chimera ovenbird If a lamprey and a python and an oyster and a stained glass window had a baby, it might look something like the thing my sleeping mind conjured in the hours before dawn. I found it in the living room of a house in a foreign country. It was hunting crabs that scuttled over the stone floor. Its body was a thick rope of muscle, twelve feet long, covered in magnolia pink mother-of-pearl scales that swung like the sails of a thousand wind chimes, making a dull music whenever it moved. It reared up, cobra-like, its mouth a circle of parasitic teeth, and lunged down upon its prey, the scales clattering on the floor. I watched this terrible, beautiful thing eat a meal of chitin and dust and wondered how it managed not to shatter its iridescent armour. How do any of us keep ourselves intact, when we must smash our bodies into the unforgiving earth for the chance to drag ourselves into another day? 260330 what's it to you? who go blather from