The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Carnassials cclxiv-ccxci

Nevertheless, while biting a hole in the ground in which to conceal himself from his pursuers, the Father of Teeth uncovered what appeared to be a buried bundle of clothes. As he chewed further, rattling some metal posts a short distance away, the clothes unfolded themselves and became a small girl with white irises and long canines. With the latter she grinned at the Father of Teeth and then attempted to sink them into the boiled-leather folds of his neck.

Eventually she emitted a muffled "phoo," and sat back defeated on the edge of the hole. With affected nonchalance, she began using the spearhead nail of her little white forefinger to pick blackened splinters of the Father of Teeth's epidermis from between her gums.

"You're a tough one," she said.
"Nothing in there but pulp anyway," said the Father of Teeth. "You'd only have got indigestion."
"The way you've been eating into my native soil, you might have some trouble yourself," said the little girl.
"The trick is not to swallow too fast," said the Father of Teeth. He resumed his excavations, causing the metal posts to jangle against one another, while the little girl shook her head sadly.
"You must be very hungry," she said. "There's nothing here any more. There's a town, but the people went away. You can try the glucose forest if you like."
"The what?" asked the Father of Teeth.

So the little girl put her cold little porcelain hand inside the Father of Teeth's grisly gristly claw and led him to the metal posts. There were hundreds of them rooted in the dry ground, each sprouting a plastic bag at the top. The bags were far out of reach for either the little girl or the hunched and rickety Father of Teeth; but the little girl floated up and tossed one to him. It was full of a transparent fluid, which seeped drop by drop down a thin flexible pipe twisted loosely around the metal stem. "Sticky stuff," said the little girl with distaste.
"Where does it go?" asked the Father of Teeth, who had observed that the pipe appeared to drain straight into the ground.
"Who knows," the little girl shrugged. "The likes of me have no curiosity, only hunger." She grinned. "The Creator of the universe would have it so."
"What do you know about the Creator of the universe?"
"Only that He loves hungry children. That's why He made so many of us."
"He also made a great many teeth. Does that mean He loves the teeth for themselves, or does He merely enjoy the sound of chewing?" The Father of Teeth bared his best dark-mahogany chompers. "Or perhaps it's the caries He cares for. What do you think?"
"I think the pulp in your veins has addled your brains," said the little girl. "And I'm still hungry."

The Father of Teeth began chewing up the earth around the stem of the metal post, while the little girl floated up and perched in the cleft where the bag had rested. Soon the Father of Teeth uncovered the compost in which the metal post was rooted: a corpulent man with a healthy pink flush to his flabby features, sleeping peacefully in the earth and a soiled pinstripe suit. The pipe from the transparent bag fed into a vein in his wrist. As soon as she saw him, the little girl swooped down and sank her fangs into his complacently pulsing dewlap. "This is yummy," she told the Father of Teeth.
"There'll be one beneath each of the glucose trees," the Father of Teeth told her. "Use them well until you find better pickings."

Remembering her manners, the little girl wiped her red mouth. "Others are on the way," she said. "I saw them from up there."

So the Father of Teeth hurried on through the glucose forest, while the little girl waylaid his pursuers. Thanks to the corpulent man in the soiled pinstripe, her appetite was somewhat slaked, so only a few of them died. The rest took temporary shelter in the abandoned town, but found that they lacked the energy to pursue the Father of Teeth any further. They remained where they were, and soon grew into a useful community, if somewhat pallid and listless and frightened of little girls.