The Father of Teeth

Text for today: I Canines xciii-cxvii

Later, as they burned the great library, the Father of Teeth was brought before the commander-in-chief in his great tower and ordered to account for his actions."What actions might those be?" asked the Father of Teeth obligingly.
"Treacherous and inordinate fiend," fulminated the commander-in-chief inaccurately, "just look what you've done to our act of purification!"

The Father of Teeth looked down from the tower window upon the library spurting flame from every window and door and librarian, and saw that it was good. "I have always been a great devourer of literature," he said, displaying his best parchment-yellow paper-cutters, while the staples gleamed among his gums.

"You deliberately deprived us of books to burn," accused the commander-in-chief. "Your depraved and gluttonous appetites left us with nothing but an empty building full of shelves, to which we had to bring our own kindling on transports that should have been used for the wounded. You know why we burn books, of course?"
"Of course," said the Father of Teeth. "Like everyone else, you burn books to rid the world of corruption, to wipe out false knowledge and fake news, to destroy impious and ungodly doctrines, and to make room for those transcendentally virtuous and self-evidently reasonable teachings which, despite having the Creator of the universe on their side, have somehow managed until now to be continually repressed and bullied and silenced and distorted and insulted and their priests denied an honest living." He grinned again, and the staples glittered.
"And you know that our victory is inevitable?"
"The victory of fire is frequently inevitable," said the Father of Teeth, "from the fury of Surtur to the tardy fattening of a lower middle-class yellow star. In any conflict, the prudent though not necessarily the most interesting commander is the one who allies himself with the ultimate victor."
"I am not prudent," bellowed the commander-in-chief. "The fighter for righteousness and justice has no need of prudence."
"The one who allies himself with the ultimate victor," said the Father of Teeth, "will never again have need of righteousness or justice, however those vague and mutable concepts may be defined."
"Your nihilistic relativism is an outrage upon morality," sad the commander-in-chief, taking out an execution warrant. "I'm going to have you burned at the stake as a metropolitan élitist."

The Father of Teeth widened his grin just a little more, and cunningly flexed his gums. The staples flew out like hornets and lodged in the eyes of the commander-in-chief, to his considerable discomfort. Screaming and blundering, while his sentries outside pounded at the door, the commander-in-chief at last clawed his way to the window, from which he plummeted with the gravity due his rank to a rather messy landing upon the spears of the tower guard.

"What goes up must come down," said the Father of Teeth, as he forged the commander's signature on the warrants for his immediate release, his cash reward and his medals; "and every fire must yield to darkness in the end. Even for the just and righteous, there is much penetration in books."