The Great Denture Hunt

Prompt: Write a poem or story which contains: a queen, a pair of missing false teeth, and a turtle that likes to walk backward.

         One day in Fantasialand City, home of the most royal families per capita of any city in the world, an octogenarian queen found herself in a rather embarrassing predicament. On a record-breaking hot day (even Fantasialand had to deal with global warming) the queen had decided to give an incredibly long speech. Her words on the illegal immigration of Dickensian proles into their county lasted for over six hours, and her jaw had been loosened considerably from both the heat and the great workout it was receiving. The heat made it so that the queen’s face had sweat dripping down and drool dripping out, lavish makeup streaming down her face so that she seemed more like a tribal Scotsman than anything else. Her jaw sagged down inch by inch until, just as she was about to make her second point, the jaw gave a metallic screech and plummeted down on her speaking podium, causing a gasp among the entire crowd. The jaw just sat there for a moment as the queen made hideous noises, apparently attempting to speak further, and then her teeth popped out and soared into the audience. The repulsion every crowd member felt at having the teeth on them would send the dentures further back into the swarm of people, with each person effectively playing hot potato on down the line until one controlled person simply flung the teeth into the dark forest, which he thought resolved the issue.

         The queen was inconsolable at the loss of her teeth, as ivory dentures were considered a status symbol in Fantasialand. After the obvious move of executing the person who threw her teeth into the forest, she resolved to call upon some recent acquaintances of hers to fetch the teeth from the winding forest. Her arrangement would also benefit from some friendly competition. She called upon the tortoise and the hare to retrieve her dentures.

         The long-standing rivalry of the tortoise and the hare had several times been exploited by the fair kings and queens of Fantasialand. Now the competition would be to see which animal would find the dentures first, a bit different from the typical generic race. For the purpose of bets, odds at the time were 1.5:1 on the hare winning given the tortoise’s statistics of 3 wins, 2 losses at the time. The odds would have been more against the hare, but according to the win-loss pattern, the hare was to win this match-up. So, if you are a betting person, please take your time and place your bets on which character will win while I finish tearing down this fourth wall. Oh, and don’t bet if you know the result or are reading ahead, because cheating is wrong. Are you ready now? Okay, let’s resume.

         The hare, as usual on even-numbered attempts, was devoted to winning this round. He had trained his concentration and humility skills all year, and was ready to find those dentures. The tortoise, on the other hand, had primarily stayed at home watching television in order to sue Animal Planet and children’s shows for using his likeness on their shows without contacting his agent first. He was feeling more pompous than ever, and delivered a public speech prior to the event to display his confidence:

         “For tomorrow’s event, I am going to walk the entire hunt backwards to show the hare how worthless he is! I’ve always preferred walking backwards really, but it’s just a little slow and not really great for little scavenger hunts like this. That hare may be here today, but he’ll be gone tomorrow…! Because “hare” sounds like “here”, right? Do you get it now? C’mon, laugh!” The audience got it, but it just wasn’t funny.

         The hare was equally determined to show up the tortoise in spectacular fashion. “I declare here that in tomorrow’s event,” the hare proclaimed in another pre-race speech, “that I will find those dentures while holding my ears over my eyes! This both makes it harder for me to run and harder for me to see, but is hardly a problem when I’m just facing the tortoise! Hey, where do you find a tortoise with no legs? Where you found it! Ha!” But again, the audience was unimpressed with the speaker’s attempt at humor.

         Once the day of the Great Denture Hunt finally arrived, the tortoise and hare were both fit and ready. A white starting line was painted on the ground for the event just outside the forest, though it wasn’t exactly a race, and there wasn’t a finish line. Still, the two animals crouched down into a ready position for hours, attempting to be more ready than the other one while really just tiring out their legs. Once a sufficient crowd had gathered, a shot went up into the air to signal the beginning of the race, and off they went!

         The great excitement everyone had had for the event quickly deflated as the tortoise inched along backwards too slowly to make up for the wind pushing him back, and the hare simply ran straight into trees over and over because he hadn’t allowed himself to look where he was going. The two animals made this pathetic attempt last until dusk, when a random onlooker spotted the dentures sitting on top of a bush nearby anyway. Everyone stopped the tortoise and the hare and all bets were returned (sorry). The pitiful animals retreated from the public eye at this embarrassment and the queen went on as normal, rewarding the random person who found her teeth with a grand estate in the center of Fantasialand City. And that is how the rivalry between the tortoise and the hare was finally resolved.