Briarprick Thorston wasn't mean, she was just honest. Unlike her liar of a brother, who was just mean and a liar.

"You're ugly," She told her brother who merely replied she had to be ugly too since they were twins. She didn't believe that because he lied anyway. She believed however, that his big forehead, long jutted jaw and scraggly brown hair—was ugly; he looked like a troll. Or what she imagined one to be from old Man Gobber's tales.

"You're a pipsqueak," she told Stoick the Wee and he called her mean. It was a fact. She was almost his age and she could at least climb a tree without falling the first three times plus she never ran home crying to her mother if she did.

"You're fat," she mentioned to Brigid when she caught the girl sneaking extra portions at a Mead hall event. Brig was big-boned for her age and nearly whomped Briar a good one for that comment but Briarprick believed no one should be offended at truth and no one should get mad about it. In all actuality Briarprick was just too skinny in comparison, an inherited trait from her father's line. Thorsten women were lithe and no amount of eating would ever gain them curves of a voluptuous nature.

"You're dumb," she told her cousin, Splint, when he couldn't figure out how wheels worked no matter how many times her Uncle Fishlegs explained it to him. Splint didn't understand what she meant, he wasn't known to be a deep thinker, and it came as no surprise.

"You're spoiled," she told Frostbite after seeing the older girl whine and whine because Briar had been given a Nadder-tooth necklace and Frostbite didn't have anything. It got so bad that Uncle Fishlegs finally presented her with a necklace of her very own that he made from sheep vertebrae bones with a wishbone pendant. Frost had to have everything her way. After Briar's truth, Frostbite then turned her whining on her younger cousin telling her to 'take it back.'

"You're not fun," she told Fin. Finola was probably considered even less pleasant to be around than Briar. Finola was said to keep a permanent frown ever since she could crawl and often refused to talk, even more so when the Lady Jorgenson passed. Fin's silence made her unpleasant, never fun nor amusing like most of the younger children in the village and of course little Fin did not dignify Briar with a reply to being 'not fun', which only proved it fact.

"You're rude," she told Svenan the younger when she asked him one day what he was doing and he told her to 'go away' because she ruined his concentration. He looked to be constructing something and ignored her thereafter.

Her Mother had always told her to tell the truth, that only good people told the truth even though her father was claimed to consider small lies to be acceptable by both her Mother and Aunt.

Her father was very blunt as well, and so she combined her thoughts, and her honesty into one unit. Her love for her own voice also added into it, Briarprick was often told to 'shut up' by the kids around her because she never stopped talking nor telling them the truth about themselves. Her father had once proudly proclaimed her a 'loudmouth.'

She sang songs at the top of her lungs when she did chores to pass time, which caused Frostbite to whine and demand her to be quiet. Briar didn't like it when Frostbite got her way so only sang louder. That's when Frostbite would try to out-sing her. Briarprick's voice was lower, rough, and left verbal scratches across ears. Frostbite had a dainty, charming voice of girlish innocence that manipulated everyone around them. When Frost started singing, Briarprick gave up because Frostbite had a prettier voice and that was one truth Briar wouldn't admit to out-loud.

"You're Weird," was one of the first things she had told Curran Jorgenson after really meeting him. She had seen him before out playing with the boys or participating in games of Bashy Ball. But after his mother died, Cur often went off by himself to play and avoided playing what his sisters wanted him to. One day she decided to follow him since everyone else had told her off—even Frostbite who got along with her the best, amazingly. There was only so much honesty Frostbite could handle from Briar in a given day.

She found Cur in a field on the sunset side of the island. Curran was three years older and had a long stick in his hands and he was thrashing it around into the air towards nothing in particular. She had asked him what in the world he was doing. He said he was playing his own game where he imagined he was composing the nature and told her that the wind whistled and that the grass swayed in a tune no one ever bothered to listen to.

So she told him what he was in all honesty. Weird.

She was five years old and had been practicing honesty since she had learned the concept. She still yet had to comprehend the difference between fact and opinion because to her, they were one and the same.

He shrugged, not missing a beat to his silent symphony, "Thank you."

And it was the first time anyone had acted positively toward her honesty. So if Cur could find the time to thank her for telling the truth, then it was probably true the rest of them should too!

Cur had a Terrible Terror on his shoulder and she recognized it was the one the Elder Spitelout often toted around. She wondered why it was with Cur this day and not his Grandfather.

She was used to Terrible Terrors flying around her Uncle's lodge. They ate off the slop pile and her Aunt bribed them with fish bits to fire her clay. Snipe was a Terrible Terror that was fond of Splint but they hardly ever saw him because her ugly brother was always bullying the poor thing. That, or Frostbite would latch onto Snipe and her 'love' was too much for the creature.

She reached up and petted the Terror. It gave her a wide-eyed once-over before deciding to accept her hand. It even hopped over to her arm. It's talons scraped her skin in order to maintain balance, she winced but it let up once the Terror settled next to her neck.

Since no one else wanted her around she sat awhile in the field curiously trying to understand what Cur was talking about but the silence felt odd because she was always surrounded by loud noises of the household. Her own voice, her brother's taunting, her cousins' whining or bickering, her Aunt's shouts of annoyance, and her Uncle's constant murmuring.

It made her think of the night where recently she sat awake when she was supposed to be asleep. Frostbite had accidentally elbowed her awake and she ended up sitting on the floor in a ball. There was no noise for once because the night seemed to have a magical blanket that covered all the sound. She grabbed her Nadder-tooth necklace that her mother had given her, for comfort and looked at it—maybe realizing a truth about herself—the reason to why she was always making noise.

Even though so many people surrounded her she still felt so overlooked.

"It's too quiet," she said, breaking the spell.

"What'cha talkin' about? All I hear are noises," Cur spun around and his long stick swished at the grass.

"I don't hear anything," she said honestly and then paused to think, "and it's kind of nice."

He looked a bit horrified at her statement and retorted, "If you close your eyes it helps, you can go imagining based on the sounds."

She did so, she closed her eyes and suddenly was in a void of darkness but she did hear something.

She heard the sea loll upwards to the shore, and crash against the cliffs, she heard birds twittering in the trees, a breeze through the grass, and a few echoing dragon calls across the island.

She was now on a quest to find her very own dragon.She imagined upon hearing another call.

Big dragons didn't let children ride on them and she often wished she had a Zippleback like her Auntie and father's, though she wouldn't share it with her ugly, lying, brother—he could find his owndragon.

"So you hear it?"

"I hear something," she admitted and opened her eyes. "I heard the sea and stuff."

He only smiled, and not even in a 'I told you so' look, before turning to do what he was doing previously—but then he halted, and timidly asked, "Do you like music?"

"I like to sing."

Something in his demeanor, in his crystalline eyes changed, "Sing a song."

"What? Right now?" She had a distaste for being told what to do.

He grabbed a smaller stick at his belt at drew it out, revealing it to be a music pipe. He lifted it to his lips and gave her an earnest look, urging her to sing. So she did.

The Terror gave a tiny screech and removed itself from her shoulder.

Cur told her to stop singing immediately, "Never mind."

"What'd I do wrong?" she frowned and wiped the unruly pieces of hair from her eyes that had blown there.

"It doesn't match."

"What?"

"Your voice."

She kept her frown. Was that just the nice way of saying her voice was bad?

He played anyway, a tune she didn't recognize. It was certainly a pretty sound and it made her frown lift.

"What song is that?"

"I made it up," he paused for only a moment to answer and was right back to playing. She was impressed, the other boys just fought and teased or were totally useless, well Stoick the Wee was the only one who fit that latter category. After a few moments of the noise, she spotted a flash of color from the corner of her eye.

A Nadderhead dragon was approaching, gliding low on the sky. But it wasn't just a Nadder. It was a lot—more than she'd ever seen together. Purple, Red, Blue, and Green scaled firebeasts circled the sky above them as Cur played his song. It looked like they were going to land soon, and right on top of them all! Wild Nadders!

"Cur!" Briarprick shouted and gave him a harsh push to release him of his own fugue. The pipe flew from his mouth and dropped to the ground.

He stared at it and then to her. Instead of shouting or getting angry he only asked, "Why?"

She shouldn't have felt so bad for knocking his pipe away, she had saved them from being squashed but the way he looked at her was so sad. She pointed up and he finally noticed all the Nadderheads that had close watch of the boy who played music. They began to fly away. The music must have enchanted them somehow.

"Oh," was all Cur said, craning his head back and watching them—like it was a regular occurrence. She hadn't seen so many Nadders at once before. They came through the village but not in that much volume. It was beautiful though, the myriad of bright colors above them on every layer of the sky. One day Briar would be there up there with them, flying.

Cur picked up his music pipe, dusted it off, and tucked it back into his belt, "I guess that was a bad idea."

She gave him an obvious stare to which he ignored. She hated to be ignored.

"You are so weird." It was truth; he was unlike any other boy she had ever met.

He only grinned that time, losing any trace of shyness from before, and returned to composing the seeming uncontrollable sounds of nature. But on the contrary, the sounds seemed to obey him for he held a face of satisfaction.

That day in the field was an important day, though she didn't know it then. She didn't hear any songs from the wind or grass like he had—just the regular noises. But she believed, and that was important.

Looking back when older, she could pinpoint that time to be where she and Curran had started to become friends. He had found a person who could begin to know the complexity of his world of sounds and she had found someone who tolerated her blatant honesty. They didn't seem to be suited friends on the outside but Briarprick could honestly say the world was full of weirder things than an introvert and loudmouth finding some ground toward friendship.

That was the truth.