A girl called Henrietta Darling.

This is a story about life and death, but above everything else this is a story about teeth.

The moon was high across the sky as the Tooth Fairy in training Henrietta Darling prepared to meet her destiny. Like most young people across the world, this particular destiny involved an exam. Notes had been colour-coded and memorised over several tear-filled nights. Equipment had been cleaned, packed, lost, found again and then re-packed. Her best Tooth Fairy uniform hung from her ceiling in order to allow its frothy glittery baby blue tutu to unfurl like a peony flower. The regulation baby pink combat boots had been cleaned and polished. Now the only thing that remained was hair and makeup. The hair was of course tricky. The one thing Henrietta had inherited from her mother, a fertility Goddess, was her supernaturally thick long hair.

Every minute of every day it would grow in long glossy curls faster and faster until it spread across the floor.

It was the sort of hair you only ever saw on 19th century paintings of beautiful princesses lying in fields of symbolic flowers. 

It was the sort of impossible deep red that reminded humans on the bus of mermaids and red velvet cupcakes. It also turned into a wet sweaty mop during the summer, got caught in car doors and frequently smothered her in her sleep.

Henrietta stared at her two thick braids that spilled onto the floor and then grabbed the kitchen scissors. Grunting with effort, she sawed through the braids until her hair was reduced to a crooked bob around her pointy ears.

"It looks terrible, like those movies where the human teenager cuts all their hair off when they want attention," Henrietta's best friend Milky Kai remarked from where she was lounging on Henrietta's bed.

Milky Kai, unlike Henrietta, was supernaturally beautiful and her hair always sat in a geometrically perfect glowing white bob around her red fuzzy fox ears.

Whenever human's caught a glimpse of Milky they would gasp and assume she was dressing up as some sort of Japanese cartoon character.

None of them ever guessed she was a fox spirit.

"It will grow back by morning!" Henrietta replied. "I can't risk it getting stuck in an escalator again, and when I wear it up the weight gives me such a headache."

She turned to the next job at hand - makeup. It was easier for pure-bred fairies in the field who naturally had skin that faintly glittered like stardust. They didn't have to work so hard. Henrietta, on the other hand needed to cover the crop of pimples on her left cheek and the dry patch of skin on her forehead. 

"Madame Catstring doesn't expect all of this, you know," said Milky as she scrolled through her tablet. "I showed up to my exam in shredded leggings and my sequin covered bra."

Of course Milky did that. The minute Milky turned one hundred, she transformed from Henrietta's pet fox into an alluring femme fatale. Milky then promptly put a potato sack on and managed to make five men fall instantly in love with her.

"Play the video again please, I want to make sure I got the last part right," Henrietta replied as she picked up a bowl carved from pure rose quartz, filled with pulverised daffodil weeds, black ash and sticky honey.

"Again?" Milky sighed, but pressed play before holding up the tablet.

"Now that you've prepared the base for your beauty glamour, you'll want to bless it by the light of a fresh moonlight. Depending on your skin tone you'll want a yellow or white moon," drawled Glinda Overington, renowned magical beauty vlogger and influencer.

Rumors said that without her spells Glinda Overington was a green scaly-faced lizard person with giant yellow fangs and a nose covered in pustules. With her enchantments however, she was a vivacious redhead with creamy soft skin and gigantic bee stung lips.

"Ok yellow moon, perfect," Henrietta said, placing the bowl on her window sill.

"I heard she had mermaid blubber injected into her lips," said Milky, who frequently ate raw kangaroo and possum said with a disapproving sneer.

"Mermaid blubber? Please! She gets her lips using a potion involving a single crushed Queen Bee, taken from a hive found above a clover field during the height of a summer solstice," Henrietta replied as she twitched the curtains aside.

The bright yellow moon hung high above, lighting up the giant cranes that stood between the high rise buildings. Long ago nothing blocked the moonlight apart from tree branches and clouds.

Henrietta had vague memories of those frightening hot summer nights.

Now concrete and humans were chipping away at the trees and the monsters were crawling back into the dark.

"I bless this under the moon," Henrietta whispered, and the moon seemed to quiver. Of course it would. Henrietta's mother loved to spy on her.

"I don't even understand why you use glamours, you're very pretty considering

you're a human," Milky said reassuringly and Henrietta rolled her eyes.

"Half human! And I need to look more than very pretty, I need to look like a living breathing fashion

doll." Henrietta replied as she sat in front of her mirror.

Henrietta knew Milky was right, she knew she was "rather pretty".

Henrietta liked her dark eyes she'd inherited from her father that either looked sleepy or sultry.

Henrietta loved her full lips and her dimple when she smiled.

Still the tooth fairy world was different.

Half humans rarely became toothfairies and they were used to agents that looked like perfectly symmetrical gods or horrifying monsters.

There was no gray area, the profession demanded perfection. 

Carefully using one of her best fine haired makeup brushes, Henrietta painted the

sticky potion all over her face and then clapped her hands.

"Cailín álainn tusa," Henrietta chanted and the potion vanished.

Henrietta's round face suddenly developed dramatic cheekbones, her nose became

slimmer and her lashes resembled thick black spiders. In her eyes she looked flawless. "See! It barely did anything," Milky sighed. "You're already beautiful! And all of this

for a silly test. You should hurry or you're going to miss the bus!"

Henrietta snatched her tablet off Milky, shoving it into her tooth fairy utility belt, a tiny

bag that had the power to contain the entire cosmos,

"I'll be fine, the Thursday bus is always late," Henrietta said, and Milky made a faint

choking sound.

"Wait a second - it's Thursday - that's the last night of October! That's what this is

about isn't it? The toothfairy academy exam after party ! You promised you wouldn't go this year!" Milky cried, and Henrietta sighed, shutting her eyes.

"I never said that! I said wouldn't crash the party! But this year Katya actually invited me" ," Henrietta replied, and Milky jumped off the bed with a snarl.

"You almost died last time! Your diaphragm ended up crushed," Milky said, and Henrietta shrugged her shoulders.

"That was last year! It was my own fault for crashing a party that used an actual living rock demon as a bouncer! I've been invited this time! The other students actually talk to me now " henrietta said to Milky who shrugged as if admitting this was true.

The first two years at the Tooth Fairy academy had been quiet and cold.

Most of the other students looked at Henrietta with quiet astonishment wondering how a human had managed to wander in.

One pixie kept rudely asking Henrietta for over a month if she'd been cursed by a vengeful witch.

Things however changed at the first student Union karaoke party, 

 "I thought you were going to concentrate on being a Tooth Fairy," Milky replied gently.

"I've been invited Milky! Me! to an actual after party " Henrietta said firmly and Milky squeezed her hand.

"This time you need to wait for me before trying to get in! Any trouble and I'll bite someone's throat out" Milky smiled revealing her sharp in-scissors.

"Please don't.. go for the ankles! The last thing I want to do is cover up a murder" Henrietta smiled and Milky squeezed her hand again,

"Good luck, and remember if I can pass this exam anyone can" Milky smiled.