"It's truly surprising how dragons are better at making friends than humans." -Skreecher, Terrible Terror


-Friendship-


Two weeks had passed. I'd become accustomed to living with these kin-rage fires, and I'd even developed great relationships with seven of eight of them, the eighth being the one who seemed to not really like me. There were four boys and four girls, names consisting of: Tyler, Danielle (or Danny), David, Kathryn, Brandon, Ana, Eli, and Agnes. Obviously, the one named Eli had some problems with my name being Eli, too. And, I'm pretty sure he was the oldest of the group, but only by a few hours, I wasn't sure though. It wasn't my business to ask.

I'd also met the sire of the group, whose name I learned was Logan. He seemed like a nice guy, but he also seemed protective, which was fine by me, I needed someone to protect me like him, especially as I didn't really know how protective my dam and sire were.

And, finally, I learned about their nicknames. The first real day I was there, I heard Rachel call Brandon 'Silverhorn,' which I was confused about initially. But, Rachel picked up on, and told me, "Sorry, should have mentioned, we have nicknames for each of us. For example, Brandon is Silverhorn, Tyler is Crookedclaw, Danny is Silvereye, David is Flameripper, Kathryn is Snowfang, Ana is Frostsong, Eli is Shiverwing, and Agnes is Hookback. Each of the nicknames are basically just describing some characteristic about each of them. Most often they're obvious, but others aren't so obvious."

"What will I get, then?" I asked. Rachel looked up to the leaves on the ceiling in thought. Clearly, there wasn't a major quality about me that would be so worth note. But, what she said she wanted to give me as a nickname was something I'm surprised wasn't just her initial thought.

"Can you open your mouth?" She asked. I obliged. I'd wondered why the others had teeth, and I didn't. It wasn't something that was too worth complaining about. After inspection in my mouth, she continued, "We'll call you Toothless."

"Really? That's what your giving him?" Shiverwing said, rather annoyed. "Why couldn't you call him, like, I don't know, Hollowtooth or something?"

"Because, Hollowtooth is ridiculous," Snowfang said in response to her clearly irritable brother, "At least she's giving him a name that he most likely won't be embarrassed about. I think Toothless is an awesome name."

"Precisely Snowfang," Rachel said through this rather short argument. "And, he seems to be the only left of his kin, so, that's already something that will really mean that he'd get bullied by other dragons. Giving him an embarrassing name is adding to their ammunition against him."

Shiverwing growled, turning around and heading towards a pile of leaves he called his bed. Rachel groaned and turned back to me, before she continued to speak. "Sorry, yeah, we have some nicknames, and it seems he's not happy with yours."

"He doesn't seem happy about me in general," I answered, rolling my eyes and looking back over at Shiverwing. I noticed tears streaming down his face, and his shoulders were shaking. Clearly, he was crying, so, my natural reaction was to go over to him and give him some comfort, which I did. Even he was a fan of me, I should make an example and be nice to him in return.

As I approached, he looked directly at me in the eyes, and glared at me, the tears still streaming down his face. Even despite my brain saying that this wasn't a good idea, I continued to walk up to the crying dragon.

"What?" Shiverwing said, bluntly. I didn't change anything about the way I held myself, or the way I walked. I just confidently continued to walk up to him, and laid down beside him. He seemed rather uncomfortable, like he'd never seen this before. However, he eventually calmed down.

"Shiverwing, what's wrong?" I said, calmly talking to him. He was unsure of how to respond, but the response I got was exactly what I was expecting.

"Why do you care?" He said. As I expected to hear this, I remained calm and talked to him politely, as I normally would.

"Because, whether you're related to me or not, for the time being, you're my brother. And, no matter what, I need to think of you as such, as you should to me. So long as respect goes both ways, I'm happy to talk with you about anything that's on your mind. Now, let me ask again. Shiverwing, what's wrong?"

Shiverwing looked directly at me with this look of surprise. His reaction I expected, but his response wasn't something that I was expecting.

"You won't be mad at me?" He asked, scrunching his face together hoping for a good response.

"I absolutely will not. So long as you speak respectfully, I'll listen."

"Okay…" Shiverwing answered. After that he hesitated. He clearly wasn't sure how to word it, but eventually he said it completely bluntly, which surprised me. "I'll be completely blunt with you and say that I am kind of angry that you're here. I guess it's got something to do with me being used to tradition."

"That was something I picked up on when I looked at you the day I showed up. You seemed a little unhappy that I'd showed up. It was the way you looked at me and snarled at me that gave it away. If you're not happy with me that's fine, but try not to let it out."

He nodded. I rubbed my head against his and stood to head back to the rest of the group. However, he said something to me before I went back.

"Toothless," He said, quietly, but loud enough for me to hear. "Ya know, I guess I'd judged you to early. You do seem like a good dude, I just needed to talk to you first. Thanks for this, I'm happy we talked."

I nodded and went back to the group.


Four weeks passed after that exchange with Shiverwing. *He and I talked about the problems that we have on a regular basis*. One time I'd been a little stressed out, and upset thinking about my sire and dam, and we just talked for about an hour straight about it. Another time, he was a little upset with his sire, and he just wanted to vent to me.

Outside of occasional therapy sessions that we had, we did become better friends, and would often eat next to each other. We also would often walk together when we went out. The occasional banter would come up, but it was playful banter.

As a hatchling dragon, even at six weeks into my life, I had a lot of energy. Playing a game was one way to get rid of all that energy. I'd always ask Shiverwing if he wanted to play with me, and he would always say yes. We'd play such games as tag, hide and seek, and, our personal favorite was a little game we came up with called 'Who can annoy our siblings first?' The strategy was trying to seem casual, but try and annoy the heck out of our siblings, within ten minutes. Our scores of were tied up at this point. Once we managed to annoy all our siblings to the point of being rather upset at us—individually, we would count how many us as ourselves had annoyed, and whoever had the most would be the winner for that round. The next round would be the tiebreaker round. Whoever won that would win the first season of WCAOSF, as we abbreviated it to.

And, today, was the day of the final game. It had been a week since the game where I tied up with Shiverwing. Now was the tiebreaker round, and we would see who the best was at annoying our siblings.

I woke up long after the rest of the siblings, but at around the same time as Shiverwing. I stood from my grass bed and went straight to Shiverwing to see if he was up. He was, and I spoke.

"Hey, Shiver, you ready?" I said, quietly to not scare him. He turned and looked at me. His familiar smile was being expressed. I popped a smirk, and a sly look at him. "Then, let's go!"

Shiverwing stood and walked straight into the main area of our living space. We'd managed to get Logan involved with our little game. He was our adjudicator. He counted us down for beginning, gave us occasional time warnings. One at five minutes, one at two and a half, one at one minute, and one at thirty seconds.

We went straight up to him, expressing grins, and he immediately knew what was about to happen. His grin began to grow, and he nodded at us.

"You guys ready?" He asked. We both nodded. "Okay, remember the rules: you must start on opposite sides of the 'arena,' you can't cooperate to annoy your siblings, keep track of how many points you've gotten. If you get eight, then whoever makes it to me first is the winner. If the ten minutes ends before you hit eight, whoever has the most is the winner. Makes sense?" We nodded. "Okay, you ready?" Another nod, "Three…" The tension began building over something that will only serve as bragging rights. "Two…" The tension built higher, even though we didn't have any reason to be nervous. "One…" Shiverwing and I crouched down on our front paws, preparing to run straight to our first target. "Go!"

We both ran straight to who we decided would be the first kin who we would try our best to annoy. My first target was Snowfang. I knew she would be easiest to get to annoyed state. Pretty early on in our competition, we decided to make it go to the point that our kin said something along the lines of, 'Can you leave me alone?'

"Hi, Snow!" I said, so cheerily that even I became annoyed at it. She turned towards me and groaned. I knew I was already off to a great start. And, even if I became annoyed at my own comment, I knew the others would too.

"What, Toothless?!" She responded forcefully. I knew I was on a roll already. If she seemed annoyed already, the rest wouldn't be too hard.

"Whatch'ya up to?" I said, again cheerily, even to the point I cringed externally.

"Toothless, can you leave me alone?"

I laughed internally, but obliged to leave her alone externally. After that, it was off to the next target. This continued for the whole ten minutes. I'd managed to get seven out of eight. When time was called, I hoped that Shiver wouldn't have gotten anywhere near as many. Turns out, he got six of them. When he announced it, he made the 's' sound last for a long time. But, when he said six, I immediately broke into laughter. It was a nice way to end off our first season.

*Dragons often will speak to each other to work out their problems, even as hatchlings.


Shiver and I continued to take our regular therapy sessions together. We'd play consistently. We had a schedule for when we'd play games. Once a day we'd play 'Hide and Seek.' Every other day, we'd play 'tag'. And once a week, we'd get together and try to come up with new game ideas. So far, since the end of the first season of WCASOF, we'd come up with nothing.

This morning wasn't any different for either of us. Not even Logan, who always met with us when we tried to come up with games, couldn't come up with anything at all. In the past, he'd suggested games, but Shiver and I didn't like the ideas. Today, we decided to not get together, and rather just play our 'Hide and Seek' and 'Tag.'

For 'Hide and Seek,' *Shiver would hide first, once I found him, he and I would switch out. For tag, it was 'hit the deck,' and whoever hit last would be 'it' first. This would continue to be the way we did it.

The games would be done in the early morning, and afterwards, it was to whatever schedule was set up by Rachel for the day. Usually, we'd be given free time, which we had already spent that morning, so Shiver and I would be so tired that we go back to sleep. As usual, this continued to be our schedule every day.

However, come the first winter, we were not allowed to go outside without Rachel or Logan, which was completely okay. The one problem is that this one winter happened to be the coldest, so I'm told. We spent most of it snuggled up against Rachel or Logan, but other than that, we didn't do much.

My first winter ended well. On one random day, we basically spent what we call a 'Winterday,' which is like a birthday. Mine was the last, which was apparently the best day for me to have a Winterday. I was happy, Shiver was happy for me, and the other siblings were still rather annoyed at me and Shiver for annoying them.

So, I would finally experience my first actual Spring, and I was looking forward to it.

*Dragons can't sense another dragons presence until they've surpassed ten winters.