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WHERE IS MY QUEEN?

Thwack-thwack.

I fly through the wind-driven snow.

Straight toward the scream.

A dark shadow in the forest.

Then I see it up ahead.

My God.

I close my wings and coast down to the forest floor.

I crouch here on my scaly green haunches in the snow, gaping at it.

The shiny chamber.

It’s shrouded in insanely thick vines. And a wall of dense thorny brush has grown up all around it. But if you know what you’re looking at, you can still make it out through all the undergrowth.

The chamber with the clear door.

A relic from a different era.

My early years were a succession of arrivals and exits through this door.

Back when I had been claw and fang and wing, nothing more.

I snort firebolts out my nostrils.

My very first lair.

After all these years, it is still here.

Where is my Queen?