Just as she was.
She plodded through the mud to join them. She was hungry, but she scarcely noticed that anymore. She had been constantly hungry since the day she hatched from her case. Today she’d been fed seven fish, large if not fresh, and one bird. The bird had been stiff. Sometimes she dreamed of meat that was warm and limp with the blood still running. It was only a dream now. The hunters were seldom able to find large game close by; when they did get a marsh elk or a riverpig, the creatures had to be chopped into pieces before they could be transported back to the dragons. And the dragons seldom got the best parts of the beasts. Bones and guts and hide, tough shanks and horned heads, but seldom the hump from a riverpig’s back or the meat-rich hind haunch of a marsh elk. Those parts went to the humans’ tables. The dragons were left with the scraps and offal like stray dogs begging outside a city’s gate.
The boggy ground sucked at her feet each time she lifted them and her tail seemed permanently caked with mud. The land here suffered as much as the dragons did; it never had a chance to harden and heal. All the trees that bordered the clearing were showing the effects of the dragons’ residence. The lower trunks were scarred and scraped. Dragons scratching vermin from their skin had eroded bark from some of the trees, and the roots of others had been exposed by the traffic of clawed feet. She had overheard the humans worrying that even trees with trunks the size of towers would eventually die from such treatment. And what would happen when such a tree fell? The humans had somewhat wisely moved their homes out of the treetops of the affected trees. But didn’t they realize that if one of the trees fell, it would doubtless crash through the branches of neighboring trees? Humans were stupider than squirrels in that regard.
Only in the summer months did the muddy beach approach a level of firmness that made walking less strenuous. In winter, the smaller dragons struggled to lift their feet high enough to walk. At least they had struggled. Most of them had died off last winter. She thought of that with regret. She had anticipated each of the weaklings dying and had been swift enough, twice, to fill her belly with their meat and her mind with their memories. But they were all gone now, and barring accidents or disease, her mates looked as if they would survive the summer.
She approached the huddled mass of dragons. That was not right. Serpents slept so, tangled and knotted together beneath the waves lest the currents of the ocean sweep them apart and scatter them. Most of her serpent memories now were dimmed, as was appropriate. She had no need of them in this incarnation. She had been Sisarqua in that life. But that was not who she was now. Now she was Sintara, a dragon, and dragons did not sleep huddled together like prey.
Not unless they were crippled, useless, weakling things, little better than moving meat. She approached the sleeping creatures and shouldered her way into them. She stepped on Fente’s tale, and the little green wretch snapped at her. At her, but not scoring her skin. Fente was vicious, but not stupidly so. She knew that the first time she actually bit Sintara was the last time she’d bite anything. “You’re in my spot,” Sintara warned her, and Fente clapped her tail close to her side.