Fic Update Thread 54: Find a spot out on the floor!

[Ebony]

A Thing of Vikings returns!

Chapter 155: Inceptions

 

‘Toothless’ he called me.

Flyers do not usually have names as walkers understand them. Not usually. We recognize each other through our voices and gestures, because we were all living together in the nest. Before, I would think of ‘Stormfly’ as the ‘Spiketail of blue-white-yellow with a particular trill to her voice’, not with a name of her own. And that was because we mostly had to deal within our own nests. The only ones who had names, titles really, were those who led those nests. You knew those within your nest, and perhaps the reputations of those who led others.

But then I was given a name.

My best friend, who I first thought of as ‘small brown walker with a lilt to his voice’, gave me a name. He called me ‘Toothless’.

Once I understood what that meant, I thought it was a reference to how I can pull my teeth in before I release a flame. And it was that… but not only that.

He called me ‘Toothless’ because I did not mean him harm.

I can be dangerous and deadly, but I did not want to be. I would rather play and joke with my friend. I would rather lick his face and hear him complain about how it does not wash out than bite him, or anyone.

So it was a title, like how nest-lords earned. But it was also my name. A name that my friend gave me.

—Journal of Toothless the Night Fury, Collected Writings of the Dragons of House Haddock