Sticks? Stones? Come on people, we're dragons
Twilight Sparkle’s castle was radiant, but not so much as the iridescent Dragonlord Ember. “A dragon does not breathe fire.”
“Um? Yeah we do. That’s like the first thing we’re known for. Everybody knows it.”
She snorted. “What you know is wrong, Spike. What everybody knows is wrong.”
Spike was not usually inclined to be contrary, far from it, but he felt he had to argue the point. He looked to Twilight Sparkle for reassurance, but she was like a pony half her age, bright-eyed and reveling in quill and notepad before teacher. Even so, Spike rather felt like he was arguing a given point. The sky was blue, Twilight Sparkle was a massive nerd, dragons breathed fire. He felt inclined to be confident on that point. That point and the second, really. The quill scritch-scratched.
“Dragons breathe fire,” he said.
Ember’s wings flared and her chest rose and fell with exaggerated effort. There was intensity in her eyes, but also the glint of playfulness. She acted shocked by his words. “Oh no! I’m breathing right now! Run away, Twilight Sparkle, get to safety! Your pretty castle, your home, I’m so sorry, I have to breathe, nooo!”
Ember swooned, or completed most of a swoon, so that she looked pantomime majestic in the face of fate most tragic. She puffed noisily and the tiniest gout of flame sizzled from her tongue. Her eyes swivelled and she winked. “Dragons breathe air, Spike, same as everyone. That whole thing is a misnomer. We don’t breath fire; we speak it.”
The Dragonlord sighed. “You don’t have to put your hoof up to ask questions.”
Twilight Sparkle became Twilight Blushing. “Sorry. But, how do you mean, dragons speak fire? Ooh,” she squealed, “I’m questioning the very basis of Equestrian understanding on dragon nature! Questions so obvious they’ve never been asked! I’ll finally publish a legitimate paper in a reputable journal! Yes, yes, yes!”
“Does she... does she always go bouncing around like that?”
“She gets excited.”
“I see.”
They watched the pony go. Ember said, “Should I wait, or...?”
“You can tell me. She usually works it out of her system in a minute or two. Just as soon as the self-consciousness hits, and she remembers we can see her.”
Twilight Sparkle, who had become Twilight Blushing, became Twilight Blushing Very Much Indeed more or less on cue. She planted her hooves and cleared her throat, as if these slight mannerisms of professionalism could obliviate the previous minute’s antics. They couldn’t.
“Just, focus on your note-taking, okay?”
“Right,” squeaked Twilight.
“We dragons were the very first creatures to discover magic.”
It was a strange and pleasant dissonance for Spike, what with him being a faithful student to a grand ruler and Twilight Sparkle playing the helpful notary. It was a lesson for him, after all, and only stood to reason. He listened intently.
“And we didn’t use horns, or rituals, or potions. Dragons used magic by learning the true name of things. Know the name and you know the thing. And that gives you power over it.”
The scritch-scratch became a more fervid Scritch!-Scratch!
“The common word, ‘fire’ is...fine. It's a nickname. An allusion. It’s powerless, so it's harmless, and that works for you ponies. But if you want the real word, the draconian word, that word is...” Ember tossed her head back and spoke the name of fire. It reflected in the ceiling and the floor, in the walls and the watcher’s eyes. The colours burned and the heat was sweltering.
“Oh my,” murmured Twilight Sparkle, eyes swimming in colour, notepad forgotten.
Ember’s eyes swirled like molten bronze. They seared Spike in place. “Every dragonborn knows fire, whether he knows that he knows it or not. It was, and is, our first and dearest word.”
Twilight Sparkle hummed and hawed. “How do I spell Fwoosh growl rumble fwoosh!?”
“You don’t.”
And Spike understood. It made sense in a way that, when Twilight would inevitably quiz him on it later, he wouldn’t in the slightest be able to explain. It was primordial. He could feel the fire grow stronger within him. He didn’t burp, or sneeze or cough. He spoke, and flame answered. He smiled at his Dragonlord. “And there’s other words?”
Ember’s grin was toothy, not unattractively. “A whole language.”
The afternoon passed in demonstration and study. Ember was a patient teacher, but she was Spike’s teacher, not Twilight Sparkle’s. She bore up under the alicorn's interrogations graciously. Many of the Twilight’s questions went without answers, but even answers like “because that is the way it is” and “it is something a dragon feels”, frustrating as they were, she faithfully recorded verbatim.
To Spike it was like there was a whole ‘nother level. Ember took them up a tower and there Spike learned the name of the wind, albeit not without some excitement. (“I didn’t think he’d actually jump,” a much amused Dragonlord said to the flustered and thankfully rescue-capable Princess.) Spike felt the terror and the rush; he walked away elated; his whisper was like song and the wind gusted around him like a pet eager to be taken for a walk.
Ember demonstrated the word of peace, so that others would get over their fear and awe of a dragon’s innate majesty (A problem that, while common to dragons, Spike had remained embarrassingly innocent of in his own life).
They practiced into the evening and Spike learned with some difficulty the opposite of flame: frost.
“Whoops,” he said. Twilight Sparkle was glazed with ice and her hair went straight back, frozen stiff.
“It’s-s-s fine, S-s-spike.” Some magic of her own, a blanket over her shoulders and a hot cup of tea soon set the Princess to rights. She was neatly entrenched in a growing arrangement of note pads and reference sheets, and had developed a not unexpected attack of books. All this changed the pace of things; Ember’s teaching and Spike’s learning took on a more reflective and relaxed manner as the evening crept over them.
“What about lightning?” Spike asked. “Flame. Frost. There’s a name for lightning. There’s got to be. That’s something I could really impress the ladies with, you know?”
“I...” Ember paused. A cloud of uncertainty settled over her, a rare state for a dragon. Lightning, lightning... Certainly there would be, must be, but why had she never heard the name of it? A dragon never confesses ignorance though, and she rallied heroically. “Of course there is. But I’m not teaching you that tonight. Far too dangerous. You already iced Twilight, and the sun is setting.”
“Oh, okay.” Spike was only dismayed a moment. “I still learned a whole lot. I can keep practicing over what I learned already. He struck a pose but the Name of Fire became the Name of Yawning in his mouth.
Twilight Sparkle, freshly thawed, was compiling her amassed research for the night. “It has been quite the busy day for you, Spike. Maybe you should get some rest and come at this again in the morning?”
Spike was drowsy. The day had been a rush and moreso it had been a sustained rush. With the excitement gone, that other ex word - exhaustion - came in to collect.
“What’s the name for a warm cozy sleep?”
“Bed.” Ember smiled. “You’re picking this up like you were born to it, Spike. You were born to it, I mean, but even so.”
“See you tomorrow?”
“See you tomorrow.”
“Alright, goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Spike.”
And Spike left, slumped and dragging his tail with fatigue but, in some indeterminate way, walking considerably taller all the while. That left two.
“We really appreciate you coming for this visit. I had no idea there was such intricacy to dragons. It’s practically a whole new branch of magic”
“Spike has the birthright. He just needs to be shown and to understand. It wouldn’t reflect on me as Dragonlord very well if I let a dragon grow up ignorant. It wouldn’t reflect on me very well as a friend, either.”
Twilight Sparkle had a very disarming smile, Ember decided. She didn’t carry herself like someone carrying daunting magical prowess. The alicorn looked happy shuffling her papers into orderly sets. “Even so. To come all this way and spend time with Spike like this. It means a lot. If there’s anything I can do to make your stay more enjoyable, let me know. I’ll be up a few hours yet reviewing and organizing all this. You’re an absolute wealth of information that we’ve only just begun to tap!” The threat of Twilight Bouncey came and past unrealized. Ember didn’t find favour with the Princess’ metaphor, but she knew it was not meant to suggest a thief on a hoard.
Moreso, Dragonlord Ember had something else on her mind. “Everything should be fine,” she said. “If anything, I plan to go to bed early, too.”
“Oh? Well in that case, goodnight.”
“Goodnight. And thank you.”
Ember left and made her way through the expansive halls of the castle. The guest chamber given to the Dragonlord’s use was, like the rest of the castle, shaped crystal. Fine chandeliers and vanity mirrors, the very walls themselves made constellations of candlelight. It made for a very relaxing ambience, and on another night Ember would have been quite content to let it lull her into total relaxation. However, Spike had raised a question and, like Twilight Sparkle, she intended to do a bit of research of her own.
Why wasn’t lightning ever spoken by dragons? She’d never heard it, that much was for certain.
Twilight Sparkle had a special love for the early stages of a research project. Of course, she had a unique and special love for every stage, but at the start there could be such joyous speculation, such wild abandon in the hypothesizing. A study of dragons of this calibre would cement her name not as a hero or a princess - both entirely wonderful things, to be sure - but as a scholar. And Twilight Sparkle had never set out to be a hero or a princess, but a scholar.
The thought of such hefty academia made her tingly.
The flash and the sharp crack snapped her out of that. The crystal walls amplified and scattered illumination to such spectacular extent that it could have come from anywhere in the castle and still be so bright, Twilight Sparkle couldn’t be sure of the source.
Dashing to check the safety of the others she met Spike bumbling and hurrying into the hall, clawing his way clear to wakefulness fast as he could. “What was that?”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. That’s not Starlight Glimmer, is it?”
Scooping up the baby dragon, Twilight hurried on. “She’s still visiting Sunburst for another two days!”
“Ah, right. Just, I don’t want to go time-traveling again. This is a good time, I don’t want to change it.”
“Freaky bangs and flashes notwithstanding!” Rounding the corner, Twilight zeroed in on the door to Ember’s guest chambers. She burst through them out of ingrained heroic habit.
“Ember! Ember, Are you alright?”
What Spike and Twilight Sparkle saw was this: Dragonlord Ember, standing up stiff as a board with her back to them. She jittered and turned slowly.
“Ayble mibble fid,” she said. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth and she hastily shoved it back in. “Verble tidde flib.”
“What?”
Ember shoo’d at them. “Nobble tsobble eeble!” An arc of blue electricity danced along her mouth and fizzled out. Ember covered her mouth with a drastic slap of her claws. Sparks teased their way from between them.
There’d been no missing that little display. “You spoke the name of lightning, didn’t you?” Spike asked.
Ember’s eyes went wide. She shook her head urgently, saying “Nopple oibble sarble nit!” Her jaw was lax and her tongue once again lolled like a dentist’s patient. The Dragonlord glared defiance as she fixed it, only for it to come lolling out the other side. She sighed or, in her case, sibbled, and droopled in defeebble.
“Ayble moibbledd spiggled timeld nimmemment linen,” she said.
It sounded confessional.
This being Twilight Sparkle’s castle, every nightstand in every chamber came stocked with pages, quill and ink. She floated a readied quill to the Dragonlord’s claw now.
Ember nodded.
I rediscovered the word for lightning, she wrote. You would think it was cool having a lightning bolt in your mouth, but turns out it isn’t. I can’t feel my face. She jabbed the period to the sentence in place with a mean stab. Ember skulked grimly. I’ll be fine. Sorry.
Spike spoke thoughtfully. “I guess dragons breathe a lot of things, but we just don’t breathe lightning after all.”
Dragonlord Ember held his level gaze with all the intensity and majesty she could. “Nottle. Murble. Tin womps.”
Twilight Sparkle hummed awkwardly. “I think she said, ‘not more than once’.”
The Dragonlord furiously decreed: “Heeble Neebles whabbles Ayziz Zid!”
The three paused.
The three regarded each other.
The three broke down into fits of giggles. Ember hiccuped and a teeny tiny lightning bolt tickled her nose.
Not a bad day, all in all.
“I’m keeping that page. For research.”
Author's Note
My theory as to why Skyrim features no lightning breath attacks.
