Found Is Not Stolen by Babs Rudlin

The dream always started the same: a frantic tongue exploring the gaps where bone used to be. Teeth raining from above, then the voices began. They yelled from the rafters, a clamour of accusation. They said the words she couldn’t admit. Finally, they whispered it, a cold breath against her ear that made her wings shiver as if shattered glass.

Found is not stolen.

It was untrue, of course. A pathetic, rhythmic mantra she used to settle the furious beating of her heart.

Lila was standing over the child’s bed, the moonlight throwing long, grey shadows spanning the duvet. There was no shiny coin in her pocket. No gleaming pound to leave behind in exchange for the ivory treasure placed beneath the pillow. Her hands, stained a dull charcoal from the soot of the chimneys, shivered while she reached out.

The "Found" rule was for the lost things—the buttons in the street, the copper dropped in the dirt. But she was reaching into the refuge of a sleep-warm bed. She wasn't a collector anymore; she was a harvester.

Lila didn't want the teeth for herself. She didn't even want them for her colony. She needed them for the Ossuary Wyrm that lived under the floorboards of her own cottage.

The Wyrm was an ancient, shimmering thing, but it was fragile. It functioned as the literal heartbeat of her home; its long, pale body looped through the foundations, radiating with a low, protective buzz that kept the malevolent spirits of the moor at bay. But the Wyrm was born without a frame. To stay upright, to keep the house from sagging into the moist earth, it needed a spine.

And it only accepted the purest calcium: milk teeth.

Lately, the Wyrm had been groaning. Lila heard the floorboards moan, like stones being scraped. The tiny golden orb that served as her guide had shimmered wildly, hovering over the crevices in the cellar, shining on the Wyrm’s sagging, jelly-like hide. It needed reinforcement. It needed a tithe.

She felt the sharp edge of the tooth as she slid out her hand from the pillowcase. It was small, still warm, and bore the perfume of peppermint and innocence. A flood of nausea washed over her.

"I found it," she breathed into the quiet room, her voice cracking. "It was... detached. Abandoned."

But while she tucked the prize into her velvet pouch, the whisper returned, louder than the silence. Thief. Monster. Coward.

She didn't stay to see the child wake. She couldn't bear the thought of the small hand probing under the fabric and finding only an empty, cold space where a reward should have been. She flew into the night, the burden of the teeth feeling like leaden stones against her chest.

Lila didn't use the window. She slunk through the keyhole, a ribbon of smoke and misery, before unfurling her wings in the fresh night air.

The flight back to her cabin was usually a thing of joy—a soaring glide above the city's rooftops, its lights shimmering like fallen stars. Still tonight, the air appeared heavy, as if the atmosphere were thickening against her. Her wings, typically translucent and radiating with a pearlescent sheen, felt as if made from wet parchment. Every flutter of her wings was a labour, a rhythmic signal of the burden in her velvet pouch.

She stayed low, hugging the darkness of the chimney stacks. Below, the world was silent, tucked away in their duvets, unaware of the small, winged predator skimming through the grey mist.

The shame was a physical thing. It wasn't just the theft; it was the breach of the ancient contract. As she crossed the boundary where the city cobbles gave way to the tangled briars of the wood, her heart beat a frantic, irregular rhythm. She felt exposed. She imagined the trees—old, gnarled sentinels—watching her with knot-hole eyes, judging the creature who took without giving.

Found is not stolen, she said in a whisper, the wind catching the lie and tearing it from her lips.

She looked down at her hands. The soot from the chimneys had worked its way under her fingernails, making her look more like a common chimney-sweep than a fae of the high courts. She felt diminished. Small. A servant to a translucent horror that lived in her floorboards.

As the thatched roof of her cabin came into view, tucked into the hollow of a weeping willow, she didn't feel the relief of homecoming. Instead, she felt the bond of the Ossuary Wyrm pulling at her marrow. It knew she was close. It knew she had the calcium. The house itself appeared to lean toward her, hungry and hollow, waiting to be propped up by the piece of a child she carried against her chest.

Back at her cabin, Lila descended into the cellar. The atmosphere was dense with the smell of humid soil and old secrets. The Ossuary Wyrm uncoiled from within the shadows, its skin as transparent as a peeled grape. It had no eyes, only a sensing heat that followed the warm imprints of Lila's footsteps.

With quivering fingers, she drove the stolen tooth into the Wyrm’s side. The creature gave a low, vibrating purr as the tooth sank into its flesh, joining an uneven, haphazard line of other stolen bits of ivory. The tooth became a new vertebra, a tiny white anchor in the Wyrm’s soft body.

The creature stiffened, its frame suddenly rigid and strong. Upstairs, the cottage settled. The windows stopped rattling in the wind. The house was safe for another week.

But the moment Lila climbed the stairs, the whisper returned.

Thief. Monster. Coward.

She had saved her home, but she had constructed it upon a foundation of stolen childhood. And the Wyrm, she knew, would eventually want more than just milk teeth. It was growing, and its appetite for bone was only now beginning.

983/1000 words

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The Haiku’s Echo: A Dark Retelling in Collaboration with Emma Green Apples.

I posted a request for flash fiction prompts over at Threads. The generous Emma suggested I use her latest haiku:

dreams of teeth falling

they yelled they said they whispered

found is not stolen

As soon as I had read the verse I could not wait to begin typing.

Emma can be followed at threads.com @emmagreenapples.

Thank you so much Emma I really enjoyed crafting this piece of flash fiction.