Lack of caffeine induced headaches

Now, at twenty-three, she was a licensed junior necromancer operating out of a converted crypt just outside the sleepy village of Wyrmley-on-Fen. Her skeletons were… mostly cooperative. They sometimes fetched the wrong tools, occasionally wandered off to lie in flowerbeds, and once attempted to unionize under a passing paladin, but overall, they were manageable. 

Or, they had been. Until this morning.

Tamsin yawned her way through the crypt’s front arch, cup of steaming chicory root in hand, and nearly tripped over a picket sign. 

The sign, scrawled in charcoal across a plank of coffin wood, read: NO TEETH, NO PEACE.

She blinked, then looked up. 

Twenty-seven skeletons stood arrayed before her in ragged but determined formation, bones clacking slightly in the morning mist. One had a daisy stuck between its ribs. Another wore a tiny crocheted hat. All of them held signs. 

BONE RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS DENTAL BENEFITS OR WE WALK (AGAIN) UNDEAD LABOR, UNDEAD POWER

At their head stood Ossric, the first skeleton she ever raised. He was a lanky specimen with a distinctive gold tooth jammed into his upper jaw, possibly posthumously. He wore a badge on his sternum that read U.L.B. in proud letters.

“Uhhh,” said Tamsin, quite eloquently. “What the hell is this?”

Ossric stepped forward and bowed stiffly at the waist. “Ms. Graves. As of this morning, we– the Unliving Labor Brotherhood– are formally on strike.” 

“You’re dead,” she pointed out. “You don’t have labor.” 

“Incorrect,” Ossric said, and tapped a clipboard against his femur for emphasis. “Our collective productivity has kept your crypt maintained, your garden weeded, and your raven fed. We also assembled that IKEA bookshelf. Twice.”

“Only because the first time you did it upside-down.”

“We were untrained. Which brings us to our demands.”

Tamsin took a slow sip of chicory and stared. “You want… dental?”

“It is a matter of dignity.”

“You don’t have gums.”

“We are well aware. That’s part of the problem.”

Tamsin stormed back inside, robes flapping behind her. She slammed the crypt door shut and leaned against it, heart hammering.

The crypt’s interior looked like a craft store had lost a fight with a haunted museum. Bone polish cluttered the workbench beside a steaming cauldron of laundry potion. A disembodied foot hopped by in search of its skeleton. A book labeled “Emergency Disenchantment Procedures” held up her wobbly table leg.

Her apprentice crow, Crumble, cawed judgmentally from atop a rune-etched shelf.

“Oh, shut it,” she muttered, pacing past cauldrons and bone polish. “They’re dead! This is not supposed to happen. I followed the Handbook to the letter. No free will past animation. No political consciousness. No–”

She froze.

On her cluttered workbench, half-buried under receipts and grave-dirt smudged scrolls, sat a slim red pamphlet titled Your Rights as a Reanimated Worker: A Manifesto.

With a shaking hand, she flipped it open.

Reanimated beings may retrain residual autonomy if necromantic bindings are insufficiently reinforced during the full moon cycle. Symptoms include:

Asking questions

Independent movement

Political organizing

Demanding health benefits

There was also a cartoon skeleton giving a thumbs-up, with the caption: Organize or Agonize! 

“Damn it,” Tamsin whispered. “That stupid waxing moon.” 

Outside, the protesters had begun chanting: 

“WHAT DO WE WANT?” “TEETH!” “WHEN DO WE WANT THEM?” “NOW!”

By midmorning, Tamsin sat at her worktable while Ossric stood on the opposite side, a bone-dry negotiator with his phalanges neatly folded behind his back.

Between them sat a magical contract, glowing faintly with binding runes and scribbled in impeccable skeletal penmanship. The parchment smelled faintly of grave dust and roses; one of the skeletons, Tamsin noted bitterly, had apparently gotten into her enchanted potpourri drawer again.

“I still think this is insane,” she muttered, dipping her quill into ink. “You don’t even have nerves. What would you do with dental benefits?”

Ossric didn’t blink– he couldn’t– but he tilted his skull at a proud angle. “We believe in preparing for the future. If restorative dentistry becomes magically available, we wish to be included. Furthermore, some of us would like dentures for aesthetic reasons.” 

“I raised a fashion-forward army,” she grumbled. “Of course I did.” 

She skimmed the contract. Terms included:

One hour break per every six hours of labor

A rotating schedule of oil baths and calcium fortification

Access to magical dental benefits (and restorative dentistry, should it become available)

A grievance procedure (to be overseen by a neutral third-party lich) 

Skelly Karaoke every Thursday

Right to decorate bones seasonally so long as the decorations are biodegradable

At the bottom, a note had been added in childlike handwriting: Also, we want soup sometimes. Just to smell it. - Ribsy.

Tamsin groaned. “Fine. Fine! I’ll sign it, but if I end up in front of the Board of Necromantic Ethics again, I’m blaming you.” 

Ossric produced a quill with a flourish. “Deal.”

As soon as she signed, the contract flared gold and vanished in a puff of legally binding smoke. Outside, the picket line broke into spontaneous applause. A few skeletons tossed their protest signs in the air, one of which promptly caught fire.

“Great,” Tamsin said. “Now I’m a union boss.”

The next week was… weirdly peaceful.

Now that they were officially off strike, the skeletons got back to work, more cheerfully than before. They cleaned the ossuary with impressive speed, repaired the cracked western tomb wall, and even alphabetized her cursed scrolls. (Mostly.)

Morale was high. Bone polish shone. The crypt smelled faintly of soup. The skeletons began expressing themselves, too. One skeleton started bringing wildflowers in its ribcage every morning. Another, clearly emboldened, began writing undead haiku on scraps of tomb parchment. Even Crumble stopped sulking and began perching on Ossric’s shoulder like a tiny feathered supervisor.

Tamsin had to admit it: they were working better.

Still, something about the dental clause nagged at her. Ossric wasn’t the type to insist on a demand without reason.

One night, she found him perched on a gravestone, staring up at the moon.

“You’re serious about the teeth,” she said, sitting beside him.

He nodded, creaking faintly. “When I was alive, I was a cobbler. Made shoes so fine even the lord’s son wore them. But I had a terrible toothache for years. Couldn’t afford a healer. Died before I ever got it fixed.”

Tamsin blinked. “Wait. You remember that?”

“Not clearly. Just… echoes. Hurts that linger in the bone.”

He turned toward her, and though his eye sockets were empty, his voice was soft.

“You gave us a second life. We just want it to hurt less than the first.”

Tamsin swallowed. “Okay. Okay, we’ll find you some teeth.”

Tamsin had made many poor decisions in her short career; once animating a chicken skeleton by mistake (it now nested in her sock drawer), once summoning a minor bone demon who wouldn’t stop redecorating. But seeking out the Ivory Market? That ranked near the top.

Hidden beneath the old catacombs of Spindlewick, the Ivory Market was less a marketplace and more a den of magical oddities, half-legal relics, and dealers who’d sell you your own shadow back, refurbished.

Tamsin stepped carefully past a booth selling cursed molars (“whispers at night!”) and paused at a crooked tent labeled:

GRIN & BARE IT - Dentures for the Deceased

The proprietor was a banshee in readers’ glasses, polishing a set of fangs. 

“Looking for teeth?” she asked, her voice more librarian than wailing ghost.

“Yes,” Tamsin said. “For a skeleton. Twenty-seven, actually.”

The banshee blinked. “Oh, honey. Bulk order?”

“Union dental,” Tamsin said tiredly.

“Say no more.”

It took four enchanted contracts, a soul-backed promissory note, and a semi-legal trade of one very cursed femur, but Tamsin left with a bag of magical dentures: customizable, snap-fit, and enchantment-safe.

The moment she returned to the crypt, the skeletons gathered around like children on Hearthfeast morning.

Ossric reached out first, holding the denture case with reverent fingers.

“They’re yours,” she said. “All of yours.”

One by one, the skeletons clicked in their new teeth. Some chose neat rows of pearly whites. Others went with tusks, gold-capped canines, or artistic flair. Ribsy picked a set of novelty fangs that sparkled when he grinned.

And when the last denture clicked into place, something changed.

The air shimmered faintly. The bones glowed. The whole crypt filled with a hum like a tuning fork struck just right.

A side effect of granting dignity, perhaps.

Or maybe just a job well done.

Ossric turned to her and, in a slightly less raspy voice, said: “We are grateful, Mistress Graves.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, blinking moisture from her eyes. “Now get back to work. Those tomb wards aren’t going to reinforce themselves.”

The skeletons saluted.

And that night, for the first time in her life, Tamsin dreamed not of darkness or debt collectors, but of a bone-deep warmth, and a row of smiling teeth.

Even if most of them glowed in the dark.

And the original image, ofc ( ◠‿◠ )