Slow Down
Learning to fly on the backside of a dragon involved falling.
A lot of falling.
It mainly meant learning to not fall, too. It meant learning to read the pilot's actions ahead of time and adjusting to their movements, and in this case, Whiplash was the pilot, not Lupin. She never was. That was another thing she had to learn. It wasn't like driving an MRAP, where she was in full control, where she could go where she wanted—environment permitting—and where she, for the most part, didn't have to give in to the whims of something else besides her own exertion of power.
Learning to read Whiplash had been hard at first.
He may have shown an interest in her at the start, but she had to reach out to him as well. Lupin wasn't the best at doing that sometimes, even under the best of circumstances. She was better at working with machines than she was with people, and while animals usually came in second to that, dragons were an entirely different classification.
Night Furies, she's come to find, were wary creatures. Most dragons were willing to give a rider a chance, so long as they passed the first bonding test. Whiplash was fickle at times. One moment, he was curious about Lupin, the next he wanted nothing to do with her.
It wasn't always fun and games when it came to him. She had to figure out that he indeed liked watching her draw—whether it was the dragons or people or things—but he especially enjoyed any and all sketches she did of him. He did not like it when she quit a piece that he was featured in—and he knew it was him and not one of his flock mates—and decided to toss it or restart. He would steal the pages from her fingertips and hoard it away. Incomplete or not, it was him. What a vain dragon, she always thought when he got so prissy about it.
"I can make a better one," she'd try to tell him, but Whiplash didn't listen to her pleas. She still didn't know where he stuffed his sketchy little treasures.
Or perhaps maybe it wasn't all that great when he got into everything. He was curious and intelligent, and she could respect it—but that didn't mean she appreciated it at times. She had to fight at times to get him to wear a riding saddle, and he'd found ways to let it slip off—sometimes even in mid-flight. He was a clever little cog. Or so he liked to think himself, when he preened himself afterwards.
He was, at the very least, considerate enough to have it happen over the ocean, where he'd scoop Lupin up from the drink, soaked and cursing up a storm, but relatively unharmed. Except for maybe her pride.
Valka didn't worry as much after the first few times, and instead now laughed alongside Whiplash whenever that happened.
But flying was something else compared to all those headaches. On the days when Whiplash didn't feel like being a little prankster, it was so freeing. It was exhilarating, it was a rush like no other she's ever experienced. Driving at high speeds along the 405 back home in California, rushing through the San Fernando Valley and into the mountains that led through to Los Angeles proper couldn't compare, not even with all the NOS in the world.
When he hit high speeds, it was like her heart and lungs were freezing, her stomach dropped away in such a way that it didn't make her feel squeamish, and in just those moments…in those moments it was like there was nothing else but them. No Chimera Dynamics, no fucked-up memories, no pain, no Valka, no Berk, no life to get back to. It was just the two of them and nothing could stop them.
She never wanted to slow down. She just wanted to keep going, never stop, not for anyone, or anything. In those moments, she suspected, neither did Whiplash.