Unformatted text is narration or Norse dialogue.

Underlined text is Irish dialogue.

Aran was a young Irish boy, about the age of four, and he looked about as stereotypically Irish as someone possibly could, with fiery red hair and a seemingly infinite number of freckles spattered across his pale skin. His hair was cropped rather short, but he was planning on growing it out so he could pretend to be Cú Chulainn or something. Aran loved Cú Chulainn. When he wasn't trying to read of the great hero's exploits, he was busy looking for cool rocks on the beach a ways away from his home, or trying to play with the sheep his parents spent quite some time taking care of.

At that moment, he was looking for rocks. It wasn't optimal weather for such an activity, what with the dark clouds blocking the sun, but when would that deter a young child? Young children are unpredictable at best, and Aran was no exception. Normally, his parents wouldn't let him search the beach with the storm on its way, but his mother, Orlaith, reluctantly agreed to go with him. Canice had told his wife to stay safe as the two of them left the house, Aran running out the door rather energetically. He maintained his energy as he dug around in the moist sand, shrieking when the cold water touched his bare feet. Orlaith smiled rather fondly at him, despite her exhaustion from trying to keep up with him.

"Mummy, mummy, what's that?" Aran asked, tugging insistently on her dress. Orlaith's eyes followed where he was pointing to.

"That…" She squinted a bit, leaning forward. Her eyes widened in surprise. "Stay behind me, Aran." Orlaith instructed, and Aran looked up at her curiously.

The large shape Aran had asked about was clearly a dragon, which was quite odd, seeing as the area they lived in was (thankfully) spared from the dragon raids other lands were plagued with. Orlaith and Aran had both heard those sorts of stories from various travelers. Despite the travelers practically quaking in their boots just from the telling of such tales, Aran had developed one of those childhood fascinations for the dangerous, fiery creatures. As such, when he realized exactly what the large lump of something in the distance was, Orlaith had a rather difficult time keeping him behind her. She wasn't completely sure why she was approaching the beast. Perhaps it was the fact that it wasn't moving in the slightest, not even to breathe.

It was a pale shade of pink, with faded brown stripes across its wings that were likely much darker at some point. The eyes were somewhat small for a creature of its size, and she couldn't see the colour because they seemed glued shut. Upon closer inspection, she realized one of its wings had broken, and there were various injuries on its body. It was quite odd, and she stood there with her brows furrowed, not sure what to make of the discovery. Aran took advantage of his mother's confusion to approach the dragon. Orlaith would have stopped him, but she'd realized the dragon was quite dead.

"Hey mummy, what's this?" Aran asked, pulling something from the reptile's claws.

"Well, it looks like an egg, sweetie." Orlaith crouched down by Aran, petting his head. "I think this was a mummy dragon."

"Oh." Aran seemed conflicted. "Mummy dragon probably wants it back, then…" He pouted. "I wanted to keep it."

Orlaith couldn't help but wonder at that moment if dragons were innately horrible. It was something she'd never thought of in the past, but now she found herself pondering the outcome of raising the creature from an egg. Could it be taught to help around the farm? She glanced at the creature's mother, and couldn't help but ask herself what she would do if this were any other animal. Aran was hugging the egg, which was a somewhat entertaining image as it was roughly the size of his head. Perhaps a little larger.

"I don't think the mummy dragon wants to keep her egg." Orlaith said after a moment of thought. "In fact, I think we should take care of it instead." Aran gasped excitedly

"Really!?" He jumped up and down a little.

"And it can be your new baby sibling!" Orlaith grinned, taking the egg from him, somewhat worried he would drop it.

"I can't wait to tell daddy!" Aran shouted, and started running.

"Aran, wait!" Orlaith called after him, taking one last look at the dead dragon before chasing her son.

She could only hope this wasn't a huge mistake, and that her husband wouldn't be too upset with her. She'd always been the more impulsive of the two, after all.

Word Count: 779

EDIT 6/6/18: I decided to change the Irish text to be underlined instead of italicized, because I want to use italics for emphasis instead.

EDIT 2/19/18: I took out the mention of trader Johann. You probably know why, if you've watched the more recent seasons of Race to the Edge. (Also the first time I tried to update this I had some formatting issues, I apologize if you had to see any of that)

Hello there! As you may have gathered from the title and summary, this a rewrite of my completed fanfic, How to Deal With Vikings. I'm rather lazy, so I didn't bother coming up with a new title, but there will be some key differences, and I hope my writing style and habits have improved since then.

Some changes already present are that Aran's mom was actually with him when he found the egg, and I've decided to make him trans instead of genderfluid. He technically doesn't fully identify as male, but considering the time period, he wouldn't really be able to know that because nonbinary identities weren't really a thing you could learn about until quite recently in history! He does identify closer to male than agender though, so it's not too big of an issue in my opinion.

I can give no guarantee to what my update schedule will be like, but because I'm rewriting things and don't have to be super original with things, I'm hoping to update frequently enough. I hope to see you soon!