The night the tooth fairy forgot | Magic Fairy Post

There is a very particular kind of 6 am that every parent of a small child eventually meets.

The eyes open. The little sigh of being awake. The pillow lifted with the trembling reverence of someone who is about to be sure they have been visited by magic. And then the small, devastated voice.

She didn't come.

I have lived that morning. You have lived that morning. Or you haven't yet, and one day you will.

Here is what nobody tells you about the tooth fairy. She is not actually a fairy - I wish she was. She is you, on a Tuesday, after a long day, after dinner that took an hour to clean up, after one more book and one more glass of water and one more reason that bedtime cannot possibly end. She is the version of you who said "I'll just sit down for five minutes" at 9:14pm and woke up on the couch with the lights still on.

In the book, there is a bell. It belongs to a fairy called Lola Flossy, who lives somewhere far away, past the moon's gentle light, in a town made of teeth stacked in towers of sparkly white. Her bell rings every single time a tooth pops out, somewhere in the world. It rings every time a tooth pops out, and right now it's so loud it wants to shout. I wrote that line for Lola. But I think I was really writing it for the parents.

Because the truth is, in our houses, the bell rings all the time. Not the tooth one. The other one. The signing that permission slip bell. The packed lunch bell. The where-are-the-library-books bell. The you were supposed to be baking for the tuckshop bell. By 10pm, when the little tooth is sitting under the little pillow, our bell has been ringing for fourteen hours straight.

Sometimes we forget. And when we forget, we feel like the worst person in the world. There is a particular flavour of guilt reserved for the parent who, at 6:02am, mouths the words "I'll just check it again, sometimes she leaves it on the side" while frantically rummaging through all drawers for any coin - who even carries coins in 2026! When does Lola Flossy get Apple pay!

So here is the thing I want to say, to whoever is reading this at the end of another big day.

Forgetting doesn't undo it.

Your child will not remember the morning the coin was late. They will remember that someone in their world treated their tiny tooth like it was a marvel. That you wrote the little note. That you knelt by the bed at some godforsaken hour because their first tooth, that small piece of them, was a big deal, and you wanted them to know it. That you saw the size of the moment. They didn't see the anguish we felt when we throw them out (the completely illogical anguish because ew a tooth, but their tooth!)

You're allowed to be tired. You're allowed to forget. You're allowed to be the kind of tooth fairy who keeps back-up coins taped hidden in the cupboard above the stove because experience is the best teacher. None of that makes the magic less real. The magic was always you. It always was.

In our stories, the fairies don't fix the world. They notice. That's the whole thing. So if you remembered, beautiful. If you forgot and made it right with a soft excuse about the wind blowing her off course, also beautiful. If you are reading this with a tooth under a pillow tonight, this is your reminder.

She comes.

She came.

She always does.

P.S. Our book about Lola Flossy the Tooth Fairy is currently live on the site. We haven't announced it. There are just twenty copies in our first run, for the families who find them first. If you'd like one, she's here.