with a smile that had one of Aster's fairies faint.

Aster ground his teeth and lept into a bedroom. He came back with a tooth in his paw. Jack's fifth fairy now also had a tooth.

"You don't wanna enter a race a rabbit."

"Really?" Jack tilted his head and the older, father, wiser dissonant voice came forward in Jack's two-tone voice. "I happen to know, I'm faster." And Aster just knew that Jack was, and what ever contest they started would have the other spirit win.

That didn't mean Aster wasn't going to try. "I've got more experience."

Jack grinned at him and Aster grinned back as the lad was hit in the side of the face with a canvas bag.

"Sack, for teeth." North said, placing a tooth in his. "Largest sack at end of night, wins!"

"No crying when I win," Jack said and flew off. The fairies near Aster tugged on his fur, responding to mental directions given by Tooth and off he went. At the very least, Aster wanted to collect more teeth that North.


Nicolas considered it a good sign that Manny was bright that night. It made it easy to see the houses and the teeth under the pillows. It also meant the prince was doing what he could to keep Pitch off their back for now as they made their way collecting teeth around the world. Nicolas took pleasure in the skipping from hemisphere to hemisphere, country to country via sleigh and portal. It made things interesting.

What was also interesting was the black sand he noticed from time to time on the windowsills and pillows. He pointed it out to Sandy, who nodded. The comet had been seeing the sand too, and he wasn't ashamed to say his speed in their teeth collecting contest was slower than it could be because he was taking the time to absorb the black sand into his body, turning it into dream sand.

Or rather, back to dream sand as it had been that initially until Pitch corrupted it.

There was a flash of sliver light and Nicolas noticed a concentrated beam of light on a child's window. Quickly, he made his way towards it and Sandy joined him. There was no tooth under this child's pillow according to the tooth fairies with them. Instead, there was a prancing dark horse above the little boy's head. The boy squirmed and lightly whimpered, not enough to draw the attention of his parents.

One of Pitch Black's nightmares in action. Nicholas was surprised that this was the first one he'd seen that night. The sand on the windows was pretty common, and based on the Tooth Palace battle Pitch's army was large.

Sandy quickly phased through the window to make the dream pleasant and Nicolas took the time to look around the town they found themselves in. It was nothing special until the cloud that had passed across the moon finished it's journey. Nicolas could easily see that the moonbeam that had led him to his child wasn't the only. They were scattered around town and he cursed at the idea that so many children were currently having a nightmare.

A glint of light off purple feathers had Nicolas's attention drawn to the small flock of fairies he knew had been following Jack. But Jack wasn't with them. Alarmed, Nicolas quickly scanned the sky for him but then the winter spirit flew up from a ground floor window.

"Come on ladies, you need to learn how to keep up." With that, Jack flew into a moonbeam and disappeared.

Nicolas jumped, and was only saved from splatting onto the sidewalk by Sandy's sand curling around his waist. Sandy signed 'be careful' and Nicolas quickly shook his head.

"I just see Jack Frost disappear in moonlight."

Sandy looked just as alarmed as he did and together they made their way over to the moonbeam Jack had flown into. Only the moonbeam was just as gone as Jack.

Quickly, Nicolas jumped to the roof in the house in question and saw a sight he had never expected to see. Jack Frost jumped into another moonbeam and then reappeared in a different one.

He was using Manny's concentrated light magic to teleport.

"Sandy, you are star. Can you do that?"

Sandy shook his head no and showed two stars above his head, each with a different ray pattern and then xed one out. "You are wrong type of star to use moon magic?"

A nod.

"Jack Frost is star?"

A firm no, and Sandy started into a long explanation that Nicolas tuned out. Just knowing Jack wasn't a star was enough.

"Who are you, Jack Frost? What are you?" he whispered to himself, jumping down a chimney to collect a tooth. It was a mystery that while bouncing around his head left his belly undisturbed. It meant Jack Frost wasn't evil, but Nicolas had already guessed that. It also meant there were more important matters to concentrate on.

He left a chocolate coin under a pillow and made his way onto the roof. He could see into another house, where Tooth was hovering over a child and Jack was leaning on his staff next to the bed talking to her. Nicolas might as well check up on his friend, see how she was doing.


Tooth was very aware of Jack's presence beside the bed and a rare onset of body shyness had her not look at him. She had a strong desire to be fully zipped and smoothed in his presence, not her current state of ruffled feathers from fast flying, fighting, and battling winds.

"I miss this, seeing the children."

"It's a bit different up close, isn't it?" Jack sounded like he knew the difference personally, but when would he have ever observed children from afar? The gossip about him always had Jack frolicking up close and personal with children. "You didn't have to stop, you know. You could have continued making collections yourself. Instead, you gave it up to create more helpers and direct them. Why?"

Tooth turned to look at him. He was fully standing, not crouched to stare at a drawing like before. Back straight in perfect posture, hand loosely around his staff, eyes open and inviting. He was genuinely interested and that mattered more than where he learned about her past activities from a time before he had been created.

"You know, I'm not really sure," she admitted. "The population exploded, humans and my belief stretched out over the globe. I had to create more fairies." Tooth held out a hand and two fairies came to settle on it, peeping softly in concern. She hadn't been this melancholy in ages. "It took a lot of time to create them, all the teeth capsules, and teach my fairies how to do the job. And by the time they I could have left the palace I guess...I guess I was just used to staying there and directing things. Why change a system that works?"

"It works really well," Jack said and Tooth absently noted the voice change. Still echoy and dry, but lighter pitch than the deeper tone he used to ask the question. He reached up to scratch the back of a fairy sitting on his shoulder. "You haven't been giving us direction since the first city, these girls have been locating the teeth on their own. I doubt they'd be able to tell where the teeth in Canada are from India, but if you had teams whose job was to focus on one country a night I bet they could do the work on their own. And then you could work with a different team each night, see the kids."

"Do you really think that would work?"

"Of course, you trained them well." Jack answered with the deeper tone taking center stage.

The fairies around them all bobbed their heads and squeaked yes. They thought it was possible too. Well then, just why had she kept herself locked up in the Palace for all these years?

Tooth smiled and nuzzled the two fairies in her palms. "I might just do that. After we defeat Pitch of course."

"Of course."


A/N: To all you patient people wondering just what's up with Jack...that's next chapter ^_~ Sorta kinda. At least, Pitch gets a say and he's more correct than the Guardians. A lot of you have some really close guesses.