Cerulean Cape crustacean frustration

Dragon was intimately familiar with hunger, with its burn, its ache and its madness... it was only recently that his flesh rose above the hard lines of his ribs, and the jut of his hipbones and spine, concealing them - but only just.  Hunger was not the only suffering that the corsair knew; but it was the root of all of them. All that had been sour in his world was because some wolf had gone hungry. A wolf who attacked and killed their own did so because anger and savagery were born of hunger. A wolf that ate other wolves did so because any flesh was better than death. A mother that killed a weak pup did so so that another may live off the only meager scraps she had to offer. Hunger was awful, and the choices it forced were worse.

But he did not dwell on his past. In this moment he was fully entertained by the tirade that he had pulled from the girl. He received her lecture with a toothy, impish grin that stretched back to his wiggling ears, and with a swishing tail.

"You can roll me over and throw sand on me if you want," he answered, daring her with the drawl of his voice and the gleam in his gold eyes as he ignored her other question.