Here's the trick to shuffling cards,
Lacking claws or bones or hearts:
Shroud them in the air you breathe
Mist that settles, tides that seethe

Spirit of all things unseen,
Long she walked in forests green,
Mountains tall and grim and gray,
Luring wanderers astray

...

'Till came a prince beside a lake
Who paid no mind to ghostly tricks
Cared he not for bright illusions
(Blood is thin and water thick)

When the prince began to sing
She heard him well, though ears she lacked
In his lungs she sat as smoke
And from within, she answered back

She said, "Dragon! Why this song,
So melancholy from your voice?
Would that I had such a tongue!
I'd steal your own, if I'd the choice."

"Woe," said he, "I'd give it freely!
Take my tongue, all flesh besides!
Mortal life is heavy-laden,
I've no use for dragon-hide.

What freedom have you, thing of void,
No expectations, fear, or shame!"
"Ah," said she, "But life unseen,
Unheard, unanswered, weighs the same!"

So they spoke and laughed and argued,
So, in time, they grew to love,
So he fled his gold and silver,
Spirit, dragon, hand-in-glove.

Now at last they've met a tailor-
One to sew a dragon-form,
So the two at last may touch
And something different might be born

For now two spirits more they've found,
Where indigo devours red.
Father. Son. Idea instilled.
"Mother I will be!" she said.

Here's the trick to even stitches,
Lacking claws or hearts or bones:
Spin the cloth from words of promise,
Where the water writhes and foams.

---

Papa came below the sea
To sew a son of silk and thread
"Flowers fair in hue he'll be!
Full of love, and equal dread."

Not meat nor muscle had his kin,
Nor nerve or bone or claw or scale,
Wind and echoes were their skin,
Dust and silence, head to tail.

"Such lonely life, to walk unseen!"
His jaws unraveled, mouth agape.
"I'll knit my children into being,
That they may hide in dragon's shape!"

So here a hundred sons he looms,
A dozen daughters he crochets,
Family he never knew,
Stitched a myriad of ways.

But some among his children find
No fabric to them can be pinned.
These silent kin, void given mind,
Are left to drift in tide and wind.

The Crew below will judge them not;
Among them they are well at home:
Children some to glitch and god,
Lying kings and ocean-foam.

Papa came below the sea
To sew a son of thread and silk
"None can watch what they can't see!
We'll guard you from the angler's ilk."