No chewing. No crunch. The field does not remember how to eat. Vin’nyla kneels in the sugar corn ruins, mouth dry. The air tastes of phantom enamel.
VIN’NYLA (soft, disturbed): No teeth. Not even a molar in the dirt. Just silence between the split stalks. Just absence with roots. The chewing sheds sit hollow. Denture presses mid-bite. Drawers sterilized, but empty. No incisor, no bite-right, no lineage left to grind. Once— This was sacred. Gum from cow. Tooth from kin. Bite as offering. Gnash as inheritance. Now? Just a tremble in the jaw of the earth. The air ripples. Like wet chalk on velvet. And I arrive. No name. No need. I sit in the old circle. Symbols drip from me like wisdom teeth unspooled in sleep. Plaque fog, vowel-leak, root canal shimmer. They ask. Naked gums. Eyes wide. “Why have the teeth gone?” And I answer: “No teeth. Then tongue.” (SFX: low gum-pulse, flesh folding inward, taste bud drone.) And so it begins. Gums ripple. Tongues Convulse. A molar rises beneath someone’s sternum. A canine unfurls behind a knee. Someone chews light. Someone chews guilt. Someone chews sound. By morning, the attic grinds. By dusk, the wells mutter vowels. The villagers listen from behind curtains, sipping broth, devout and afraid. [image: snoteeth2024-10-13 17.05.57.jpg] VIN’NYLA (whispers): If no teeth, then what? Then tongue. Then chewing again. >From sky. From socket. >From deep inside the self. >From the parts that forgot how to bite. They thought teeth were the instrument. But the body remembers hunger in stranger ways. Vin’nyla does not feed. S/he awakens the jaw. – http://thevisitors.jeron.org/
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