The Tooth Collector

PART ONE - Chapter One

I've heard tales of regressed sharks, and frankly, I don't believe that they are false. Like every other pup, we were told fairytales to fall asleep every night. 'They are simply fairytales,' we were told, but not too long ago I discovered that they weren't myths after all.

It began when I was just a pup, small and fragile, new to the grand, dangerous sea world. Unlike most pups, I loved to explore. It must've been the thrill of discovering something new that made me want to. As much as the others warned me, the ocean didn't scare me. I saw it as a map to explore.

"Finnley, where are you going?" My mother asked as I began to swim out of my family's cave. We had resided there my entire life, I had known nothing but the small underground chamber.

"To go hangout with some friends." I replied.

"Which ones?"

"Bobby." I lied.

"Oh! How delightful." She exclaimed.

My mother loved Bobby. Everyone did. I mean, who wouldn't? He was charismatic, respectful and a good listener. At least, that's how he seemed. Bobby was a character for sure, he enjoys tormenting others who seemed weak to him. Me, for example. Of course, I was not going to visit or abide with Bobby, but rather to scout the coral reef. I ventured out, treading to a spot I inspected to fish for ancient shark and other sea creature bones. I never found too many, and if so, they were never too old. I always dreamed of finding prehistoric bones.

After not long gliding in and out of limestones, I reached my destination. It was a small compact sandy area under limestone, far from any caves or seamounts. Sure, some sharks chose to sleep on the floor, but there was no ground space around the location to fit a sleeping shark, at least not a great white. Those were primarily the ones I worried about finding me in my special place.

I stuffed my snout into the sand, digging around for something special, something different. Of course there was hope, but not enough to bum me out if I didn't find anything. I hardly did, and when I did it was just the same stuff that everyone else found.

After a few minutes of shoveling, my snout hit something hard, sharp even. I scooped my nose under it and lifted it above the sand for me to study, and felt my eyes widen. After years of searching for something, anything special, I had finally found something. I scooted it out from under the limestone and into the light, so I could see it more clearly. It was a tooth. Bigger than one is usually. I estimated my tooth to be barely an inch. But the fang sitting in front of me must've been around five times my tusk size. I stashed it back into the limestone and buried it up with a thin layer of sand, that way I could find it easily whenever I needed to.

A couple days later I returned to the fang. The journey to my secret location was okay. It was just the same limestones and coral reefs I passed nearly every day to go to it, but something caught my eye. It was a light reflecting off of something in the sand, just beside a limestone. The light nearly blinded me at first, but as I swam closer, I noticed that it wasn't the usual spec of glass or shiny rock. It was another tooth! If possible, it was larger than the one before, with a scratch across it from the middle left to the bottom right. I lifted it up with my snout and began to venture carefully to my special place, balancing it almost perfectly before I was stopped.

"Hey! Whatcha got there?" I'd recognized that voice from anywhere. Bobby. His voice was squeaky, as if he were just entering puberty. It cracked a lot, and it definitely didn't help with the fact that he almost always tried to deepen his voice.

"Nothing." I tried to dodge him with the molar staying stable on my snout. He began to slide off of the left side of my snout, but with an abrupt shift, the tooth slid back to between my hazel green eyes.