if i was a wyrmling - a milk-pale serpent, thick as your arm, gelid venom in my fangs and bitterwinter breath - and you were, say, a loose federation of villages and nomadic bands out where the taiga and the tundra kiss, would you love me? would you bring me hot moose flank? would you feed me goose stew and fill skulls with wine and mead for me? would you heap stones and ram earth and haul stout timbers from miles around to build a temple for me, with a little niche in the wall in which a wyrmling could coil and warm her scales in the glow of the peat-and-mammoth-dung fire youd keep burning for me? would you dance and sing my praises? would you bring me turquoise? and tiger's eye? and dendritic agate? and aquamarine? would you fashion a box for me, of gold and silver and horn and fragrant wood, bedded with fleece, and carry me in it, under the aurora?
