Goldbone Refused
This week’s saga of the Tooth Fairy continues:
Two nights ago before bed, she told me, "I'm sending a note to the Tooth Fairy tonight."
After dark, I snuck in....only to find her note trapped with a bell that she clearly hoped would wake her. But succeeding on my Sneak roll, I made it out of the room silently to read it:
Tooth Fairy:
Could I please have my magic tooth back for a few days?
YES [ ] [ ] NO
See you soon!
This morning she awoke to find another coded message from the Fairy, and had to puzzle out what order the pieces went in before she could decode the words over breakfast. It read:
Good idea brave friend Greenleaf! Protect Bonegold while skeletons walk your land. I will return for it the night after your Hallow Eve. Keep it secret! Keep it safe! Love Aristama
And on the nightstand: her tooth. Bonegold.
I think she was mainly excited to know that giving away the tooth might be a reversible process, but as she was preparing for bed tonight she found a new note scrawled on paper in the bathroom:
PUT BONEGOLD IN SINK AT NITE WE GIVE U CAKE
...signed with a skull and bones.
"The skeletons!" she gasped.
"Are you going to give it to them?" I asked, honestly curious. She loves cake.
But I should have trusted her heart of a Monstervore to be pure and true. "No," she said. "They're bad, and I'm protecting the tooth."
I asked: Why did they want her to put it in the sink? Why not just steal it from under her pillow while she slept?
She had to mull that over while she brushed her teeth. "Skeletons like music but they don't like sounds like the ghosts screaming," she said. "Do I snore?" Not really, I said. Certainly not enough to scare away monsters.
She thought some more. "Because I'm dreaming!" she finally said. Skeletons get nervous around people who are sleeping because they might be dreaming. Together we filled in the blanks: that's because the skeletons are afraid of Dreamland, and more directly, afraid of the evil Blanket King. What about Graycloak and Brownbritches, I asked, two strange heroes of Dreamland we'd discussed a few weeks ago (possibly the dream avatars of the gods of Kabos, Ruko and Daemelani). Them too, she confirmed. Very afraid.
Also, they’re not big fans of stuffed animals. Why? “Because they don’t have bones! They think they’re SO WEIRD!”
Finally I asked: so why do the skeletons want the tooth? Just to make another skeleton, or is Bonegold special to them?
They want Bonegold because they could use it to make a special skeleton with gold bones called Goldbone who could go into Dreamland who could sing to the nightmares so that they would attack the Blanket King. Why? Because the skeletons want to take over Dreamland and be in charge of all dreams. And because they hate the Blanket King.
And who is the Blanket King, I asked casually, hoping she was finally ready to answer one of the oldest mysteries in Kabos. "Nooooobody knows...." she said in a spooky voice.
So tonight she sleeps with Bonegold under her pillow, defying the skeletons.
But tomorrow she wants to see if she can use clay to make a fake tooth. I think she's planning on setting some traps for the skeletons on Halloween...
Decoding the morning message from Aristama, the Tooth Fairy.
