~~~

  “Hush you daft fool!” Wyrmwood’s tail hissed at him. He was confused how she was talking to him without moving her mouth… in a way to make words, that is. The inside of her mouth never seemed to fully stop wriggling in some way.

  “We are of one body now, you dummy!” She snapped at him, both in his mind and her physical tail-mouth.

  “Stop answering me before I even say anything!” Wyrmwood complained petulantly in his mind.

  It wasn’t specifically words, he could feel ideas, images, and even emotions being passed between him and… someone else.

  His tail groaned in annoyance, but at the very least stopped talking.

  “Now, who are you?” Wyrmwood tried to start again.

  His tail rose up above him, the insectile proboscis fully extending out from the mouth well past his tail’s natural cone shape, almost like a lance, as two very fluffy antennae seemed to grow right out of the tail’s flesh, gently pushing his (their?) scales aside right behind the ridge where the incredibly hard tail tip met draconic scale and flesh!

  “I am her royal highness, Queen Veronica of the Buzzing Bog!” She proclaimed regally. Her voice ringing through his head was comparable to a velociraptor being eaten by a swarm of wasps.

  “At least, I was going to be.” She grumbled, her voice moving back down to that of a lizard and a few flies.

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  “Then you had to go and get yourself killed. You’re incredibly lucky that not only are you kin of the Bog, but that I also happened to be using you as a host at the time!”

  “Kin of the Bog? Wait, you were living inside of me?!” Wyrmwood was greatly disturbed!

  For all of his still brief life had thought that his bulging tail end was just another strangeness about him, another deformity added to the pile he already had.

  As he fully re-examined the end of his tail, he finally noticed that the strange bulge was gone, his body now uniformly slender all the way to the end.

  “It’s a bit of a technicality, but you were born from the bog, so you’re kin. No matter how much of a pain you’ve been for me.” She hedged with a grumble.

  “What do you mean by ‘got yourself killed’?” Wyrmwood asked next. “I’m alive now aren’t I?” Retracting the sharp proboscis, his tail promptly smacked him on the head. “OW!!”

  “You’re only alive now because I basically gave you mine!” Veronica snapped at him in annoyance. “If you had just lived long enough for my gestation to finish I would have emerged as an unstoppable queen!”

  “Emerged?” Wyrmwood looked at his tail with a cautious grimace. “Like, out of my flesh?”

  “… you would have survived it! …probably.” Veronica mumbled the last part in his mind.

  There was an awkward silence in the moving cage, the only sound being that of the heavy wheels beneath turning and the ‘clip clop’ sound of the centaur outside.

  “Look, I’ve just regained consciousness and we appear to be trapped by humanoids and are being taken somewhere. Let’s just focus on that for now, okay? I don’t really know how to feel about one of my body parts suddenly speaking to me.” Wyrmwood tried with a feeling of growing frustration.

  In all honesty, he had been tempted more than once already to bite the source of the rude voice. Veronica clearly didn’t yet understand that the position of queen meant nothing to a prideful dragon! But biting his own tail sounded both useless and embarrassing! He would not succumb to such demeaning behavior! As a dragon he was above such-

  “You’re not even going to thank me?!” Veronica whined.

  ~~~

  When the procession came to a halt, one of the guards glanced into the cage to find the strange Wyrm gnawing on the end of its tail.

  Turning to their leader they asked, “are you sure this thing is intelligent, princess?

  ~~~