The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Cavities clviii-clxxiii

Biting his way through the rock, the Father of Teeth nevertheless broke through into a vast cavern, where by the greenish glow of his luminous grin he saw a great gleaming pile of pink and white. Almost to the scraped ceiling rose the main mound of choppers and chompers, with surrounding subsidiary hillocks of glossy gums and moulded molars, their persistent plastic smiles glimmering in the gloom with more-than-organic insincerity.

Having widened the aperture a little more, the Father of Teeth clenched his unpardonable feet and executed a triple back somersault with insectoid flailings that brought him clattering into the midst of the grinding and chattering pile. For aeons he swam and sported among the shallows and depths of the dentures, which snapped and scraped most spiritually while he dived ever deeper among them.

At the very roots of the main mound, beneath a stratum where gums and gnashers were melted together in bubbly smiles that seemed fairly innovative even to the Father of Teeth, he discovered the fossilised remnants of the dragon. Upon the smeared and scattered imprints of its long-vanished bones, carved out in the incisive fluorescence of the stalagmites and stalactites that glowed from the Father of Teeth's tar-pit grin. the bite-marks were plainly visible.

"Truly it has been said," mused the Father of Teeth, as he rose once more to the surface and resumed a leisurely, rattling backstroke, "that he who digs a treasure-pit shall be eaten up by his appetites, and that in the hoarding of worldly goods it is generally best to diversify one's investments."