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The parchment snapped against Celebrimbor’s teeth with an audible twang.
Annatar, standing a discreet distance away, blinked once. Then again.
“He’s not—”
He was.
The Noldorin prince was using his central incisors —disturbingly white and aligned—to pull the tie from a sealed parchment. The tip of his tongue peeked out momentarily to reposition the knot.
Annatar had spent three centuries developing pliers capable of cracking mandibles. Instruments forged from tungsten, honed on the cries of men. And yet here stood Celebrimbor, abusing his dentition like a common peasant cracking nutshells.
“What madness drives you,” Annatar muttered under his breath, “to risk an incisor on a wax-sealed cord?”
But there was no damage. No fracture. Not even a scratch. And it would never be so.
Elvish enamel differed fundamentally from that of Men, Annatar knew it.
While human enamel was composed mostly of inorganic hydroxyapatite crystals interspersed with tiny amounts of organic proteins and bound water, the Eldar possessed a rare and wondrous mineral: silalassë¹.
Ca₁₀(PO₄)₆L₂²
A familiar scaffold — calcium and phosphate, the bones of mortal enamel. Yet where men rely on mundane hydroxide ions to trap water, the Eldar bind light itself... Two units of photonic energy nestled within their crystal lattice, shimmering like captive stars, lending strength nothing could rival.
Not merely a mineral, but a symphony of radiance, for such teeth cannot shatter, cannot decay. Combined with the inner dentin, the result was a dental structure two hundred and twenty-nine times more resistant to stress fractures than that of mortal men.
“Men rot,” Annatar thought, “from the crown down. Their enamel is a desperate shell of minerals clinging to moisture and memory. Hydroxyapatite? What a joke. A crystal so fragile it weeps under acid. One season without care, and it crumbles. However, to break an elf’s tooth, you’d need the scream of a god and a drill with the weight of a dying star.”
And then...
It happened without warning. No herald, no fanfare — and the world, for one suspended, cursed second — stopped.
Celebrimbor smiled.
Not the rare, clipped smirk he gave when things went precisely to plan. Not the dry pull of his mouth when mocking the stupidity of others. This was something different. Earnest, unguarded, while he chatted with... the damned Ereinion who called himself Gil-galad.
To hell with him,
Celebrimbor smiled.
And Annatar felt his knees lock.
He watched attentively tooth 22³. It was slightly more rounded at the distal edge than the others. The upper canines, 13 and 23, flanked like sentinels, proud and unyielding...
He had endured eons of fire, claw, and shadow. He had crafted pain into an art. But nothing had prepared him for this terrifying and immaculate act of dental vulnerability.
He forced himself to look away. He had to. His mind was fraying. His hands itched toward his tools — but not to use them. Not to harm. He wanted to document. To preserve.
To polish, gently.
“I could ruin that smile for Gil-galad,” he thought, with a flicker of ancient malice. “I could invent an acid no enamel could withstand. Strip away his perfect A1⁴ hue until only pulp and cavities remain.”
But the thought curdled even as it formed. The image made his stomach twist in revulsion, in something dangerously like grief. No — worse — like love.
“I would rather fracture myself than his cusp.”
He clenched his jaw until his own canines — longer, sharper, forged for puncture — nearly cracked from the pressure.
Celebrimbor was still talking. Still smiling. Divine architecture. The harmony of form and function.
Perfect Class I⁵ occlusion. Molars' placement aligned with maddening precision. The midline was almost aggressive in its symmetry. And the roots — though hidden beneath the gumline — revealed themselves through the precise angulation of the crowns. Annatar could tell they extended deep, likely twice the length of any mannish tooth. The alveolar bone must brace them like the keystone of a tower.
He had studied Elvish skulls before. Illicitly. Meticulously. But this was different.
This wasn’t anatomy.
This was art.
Teeth capable of tearing parchment — but never to be weaponized.
Not meant for blood. Meant for smiles.
“Your bite alignment,” he said before he could stop himself, voice low. “Is impeccable.”
Celebrimbor blinked, raising an eyebrow. “…Thank you?”
Annatar turned sharply away, feigning interest in the forge’s heat settings — though he heard Gil-galad, somewhere behind him, stage-whispering: “He is such a freak, Tyelperinquar!”
No matter.
Internally, Annatar was already composing notes; his scientific mind was tumultuous. He had to do something.
In the forge, something began to take shape.
He held his monstrous drill — a high-speed handpiece⁶, as he called it — fitted with interchangeable spear-shaped tips made of tungsten and mithril. Originally devised for excising necrotic tissue, his own design could bore through even healthy enamel with ease. A truly sadistic innovation. He could reduce most teeth to fine powder in seconds.
And yet…
Annatar’s mind wandered to Celebrimbor, beautiful Celebrimbor, absentmindedly chewing the corner of his glove, lost in thought.
He looked again at the drill in his hand.
“This is for you, my prince,” he murmured, already sketching a redesign. Not for use. Not like this. Not a weapon.
A toothbrush.
Silver-handled. Soft-bristled. Precision-crafted.
Made only for one.