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Monday, 23 October 2023

Wicker Valley, episode 21: Tooth Fairy

Somehow we managed to wake up Adam and get out of there. Presumably because the fairy queen had a job for us. Well, a job for Michael. She was missing a tooth fairy and wanted him found. Adam had some dubious ideas for how to find a tooth fairy, but fortunately Michael was able to overrule him in favour of putting up notices that only the fairy would be able to see in places where teeth might be lost, asking to meet him.

With that done, we all went home to get some sleep. Not that I got much sleep. Every moment I'd spent in that fairy realm had made my skin crawl in a way I normally associate with churches, and I ended up lying awake for what felt like hours. When I finally did manage to drift off, I got woken up again pretty quickly by a knock at the door. I almost ignored it to try to get back to sleep, but I realised anyone knocking on the door at that time probably had a good reason.

It was Michael, dressed in pyjamas and soaked through from the rain. I brought him inside, and he told me that the tooth fairy had found him, and then dragged him out of the window, and he was now locked out of his house. And I was the closest person that he'd be able to explain his predicament to.

I suggested teleporting him home, but he wanted to know what could go wrong, and I realised I hadn't done all that much experimenting yet. It seemed to work very well when I was on my own, but I hadn't had much practice in taking people with me yet, and this was not the time to be ending up in the wrong place. And even at this hour of the night, flying him up to the window was too big a risk.

So he got in the shower to warm up, and I got him some towels and bedding so he could sleep the rest of the night on the sofa. In the morning he called Adam to ask him to bring him some clothes. Which meant I had to answer the door to a grinning Adam.

"Whatever you're thinking, it's not that." Not that he believed me, of course.

I had no intention of going anywhere near the fairy realm again, but Michael was going back and there was absolutely no way I was letting them get their hands on him, so we all went. Except they immediately took Michael off into a different room. They did feed us, after first giving us assurances that the food was free of obligations. Elizabeth said it was legit, but I still didn't eat anything until she did.

Three hours later there was still no sign of Michael and I was getting extremely antsy. Finally we got the news that something bad was going to happen in Wicker Valley and they wanted to keep Michael there to keep him safe. I wasn't letting that go and demanded to see Michael. He was fine, although pretty reluctant to stay. In the end they came to some kind of agreement. We would all go back and try to sort things out. And if we hadn't done in time, Michael would come back. I'm glad to say he didn't say anything about staying.

Bloody fairies. They're as bad as my family. Which is why the idea of Agnes and Mary basically running this town is so unsettling.

Dragging Michael out of windows wasn't the only strange thing the tooth fairy had been up to that night, as we soon found ourselves at a crime scene. Being slightly worried about tooth golems, we'd packed full sugar coke in addition to some fairy-fighting tools. It seems in this timeline we get routinely called in for weird crimes, as the police let us right in. Nasty business. The father was dead, and had lost all his teeth as well. The mother and daughter, at least, seemed unharmed. The victims left, and we took a look around.

There was a tooth creature, but it was a lot cuter than I anticipated.

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