( Voice, yet his withers. He sees them: the children splayed before them, tender, kind. Curled in his hand, learning the shape of his warmth, chasing his fingertips. Cooing, aggressively. He had not anticipated that young babes of the serpentine kind could — but then, his only example are the feral creatures grown, and Wrathion, spill of his dark scales glistened ominously before him.

Below, a dragon babe nips the fat of his thumb's pad, tears skin. Instinct prevails — he recoils, rescinds his hand. It wakes the second dragon, infuriates a third, and before he knows it, this one gesture of timid reluctance has offended the better part of a clutch. )

We cannot presume they are forever dead only because —

( ...because they seem to him, so. While they tumble by his knee and scratch the heating floor and rub their heads against his thigh, and it does not please him to consider the proposition. )

I have beheld the living dead. ( Here. Among Wei Ying's legions. ) They do not seem... joyous in their resurgence.

( Look at them, he needn't say, because one of the babes is already seeking comfort by Wrathion's side, looking to draw this great big brother into the conflict. )