Brothers and sisters of the mud! Warriors of the Weeping Willow! Let your throat-pouches swell and hear my croak!
We do not gather tonight upon these sacred lily pads just to catch the evening swarm. We gather to honor the shadow in the deep water, the longest tongue in the shallows, the sovereign of the slime and the stone.
Look to the Sunning Rock and behold him:
The Frogfather
“He whose croak commands the tides! He whose leaps shatter the wind!”
Before the Frogfather took the throne, our pond was a place of fear. The Great Herons waded through our nurseries, taking our tadpoles. The Grass Snakes slithered through the reeds, unopposed. We were divided—bullfrog fighting tree frog, toad squabbling with newt over a single fat fly.
But then, he rose from the primordial muck.
Do you remember the Day of the Iron Beak? When the shadow of the Stork fell upon the spawning pools? It was the Frogfather who did not dive for cover in the silt! It was the Frogfather who leaped twenty lengths of a cattail, spear in hand, to strike the beast upon its feathered crown! He lost an eye that day, but he gained an empire. His holy slime binds us together!
Now, look at us. We are an army. Our webbed feet stand firm in the glorious mud. Our armor of wet duckweed is impenetrable. Our tongues are quick, sticky, and lethal.
To the Frogfather, I say this:
My spear is yours. Sharpened on the river stones, dipped in the poison of the red-backed toad, it will pierce any fish, foul, or serpent that dares cross the shoreline. We are your spawn, grown into soldiers. We do not leap away from danger—we leap into the jaws of the enemy in your name!
Warriors! Raise your spears to the moonlight! Let the crickets fall silent in terror! Let the very earth tremble with the sound of our loyalty!
For the reeds! For the deep water! FOR THE FROGFATHER!
