The Draconic Wizard Workshop

Counting Horns and Making Assumptions, or, Draconic Age and Gender

by Tanix lei Dramon ak Hyuukii

Originally posted here on April 11, 2022.

For years as a kid, horn count on dragons (from my… world? If I were fictionkin I would say “source”) equaled gender. Two or three horns for male, four or five for female. When I got older, ie., 14, I began to realize that was not an adequate indication of gender identity and pronouns. After all, I knew trans people–and unbeknownst to me, I was one of those trans people. At the time, the dragons and their horns were a lifelong worldbuilding project, so I thought, I’ll just scrap the horn thing.

But it didn’t feel right. Years later, when I learned that I’m dragonkin, I realized why: because that’s how it worked back at “home,” and trans dragons just removed horns or wore extra ones to aid in gender presentation. Just like a human might pack, tuck, or bind, a dragon may go to great lengths to add or remove horns.

But the difference between the even- and odd-numbered horn counts bothered me. See, as a worldbuilding project, dragons came in specific types/breeds, and had even horn counts. Only “unique types,” dragons without any others like them, had odd horn counts.

Now, I know all dragons were “unique types.” But what does the difference in horn count mean? I have an immense amount of leftover pride about my fifth horn, for one reason or another. It feels like something to show off, parade about, tilt my head to let other people see–but why? This implies to me it’s something that makes a dragon special, earned in some way. My best guess is that it has to do with age, as I feel like I reached a respectable (although not elder-level) age. Unless I got this horn through magic as some kind of reward for a great service or something similar, that’s the guess I’m going with so far.

Part of my assumption there is my impression of pronouns in our language. Pronouns are often used to communicate a secondary piece of information–in English, and many other languages, this secondary information is gender. However, for my type of dragon, I feel like the secondary information was more of age. I feel like there were pronouns for non-dragons, pronouns for baby dragons, juveniles, adolescents, adults, mature adults, and elders, and I have this Very Strong Feeling of having the Mature Adult Pronouns and being Very Proud of “upgrading” pronouns and it’s like… well, if the horn fits, I guess. I don’t really have much else to go on, so it’s what I’m sticking to.

…New problem: what about dragons with crests?

I know some dragons had some–my mate, Selkhenar, did, for one. A singular crest running along the midline of the head and neck, allowing no room for a central horn to grow in… what happened with them? Did they get no odd-numbered horn? Did it grow through and damage the crest? How did that work? Irritatingly, I may never know. Selkhenar didn’t have one, and I have the distinct impression that I was the older of the two of us.

More questions than answers. I wish I knew more, but hey, at least I’ve made progress on a probable meaning of those elusive third/fifth horns.