Bryn was leaning on the cage's fence, watching the Shovelhelm adoringly. The little dragon was happily playing with the dirt in her stall, digging up the packed earth and pounding it into a mound with her head. In the distance a clock's bell tolled, and so, reluctantly, Bryn pulled herself away and walked down the hall toward the door connecting to her home. As she passed the incubation shelves she glanced over them with an expert eye, noting two new additions with a disappointed sigh. No egg that came to them had a happy story. Still, she was pleased to note that their Terrible Terror clutch was nearly ready to hatch. She loved introducing new dragons to the world, and the Terrors were adorably friendly and very funny.
Unfortunately, Bryn had little time to brood on this as she'd reached the door. She hesitated, but pushed on through the door. With her mother, avoiding the inevitable would only make it worse. As she stepped through, she was immediately confronted by an armored chest and swept into a tight hug.
"Hi mom," Bryn gasped out, weakly returning the hug.
"How's my brave girl? Looking forward to the Ceremony tomorrow?" Freya the Swift asked, pulling back and examining Bryn's face eagerly. Bryn made eye contact and a weak smile.
"Yep, real excited. I can't wait. I hope I get a Silver Phantom, or a Night Fury, or at least- um- a Monstrous nightmare." Bryn said with all the excitement she could muster, naming her mother's favorite dragons. Bryn didn't have favorites, but personally she hoped to get a Terrible Terror or something else tiny and un-ride-able, so she wouldn't be expected to learn to fly. If she'd said as much to her mother, though, there'd have been another long argument and she really didn't want to have to deal with that just then. She would get what she would get and figure the rest out later.
"Oh, I remember my Ceremony," Freya said cheerfully, pulling Bryn over to the table and sitting down with her in the remaining daylight. "They paint all the eggs black so we can only guess what kind we've gotten from shape and size, but that hardly narrows it down. Well, you know that, of course, but then I could hardly guess. It was already cracking and we all sat with our eggs for hours as our dragons emerged. I was hoping for a Silver Phantom too, but when Coal emerged from her egg I loved her right away. Not because she was a rare Night Fury but because as soon as her head was out of the shell she looked at me, a chip of egg stuck to her egg-tooth, with this look in her eyes that I simply can't describe." Her eyes were glazed over with nostalgia. "I know your day is going to be just as special, and whatever dragon you get, you'll have a wonderful time flying with it."
Bryn nodded enthusiastically. "I know. I can hardly wait!" She feigned.
"Dinner!" Called Ottar, Bryn's father, and the family gathered to eat.
After dinner, Bryn wished her family a good night, then went up to her bedroom. Once there, she emptied the goose meat she'd stolen from dinner into an oilcloth, which she promptly tied up and carried over to the window, which looked over the roof of the hatchery. Without a second thought she opened the window as quietly as she could, vaulted the sill, and closed it nearly all the way, with a short stout stick holding it open. As silently as possible she crouch-walked over to a tree. The natural daylight was nearly gone, which she was thankful for- she wasn't sure she would be able to do this during the day, when the distance to the ground would be clearly visible. Hands trembling and sweaty, she gripped the bag in her mouth and grabbed onto a sturdy branch as thick as her two arms together. Slowly, heart pounding and breath too fast, she made herself swing over on top of it and crawl painfully slowly to the trunk, where she lowered herself slowly, the buzzing in her ears receding and her senses slowly returning to normal. She dropped herself on the last two feet and crumpled, her whole body shivering in needless fear, though she was intensely relieved it was over. After mere seconds she made herself stand and start walking through the dark village to the temple of Odin at the top of a hill. By the time she reached it her knees no longer felt weak and her fingers had regained all of their feeling. Confidently she stepped inside and approached a cold brazier. In she tossed some wood and set her meat beside it. She grabbed some kindling and a torch from a wall sconce, which she used to light the kindling and, by tossing it into the brazier, the thinner sticks and thereby the log. She returned the torch to its sconce and went back to the brazier. She picked up the bag of meat and cleared her throat softly and whispered what amounted to a prayer.
"Um. Odin. So, tomorrow's Wednesday, you know, your day, and there's going to be this ceremony. Well, you know all about it, obviously, but the thing is, is that I'm terrified of heights. I'd love to fly dragons and go high and fast because it looks like amazing fun, but I know that as soon as I get off the ground I'll freeze up and probably fall and die, or at least embarrass myself and my family, and they don't deserve that. So, since tomorrow I'm going to be given a hatching dragon egg at random, I was hoping maybe you could see your way clear to doing me a favor and sending me one that's small, too small to ride, like a Terrible Terror or a Sliquefier or maybe a Smothering Smokebreath at the biggest? Anyway I know you like meat, especially stuff killed by strangling. Now I'm not totally sure, but I think geese are killed by strangling or at least neck-breaking and I'm sorry that I don't have much but I'm trying really hard to give you what you like. I'm sorry I don't know how to make my prayers sound sacred, but I hope this'll be enough to let you forgive me for that." As she spoke she'd untied the oilcloth and, with all the ceremony and dignity she could manage, fed the chunks of goose meat into the flames to burn. There she remained for roughly half an hour as she watched the meat be reduced to ashes, and once she was sure there was none left she began messing with the remaining wood with a poker, slowly quenching the dying fire until she was sure it wouldn't catch again. She then tucked the oilcloth into her belt and returned discreetly to her house, climbing the tree quickly by feel and crawling all the way to the end of the branch to be sure that when she swung down she would hit the roof of the hatchery. Then she snuck back into her room as silently as possible and crawled into bed.
She was shaken awake roughly by her mother the next morning. "It's the day of the ceremony! Come on, get up, I want you to look your best!"
Bryn rolled out of bed, feeling queasy with nerves but also a bit more hopeful for having curried at least a little favor with Odin. She pulled on a clean red tunic and thick work pants as well as a warm fur-lined hide jacket, over which she tied her work belt around her waist. This belt was very useful to her, with well-worn places where she attached her belt knife, freshly sharpened, her thick leather gloves, good for training the more violent or careless young, and a small pouch containing dried jerked meat, good enticement for the wayward youngsters. She pulled on her thick hide boots and looked at her reflection in the window. She cut a decent figure, she decided, and looked quite respectable and hardworking. She might only be twelve, but she was already quite strong in the arms and her hands had their fair share of scars. She examined her wavy brown hair, cut short like she liked it, and flattened some wayward strands. She spent a moment staring herself in the eyes- she always wondered if perhaps if she stared long enough she would see her soul, but a noise downstairs brought her back to herself. The door had slammed and her parents seemed to be exclaiming about something. Down the stairs she raced to see her little brother, ruddy-faced from the cold outside but cheerful.
"You're back! Oh, I was wondering if you would make it back in time, this is fantastic!" Freya was saying.
"Of course we made it back." Torbjorn mumbled. "I wanted to stay out longer and see if we could find a Bewilderbeast but Lintsocks was really strict about the schedule."
"It's too bad, I was hoping you'd miss the ceremony." Bryn shot at him sarcastically from the foot of the stairs.
"BRYN!" Tor yelled, tearing himself from his mother's hug and barreling toward his sister. Bryn pulled the eight-year-old up into a tight hug and swung him around in a circle, laughing.
"Come on, let's go feed the dragons, and you can tell me all about the wild ones you saw on your trip." Bryn said, setting the boy down and taking his hand. "I've been dying to hear all about it."
The pair spent an enjoyable morning together, first giving the baby dragons their breakfasts, checking on the incubating eggs, and then going in to have their own breakfasts. The whole time Tor regaled Bryn with the long, winding tale of his three-day dragon-spotting trip out around the neighboring islands with some of his friends and several of their parents. Bryn had done something similar once, but she'd hated it because she wasn't well-liked by others her age and the others had made fun of the sounds of excitement she'd made when she'd spotted an Eruptodon flapping its way toward a column of distant smoke. But Tor had had a blast and that made Bryn happy enough to almost forget her dread of the Ceremony, which was set to begin at ten.
As the clock tower tolled nine-thirty, the family of four departed the house and walked up to the town square in front of the chiefs' house and the meeting house, where the town was gathering. Every child who was at least twelve who had not been given their first dragon in the ceremony was present, as were their families, the co-Chiefs Hiccup and Astrid were there, as well as the priestess of Odin and the warpriest of Thor, though the ceremony would be primarily lead by Odin's priestess, it being Wednesday and everything.
The holy pair led the townspeople into the meeting house, where black-painted eggs were being kept warm around the central fire. Each had been additionally labeled with a cloth number. The warpriest picked up a bag and held it open, and the priestess lined up the prospective dragon-raisers to take a cloth number from the bag. Bryn felt like her stomach was filled with snakes as she approached the bag and pulled out a number. She walked around the others her age, slowly ringing around the stone hearth, finding a largish, oblong egg that, under its paint, seemed to be quite smooth with only a few possible blemishes. Bryn gulped. That was definitely no Terrible Terror egg. She hoped it was a Speed Stinger or something large but wingless.
Everyone had been assigned an egg, and every egg had begun to wobble and crack. Benches were pulled up and they all sat watching their eggs intensely. The priestess of Odin intoned a long prayer, blessing the dragon-human pairs that were about to bond. Bryn was intensely watching her egg, slowly deforming. She waited for what felt like days until the first piece of shell broke off. She saw her dragon's egg-tooth appear and a faint flash of pale scales. She had to remind herself to breathe several times as the muzzle of an ice-white head worked to make the hole larger by degrees. Bryn's heart sank as she recognized the shape of the head and body that slowly broke itself out of the egg. She knew most dragons were rideable, but why oh why did her very first dragon have to be the fastest and highest-flying dragon known? Why couldn't she at least work her way up?
The Silver Phantom, wings limp and weak, crawled out of the remains of its shell and toward Bryn, croaking questioningly. Bryn loved it at once, but at the same time her sense of dread had grown a hundredfold. Still, she picked it up and cradled it, blowing into its nostrils to teach it her scent. It stretched its long, thin neck up to her chin and nuzzled her as she stroked its thin, trembling body. "Let's get you warm." She said softly, undoing her work-belt, opening her jacket, and pressing it gently to her chest. She took a sling offered to her by the priestess with thanks, and tied it around herself, securing her new charge to her chest. Her fingers dove into her pouch of meat and took a small chunk out. Dissatisfied with its size, she broke it in two and offered the first to the newborn, who took it hungrily. Slowly she fed it a healthy first meal, and then it tucked its head under a fold of the sling and went to sleep.
Bryn looked around. Her fellow initiates were in similar ways, feeding other baby dragons in slings. She spotted a Hideous Zippelback, a Groncicle, a Terrible Terror, a Monstrous Nightmare, a Shovelhelm, a Raincutter, and a Night Terror. Bryn frowned, but looking back down at the dragon on her chest, she couldn't resent it.
She could resent Odin, though. After the ceremony, she settled the dragon she had decided to name Aurora down in her own bed, which would serve for the time being. She shook her proud mother off at the front door and went down to the stony shore, though her family thought she was going to read the manual entry on Silver Phantoms. Picking up stones, she threw them out to sea angrily, yelling incoherently until her hands were empty. Then she yelled at the sky. "WHY? Why did you do this to me?" She screamed at the air. "What did I do wrong? I didn't ask for anything big! There were two whole non-flying dragons you could have given me!" She picked up more stones and hucked them as far as she could manage before shouting some more. "Did you want more goose? That was all the goose I had! I gave you everything I could manage last night!" Stone after stone plopped unsatisfyingly into the ocean, though her arms were getting pleasingly sore. "I should've prayed to Thor! He's not sadistic!" she yelled angrily. She'd have to go in soon.
She turned and very nearly fell into the ocean. "Oh gods, Chief Hiccup, I apologize." She said, kneeling and bowing her head. "That was terribly undignified and heretical, I apologize."
"Everyone gets angry at the gods sometimes." Hiccup said with a chuckle, sitting down beside her. "Do you want to talk about it, or just sit here for a bit? The sea it a great place to think."
Bryn stared at him, then sat down, feeling weird and uncertain. "I'd want to talk about it, I suppose," she said, "but I think you'd try to do something about it which might end up badly for me. I mean, it's kind of embarrassing and secret, but I don't know how to deal with it. I mean, if I'd gotten a different dragon it would've been alright, but I think Aurora was the worst choice for me."
"How would a different dragon have made a difference?" Hiccup asked levelly.
Bryn was silent for a minute. "I- um- I really don't want my mom to know about this, but I'm really, really afraid of heights. I freeze up, I lose control, I panic. Anything more than five feet up I feel it, and the higher I am the worse it is. But my mom wants me to become a great flyer like her, or at least someone who flies a lot. She's crazy about Aurora being a Silver Phantom, she's already making space on the walls for racing medals. And, I'd love to fly, but I know I can't." Bryn put her face in her hands. "I've tried so hard to become less scared. I know that here, it's so incredibly safe. That a trained dragon would catch me, or there would be netting, or it wouldn't even be dangerous enough for that. I know it's safe in the saddle, but even though I know it I can't convince my body it's safe."
"Well, you have a few years before Aurora will be able to fly you anywhere. You have time to work through this, and if you want I can delay your flight training until you've worked over this." Hiccup said.
Bryn jumped to her feet. "You can't do that just for me." She said. "I- I should've handled this already, I've had this coming for years, and mom will know something's up if I don't go to flight training, I just- I-" A bell tolled, and Bryn froze. "I've got to go, I told my family I'd only be gone half an hour." She said. "I'm so sorry, Chief, don't worry about me, I'm not worthy of your aid-" she said humbly, backing up and then dashing away back up the island to her house. It had felt good to say everything out loud, but she'd just have to power through flight training. She pushed through the door, gave a hurried greeting to her family and dashed up the stairs to see Aurora.
The tiny dragon was still sleeping, but in her room Bryn found a box of sand, which she assumed was for a litter box, and a large wooden crate thoroughly lined with soft blankets, for a bed that would suit the dragon for a good few years. With gentle hands she transferred the hatchling to the box and left an old shirt covered in her scent inside, so he would become accustomed to her scent and trust her more. She took off her belt and coat, laying the coat over the crate to reduce light and let the little dragon sleep a bit longer.
There was a gentle knock at her door, and Bryn let herself out so she wouldn't disturb Aurora. Outside stood her father, his one arm over a crutch and a gentle smile on his face. "Hey there, my little drag-yn." He said, using his favorite nickname for her. "I've got something for you." Leaning against the wall, he shifted and pulled a large, partly-worn-out, fur-lined hide jacket. "I know you don't like heights, but I know you're going to try and beat that. I'm so proud of you, and I want you to have this jacket. It's the one I wore on my first flight ever, and my first flight on Skadi. While you wear it, I'm going with you. I hope that- oh! Oh, Bryn, you'll do wonderfully. We're already so proud of you." The last remarks were inspired because Bryn's eyes had filled with tears and she was holding tightly to her father.
"Thank you, Papa," She said, her voice muffled against his chest.
"Of course." Ottar replied. There was a whine from inside the room. "Now, will you introduce me to your dragon?"
Bryn opened the door and went over to Aurora. The dragon quieted as soon as he saw her, and clawed his way out of the crate and up Bryn's leg, stopping when curled around her shoulders. "Hello, Aurora," Bryn cooed, stroking his nose where the egg-tooth still remained and would remain for a few days. "Come say hello to my dad, Ottar." She walked over to Ottar, who slowly introduced himself to Aurora. Together, after Bryn had wiped her eyes and her face was no longer reddened with tears, they brought Aurora down the stairs, Bryn wearing her father's old jacket with the jerked meat in her pocket. At the foot of the stairs they introduced Aurora to Tor and Freya, and when he nipped her ear she fed him again, then, since he looked overwhelmed, she brought him back upstairs and, all of a sudden, found herself giving him a first lesson in the use of the litter box.
The rest of the day passed with the family taking turned fawning over and playing with Aurora until he was thoroughly exhausted at sundown. Bryn went down to take care of her chores in the hatchery, feeding, turning eggs, checking that the heating system was working properly, and so on. The heating system was a clever invention of her father's- water pumping through a system of pipes that spread under the floor of the hatchery and behind the wall of the incubator shelves. The water was heated by a furnace under the stone floor, which Ottar handled since he did not want any accidents in the furnace room. First the water flowed past the incubators, which needed to be warmest, then under the dragon-cages, then back down to the furnace room.
Bryn was well and truly exhausted by the time dinner rolled around, too exhausted to dread the first day of flying practice the next day. She ate her dinner silently- well, she was silent, her mother could hardly stop talking- wished her family a good night, went upstairs, checked on the sleeping newborn, and went to bed.
She had dreaded dreams of falling, but, with her sleeping hand unconsciously clutching the sleeve of her dad's old jacket, she slept peacefully.