Today I visited the tunnels where you can hear the serpents hiss and your ears pop.
The form of the long, lithe lizard is a popular one with spirits. Some are descended from the Dragon, some simply find it an expedient shape, but there are serpents and wyrms in nearly every land.
A few songs refer to "Mara and the Serpent in the earth" but none of these songs survives in context. Some suggest the Serpent is the Dragon worshipped to the east, some that he is his own spirit. One speaks of the Serpent "entering the labyrinth" and Mara watching, which may be a fertility metaphor, and Mara finding him again as he rules a kingdom, which she then steals so he cannot escape her again. The explanation of the god's disappearance likely marks this as a relatively late variant.
the Serpent bowed to Dear Mara
she curtsied in return
the seasons passed
as they danced
among the trees and ferns
down sie went into the mountains, into the earth
deeper than sie could ever remember going
down this far, hir head hurt and sie lost track
of where sie began and ended
there was so much sie had not remembered
and hir Mother would only say that sie
had already chosen not to know
deep in the earth are the labyrinths
past the grass snakes and the turnips
past the springy loam and the roots
past the groundwater and the worms