MidReal Story
Tooth and Tail: A Magical Collision
Scenario: When ratón Pérez met the tooth
Create my version of this story
Once upon a time, in a magical realm beneath children’s pillows, I met the tooth fairy.
We were both there to collect teeth, but we went about it in different ways.
I was ratón Pérez, and I was small and quick with sharp features and a long tail that I used to drag teeth back to my lair.
The tooth fairy was ethereal with shimmering wings that left a trail of glitter wherever she went.
She would sprinkle a bit of fairy dust on the pillow and leave a coin or two behind.
I liked her immediately.
She was gentle and wise, and she smelled like the first snowfall of winter.
We became friends, even though we argued about everything.
I told her that teeth were not just currency to be traded for money; they were memories, and each one had a story to tell.
She said that teeth were gifts from the universe, meant to be shared with the world.
This is a story about the time we both almost lost our minds.
Pérez González was known as the best tooth collector in all of Spain.
Of course, I was the only tooth fairy there, and that made me the best by default.
We met the first time I came across one of his teeth in a child’s bedroom.
It was a small, gnawed-on molar with a tiny crack.
I reached out to pick it up and put it in my bag, and a furious rat jumped out from behind the bed and snatched it away.
“Hey,” I said, “that’s my tooth.”
“Finders keepers, losers weepers,” he said.
“I think that tooth has a story to tell,” I said.
“It’s no concern of yours,” the raton said, which is Spanish for “tooth mouse.” He scurried off into the darkness, leaving me with an empty pillow and a fistful of glitter that I had been in the process of sprinkling in exchange for the tooth.
I was new to this job, and I had no idea what else to do with it, so I just opened my hand and let it slip away on the wind.
“Fine,” I said.
“Keep your secrets.” I decided to leave him a coin anyway, because that’s what I did, but he hadn’t left me any teeth to take in exchange.
“You’re not very good at this,” he said when he saw the coin.
Of course, he was right.
I had no idea what I was doing.
“Why don’t you show me?”
I asked him, and so he did.
The raton had a lair in the cellar of a crumbling old building that had once been a bakery but now stood empty and abandoned.
He had collected hundreds of teeth—yellow teeth and white teeth, big teeth and small teeth, crooked teeth and straight teeth—and he kept them piled up in boxes on every shelf and surface like some kind of morbid hoarder.
We went there together so he could show me how he cataloged them all.
He would pick up one of the teeth and hold it up to the light where it would shine like an opal or an emerald.
“What a magnificent tooth,” he would say.
“It is too bad you are going to sell it for money.
You are going to sell it for money, aren’t you?”
“I don’t sell teeth,” he said.
“I keep them.”
“But what do you do with them?”
I asked him.
“I like to look at them,” he said.
“You do not even know whose tooth this is?”
I asked him.
“No,” he said.
“And you are not even going to try to find out?”
“No,” he said.
“I am not going to try to find out.”
“Then why do you care about it so much?”
I asked him.
“Why do you think it is so special?”
He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Not everything has to be special, you know.”
On the way out of the building, he asked me where the tooth was that I had found.
“In the little baggie with the rest of the teeth,” I said.
“You are going to keep it there with all the other teeth?”
he asked me.
“You cannot just keep it by itself in a box?”
“No,” I told him.
“What color was it?”
“White,” he said.
“White like snow.” He looked at me and then looked away.
He was blushing!
And then he looked back and kissed me before running off into the night with his coin clutched in his tiny clawed hand.
It was then that I realized that Pérez González was not only very good at collecting teeth but that he also had a mischievous streak a mile wide and a heart as big as the moon.
Over the years, we continued to be friends despite our differences.
Every time we met, which was about once or twice a year, he would steal a kiss from me and then run away as fast as he could while I stood there feeling flustered and trying in vain to wipe the lipstick off my face.
(Oh yes, little boy who lost a tooth because you wouldn’t stop playing with your mother’s lipstick while she was on the phone: Perez got that one.)
And I would ask if he had collected any interesting teeth lately, and he would tell me about the twins whose teeth he kept together in a special box because they shared the same memories.
“Identical twins?”
I would ask, and he would say yes, and I would say, “But how do you know?”
and he would say, “Magic,” and then we would laugh and laugh and laugh, even though we were both thinking the same thing: That wasn’t magic at all, but something else entirely.
We didn’t have to explain it to each other, though, because we both already knew.
And then we would argue about the teeth, of course, because we always did, but it was never serious, not really.
We argued about everything, but we loved each other too, I think, even if neither of us would ever have admitted it, even if neither of us knew it yet ourselves.
One day, Pérez González came to me with a tooth he said I had to see.
“Is it another white one?”
I asked him.
“No,” he said.
“It is a very special tooth.” He held it out on his paw, and I saw at once what he meant.
It was small and white, just like any other tooth, but it had an almost indescribable sparkle to it that caught the light and reflected it in a way that made me feel as though I were looking at the stars up close—or perhaps the heart of the moon itself.
“It is beautiful,” I whispered, and then I burst into tears.
“Oh no,” he said.
“Please don’t cry.”
I am not usually the type to cry; I have only ever done it three times before—when my best friend lost her wings; when my sister’s pet unicorn died; and when I saw how much my teeth collection had grown after years of being proud of it—and so I felt myself blushing (blushing!
Fiona Sparkle never blushes!) as I fumbled for my handkerchief, trying to cover up my face so that Pérez González wouldn’t see my tears or my blotchy cheeks or any other emotion that might show through on my face while I tried to compose myself.
I had been taking care of his family since the time they had been too small to notice, for no tooth is ever too small to fall out, even if it is too small to be saved by a child who does not notice, for there is always someone to care for each tooth, even if that someone is not the one for whom the tooth was meant to be cared for, that someone is always there, as long as it is needed, just as I was needed by all my children, every last one of them who ever came my way—
And then, when I had finally composed myself, Pérez handed me the tooth again, saying softly, “I wanted to show it to you because this one is different from all the others; when little Timmy Molar lost this tooth, he was very brave but also very sad, for it caused him a great deal of pain; he had been crying for hours, he said, but even so he was not afraid to lose his tooth, for he is a brave little boy, and now he has grown up a little more.”
“Oh, Pérez,” I said, but he was already gone, back to his lair, to join his friends in their stories and memories, leaving me alone with the very special tooth of Timothy Molar clutched tightly in my trembling hand.
As soon as I released my hand from the tight grip I had on the tooth that belonged to Timothy Molar, I felt as though I had lost my hold on everything—myself, the world around me, even the heavens themselves—and so I clutched the tooth even more tightly than before, refusing to let go of it until I was ready to do so.
But when I finally did open my hand again, that was when I realized that something terrible had happened instead: The tooth was gone!
I was still clutching it tightly in my hand—or at least I thought I was—but when I looked inside my hand, there was nothing there.
My beautiful Timothy Molar tooth had disappeared!
I ran to Pérez’s lair as quickly as I could, but what I found when I got there was not Pérez or his friends but nothing at all.
His lair was empty, as though it had never been filled with anything other than the two little white fangs of a very sad child who had been very brave and very frightened and very sad all at once.
But those teeth were gone too, so that now even the stories and memories of Pérez’s friends had disappeared as well.
I searched everywhere, opening every drawer and every cabinet and every box, hoping to find some sign, some clue, anything at all, that would tell me the tooth had not been lost forever, but it was no use: The tooth was gone.
But then, when I thought all hope was lost, I saw it: A trail of glitter on the floor!
It led straight to the door of Pérez’s lair, and when I opened the door and looked outside, I saw that it led straight to mine as well.
Someone had taken my tooth, that much was clear, and there was only one person who could have done it: Fiona Sparkle!