You have emerged from your delirium, and you have just recieved your first solid food in a full solid week.
This morning, the young kyanite-blue dragon-whelp named Dizzy-tail--who has been taking care of you as you lie broken and ill at the bottom of this wild ravine--had brought in a small pig-carcass before kiting back off to receive instruction from his elders.
Too hungry to be ashamed, you hold the carcass in your big, green, scaly forepaws, and you you gently tear its abdomen just far enough, plunging your snout in. Oh, is that vegetable matter? It had become almost alien to your palate, but now it tastes so good, better since the pig's digestion has softened it for you, reducing it to a fine porridge. It's warm, so warm, so warm. Such a kindness it is to eat.
You wonder, for one wistful moment, if you might start missing Dizzy's crop-milk, which he had begun force-feeding you during a fevered coma days after you fell ill. You recall it having an oddly citrus sort of flavor, and it was incredibly sticky and hot.
With that thought in mind, you realize that you could grow accustomed to eating pig-guts, and as the slippery organs slide down your gullet, you realize that you might manage to get hooked on them.
Ooh, you just found the liver. Dear Artemis, bless her.
Still feeling very weak, you crawl over to the clear, shallow stream that cuts through the ravine. The still water reflects back your own crystal-green visage, a strange chimera of horse, lion, eagle and reptile. A dragon's muzzle. What you have become.
{{Is it really me?}} you think to yourself, trying to cloak your thoughts the way Dizzy told you to. {{Are YOU my reflection?}} you ask it. {{Are you real?}} You look intently into those bestial eyes, and they look back at you, unanswering. {{Who are you?}} you whisper wretchedly, getting no answer. You splash your forepaw into the water, and the image shatters as you wade slowly into the cool, clear stream.
Swimming for a while does you some good, and you spend much of the day paddling about in the water, finding that dragons have no difficulty holding their own in the water. You have fun for a while grabbing fistfuls of little pebbles in your hindpaws, which are oddly far more dexterous than your forepaws. You try tossing them out of the water, and you watch the stones sail through the air over your head, glittering in the light, and then, for a while, you decide to wade into the shallows and roll around in them on your back, grinding and rubbing your scales as you writhe comfortably.
At about the time that the sun has climbed far enough into the sky to permit direct light shining into the ravine, you climb out onto the bank to sun yourself dry. You find yourself feeling very much better, and you lie there for a long while, absorbing the rays of the sun through the soft, whitish-gray underbelly that stretches from your throat to your tail. Now, this feels very good.
{{Draconium genetrix! You can't just eat the innards!}} Dizzy scolds you in your thoughts. Your eyes pop open as the downdraft from his wings blows over you, and the young dragon thuds to a landing, with a skid, next to where you had left the carcass. He looks back at you sort of exasperatedly. {{Were you really thinking of leaving this?}}
You turn over and stand up as he arrives, and you look at him guiltily. {{I still didn't have much of an appetite}} you say, truthfully enough. {{I was thinking of finishing it}} you add timidly; this part's a lie.
He drops his head to the side with a sigh. {{If you are not going to finish your carcass}} he lectures {{then you should take it well away from your source of water, preferably far downstream of you, and try to bury it. Have you been swimming in that stream with a carcass lying this close to the bank? If it had had time to start to rot, then sickness would have been leeching into the very water you have been bathing in, and you would never have smelled it or sensed it. You would have just gotten sick all over again}}.
You lower your head, ashamed. {{I don't know about these things}} you pout.
Instead of being sympathetic, he shakes his head in disbelief. {{No, nonono, this is basic home-training}} he groans. {{Did you just live like an animal as a human?}}
{{We had trash cans}} you say sullenly, {{with water-proof liners, synthesized from petroleum products, that would then be tied tightly shut and tossed into a covered plastic bin, and trash pick-up service, paid for in the same bill as your water, would come to haul it away every week. Most of us have never lived in a primitive camp without so much as a lean-to before}}.
{{Lean-to? Like primitive kobolds?}} he asks, picking up the meaning out of your thoughts. He shakes his head and gestures for you to hush. {{Nevermind}} he says gently {{just come over here, and help me finish off this carcass while the meat is still safe to eat. Come on, now cheer up}}.
Therefore, you help him to slowly strip the meat from the bones, using your back teeth to gnaw through bone and cartilage, your front teeth to tear away flesh, and your mid-teeth to scrape away meet. You find your muzzle to be a very useful tool, so far as this job goes, and it's better than having an electric knife handy, not being nearly as much work as you had thought. As you get real meat into you, you start to feel somewhat closer to being sated, and you realize that having a lunch this time of day is really just about as pleasant of an occasion as possible.
You nap next to Dizzy in the sun for a while after your meal together, which you realize was a very light one by draconic standards, and you try to talk with him about the differences between human life and the life of a dragon. You are surprised to hear that "kobolds," as they are called, are a relative of dragons that live, by his description, in a similar manner to pre-colonial Arawak societies, although dragons see them as clever animals. He tries to understand clothing by comparing it with the jewelry kobolds wear extensively all over their bodies, mostly around their wrists, necks, arms, thighs and ankles. He finds the idea of covering one's genitals to be unsanitary, though, suggesting that it must surely invite infections.
{{Aren't dragons self-conscious about their genitals?}} you ask him.
{{And our butts, too, yeah}} he replies, {{and that's why we clean them, dummy. Anytime you vent your waste, you should tongueclean. If you don't have them clean, everyone's going to know, and you'll have people looking at you funny. I don't want to see some drake walking around with dirty gonads, eww, clean your hatchling-makers}}. He seems to find it repellent that you might think of neglecting this.
{{You mean lick my junk and my butthole??}} you ask. You put your head down on your forepaws, your face flushed quite hot under your green scales. This is going to take some adjustment, you realize.