Inspired by this prompt at comment_fic: any, any, I want a pet dragon. I don't care how much fire it breathes!

The prompt had already been filled, but I came across it again, and then there was this. I thought about making it something bigger, and maybe I will at some point.

The Alfheimr market was crowded with dwarves and vanir and æsir and ljósálfar, and noisier than one could possibly imagine. Fortunately the late spring day was chilly, so it wasn't also stifling, but just the same Loki and Thor had ducked into a small shop to get out of the press and noise of the streets for a few minutes while Tyr haggled over leather and silk and thread and who knew what else.

As he watched his brother marvel at the dragon sellers' offerings, Loki wished he'd taken more care when choosing a place to have their rest.

"Only you would want a pet which would eat you so much as look at you."

"It wouldn't try to eat me. I would teach it to know better than that." Thor's face lit with anticipation. "Just think-what if it became large enough to carry us? We could fly all over Asgard, and Niðavellir, and-"

One of the little copper-colored drakes had pressed its face against the bars, and since neither Loki nor Thor was paying attention to it, it coughed out a puff of sulfurous-smelling mist and chirped. Loki and Thor jumped in surprise.

"They breathe fire?" Thor asked the proprietor, who nodded solemnly.

"When these are older they will, young master." She gestured at a cage holding larger, blue-black and gray-green dragonlings. "Those there are have no breath power." She tapped the cages with the pale, silvery blue and gray hatchlings. "And these are ice drakes."

Thor crouched down in front of the copper and red ones, staring at them intently, and they stared back with equal interest. Hungry interest, Loki thought.

"Father is never going to allow it," Loki warned him.

Thor stood and folded his arms. "I want a pet dragon. I don't care how much fire it breathes."

Fortunately for everyone, Loki was right. Thor wound up with a pair of young, black goats with pearlescent scales under their fur and spiraled, arced, horns that gleamed bronze, and Loki received a milky green, bearded and finned serpent hatchling which twined around his arm and slept placidly on their trip home.

The goats seemed, at first, like quite the letdown, and Thor resented the amount of work it took to manage and care for them-until they grew to enormous proportions and turned out to be ill-tempered towards anyone but Thor himself, and then they were his dearest friends after Loki and Sif. Loki witnessed them chasing off Tyr and the stablemasters more than once, and they ruined several of his tricks on Thor with their biting and kicking at him any time he was in range. When Thor was fully grown and it was time for him to use a horse, he only surrendered them to a late life in the pastures after a very long talk from Frigga.

And Loki's serpent, well...at least Jörmungandr didn't breathe fire.