2024-06-25 - the concept of a Name

Tasted Fire loves learning, and it loves being spoken to, not listening to the information spoken around it. It realizes that it's hard to speak to sometimes; it gives its all and pushes its Heat outwards as it longs for friendship.

Yes, that’s it. It doesn’t care that it’s spoken to with ill form. It doesn’t care that its enthusiasm is something that isn’t often matched. It only cares if it’s ignored, and it doesn’t want to be ignored.

But also it knows that its insufferable heat makes it stand apart. It knows now that it sits alone among the clutch; no shell brushes its shell, and though it’s close to other eggs, it feels apart. Like nothing wanted to touch it in the beginning, and it grew too hot to move closer now that the clutch has grown in mind and body. It yearns, reaching out, gathering up its hot tendrils and pushing them outwards, tentatively calling for friendship. It isn’t strong enough to call to the ones, the humans like Shayled, who it knows would be the best of friends.

Not yet.

It tempers its heat as it communes with its siblings, but its heat flares when speaking with Mother, Father, and any older dragon who dare reach out. They don’t understand, the elders, but the Heat is there all the same. It grows daily with Tasted Fire’s mind and body.

Tasted Fire discovers one day that others are calling themselves ‘she’ ‘he’ ‘they’ and anything else. Gender does not come naturally to the dragon inside the yellow shell. It understands that Mother is She. Father is He. Pertemarth is He. Shayled is She. It’s never thought to give itself a gender. It is simply Fire and Heat and of all the things it knows about Fire, it understands that Fire does not care what gender anything is when it consumes.

Like the dragons issue fire from their stomachs to destroy Thread.

It settles on ‘it,’ a nice, neutral term. Tasted Fire doesn’t know what it wants; it doesn’t feel quite like Mother or like Father, though it feels that Father hasn’t been around as long as Mother has. It certainly doesn’t feel like Pertemarth, either. It simply feels, like fire does, burning brightly and not caring for that it is, only that it is alive and living and in the moment.