Once upon a time, there were a prince and two princesses who lived in a castle. One time, the youngest princess-who was darling, precocious and very well spoken for her age-had a tooth that was loose. It was an upper tooth, just next to her eye tooth. In her mind this was a critical stage in her growing up because, her older royal siblings had a full complement of front teeth, having lost the most important ones which lined their smile long ago. Now it was her turn.
There was just one problem: the tooth would not come out, no matter how she tugged at it or wiggled it. Thus her smile was lopsided and, honestly, a bit pitiful and that was one thing she couldn't tolerate: looking pitiful.
Testing that tooth with her finger, the eldest princess--a cute, serious young royal with a wacky streak--concluded, "Yep. It's not coming out any time soon. Stuck there like a bad piece of bubble gum under the desk."
"Oh no!" cried the youngest, stomping her right foot. "That's it. I'm not going to be in any portraits and attend any galas then. I look weird and they are boring anyway."
The eldest princess and the prince--a handsome and clever lad--tried with no success to convince her that it wasn't such a big deal, but the young princess had a bit of a stubborn streak and when she was convinced, she was convinced.
Sitting on the edge of the princess's bed, the prince sat deep in thought. After a while, he looked around the room, which had a high bed, dresser, mirror, a sitting area and vases filled with fresh blooms and said, "What we need is leverage."
"What?" said the eldest and the two of them had a quick head-to-head conference of whispered words. When they were finished, the eldest grabbed the young princess's shoulders and moved her to the middle of the room. Meanwhile, the prince extracted a long piece of yarn from the knitting basket in the sitting area. Holding one end, he pulled open the ornate door that marked the entrance the youngest's bedroom, then tied the line of yarn to the door's lion's head handle and stretched it to the youngest's right ear, where, with a quick snip of scissors extracted from some vest pocket, cut it.
The young princess looked on all of this with growing suspicion, especially when the prince told her to open her mouth wide "like a yawn" "What are you going to do?"
"Well," said the royal prince, in his best imitation of their tutor's voice, "The tooth won't come out. It is stuck in there like a green twig on a tree. We can get it out, but we need to pull harder. So we'll tie this string to your tooth and then your sister will slam the door like she does when she's really mad. Then, 'Pop!' it will pull the tooth right out of there."
"Won't it hurt?" she asked, doubtfully.
"Just for a sec. Like taking off a band-aid." said the eldest princess.
"Yeah." said the prince helpfully. "Or a bee sting!"
"You are not helping." pouted the youngest. Then, with resolve, she said "But let's do it. I want to move this tooth regrowth thing along so I am closer to my beautiful smile and less like a lop-sided goblin."
So the prince tied the yarn to the loose tooth, positioned her so that the line was tense and then nodded to the eldest, who stood next to the door. He counted "1, 2 and....3" and she slammed the door with the force of a hurricane. The line went taut and then slack as the tooth flew from her mouth, bounced off the floor, the desk, dresser, chandelier and her sister before finally coming to rest in a candy dish. The prince walked over and wiped the newly extracted tooth with a tissue and then held it aloft, "Behold, the tooth!"
It was only then that he noticed the eldest was holding her face, where a welt was growing red on her forehead. "Hey, no fair biting." she grumped.
"Ahhh, sorry." said the younger. "I'll get you an ice cream." she said, and hugged her sister.
"Hey, what about me?" asked the prince.
"Oh, you can have some too!"
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