“You know the garden of the Hesperides?” she asked me.

“With the nymphs and the golden apples of immortality?” I replied.

“Yeah,” she said. “And the apples are supposed to be guarded by this hundred-headed snake/dragon thing.”

“Ladon,” I said, nodding. “Yeah.”

“I don’t think he’d be a very effective deterrent,” she said. “I mean, if the apples make you immortal, you just have to get one of them and you’re set for life, right? Very long life.”

“I don’t know if they worked that way,” I said. “I think maybe you had to keep eating them or something.”

“Well, that’s not forbidden apples of immortality,” she said. “That’s forbidden apples of living slightly longer. Anyway, if the apples did make you immortal, I don’t think a giant serpent would be the way to go.”

“Oh? And what would you propose instead?”

“Instead of a hundred-headed snake?” she said. “How about a hundred worms?”

“Worms?” I repeated.

“Yeah, worms,” she said. “You know that old joke, ‘What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?’”

“Finding half of a worm,” I said.

“Yeah, and what would be worse than that?”

“Tell me,” I said.

“Finding half a worm in your apple and realizing that it’s going to be alive forever,” she said.

“Ew,” I said.

(Source: fantasyinminiature.com)