The Tooth That Floated
A small click woke Pip in the middle of the sleeping hour. It was their own tooth, tapping the rim of the water cup. Pip pressed it with a thumb. The tooth leaned one way, then the other, like a door left open. Under their tongue it felt ridged and odd, a tiny loose tile. Outside the round window, Earth turned slowly, blue and white and patient. The station hummed the way it always hummed. Pip pushed off the wall and floated down the long corridor, wiggling the tooth as they went. "See you in the morning, little tooth," Pip said, and laughed, because it was still there.
In the galley Pip opened the cold drawer and took out a square of soft pear. It was cool and slippery and smelled like a whole orchard. Pip chewed on the loose side, because that was the interesting side. Something gave way, small and quiet, like a button coming off a coat. Pip opened their mouth. The tooth drifted out, turning over and over, white as a chip of moon. It touched nothing at all. It simply floated, the way everything floated here, up past Pip's nose toward the ceiling. Pip reached, and missed, and the reaching pushed them gently backwards.
Pip caught the handrail. The grip was wrapped in rough tape, scratchy and good under their fingers, and Pip held it while they thought. The tooth sailed on ahead, slow as a seed. So Pip pushed off softly, the way you do when you do not want to overshoot. Down the corridor they went, past the furry wall patches, past the sleeping plants in their damp green sleeves, past a mug of water someone had left to hang in the air. The tooth turned a corner. Pip turned it too. Their tongue kept going back to the new smooth place.
At the end of the corridor sat the air grille, a wide square of silver mesh that breathed in all day long. Beside it worked a round little sweeper called Nib. Nib hummed up and down the walls, hunting crumbs. Nib did not like loose things in the air; loose things were Nib's whole job and Nib's whole happiness. Pip arrived just as the tooth settled against the mesh, caught there like a petal on a window screen. Nib hummed toward it, pleased. "That one's mine," Pip said. "Sorry." Nib stopped, and hovered, and waited, and hummed a lower hum.
Pip lifted the tooth off the mesh with two fingers. It was smaller than it had felt inside their head. One side was smooth as a river stone. One side had a tiny ridge, and one side had a speck of pear stuck to it. Pip rubbed it clean on their sleeve. Then Pip looked around, found the crumb of pear still drifting near the light, and nudged it over to Nib. Nib caught it, tucked it away, and hummed a bright short hum. Pip closed their hand around the tooth and floated back the way they had come, slowly.
The sleep sack hung in Pip's cabin with the pillow strapped flat at the top. Pip slid the tooth underneath and let go. It came straight back out and bobbed by their ear. Pip tried again, deeper. It wandered up to the ceiling light. Pip tried a third time, with a hand over it, and the moment the hand moved, the tooth moved too. Pip laughed into the quiet. Then they remembered the mesh pocket sewn inside the pillowcase, where a dried flower had lived all winter. Pip tucked the tooth in beside it and pressed the little flap shut.
Pip lay back and ran their tongue along the gap. It was warm and smooth and surprisingly roomy, like a chair with somebody just got up from it. Further in, at the very bottom, there was a hard white edge coming up through the gum, no bigger than a grain of rice. Pip pressed it. It pressed back. Something new was already on its way, taking its time, climbing up through the quiet. Pip patted the pillow where the tooth lay folded in mesh. "See you in the morning, little tooth," Pip said, and this time it was a promise to both of them.
The cabin lights dimmed to amber. The station breathed its long warm breath, and the air moved the way a tide moves, and it carried Pip a little sideways until the sleep sack took them in. The pillow was cool on one cheek. Below the round window, Earth went on turning, carrying its oceans and its clouds and its sleeping towns around toward the sun. Nib hummed somewhere far down the corridor, tidying the dark. Pip's hand rested on the mesh pocket. "See you in the morning, little tooth," Pip whispered, and the slow turning carried them off to sleep.