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