Aloha kiddies!
First of all, the review under my name was written by my cousin who I lent my laptop to and decided to read all my stories. As a result, she posted I love it, in Fear is a Killer and it annoys me. I swear, it's not me being egotistical.
Secondly, I want to apologize to all my wonderful peoples on here for waiting so patiently for this chapter. I'm seriously sorry about how long it took to write the last chapter and how long it took to get this one up and going. I had a butt-ton of family stuff and babysitting duty was practically every day! So, I'd like to thank you for being patient.
lastly: Really, I'd like to thank you guys a lot for this. You're giving my stories a second chance and I'm really grateful for that. Thank you.
Alrighty, here we go!
In Toothiana's palace. . .
Toothiana, queen of the tooth fairy armies, was flying around giving half-hearted orders to her fairy daughters.
"A pre-molar in Saint Paul, three bicuspids and a canine in Santa Rosita, twelve incis-" Tooth stopped up short and frowned. "Is that right? Twelve incisors in Monaco?"
A squeak of affirmation came from the tiny fairy-girl hovering at her right elbow and Toothiana raised a feathery eyebrow.
"Well, that's a bit odd, don't you think?"
Two squeaks and a chirp.
"Oh, well you might've mentioned that it was the hockey season in Monaco!" Tooth said, just the tiniest bit crossly.
A meek squeak.
Tooth sighed and raised her hand to her feathery forehead and rubbed it. "Yes, I'm sorry. I'm just a little on-edge. What with the. . ." she looked up and gave her daughter a meaningful look. "You know."
The fairy-girl flew up and nuzzled her little rainbow head against her mother's face. Yes, she knew.
All the Guardians had been on tenterhooks since the meeting. The other spirits were back to their regular jobs, including her, and they'd all been waiting for some kind of sign from Father time or Arachne about Pitch's whereabouts. So far, nothing. Word from the spider-woman was, her children had tracked Pitch to Paris, then he'd disappeared. Just gone! Poof!
Tooth was having the hardest time going back to work, mostly because she'd been one of the two Guardians who'd seen the video/memory/thing and it had cut her deep. She hadn't believed that Pitch would really stoop so low! Killing a child! It was almost unthinkable, but there it was. She'd seen the memory and it hadn't looked fake at all to her.
Tooth sighed and rubbed her little girl's head. All this thinking about it wasn't doing her any good and she could feel the first headache she'd had in several hundred years coming on. She sighed. This was ridiculous! She had work to do! Teeth needed to be collected! Then her head gave a nasty throb and she let out a small moan.
"Fine. Fine. I submit." she muttered, then she looked at her tiny daughter. "I'm going up to my room, OK? Tell Baby Tooth that she's in charge for a few hours."
Her daughter looked dubious.
"I just have a headache is all. Go on." Tooth told her little girl, raising her lips in a tiny smile. A squeak of affirmation and the little fairy-girl flew off.
Tooth watched her go and then raised her right hand to her head, pressing down on her crown to try and block the headache, but she knew it wouldn't work. She needed rest and she knew it, so she took one last look at her busy little girls, she was so proud of them, then began to fly. Up, up up she flew, heading to the highest point of her palace where her own private quarters were.
The Tooth Palace was a beautiful sight. Upside-down towers that looked like bee hives, the Tooth Towers with flat platforms circling the tops of the towers, the green grass below and the clear, blue water running over dark-blue rocks and pooling in reservoirs where Tooth and her girls, when they weren't working, occasionally waded in and dangled their feet in the warm water.
Bridges crisscrossed from tower to tower and clear, blue waterfalls ran down the mountainside that her palace was built into. It was a paradise to Tooth. The most amazing, comfortable and beautiful place on earth. Nowhere was more full of light and happiness- to Tooth, anyway. She assumed that the others felt the same way about their homes.
"Bunny does love his Warren," she mused aloud. "North loves his workshop," then she frowned. "I wonder where Sandy lives."
The Sandman had never shown any of them his home and none of the others really thought about it, so she dismissed the thought and focused on her headache which was rapidly draining away.
Tooth flew up up up, farther and farther, until she found the room she was looking for, tucked away in a small alcove high above the other towers that clung to the ceiling. You couldn't see it because the shelf of rock was completely camouflaged against the ceiling if you looked up at it, and the only way to find it was to fly all the way up to the areas where the walls led into the ceiling and rivers of water that twisted through the mountainside came out through cracks and find it by sight.
The door was barely visible behind a curtain of dark green vines with blue and purple flowers that grew from between cracks in the rock face, along with the streams of water which trickled, poured or thundered down to the pools below. Tooth pushed the flowering vines aside and then in front of her was a small, circular door with curly designs etched into the wood- which was a dark kind of wood with natural whirls and grainy, golden flecks.
In the center of the door was a small, circular imprint that Tooth raised her right hand to and smiled in satisfaction as the door glowed a deep blue and tendrils of light began to escape from the circle.
"Over a thousand years and it still works," Tooth said to no one in particular, raising her other hand as the magic, which hadn't been used in a great long while, twisted and floated through the air. It floated through her thin fingertips and she twirled them gently, making the blue magic crackle between over her skin and a few of her smaller feathers stood on end.
"Oh boy." she said, feeling another tendril of power go through her fingertips. "Still going strong eh?" Of course, the tendril didn't answer her and she smiled, watching the magic fade away slowly, into nothing.
Then the magic finished unsealing the door and it swung inwardly, without a sound. Tooth smiled, letting her left hand drop and holding up her right hand to scrutinize it. Her smile widened. She hadn't been here in years and none else ever came anywhere near here, so it was no surprise at all when her hand came away and she saw that a faint layer of dust was covering it.
She wiped her hands and then looked back up at the door. I haven't been here for so long, she thought.
Tooth walked through the door and called, "I'm home!" flying over the threshold and then alighting on her dainty feet.
Yes, she knew that no one would answer her, but she didn't really care.
Tooth had a strange habit of talking to no one when she was alone, but she didn't care much. She'd been alone for the first hundred years of her spirit-life, trying to figure out who she was and what she was meant to do. Then she'd figured out how to make miniature copies of herself and she wasn't along any more!
Being alone, she reflected as she walked- (walked, not flew,) to the bottom of a set of intricately carved stairs, was part of being a Guardian. They'd all been alone once. Bunny, North, and most of all, Sandy.
Sandy was older than all of the other Guardians put together. Roughly ten thousand years, give or take a millennium, and so he'd been alone the longest. The little fat man disliked talking about his past, as did they all, but he had confided in them a long time ago that he had once had a brother when he was human, but that brother had died, leaving him all alone. After that day, no one had asked about the Sandman's past.
Tooth shook herself out of her gloomy thoughts about Sandy and began to climb the staircase, running her fingers over the soft wood and feeling the muscles in her legs pulse gently. It was good to be walking again. Flying so much had made her a bit lazy and she was glad to get some exercise again. She went up the steps carefully and let her hand trail over the smooth wood.
The railing clung to the edge of the cave and curled like a Celtic charm, tiny branches overlapping one another and twisting to form patterns, eyes and sometimes even faces. It was a beautiful piece of work and Tooth was really glad that she'd decided to come here. This place was the only place she knew that would welcome her with open arms. It's memories engulfed her and made her feel safe and warm.
"Anybody home?" Tooth asked, smiling. "No? Good!" she laughed, then she smiled and quoted a poem she'd learned a long time ago. "In this beautiful home of mine, which sings with magic and crawls with vine. This wondrous home I keep close to my heart, I'll stay here until my whole world falls apart."
The modern equivalent of this would be, "I love my house, I love my nest. In all the world, my nest is best."
Tooth made it to the top of the stairs a few minutes later and pushed the unlocked door open. There wasn't much need for it to be closed anyway. No one could get past the first door so there wasn't any point in locking the second one or even shutting it all the way, but Tooth had picked up the courteous habit of closing every door when she exited a room.
Inside the room was a soft, purple beanbag chair, a desk with a stool, several hundred books on ornate black wooden shelves, a mirror, another small desk with brushes, bottles and combs lined up neatly on it, a basin full of fresh water and a huge window that looked out over the entire Tooth Palace. Tooth looked down and smiled. The floor was also made from glass. Thick, completely translucent glass that allowed her to look down on the rooms below.
Her smile widened and she sighed contentedly, sinking into her beanbag chair and relaxing. This place was so amazing! The glass floor never got scuffed and the wood never cracked. Around the edges where the wood met the glass was a thin, fuzzy line that seemed to meld glass and wood together. The walls of her room here wood as well. A rich, chocolatey color that made her think of auburn hair and hazel eyes.
After about five minutes of blissful sitting in her favorite beanbag chair, Tooth got up and walked over to the closest desk and sat down.
"Now what am I going to do?" she asked the mirror in front of her. "My headache's all but gone, THANK GOODNESS, and now I'm feeling a lot better, but I still feel like something weird is missing. Huh."
Tooth bent down and pulled open one of the drawers in her desk and pulled out a small picture-frame with an even smaller picture inside. The picture was cloth and the image had been drawn upon it such life-like detail that she almost expected the occupants to lift off the material! but they didn't.
The edges were burned and blackened, but it was possible to see the three figures standing in the center:
A tall, beautiful being with the same feather-covered body as Tooth, but with all green feathers instead of rainbow feathers and a crown upon her head and deep green eyes. She smiled down lovingly at the human-looking baby in her arms. The baby had bright fuchsia eyes and she held onto her mother as only a baby could, with love and an assurance that nothing could happen while she had her n her arms.
Beside the woman and the baby was a tall, tanned man with black hair and a wide grin on his face. His chest was bare and he had his arms wrapped around the woman and was also staring down at the baby in her arms.
The look on his face was so full of love and warmth that Tooth felt a tiny tear trickle down her cheek and she raised her finger and traced the woman's face gently.
That woman was her mother. The man, her father. The baby, her.
Tooth smiled and set the picture down face up, then she raised her head and looked at herself in the mirror.
"My feathers look kind of limp," she commented to herself. "I should be using that peacock feather-shine stuff more often."
Tooth picked up one of the bottles on her desk and inspected it, then she popped the top and sniffed it. She recoiled.
"Blech! This stuff's gone stale!"
She picked up the bottle gingerly and headed over to a small bin where she bent down and dropped it gently, making a mental note to get a new bottle. Then she straightened up and was about half-way to her desk again when she froze.
There was a strange feeling creeping up her spine and it was ruffling her feathers. She shook herself and made her way back to her desk, then the feeling shot through her again and she winced. "What the heck-" she started to say, but the magical power that swept over her before she could complete her question left her gasping for air.
What the heck was going on?!
Her stomach felt like a yeti had punched her in the gut and her brain felt like it was being put through an orange juicer! Acid was bubbling in her stomach and it was a good thing she was sitting, otherwise she was sure she would have fallen over by now. Her hands were going limp and Tooth found that she could barely move.
"Help!" she tried to call, but her mouth was numb. The numbness was spreading and, for an instant, Tooth wondered if Pitch had killed another child. That was what had caused her last bout of pain. Maybe it was causing her latest as well.
But, no. . . He couldn't have! Tooth thought as she felt herself sway forward. Why would he kill again when Arachne is already on his trail? It doesn't make sense.
Thoughts swirled around her mind as she pitched forward and her face met the wooden surface of the desk, sending pain shooting through her forehead.
Oh Manny, Tooth thought. WHAT IS HAPPENING?! Then her vision began to blur. Her eyes remained open, but it was like a layer of netting had been set over them. She could barely make out the desk before her and she tried not to think about if Pitch really had killed another child and if she was in for another world of pain, which she had a feeling she was.
The edges of her blurry sight began to turn dark and she knew she was blacking out.
No! No, no, no, no, no NO! she thought, fighting to stay awake. GIRLS! GIRLS, HELP!
But her daughters didn't respond.
Tooth kept her eyes open as long as she could, thrashing and trying to raise her hands to her face to rub against her eyes, crying, begging her girls to come help her, but eventually she succumbed to whatever sensation that was creeping over her and she slumped over the desk, asleep.
XXXXXXXXXXX
Tooth's eyes opened with a snap!
"WHOA!" she yelled, toppling backwards through her chair and landing softly on the floor. The glass made a very creepy echoy sound as her feathery read-end hit it and she cringed, rubbing the base of her spine.
"OW!" she moaned, closing her eyes. "Hurt!"
The pain from the fall wasn't much, but there was a strange pre-fall shock that was rattling her system. It sent shudders up and down her spine and her arms felt numb. So did her legs, but she was beginning to feel the familiar sensation of pins-and-needles that heralded her un-numbed legs.
Tooth tried to stand, but her legs weren't strong enough and she collapsed back onto the ground.
"Well, as long as I'm here I can at least try and figure out what the heck is going on with me today," Tooth muttered, closing her eyes again. It helped her headache to not have the world spinning around her. "Honestly! First I have to deal with a headache, then I get knocked unconscious, THE SECOND TIME IN A WEEK MIGHT I ADD, and NOW I'm waking up with a horrible feeling in my stomach and my legs are numb. NOT COOL!"
Tooth was more than a little ticked off, (in fact she was half-way to seething,) but she swallowed her anger and tried to focus.
"Focus Tooth. That's it. Focus on the important things: Where am I?" Tooth opened her eyes and said. "Well that's obvious. I'm still in my rooms. There's my chair, and there's-"
Tooth froze.
"There's... someone sitting in my chair."
And indeed there was someone sitting in her chair. A feathery someone who didn't look too big and was slumped over her desk, as if asleep.
Tooth sat there for about ten minutes, wondering who it was and, more importantly, how they'd gotten into her private rooms! No one got in here, ever, without her permission! Whoever this was had either followed her in or cheated her magical lock somehow, which was impossible.
Finally Tooth blinked and summoned up enough courage to speak. "Um, hello?"
The figure didn't respond. They didn't even twitch.
Tooth frowned. That was a bit rude, she thought. Well, if they want to be rude, then I'll just have to comply as well.
She took a deep breath. "YO! Person sitting in my chair!"
Nothing.
Tooth sighed. "They must be asleep." she muttered, folding her arms and glaring at the person's back."Or unconscious." Then a thought struck her. "Maybe my girls brought them here because they were trespassing," she mused.
But then why the heck would they put them in my private rooms and in my chair?
Wait. . . chair?
Hadn't she just fallen out of that exact same chair?
With an enormous amount of effort, Tooth struggled to her feet and fell against the side of the wooden wall that faced the person in her chair. What she saw nearly knocked her down again.
"It's... me!"
It was her. Feathers and all! The sleeping body was none other than her own!
Tooth gazed at the frame of her unconscious body in wonder.
"My feathers, my face, my hands, it's all there!" she said in amazement, taking a hesitant step closer. Her body didn't stir. Tooth reached out a hand and tried to feel her own crown of rainbow feathers, but she received a surprised shock when her finger went right through!
"Whoa!" she said, stumbling back a few steps. She collided with the wall and had to brace herself to keep from falling over or sliding down. "What the-" Tooth didn't know what the heck was happening. Falling through objects, not being able to touch another being, the horrible feeling in her gut that had been receding slowly but was now back with a fiery vengeance.
"UGH!" Tooth groaned, holding her hand against her stomach. "What the heck is going on?!"
Her body felt like liquid fire was coursing through her hollow bones. Never before had she felt so horrible. It was like dying, only worse!
Dying...
"Am I dead?" Tooth wondered aloud, momentarily forgetting the pain she was in. "That would explain a few things. UGH! like the massive amount of pain that I am experiencing right about now. Ghosts and echoes can't touch their bodies without experiencing massive amounts of pain, or so Grimm tells me."
Tooth looked at her face, pressed against the smooth boards of the desk. Her eyes were closed and she couldn't see even a flicker of move- THERE! Her mouth! Tooth watched intently as her mouth moved about a fraction of a centimeter as she inhaled, and then exhaled.
"I'm not dead then. Good. I didn't want Baby Tooth succeeding me that fast!" she said, smiling. The pain was vanishing as quickly as it had come and soon she was strong enough to make her way over to her body. She was still breathing.
"So... if I'm not dead..."
Tooth gazed down at her living, breathing body, then she looked at her ghostly glowing hands. It sure felt like she was still alive, but it also felt like there was something missing. A spark, a flicker. It was so hard to put in words! Tooth stared from her glowing hands to her breathing body, wondering what had happened to her.
Had Pitch caused her to stop being believed in again? Was that why she was having the Out Of Body Experience? Or was it simply that she was supposed to do something that her corporeal body couldn't accomplish?
"Huh. Well, that explains the glowing." Tooth muttered, smiling and looking back up at her body.
Wait, glowing?
Tooth looked down and, for the first time, actually noticed her strange glowing skin and feathers. The glow was slight and almost unnoticeable, but Tooth could see the gently pulsating blue glow coming off her skin. It was beautiful and reminded her of the magical glow that opened the door to her hidden room.
It also reminded her of the blueish ghostly light that appeared when a human passed-through her.
Tooth shuddered.
Being passed-through was not a pleasant experience and always made her think of being submerged in ice-cold water.
"OK, so I'm glowing. That just heightens the likelihood of me not being alive or believed in." she said matter-of-factly. "Great. Now I have an excuse to go out and kick Pitch Black's- UGH!"
She was interrupted by a violent jab in the center of her stomach. It knocked the wind out of her and sent her careering backward into the wall.
"AUGH!" she cried as the feeling escalated. It was like a barbed fish-hook was being stabbed into her side, then pulled sharply, but the barbs wouldn't allow the hook to come out and instead her flesh was pierced from the inside. The pain was agonizing. Unbearable! She felt like she was on fire! Nothing could compare to this!
And then, like a soft breeze had lifted it away, the pain vanished- leaving Tooth completely frozen and wondering what the heck had just happened for the second time that hour.
"I hurt all over," she muttered, assessing her injuries. "There's an aching in my chest, and my wings..." she tried to lift said wings up but they were having none of it. The movement sent pain jarring down her hollow bones. "OW! OK, I don't think I'll be flying for a while." she inwardly cussed. Flying was the most amazing thing on the planet!
It made you feel light as air and gave you a freedom noting else did. That was her opinion, anyway. Other people, namely Bunny, might not feel so inclined to enjoy flying.
As Tooth thought about the joys of flying, other things wormed her way into her mind. Why was she here, in this form? Where were the others? Jack and the Guardians and her girls?
"And what, in the name of MiM, is the meaning of these random attacks of pain?!" she wondered aloud, clutching her stomach in case another volley was coming.
Why was she getting all these random pain attacks? Was it because she was ill?
No, that's ridiculous. she thought. Spirits don't get sick.
No? What then?
Thinking so much was beginning to hurt her brain and she dropped her head into her hands, holding it as if that might make the questions stop.
It didn't. The barrage of questions that needed to be answered just kept banging away at her head. Soon they were joined by voices, and a pit of acid began to bubble in her stomach. The voices became louder, drowning out the questions she was asking herself and soon she began to recognize some of the voices.
One was Bunny's, asking her if she had his baby teeth. Another was North, telling her that all his baby teeth had been lost in an avalanche when he was a boy.
"My Mother collected dem, you see. She vanted to give dem all to de spirit of memories all at vonce."
Then she heard human voices. A mother, telling her little girl to put her tooth under a pillow and the fairies would soon come to take it, leaving her a beautiful gem or a small coin in replacement. A father, holding up a tiny white tooth encrusted with brown dried blood and saying to his wife, "'er first! 'Er first!" in a language which hadn't been spoken on earth in several thousand years.
Then, the sad voices came.
The other voices she had heard were so happy and full of joy, but these ones were dreary and almost heartbreaking.
"Mumma, my tooth is gone!" it was a little boy with an eastern accent. Almost English but not quite.
"I'm sorry Raoul, but we had to sell it for money to buy food for the week." the mother sounded truly sorry.
Then the crying started. Fresh, clear salty tears that cascaded down a child she had never met's face. She wasn't just listening to the voices now, she was seeing what had happened to cause them in the past. She could see the boy, half-naked and crying about his lost tooth and his mother, wearing a few rags tied around her chest and a dirty, torn skirt with her arms around him. Her back was exposed and Tooth could see the scars, white against her dirty flesh. It was too much for her to watch.
Tooth turned away, but another vision started.
Another voice, this time male, rang out.
"Karen, what are you doing?" he was on a small, dirty horse and the horse was galloping towards a young woman walking along the road with a pack on her back.
"Don't try to stop me Molin." The woman said. "There's nothing for me here!"
The man jumped off the horse and raced towards the woman, who broke into a run. She moved surprisingly fast and within a minute she was almost gone from sight. The man came to a stop, right in the middle of the road, then he broke down and fell to his knees, weeping and begging for the woman, who Tooth assumed was his wife, to come back.
These memories all happened with a flash in her mind and instantly, she knew why she was feeling so poorly. Why she was having this out-of-body experience and why the pain returned only when she turned to the right, away from the stairs.
"It's a Hunt!" she cried, jumping up and stumbling towards the stairs. "That's what this is! Oh, why didn't I see it before?!"
Tooth felt the strength return to her wings with each step and soon she was flying, soaring down the spiral staircase that led to the main palace. She was pretty sure she knew what was going on with her out-of-body experience, but going down to the main rooms was the only way to make sure. All the bad feelings were gone now she all she felt was a powerful purpose guiding her onward.
Tooth passed her other private rooms as she flew down the long flight of stairs. A room for her books, which she seldom read any more, a room that held all of her clothes from when she was human, and a room for her personal treasures. These personal treasures were mostly shiny things she'd 'borrowed' from humans or found in the trash for some weird reason. A piece of blown glass, a silver hairpin, a shiny blue glass ball with colored sand in it and many other strange items which Tooth didn't know the purpose for.
There were many beautiful memories in those items and that was why she kept them. To see those memories and let the people who had owned them see their happiest memories.
"There's nothing that holds memories more than something you make with your own two hands." she said as she stopped and smiled happily at the Treasury door. It was her favorite place above all in the palace and she took great cares in keeping it clean and orderly. Memories don't deserve to be kept in a dusty old room where no one can appreciate them. Tooth thought. Just thinking of those beautiful memories gave her a warm feeling and as she turned to the stairs again, she felt a slight tugging in her heart. Like something was telling her to come in and see the memories once again.
Tooth stopped and frowned. Had she imagined it, or was it just the thought of all those memories and her weird visions in her room upstairs that was giving her the strange feeling? She had no clue.
She stood there for at last five minutes, watching the door and wondering if she should go in there to take a look. Then she shook herself, thinking, What could possibly be in there that could trigger such a powerful memory-hunt? She decided to forget about it and continued making her way downstairs. She needed to check on her girls before starting this Hunt. Make sure they were doing alright and that Baby Tooth was handling everything well.
Tooth made it down to the lower level of her personal rooms and opened the door that had been carefully hidden behind the vines. She looked out n the vast beautiful world below and smiled. She was so lucky. then she took to the air, heading down to the tooth slots where the baby teeth of every alive child in the world were kept. The instant she got within ten meters of the nearest tooth tower, she felt a tugging in her gut and she smiled.
"I knew it!" she crowned. Tooth aimed for the closest tower and zoomed around it, waiting for the tugging feeling she knew so well to begin. It didn't.
Tooth was a little confused, so one by one she flew over all the towers in her palace.
First the one that housed the current teeth from Africa, which didn't have that many teeth. The tugging didn't grow stronger. Then she circled the two Australian towers. Nothing. The ten towers for North and South America weren't it either, and by the time Tooth had circled the six towers reserved for teeth lost in her own continent, Asia, and Antarctica- which was a very small single tower, she was thoroughly confused.
"If it's not any of the continents, then where. . ." Tooth scanned the other towers around her. The Hawaiian islands, Greenland, Ireland, England, they were all grouped together at the far end of the tooth tower area. She flew towards them, but none of them gave her the tugging feeling she was looking for.
"Well this is highly odd." Tooth muttered. "Is the tooth from outer space?
Apparently. If she wasn't getting the tell-tale feeling that whatever tooth she was looking for was near, then it wasn't here at all. Children didn't exist on Venus, did they? Tooth wished she could ask one of her girls to fetch it for her, but the girls couldn't see her and were milling around, doing their jobs.
At least, most of them were. A small group of her girls were gathered around the second-tallest spire, chirping and tweeting anxiously.
Whereismother? was the most common question. Along with, isshesafe?
Calm down! said a voice Tooth knew very well. Motherissafe, for now. Sheisinherroomsandwecan'tgetinthere, sowewaitforhertocomeout."
Butwhatifmother-
Motherisfine! Baby Tooth squeaked firmly, folding her arms. Untilmothergetsback, I'mincharge. She looked around at her nervous sisters and smiled. C'mon girls! Weneedtokeepbusy, andtheonlywaytodothatistodoourjobs. Solet'sgoladies!
The girls reluctantly chirped in unison and they all flew off to attend to their regular duties as Tooth Fairies. All except Baby Tooth, who stayed hovering on one place, scanning around the palace with her tired amethyst eyes.
Mother?
Tooth bowed her head, wishing she could talk to her favorite little girl. All the others were like children to her, but they were just copies really. Baby Tooth was different. Special. She had that golden feather on her forehead, just like Tooth did, and there were little speckles under her eyes too! It was uncanny, how Jack had picked this one fairy to be his friend and the fairy had turned out to be unique.
"Maybe when I fade, Baby Tooth can take over for me." Tooth mused as she flew around aimlessly, waiting for the familiar tug to indicate she was getting close to her prize. But there was nothing.
"Nothing, nothing, nothing." Tooth grumbled as she landed on a flat landing plate covered in intricate pink and golden designs and inlaid with blue stones. "Cliff-notes to nothing. Nothing abridged. The endless encyclopedia of nothing!" she sighed, resting her head on her knuckles. "This is one of the weirdest memory-hunts I've ever been on. First all that pain, then those memories, and now not a tooth in sight, and my girls can't even see or hear me!"
She sat there for about ten minutes, wondering what the heck she was going to do. Where could the tooth be? In some other part of the palace?
"Not likely." Tooth murmured. "All the teeth my girls and I take are taken to the Tooth Towers! Every... single... one..." Tooth blinked. Something was coming back to her. Another memory but. . . this time her own! Something that had happened not that long ago. Something to do with one of her fairies. And a tooth. And . . .
"PITCH!" Tooth yelled, erupting from the ground with a flurry of feathers. "Pitch! Baby Tooth! The tooth I punched! Oh gods, I'm such an idiot!"
She flew up and up, heading back to her private rooms, dodging her daughters and other Tooth Towers and platforms which were hanging from the ceiling. I'm such an idiot. That tugging feeling I felt when I passed the room, the lack of pain when I turned to the right, she dodged another one of her girls. It all makes sense now! I knew I was on a Hunt, but I didn't know who's it was!
Tooth made it to her treasure room in under ten minutes and when she threw the doors open and buzzed inside, the churning in her stomach instantly ceased. She felt a warm, healthy glow cover her cheeks and her hands were tingly.
"Great. Now all I've got to do is find that thing!" she muttered, landing on the glass floor and rummaging through her boxes of treasures.
The room around her was beautiful. Solid oak wood, just like her private room and glass floors too, but this room had a special air about it. It had that magical tingle and it always sent Tooth's feathers quivering with excitement whenever she went inside this room. It's ceiling was a glass mosaic that Tooth had found buried in the sand of the Mediterranean sea, off the coast of Egypt. She didn't remember why she'd taken it now, but she thought it had something to do with the great library of Alexandria being burned just a hundred miles away.
Tooth looked and looked, the feeling getting stronger and stronger with each handful of precious glass figurines and shiny glass frames, but after twenty minutes she sank down to her knees.
"Where is Baby Tooth when I need her?!" She cried, pounding the floor with her fists. "She's the one who put the wretched thing in here!"
Several years ago, Tooth had had some unpleasantness with the Boogeyman and had forcibly removed one of his teeth in retaliation. Namely, she'd punched him. The tooth had fallen to the ground and it wasn't until a month afterwards that Baby Tooth had come to her mother, saying that she was picking up a tooth on her radar that wasn't a child's.
Now, because so many adults lose teeth that aren't their baby ones, Toothiana had made a separate section of her towers just for adults. She'd categorized them by continent and, in the case of America and Asia, by country too. So She'd told Baby Tooth to put the tooth with it's owner's box. Baby tooth had said that this tooth didn't have a box.
"Are you sure?" Tooth said, picking up the tooth and scrutinizing it carefully. "Goodness, this man certainly never brushed! And- are those points?"
They had been indeed. Then the Tooth fairy had been dismayed to learn that the tooth wasn't a human's, but Pitch's!
WhatdoIdowithit,mother? Baby Tooth asked.
"Oh, I don't know." Tooth said, thinking that, even if it was a tooth, she really didn't want to see that thing ever again. "Go put it in my special cabinet." The special cabinet was for immortal's teeth. Jack had been housed there, and Sandy's. Her own teeth had also been put there, as well as the teeth of April Fool, the leprechaun, and even Aphrodite the goddess of love. Everyone's teeth was there.
Baby Tooth had done so and Tooth didn't pay it any mind for the longest time, until one of her fairies came across it several years later. She'd been disgusted to find it there and had asked if the tooth could be cleaned and put in the storage area, the place where all the teeth of dead children and adults were kept, below the towers. Tooth had agreed and, after being rigorously cleaned by Baby Tooth, the little fairy was about to put the tooth in storage, in a small golden cylinder with Pitch's face imprinted on it, when Tooth had stopped her.
She didn't know why she'd done it, but something about that tooth had compelled her to put it in her own rooms. Something about the memories it held had affected her with their power and since they were Pitch's memories, that made her even more curious to see what kind of memories his tooth held. Happy ones? Sad ones? Undoubtedly both. Whatever the nature of those memories, they were the most potent and powerful memories she had ever cared for.
"Yeah, powerful. So powerful that it's taking me an age to find the darn things in a room full of memories." Tooth muttered, standing back up and beginning to look through a dresser drawer. Nothing but a few dozen charm bracelets. Their multi-colored gemstones sparkled in the reflective glass.
Several more minutes and still nothing. Then Tooth picked up a stack of books to move them out of the way and a small golden box that she hadn't seen came tumbling down from the top. It landed right in front of her and she eagerly scooped the box up, hoping that this was indeed the tooth she'd been looking for. The box was three inches square and was shaped like the cylinders where the regular teeth of the children of the world were kept. There was a slight humming emanating from the flat diamond-studded lid and Tooth felt her powers respond as a melodic singing filled her ears.
"OK," She said, putting her hand on the ornate lid with a familiar scowling, spiky-haired head against a backdrop of black stamped on it and slowly breathing in, then out. "Here we go."
XXXXXXXXXXX
The first thing Tooth saw when she opened her eyes was a thick bank of greyish-black fog. Dark, heavy stuff that you could barely see through. Her eyes were shrouded by the fog like when she had to shut eyes really tightly to concentrate on a tooth, then opened them in a flash when the location came to her. The few seconds of patterned blackness that covered her sight before fading away was exactly what this fog reminded her of.
Yes, the fog irritated her, but it didn't worry her. That was how all memory-hunts began; the memories hidden in the teeth struggling to re-arrange themselves into a presentable order that made sense to their viewer. As she waited patiently for the fog to recede she began to think about things. About how long it had been since she'd been on a memory-hunt, about what her last Hunt was. She couldn't remember the exact details, but she knew it had something to do with a lost dog. Memory-hunts were tricky things and she only remembered simple details. Never the names or the important things, just little generic things.
Tooth sighed, her mind trailing back to her past memory-hunts. It was always so simple. When a person was going through a really tough time, one of the only things that helped was happy memories. These memories could be accessed by the person in question and that typically worked for most humans- they remembered some good times, felt a bit better and soon they were back to their old selves, but on the odd occasion the human felt so badly that Tooth was called in to help out.
Her job was to find the person's tooth, touch the tooth and that would release the person's memories to them, totally immersing them in their own memories. On the rare occasions when Tooth was feeling curious about the memories she allowed herself to get sucked into the memory and had viewed it for herself. That had been a lot of fun. . . for a few decades. Memory-viewing took a lot of energy out of her and after six decades of doing this every year the memories had gotten too powerful and she had woken up with nosebleeds afterwards.
Tooth smiled fondly at the memories. Yes, even at the nosebleeds. They hadn't lasted long anyway. No more than a few hours.
"Good days." she murmured, coming back to the memory at hand. So far, this memory was dull and she couldn't see a thing besides the dark fog which wriggled like a living being, twisting and pressing against her like a cushion. It made her feel like she was being smothered as well as temporarily blind, but she knew it was just her imagination.
Soon Tooth got bored of standing in one place and started walking forward through the rapidly thinning fog. She walked and walked, wondering how long it wold take before she got tired and had to rest. Not for a good long while, she thought. Tooth had never been fond of walking, preferring to use her wings to get from A to B.
Flying is an amazing feeling, she thought happily as she walked. And it was, exhilarating, magical and even terrifying at times, but always amazing. It was why North always drove his sleigh, why Sandman made a dream-sand plane, and why Jack flew with the wind using his staff. It really was the most amazing, magical feeling. She didn't have a clue what Bunny had against it. Then again, he was a rabbit.
Thinking of flying when she couldn't was making her feel a bit down, so her mind turned to other things.
I wonder if Baby Tooth is doing a good job with the teeth. She thought. Did I explain to her how to make a new tooth box? Probably. Did I explain what to do if a tooth with cavities comes in? Yes, I did. Does this fog ever end?
"Does this wretched fog ever end?" she grumbled aloud, pursing her lips. "I know that memories start out this way but-"
Tooth was so busy talking to herself and thinking about the tooth of Pitch's that she didn't realized that the fog- the magical fog anyway, had completely disappeared and that what she was walking through was now completely normal fog, gray and murky. In fact, she was so focused on her displeasure at the fog that she hadn't notice the dark street with dirty brick walls around her or the small noises in the background, cats and stray dogs and the like, until she banged her head into the dead end of the brick wall.
"OW!" Tooth yelled, stumbling backwards and landing on the hard dirt floor. "What the heck-" then she noticed the brick walls on either side of her and her fists closed around the short layer of dirt covering the asphalt lane. "Oh for the love of-" she grumbled, rubbing her head. There wasn't any pain, this being a memory, and there wasn't any bump either. All she could feel was a throbbing in her temple, which was just the chemicals released by her nerves that her mind translated into pain. It annoyed her greatly and she patted her head gingerly, waiting for the false pain to go away.
Tooth tried to stand but she slipped and landed on her feathery rear-end once more.
"Stupid memories." she grumbled. "Always has to make me pop up in random places! Now I remember why I stopped doing these stupid Hunts, apart from the nose bleeds!"
Tooth continued to grumble and gripe as she gripped the brick wall and pulled herself carefully up, then she leaned with her back against the wall gently, looking at the area around her. The fog blocked her view of the street in front of her and the street behind her was bricked up. A dead end.
"Well then what was the p-" Tooth started to ask crossly, then she stopped in mid-sentence. A writhing sensation was growing in her stomach. A sensation she knew well. A tugging in her gut and a slight bubbling of acid in her throat. She took a step forward. The tugging didn't intensify. She took a step back. The tugging nearly knocked her over.
"Forward it is then." Tooth muttered, talking several deep breaths and then heading into the normal bank of fog. She was a little apprehensive of this, but she knew that the memory was calling her that way. She had to go.
She went. The tugging lessened with each step she took and Tooth began to feel the familiar excitement of a Hunt in her heart. The tugging meant that she was getting closer to the reason for her being here, and that meant Pitch.
"I hope he's close," Tooth muttered, following the tugging feeling. "The longer I'm here, the more my wings hurt."
Since she'd been dropped into the memory-hunt her wings had been hanging limply on her back. This happened quite a lot during memory-hunts. Her wings were made of the same kind as dragonfly wings, and dragonfly wings weren't partial to water. Fog, magical or no, was nothing but evaporated water and that made her wings limper than wet tissue-paper. Having her wings soaked did not agree with Toothiana and she couldn't wait for them to shake off the fog's damp and return to their usual shining radiance.
She didn't know how long she walked, led by the tugging in her gut that let her know when the object of her Hunt was getting closer, and soon she saw the regular fog lightening as well. Several minutes later she began to see the tall, towering houses and old-fashioned lamp posts looming out of the fog. The houses were also old-fashioned looking. They had stone steps leading up to the fancy red doors with brass doorknobs and there was an occasional yard or lawn in the front with dark green grass and tulips.
Tooth hadn't the faintest clue where she was and the houses didn't help. All she saw were old tilting houses and iron lamp posts with yellow wax-candles burning in the glass cases at the top. If she didn't know better, she would've thought she was in London.
A large bell tolled and Tooth looked up. Big Ben was looming over the tiny houses, striking the hour. Twelve.
Huh. So I am in London, she thought, looking around. I wonder what year.
She passed a closed newspaper stand and saw a bold title proclaiming it to be the second birthday of Queen Elizabeth the first.
Ah. The middle of the fifteen hundreds.
Tooth walked down another of London's many streets, wondering why on earth Pitch would be in London at this time. The scenery?
Tooth doubted it.
As if her thinking of him had brought him forth, Tooth saw a black shadow come out of an alleyway and begin to walk ahead of her with his hands laced behind his back. The shadow was wearing what looked like a long trench coat- or maybe a robe, and she could see a familiar head of silky black, porcupine-like hair sticking up on his head.
She knew that this could only be one person and she broke into a trot to catch up, which wasn't too hard. He was walking slowly, turning his head from side to side as if to savor the dark atmosphere around him.
"Hey Pitch! Long time, no see!" she said as she caught up to him and fell into step beside him. His face was the same as she remembered it; ashy, with a large hooked nose and flashing gold and silver eclipse eyes.
Of course he didn't respond. He couldn't see her or hear her. This was the typical response of the people she witnessed in memory-hunts. They couldn't see or hear a single thing.
"So," Tooth said, happily starting a steady one-sided conversation with Pitch. No, she wasn't insane from all the time she spent on her own. It was just that talking after a lengthy period of silence gave her quite a lot of relief. "What are you doing in London? I mean, I know there are kids here that have nightmares a lot, but I don't see any kids around here."
Pitch didn't reply. He just continued to walk forward, staring around him with his hands laced almost leisurely behind his back.
"So what's the rub?" Tooth demanded. "Taking a vacation, are we?"
Again, he ignored her.
Tooth stuck her tongue out. "OK fine, use the silent treatment on me. See if I care!" she puckered her lips in a pout and muttered, "I'll just see whatever you're doing anyway."
After about a minute, Pitch stopped in the shadow of a lamp post and stared at the house across the street. It was a fairly nice-looking house. Normal-sized. Painted brown. Two stories. There was a shop beside the house that looked like they were adjoined and Tooth read the name of the shop.
The Blackadder Bookshop.
"Huh. I didn't know you were a reader, Pitch." Tooth said with amusement.
Pitch ignored her and headed towards the shop, striding across the street and coming to a stop in front of it, staring with a creepy smile on is face.
"Um, I'm guessing there's a kid in there and that you're going to give them nightmares." Tooth said, looking from the Boogeyman and his weird grin to the house. There were two windows on the first floor and one on the second. No windows were visible on the second floor of the shop. Pitch's attention was focused on top window of the house, which she guessed was where the kid was. "Well, unless it's seriously important, I think I'll-"
Before she could finish, Pitch transformed into a cloud of Nightmare Sand and flew up to the windowsill, slipped under the small gap beneath that Tooth could just make out, and disappearing from view. She was about to sit down and wait for him when she felt a violent tugging in her gut. She groaned.
"Of course." she muttered, getting to her feet and heading across to the shop front. Her wings were dry by now, thankfully, and so she flapped them once to test their stability, then rose up to the windowsill where she could see Pitch leaning over a raised bed. Tooth took a deep breath and propelled herself through the window, phasing through like a ghost and solidifying on the other side. Tooth sighed in content. It felt good to be flying again.
She was seriously unhappy when she wasn't flying, but she was feeling a bit better now. Tooth flapped her wings once, then looked around the room she was in. Typical Elizabethan child's room. Small, bland. Brown wood, no paint. A desk, a shelf of books, a pile of clothes and a rack with several coats and hats hung on it. Then she turned her attention back to Pitch. He was still leaning over the bed with a predatory smile on his lips.
Tooth stayed where she was, appraising Pitch and the bed with mild amusement. "OK, Pitch," she said, smiling. "I know this is your duty, job, whatever and all... but do you seriously have to look like that?"
Pitch ignored her and drew out a handful of Nightmare sand, blowing it on the person in the bed. Tooth still couldn't see what kind of kid it was. She expected a little boy in a big, white nightshirt.
"Let's see..." Pitch said, speaking for the first time since she'd entered this memory-hunt. Tooth blinked. He had a british accent! That was hilarious! "What's your greatest fear, hm?"
"Since when did you have a british accent?" Tooth demanded, staring at Pitch with an amused look on her face.
Pitch ignored her, keeping his attention on the person in the bed. "Ah, I see." he said, looking at the person in the bed for a few minutes. "Well, you know what they say. The best way to face a fear," Pitch pulled out another handful of Nightmare sand and blew it over the lump that Tooth assumed was the child's head. "Is to imagine yourself doing it."
A small, black orb formed over the boy's head and Tooth could see a figure inside the orb. It was tiny, so she decided to go a bit closer. Just to take a look. She hovered several inches above the floor and propelled herself gently forward a foot or two. Then she stopped and her feet alighted on the floor of the bedroom.
"OK, so I'm watching a nightmare." Tooth said, just to make sure. "The nightmare of-" she broke off, stunned. Inside the nightmare orb was the figure of an adult man, barely twenty years old she thought, standing on a raised platform with a noose around his neck.
"That's... not good." Tooth murmured. "Um, Pitch? Shouldn't you go easy on the kid?"
The kid in question groaned and turned in his bed. Tooth blinked. He had an unusually deep voice for a kid. Pitch smiled and began to coax the nightmare. Not a horse, but a black orb forming above the boy's head. Tooth bit her lip. The child was obviously having a nightmare about his older brother dying. To pick on a poor, defenseless kid like that with an obvious fear was just an act of cruelty, plain and simple.
"Pitch, after this I am never going to be able to see you without punching you at least once." the Tooth Fairy vowed, closing her eyes for just a second to black out the anger that was blossoming in her chest.
Pitch continued to croon and coax the nightmare. The orb grew bigger and bigger and the young man inside looked up stoically. There was a hooded man with his hand on a lever that brought the young man down and Tooth looked in horror as the young man fell. The noose dissipated and surrounding platform disappeared too, to be replaced by a craggy cliff that was running past him because he was falling so fast. He looked petrified.
Tooth sighed. This was a cruel nightmare, even for Pitch. He was standing there, with that sick smile on his face, and Tooth felt the powerful urge to punch him. The kid in the bed was grunting and groaning. The young man in the nightmare began to scream as he fell down the cliff-side. He tried to slow his fall by grabbing on to one of the crags in the cliff, but the sand or stone or whatever it was obviously sharp and it serrated the man's hands, drawing lots of blood and slicing through his hands and almost down to the bone! The man screamed in agony and Tooth gasped in horror.
"Oh!" she gasped, staring with undisguised horror at the bloody man and the groaning child in the bed. "Pitch! How could you?!"
Pitch was cackling with mad glee. "There. That's the way, boy! Face the fear of being dashed against razor-sharp rocks."
The young man just kept falling, falling, falling. Tooth thought he would wake up soon and so she forced herself to be calm. "He's going to be alright. You don't really die in a-"
There was a resounding crack and the young man in the nightmare fell violently against the sandy rocks. Tooth caught her breath, staring in utter horror. His legs were splayed out in right angles and his eyes were filled with terror. Blood was seeping from beneath him and pouring from a huge crack in his skull. He was gasping and silently begging for something, but she couldn't hear him. It made her heart almost break to see his groaning, moaning and crying in real life and laying bleeding on the ground in his nightmares.
Pitch smiled. "There. A job well-"
A blinding light erupted from beneath the blankets of the child in the bed. Both Tooth and Pitch let out a cry and staggered back with their hands over their eyes.
Tooth heard Pitch scream and she wondered what was happening. White light? She kept her eyes covered for at least five minutes, then she heard a strange, melodic humming that was distantly familiar and she couldn't help herself. She slowly, carefully, uncovered her eyes and what she saw made her jaw drop.
The room was filled with a watery, blinding white light that was reflected around the room off of shiny surfaces and the mirror above the child's desk. Tooth could see other colors too, light reds and oranges and blues, cascading all around the room like miniature rainbows. Tooth thought she could even hear tiny voices echoing around the room, singing and laughing.
"Singing?" Tooth whispered, looking around. She couldn't see anyone else but her and Pitch, who had also let his fingers drop and was staring at the bed with a slack-jawed look.
"Pitch, what is going-" Tooth demanded, but she was cut short again. There was a sucking sound, like water being pulled down a bathtub drain, and the white light was pulled back into the figure on the bed. The singing disappeared. The rainbow too. All light ceased and Tooth heard Pitch let out a sigh of relief. Obviously he preferred the dark and dank.
"What...the...heck-" Tooth stared at the bed with straight confusion. "What the heck-"
"Well, now ya gone and done it." a deep, male voice said from behind Tooth and Pitch.
They both whirled around and Pitch summoned a orb of nightmare sand in his palm. Tooth let out a squeak and flew back a few feet until she was right beside Pitch. There was a dark, hulking figure blotting out the moonlight that had been streaming in through the window. Tooth could see a cloak with two red dots in the deep recesses of the hood. She could also see a long stick, clutched in bony hands with a sharp, shining blade connected to the top by a silver skeletal hand.
Grimm.
"Grimm!" Tooth almost shrieked, glaring at the Grimm Reaper. There he was, black wings folded behind him, scythe hanging loosely in his hand. The red pinpricks that were his eyes glittered with... what was it? Tooth wasn't sure. It was hard to tell the emotions of a hooded person with no visible eyes, save two red lights. Amusement? Malice? Hate? No, nothing like that.
"Who are you?" Pitch asked, raising his hand with the nightmare sand. "Speak!"
Grimm let out a deep, rolling laugh. It sounded like a thunder-clap or a drum-beat. Loud, booming, but filled with no mirth at all. Tooth shuddered. It was laughs like this that really freaked her out. Actually, the Reaper in general freaked her out. He had no face, he had no eyes, and- (and this was the most frightening thing she'd ever experienced,) he didn't have any teeth or memories. She never found his teeth and he claimed to never have been mortal like the rest of them.
"Ya do not scare me, little shadow." Grim's deep voice said, laced slightly with his Jamaican accent.
"No?" Pitch replied. "I am the Nightmare King! Lord of darkness, king of-"
"Ya are a sneaking, weak shadow who hides under da beds a' children." Grimm interrupted, his accent becoming a bit more pronounced. "Ya are nothing but a second-rate fear spirit."
"Watch what you say, spirit." Pitch hissed. "I can look into the very hearts and minds of every being, man, woman, animal and spirit, in the world and use their worst fears against them!"
Grimm laughed again. "Sure ya can. Just try dat wit me. I dare ya."
Pitch smiled, showing his yellow, filed teeth. "Alright. I'm warning you, I won't be merciful."
Tooth imagined Grimm smiling beneath his hood. "Very well. Go ahead."
Pitch smiled his most terrifying smile and then closed his eyes, lowering the hand with the nightmare ball and taking in a deep breath.
Tooth blinked, wondering what would happen. Of course, she knew that Grimm wouldn't have any fears. He was the Grimm Reaper, after all. What was more scary that that?
Aphrodite on a bad hair day, her subconscious said. She laughed. "True." then she looked back at Pitch. His body was outlined in black, throbbing lights and he was slightly vibrating on the spot. Tooth was faintly surprised.
"So that's how he sees your fears." Tooth whispered. "He closes his eyes and- but why the vibrating?"
Pitch continued to vibrate and the black lights around him began to throb more violently. Tooth took a step to the side, away from Pitch and started looking a little worried. What was-
Then Pitch's eyes shot open and he staggered back as if a giant hand had punched him in the stomach. Tooth blinked. "Ummm, OK."
"Well, what did ya see?" Grimm asked. There was a note of humor in his voice.
Pitch still had his hands clasped over his heart and he was breathing hard. Tooth had never seen him like this! He looked seriously rattled. Shocked, even. It was surprising, to say the least.
"I-" Pitch said haltingly. He was obviously having trouble getting his breath back, even though she was positive he couldn't really breath. The act of inhaling and exhaling was second-nature to most spirits. "I...couldn't- I couldn't see you're-"
"My fears?" Grimm replied. Tooth imagined him smiling again. "Yes, b'cause dere aren't any."
Pitch's eyes widened. "No- no fear? But...but everything has fear!" he was babbling now. Tooth thought he sounded a bit hysterical.
"Not when ya are fear itself." Grimm replied, smiling.
Pitch's eyes widened even farther and Tooth smiled. Grimm was just blustering. Pitch's area was fear, but Grimm's was death. The most feared thing on the planet. Every human being on the face of the planet fears dying in one way of another.
"You-" Pitch sounded like there was something clutching his throat.
"I am not fear, true, dat is your department." Grimm said, echoing her thoughts almost exactly. "but I am da ting feared by all on dis planet."
Tooth chuckled. What a grand-stander.
"What are you?" Pitch asked. He had his usual voice back. Silky-smooth, but cautious. He didn't know who Grimm was, obviously. This must be in his early years, Tooth thought. Before he met with the rest of the spirit world and made all of his current enemies.
"My name is Thanatos, but most people call me da Grimm Reaper." Grimm replied evenly.
Pitch blinked. "The Reaper?"
"Indeed." Grimm said.
"Aaaaaand, you have a Jamaican accent...why?"
Tooth sniggered. "I asked him that too," she said, smirking. "But he didn't answer me."
Grimm shrugged. Tooth saw his black, raven wings raise and then lower. "I have no idea." he admitted. "Why do you speak like a stuffy british librarian?"
Tooth laughed openly. "He he hahaha ha! Nice one Grimm." In her opinion, Pitch's current accent was a bit prissy. This must be why she'd never heard him speak with it.
Pitch opened his mouth to reply, then he thought better of it. "Touche." he said, inclining his head. "Now, would you please explain to me why you are here?"
Grimm turned his hood slightly.
Pitch turned around to see what Grimm was looking at. Tooth turned too. The only thing that was over there was the person in the bed.
"I don't understand." Pitch said.
"Don'choo?" Grimm said, turning back to Pitch.
"No," Pitch said firmly. "I don't know what you are talking about."
Grimm tutted and Tooth saw Pitch take a step back as he glided forward. "Pitch- dat is your name, inddint it?"
Pitch nodded mutely.
"Well Pitch, it is very simple." Grimm was at the human's bed now. Tooth flew over beside Pitch as the Boogeyman turned around to stare at the Reaper.
Grimm picked up his scythe and leaned over the boy. Tooth could make out his heavy wings folded against his back and she wondered what Grimm was going to do. Just why was he here? It wasn't like the boy was-
Tooth's eyes widened and she sucked in a horrified breath. "Oh no." she whispered, staring transfixed at the bed. Oh no, oh no no no no no no NO!
The Reaper tilted his scythe down towards the boy's blanket and hooked it with the blade. He slowly slid it back and beneath the thick woolen blanket-
"What-?" Pitch choked, staring at the bed. Evidently, he was as surprised at Tooth was.
"Dead." Grimm said, shrugging the blanket off of his scythe and gliding back to the window, away from the bed.
"How?" Pitch demanded, turning around with confusion and a little bit of anger on his face.
Tooth stayed where she was, just staring at the young man in the bed. His face was twisted in fear. His legs were splayed in the exact same position they'd been in the nightmare. His hair was shock-white.
Grimm turned away from Pitch and Tooth. His wings rose and stretched a few inches, then they settled back in their folds.
Tooth turned away. She couldn't look at the body any more.
"HOW?!" Pitch demanded, striding over and reaching for Grimm's shoulder. Grimm turned around so fast that Pitch shirked back and Tooth flinched.
"You." Grimm said coldly. "You killed him."