Niphados has emerged from the snow to play.

 Niphados came out of the big snow of 2010. She tried to emerge a couple of times but remained buried under all that snow for a long time. She did finally emerge towards the last of the snow and she was beautiful. She crumbled the walls of the fortress with her talons and tail, laid some eggs so there would be more dragons for our future, and was in the spotlight for her magnificence on the front page of the local newspaper. It took 3 days (8 hours per day) to get her to emerge from the huge snow bank around our house. And on the last day she finally whispered her name to me, “Niphados” which means snowflake in Greek.