FYI -- I'm buried under a pile of work, but I'll have the new challenge up shortly.

Which mythical creature was it whose teeth, if sown in a fertile field, grew into monsters?

Cadmus slew a dragon, and sowed its teeth in the ground, on orders from the gods. The teeth sprang up into warriors, who attacked each other; when only the toughest five were left alive, Cadmus nursed them back to health and led them in founding Greece.

That's the only teeth = seeds = something other than a plant story in my repertoire, but I'm sure there are others. (Actually, there's Momotaro, where a baby is born from a peach pit, but there aren't any teeth to start that story.)

That's the one I was thinking of Nutty. I haven't read any mythology in such a long time, I'd forgotten the particulars.

Yep, Cadmus. I mentally pegged the metaphor as a negative, possibly because I first heard it as a kid, and it struck me as horrific: something that couldn't be killed, that if you planted dead bits of it, things grew.

Isn't it weird, how things transpose in our heads, and stay that way?

Just so, deb, just so.

If plants I'd planted turned out to bear weapons and yell and chop at things, I would call that monstrous. (I don't know why they attacked each other instead of Cadmus; and while there is the overall positive outcome of founding Greece, I think there's plenty of potential for ugly subtext in the course of the story.)

And then there is the hydra, with the whole "cut off one head, and get two back!" I think they could only be worse if each decapitated head grew a whole new body, so by the end you were fighting 100 hydras. Actually, I am sure a video game somewhere has created just such a scenario.

Nutty, I do remember reading the hydra myth at about aged 12 or so, and wondering "Why didn't they just get flamethrowers?"

Man, I love metaphors, even when they bite my arse.

....and 9 hours later, I finally follow through on my promise of a new topic:

Challenge #50 (describe someone through the contents of their desk/wallet/etc.) is now closed.

Challenge #51 is 2 simple words, on a not-so-simple topic: heaven and hell.

t edit You don't necessarily need to take the "and" literally -- it could also be "heaven OR hell." As always, up to all y'all.

Oh, jebus, Tep. You're trying to kill me...

Okay, very deep breath. This one is very hard to write.
-------

Heaven is the gentleness. The security. The way he rocks me. It is, "Quit your job. Follow your dreams. I'm here," and "Go to sleep, baby," at 2AM, face still wet from nightmare tears. Heaven is knowing I never have to doubt or distrust or second-guess.

Hell is 200 days a year by myself. Never having a date to a wedding. Loneliness. It is, "So where is he this week?" and not knowing the answer. It is sleeping diagonally in the bed and listing my mother as my first emergency contact. Hell is knowing the heaven may not be enough.