A Song of Slime
I've had friends asking what happened after my daughter set a trap for the skeletons who stole her lost tooth on Halloween. Luring the skeletons in with a sign offering to trade four teeth for one, and baited with artificial teeth and fake candy she had made out of clay, she lined the bottom of her trap with 'magical science slime' she made in her slime lab that she promised would stop the skeletons--even if she wasn't saying how.
In the morning, she found her lost tooth returned...and a selection of tiny (plastic) skulls and bones scattered in the slime. "The slime dissolved the bacteria on the skeletons and they fell apart!" she exclaimed. Her trap had worked!
The next night she tucked the tooth under her pillow, protected by her army of stuffies. The following morning she was relieved to find that the Tooth Fairy had visited and successfully exchanged the tooth for money. But she was disappointed that the Fairy hadn't left her a note, as she had many times in the past.
Then yesterday she discovered that the Fairy had made an unusual daytime visit while she was at school to leave not only a note, but a gift. Pulling out her copy of the the ancient Jum alphabet (another long-ago invention of hers), she decoded the message from the Fairy:
Translating the note from the Tooth Fairy.
"Your heart loves both friends and foes, and your slime saved skeletons from their curse. A Neona studied your slime and bottled its secret. Make more. Use it for fun and adventure. Dream of us! Your friend, Aristamia."
(As we haven't finished writing the Monstervore Dictionary yet, a couple quick notes: a 'Neona' is one of the land's good witches, full of ancient wisdom but living in reverse as they go from old to young, flying around on magical broomswords, and trying to undo the evils done by the bad witches of Witchmaw and the mashed-up witchbeasts they create. 'Aristamia' is the fairy name of the Tooth Fairy, though the skeletons call her Bonethief because she takes the teeth they want so badly.)
Along with the note came a bottle of mysterious oozy fluid with shiny purple sparkles in it, labelled in Jum that she decoded to read: "BONESAVER'S BLESSING (Brewed by Grandmaray)". We had to search back through years of our Monstervore notes to find that Grandmaray is the wisest of the Neona, having lived a magical life of old-to-young-to-old-to-young many times over a thousand years. (She also has a number of magical pets, including a bear that wears pants.)
Uncorking the bottle, she sniffed and guessed that it smelled a lot like the 'fixer' she uses in her slime lab, and went to work mixing up a small experimental batch. In a few minutes she had expertly stirred and kneaded together a slimy, stretchy, viscous knob of shiny purple slime!
As she worked, she wondered aloud if it was Grandmaray who called her 'Bonesaver', or if the skeletons had given her the name. "I hope it's the skeletons," she said. "I hope they want to be saved and aren't angry that I made them fall apart. Especially since all the people in Kabos are going to know how to do it now." It's a good point: how this new magical innovation will shake the foundations of the ancient battles between the skeletons, ghosts, and fairies is a tale that remains to be told.
As another birthday approaches I worry that at some point she'll get 'too old', and the tales of Kabos will stop coming. But this morning as we talked about her birthday we also bounced ideas back and forth about the day a baby was born and the Daygods of Kabos, and what happens if the moonos show up to visit a newborn, and the journey you take with your mirror sister at the end of your life to find the Impasse Gate to the Impossible Lands beyond, and, and--well, as always I'll write down the notes, and keep working on the Monstervore Dictionary so that someday she can go back and visit it all again.
