For the past two and a half days, the throbbing has been unrelenting.

She presses her lips tightly together, sprinkles more glittery diamond dust on her wings, adjusts a strap on one of her tiny silver slippers, and sighs.

Another busy night ahead. Thanks to Sophie in Massachusetts, she counts 10,346 children to visit between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m., and the way little Timmy Tucker is pulling at his back left bicuspid as he says his prayers in Payette, Idaho, she’ll be visiting 10,347 children.

She places her white luminous hand on her swollen right cheek and moans. She doesn’t have time for this!

Once she gets back home from her job, she’ll try for 40 winks and then up with her own children, boiling some henny penny eggs and squeezing some rose petal juice for them before putting them on the grasshopper bus to the firefly pre-school.

Husband Danny will want help counting the little white pearls she’s collected during the night to deliver to the fairy counter. The way expenses are going in Fairyville, she hopes some of the pearls are big ones tonight.

A particular painful twinge in her mouth makes her shudder. She flicks her wings and heads out the window, grinning despite herself.

Whoever heard of a tooth fairy with a toothache?