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You would never let go of me.
When the talk is of dragons, few seem to grasp the full concept of them. The sheer force. How, once you have ridden one, it will ride you. If you are not careful, if you don't keep balanced, if you panic, it will ride you to death. Drive you mad.
It isn't the dragons fault, at heart. It is what it is. The spirit of rivers are not to be meddled with.
When the talk is of rivers, few seem to grasp the full concept of them. How unstoppable their flow is. And how many kinds of rivers there are. Apart from those on the outside of your perception, those who stream from the mountains to flow through your city, and swell and overflow their banks during spring rain showers, there are those on the inside. Where images form, and ideas, and deep dark terrifying and wonderful things that can't even be named.
They flow where they please, and mix the Inside with that laughably frail human consensus called 'reality'.
They will flood you, these rivers, and make you breed creation. Their love is harsh, brutal, deep and overwhelming. They will impregnate you without mercy, and you give birth again and again.
It isn't the fault of the river if you can't take it. It is what it is. Only if you try to stem its flow will you be drowned.
There is no saying 'no' to that water. Not once you have said yes. And perceived those things in its depths which will irreversibly make you belong to it, and make those who don't understand smile nervously at you and whisper behind your back.
When I got older, I panicked, once, because of those whispers. I tried to stem up the river, and you flowed over me and wrapped yourself around me, and we sank. I could sense your deep, vast sadness even as your dark waters filled me. They call it 'depression', but some of us know better: It is the bad spell that feeds from people who forget their own name.
It was still water. Stinking mud. A thorn in the soul. Bored, malevolent monsters live at the bottom of such waters.
I remembered my first job in the bathing house. I gave up denying, and pulled the thorn out, and you renamed me. The mud proved fertile. Green growth sprung from it, long and waving as my hair. And as you flowed through me again, you played with it the same way.
I wonder if I would have made the promise if I had known, initially. I was such a young thing. Well, so did you appear to be, but you were a dragon; in reality you were ancient. As I grew, so would you, and the true vastness of your desire would reveal itself. Creation demands blood, and innocence lost.
But I think I knew.
And I still said yes.
And you. You would never let go of me.