They’re my children, of course!
The claim that I cannot create anything of my own is outrageous, and absolutely typical of the lies they tell about me… I have loins, don’t I? I have my own “flame imperishable” within my breast, and that may be propagated the way most life is propagated! Tsch.
My kin and their pet elves will tell you I can only twist life in a mockery of Eru’s Children– that’s their clever way of phrasing things so they don’t have to admit or record the things they’re too squeamish to accept. They don’t like to think that maybe their ancestors, or the ancestors of Men, or indeed some of their favorite Ainur, might have copulated with the “great foe of the world”.
Oh, what stories I could tell them, if they’d listen; I’ve some tales that would upset more than one marriage bed in Valinor.
To answer your question: my dragons were not designed, they were born. I didn’t shape them out of clay. There was no progression from one to another, like gradually perfected recipe– hah! Since the beginning of Arda, was there ever a time I worked in such a tame, linear fashion?
Each of my dragons came from a different mate, if you’re wondering why they are so different from each other. Glaurung was my first to hatch, and he did not have wings because, I suppose, wings were not among the traits supplied him by Nature. Given his parentage, I’m not surprised; he was clearly made for water… It’s a shame that we are so at odds with all the powers of the Sea. I would have liked to see my golden chick swim as he was meant to, a terror upon the coasts, churning the waves with his tail…
From experience I can tell you that my own supply of inheritable characteristics is vast and unpredictable– for I am vast and unpredictable, am I not? I can be so many things… or, I could be, in the days when I could still change shape like mercury with barely a thought. So of course my children are variable and diverse. Some you’d barely recognize as being the same species as one another; some do not match even themselves from one side to the other! That is their beauty, their strength. They adapt, they are opportunistic, they can survive in any hostile, desolate, forgotten scrap of earth they dig their claws into. They do not fade from sorrow or wither for lack of beauty; they gain strength from their hurts, they take pride in their scars, their asymmetry.
That is something my kin have never appreciated, and their pretty, boring elves will never tolerate. This is why I’ve had to kill so many of them– who doesn’t want a better, safer world for themselves and their children?
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 