The Whole Tooth · 11:01am Jan 14th, 2020
Sweetie Belle was desperately running from the ferocious, animate wooden teeth when she heard the giggling.
She almost tripped with outrage as she realized that somepony was making mock of her peril. The fact that the little unicorn’s trip caused her to tumble right through a tree and the hedgerow behind it broke her immersion, leaving her lucid enough to recognize that she was dreaming.
That didn’t make the fact that somepony was still laughing at Sweetie any more tolerable.
"Who is that? Why are you making fun of me! False teeth are really scary! They’re all wooden and false and- wait. Who’d be in here with me? It’s my dream! Not even Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon have enough spite in them that they’d be able to warp the laws of magic and reality sufficiently to break into my most private night-terrors. The only pony who walks dreams, at least, the only pony I know of is…"
And then the Princess of Dreams fell out of the tree Sweetie Belle had just run into, and face-planted in the dream-sod.
Still giggling up a very much not-figurative storm.
"Princess Luna! I knew it was you, I just didn’t want it to be you! You’re supposed to be our friend! The fun princess! The one who can relate to how foals feel, and be all empathic!"
"Nay, little horseling. Thou art no longer a foal! Thou hast thy very own cutie mark. Thou art now an adult by law and custom, and beyond the bourne of our pity and empathy entire! Thus, we hast every right to burst into thine most private dreams, and make fun of whatever idiot, childish fears thou holdst, well into thy nominal adulthood. Ivory teeth, indeed! Ha!"
Sweetie’s righteous, icy fury was beginning to melt into a much more soppy sniffling. Possibly even a bit of snivelling. "That’s not fair! You don’t get to break into my personal brain, and laugh at me! And they’re not ivory teeth! They’re wooden...
"Wait, false teeth can be ivory? Isn’t that real teeth? Like, oliphants or something like that?"
"Verily! Ripped whole from the head of third-world sapients, and smuggled into Equestria by varlets and knaves! It is a most terrible and uncomely smugglers’ trade. We tried to talk our sister into making the wearing of ivory teeth a capital offense, but she said something weak and lily-livered about ‘not executing ponies for lesser felonies anymore’. Bah- ouch!"
Sweetie looked more closely at the alicorn of the night. Was her face.. Swollen?
"Princess Luna, are you ok? Your dream-avatar looks rather, er, off tonight?"
"We wouldst like to see thee look as well, on as many drugs as we art on right now. Oh, ouch. But not enough, for I rather fear that they’re starting to wear off. Ouch, ouch ouch… mayhap we wert a trifle over-jolly at your particular night-terror, but it was just so… coincidental!"
"Princess Luna, why would you be on- drugs? Really? Miss Cheerilee and all the adults say…"
"Nay! Ouch. Nay, good Sweetling Belle!"
"Er, Sweetie Belle."
"Whatever! Thy favorite princess did not ingest all of these vile, attention-distracting, mind-disordering concoctions for the joy of it all, nor for the purposes of ‘partying’. Rather, mine own tooth-doctor prescribed them for the head-aching pain of this damnable procedure we have to undergo now and again."
"Tooth-doct- you were at the dentist? I thought alicorns were physically perfect!"
"Nay! Tis rather that our very physical perfection requires the occasional care. In our case, that our teeth tend rather heavily towards the… well, dost thou know what wolf teeth are?"
"Yeah. Some ponies get weird snaggly teeth like predators, and they have to be ground down."
"Verily! Imagine that, except you occasionally grow an entire mouth full of sharp, jagged, foal-eating fangs. It is very discomfiting to our attendants and those few ponies who seek us out in the flesh. They must be ground down, ruthlessly, savagely, completely! Ah, but at least, these modern days have introduced ‘local anesthetics’ and ‘painkillers’ to keep the procedure from being absolutely agonising."
"Wow, princess, if this is you on medication, I can’t imagine how bad it must have been back in the bad old days."
"Child! Why do you think we went Nightmare Moon in the first place? What foal gets upset about ponies not staying up all night into the darkness to worship our stars and moon? One out of her mind with agony and misery from constantly having her Grogar-blasted teeth ground down!
"After a hundred years of that, we finally broke down and refused to let the butchers at our fangs. Ponies may have taken it… amiss. And things, as they say today, got out of hoof."
Not every speedwrite session is a successful one, or truly publishable. My Sweetie Belle's voice isn't right, but this is what you get when your author is hopped up on ydrocodone and antibiotics.
Huh. I was expecting a feghoot there.
5186120
A Lune in a tree is worth tooth in the... yeah, I got nothing.
Wait, you know what time Luna had her procedure done?
Tooth hurty!
But seriously you should slap a random tag on this and publish it anyway!
A Luna in a tree is worth a tooth in the hoof, presumably. But I've never written a feghoot, and have never really understood them, either. Something about a shaggy dog story ending in a pun?
5186124
As his regular editor, I'd want to clean up a few things before he made a real story of it. But maybe that's just me.
Given how I'm still chipping away at In the Company of Night, I couldn't help but read "third-world" as "Two links down the Chain." Probably not what you were going for, but I do love a good multiversal smuggling ring. (Also, yeah, the ivory trade is even more horrifying when the elephants are self-aware. Unless they go for the monopolist approach and control all access to it. I could easily see the Mansa Musa of Equestria as an elephant.)
But yeah, this was a fun little drabble, especially given how you were still on a dentist's high while writing it.
5186135
One of my biggest disappointments in canon MLP world building is that we didn’t see more in the way of sapient magical ungulates. (Although the comics had the deer at least.)
5186127
Yep, that’s pretty much it!
5186130
You know until now I’ve never really thought about the fact that editors and dentists have basically the exact same job just working with different mediums.
5186137
I do often see a bottle of whiskey sitting somewhere in my dentist's office.
5186138
What century is your dentist’s office in?
Waiting at the dentist office as you write this?
Luna on med is really funny and not done enough in fiction.
5186156
The evening after, actually. Back to work today... with only ibuprofen. No working on opioids!
Fun little read, nonetheless.
5186135
I like to think the elephants leave their tusks to their descendants, who then sell them to the less squeamish sort of pony. Elephant dentists are investment councilors on the side.
I figure Luna was kind of a hanging judge back in the day.
I've sentenced fillies younger than you to the gallows, Sweetie Belle. Didn't want to, felt I owed it to them. To their cutie marks.
I mean, if a pony's mark clearly promises that they were foaled to be hanged... You have to respect that, don't you?
Hehehe, explains Nightmare Moon having fangs, certainly.
You might want to make one of those "collected shorts" stories sometime.
"Oh," said Sweetie Belle. "That explains everything. My sister says all kind of ponies have that problem, Princess Luna."
"They do?" Luna blinked several times, still holding her jaw.
"Sure!" chirped Sweetie Belle. "Haven't you ever heard of somebody taking a long vacation after they've been worn down by the daily grind?"
Heh, nice. :)