🏳️‍⚧️ Andréa ΘΔ 🐉

A growl rises within me. A deep and throaty sound to match a rising pressure from within.

My thoughts feel oddly intense, focused. I close my eyes, overwhelmed by the strange emotions I'm feeling. Only now do I realize how dead inside I was, for so many years; even my moments of greatest anger and greatest joy are but chalky knolls in the face of this sharp peak of emotion I feel. It's not quite anger, not quite joy... it's a sort of aggressive confidence. A welling feeling of ferocity, of pride. An intoxicating, powerful arrogance, both terrifying and exhilerating to experience.

I kinda wanna write more cultural and societal stuff about dragons...

Ok here have some Andi-dragon-verse lore: in most dragon cultures, a dragon has two names. A personal name, used in most informal and formal contexts, and a ceremonial name, which is constructed through compounding words together, is kind of as much a title as a name, is typically picked by the dragon at adulthood, are usually quite long indeed, and generally unique to the individual; ceremonial names are how dragons are recorded in things like wall-engraving annals, and they are referred to at various cultural ceremonies.

Of course, the specifics of this vary by region and culture - dragons aren't a monolith - but it's a common feature in many dragon cultures thought to date back to ancient days.

Ceremonial names aren't that private or taboo, but they're generally long an unwieldy enough that referring to someone by theirs just comes off silly. Lit flames (that is, dragons who were born in human shape and find their flame later in life) most commonly end up keeping their human name as their personal name and choose a ceremonial name for themselves; some don't bother, some pick whole new names, like everything to do with names, it's all quite a personal thing.

... so that's why I'm Andréa, even tho I'm a big red dragoness ;)

What's my ceremonial name? Oh I'll have to make a proper conlang sketch to figure that out...

• the idea here is to bridge the gap between the casual cute names I give my dragon characters like "Taara" or "Ikâra" and the classic dragon trope of fun unwieldy names like "Paarthunax" or "Terendelev"

You draw closer to the human, tasting his scent, trying to discern his intentions. Your wings held high, your tail swaying in deep thought. You circle him, as he stands motionless, frozen in fear.

Tobias, your best friend. A boy you grew up with, playing in the town's stone streets. And yet, he doesn't seem to recognize you. He seems so small and fragile, now. You taste fear, deep and primal. He's deeply, deeply afraid of you.

Draconic instincts and your human memories grind against each other, conflicting. You're forever changed, now. A beast; strong and free, but monstrous in the eyes of men. The baker's daughter ceased to be when your true nature asserted itself; and for these past few days since that change, you had assumed you would have to leave that world behind forever.

The world is dark and blurry. You feel like you're drowning, yet you sense no water's chill.

It's a deep, deep darkness. Enveloping, imprisoning, and strangely, depressingly familiar.

Though you know not where you are, or how you came to be here, the shadow that suffuses this place is an old companion indeed. Inescapable, ever-present - and you are fed up with it.