One
Iza does not dare open her eyes.
She inhales deeply, relishing the feel of her ribs stretching around the expanse of her diaphragm, and thinks, I am alive. Rain patters against her face, icy pinpricks to the heat of her flushed skin, and she thinks, I should not be alive. This she knows with absolute certainty.
Those struck by Thor do not rise again.
And yet, she continues to breathe. Even sprawled as dumbly as she is on the muddied forest floor with the faint scent of smoke teasing her nose, she continues to live. True, her body aches and her muscles shiver sporadically, but she feels stronger as the seconds pass. Stronger, perhaps, than she has ever felt before.
Overhead, thunder rumbles in the sky ominously and Iza flinches, expecting another strike of lightning to course through her body. Thunder merely roars again, and in her mind it almost sounds like laughter, though strangely not unkind. The curious absurdity of such a thought is what compels her to open her eyes – finally. The sky that greets her through the boughs of the trees is darker than it had been, the rain falling from the heavy clouds a torrent that quickly soaks her to the bone. There is no more lightning.
No, all the lightning had stuck Iza – and now it has vanished from the storm.
Briefly, Iza wonders what the village elders would think of such a thing if she were to tell them. Should she tell them? Thor's hammer had swung from the ether to deliver to her a killing blow from the sky itself. Surely, such an account would interest the elders; they would rave about it for weeks and try to divine a meaning from Thor's actions.
But, no. By the Norns, Iza would have to tie her tongue! If she were to tell the elders of what happened to her, then she would also have to tell the elders – and the Chieftain – why she was in the forest to begin with. And if she told them that she intended to hide in the forest until the battle was over, then she would not only be forced to confess her reluctance to fight but also why she disapproved of the fighting in the first place.
Iza would not shame her father in that way.
Resolved, Iza eyes the sky warily as she sits up. Fresh air on the top of her chest makes her look down, catching the plain wool of her tunic as the singed edges flutter apart to expose her skin. Iza fairly gapes at the revealed flesh. Right over her heart, there is a series of angry pinkish markings – tender to the touch – that branch out from the center point like the roots of Yggdrasil. Or like lightning. Alarmed that Thor has marked her so boldly by planting lightning on her skin, Iza rushes to cover it up. Her hands tremble as she ties the frayed edges of wool together, heart hammering in her eardrums. Any notion of forgetting being struck dies very quickly. Iza has been marked for life – the very evidence lives on her body now.
Pressing her trembling hands over her now-covered chest, her eyes take in her surroundings and she gasps. Dread builds, locking her throat. The ground is as scarred as her skin, the mark of Thor's lightning torching through the grass and blackening the earth several hands around where she sits. Iza scrambles to stand, knees knocking together as she flees the scene, heading further from her village and deeper into the forest.
She expects to feel weak and lightheaded, but except for the nerves clanking her bones together, Iza is hale in body and mind. The quiver hanging from her waist bounces against her thigh as she runs, picking up speed and fluidity as muscle-memory returns to her shocked body. Iza spends quite a bit of time in the solitude of the forest around her village. It is as much home to her as the Chieftain's house atop the highest hill in Forks.
Iza isn't sure of how long she intends to run – knowing she must eventually go back home, perhaps when the flashes of dragonfire have long vanished from the battleground her home frequently becomes – but a high-pitched noise snags her attention and halts her leather-clad feet.
That sound, she knows, has no home in her forest. The forest is peaceful, a place of spring-fed water and chirruping birds even at night; even wounded elk do not emit such a noise.
Iza changes direction, torn between caution and an immutable sense of knowing.
After all, she has heard that noise before and she knows what it means. Just not here, in the quiet of the trees.
The metallic cry comes again, thready and weak this time, and Iza hurries to break through the bramble. She stops at the top of a deep ravine, peering down into the darkness to spy the injured dragon with a muted sense of surprise. It is too dark to tell what kind of dragon it is, but she supposes it is smaller, more slender than ones she has seen before, with scales that blend into the shadows and eyes that emit the tiniest of greenish glows. It is the scant light provided by the dragon's eyes that clue her into the cause of the dragon's injury, for an eerily similar pattern scores the earth around the dragon.
It seems Thor had seen fit to strike two beings on this night.
The sky rumbles again – a confirmation – and the rain begins to fall harder, raindrops slipping down her neck around her long braid. The dragon cries again, the pitch of its voice painful to her feather-pierced ears.
The dragon is dying.
They had both been struck by Thor, but only Iza had survived.
There must be a reason.
The caution that had kept her immobile at the top of the ravine disappears, and Iza skids down the mud-slicked slope, landing hard on her hands and knees. She grunts, then freezes when she feels the heavy weight of the dragon's stare. Iza raises her eyes and stares right back at the shadowed dragon. The fear she expected to feel – the fear she feels each time the bell is rung and the dragons come to steal the village livestock – is nowhere to be found.
All Iza truly feels is a disquieting sense of pity at the pain plain to see in the dragon's glowing eyes.
The sky rumbles again.
And Iza says, "No creature, not even a dragon, deserves to die alone."
The dragon closes its eyes and Iza holds herself still, a silent vigil witnessing the slow, belabored death of a dragon – the declared enemy of all that dwell in Forks and the villages beyond. It is quick and, she hopes, painless for the dragon. Iza, unlike others, has never seen glory in senseless death. She feels some sadness for the dragon and wonders if dragons have their own Valhalla, if the dragons who die in battle find treasures in the next world just like Vikings do. Do dragons have Valkyrie?
Such thoughts are strange, she knows. Yet still she has them.
Is that why Thor saw fit to strike her with his lightning? If so, then what had the dragon done to deserve the same – and worse – fate?
Iza frowns and shakes her head, fumbling for the flint tucked into a sachet of supplies in her quiver. She plans to burn the dragon, to send it off to the afterlife and Hel's realm with as much dignity as it deserves. A dragon is still a being of the Great Tree. To die without fire to protect its soul is – unthinkable.
But as the sparks of her flint cast fleeting bursts of light into the darkness, her eyes catch on something beneath the dragon's leathery wing. Iza crawls forward and pushes the wing back, squinting into the blackness. Thor must still be watching over her, because lightning flashes just bright enough that Iza can make out the shape beneath the wing as thunder crashes again.
Impossible.
But undeniable.
Scarcely believing it, Iza carefully reaches forward, palms slipping against the smooth, stone-like texture of the – miraculous – dragon egg. Her mind blanks free of thought as she holds the egg, its weight dragging on her arms, the falling rain slicking her grip enough that the only thing she can do is hug the egg to her chest to stop from dropping it.
Because surely dropping a dragon egg would be very bad.
"Oh, Thor," Iza murmurs in dazed prayer. "What do I do? What would you have me do? I can only imagine that you must have a purpose for striking me and leading me to this dragon – but what I am to do with a dragon egg? I cannot bring it back to Forks…"
Yet, what other option does she have? Her conscious would not rest well to know that she had left a vulnerable egg in a forest, unknowing if it would survive alone and without the guidance of its mother. And she cannot help but feel that the dragon had died in peace precisely because it knew that Iza would find – and protect – its egg. Otherwise, wouldn't the dragon have fought against Iza's interloping until its dying breath? Instead, the dragon had passed in peace – and entrusted its egg to a wayward shieldmaiden.
Iza steels herself as she sets the dragon alight, staring into the flames as she cradles the egg to her chest. The rain works to dampen the abrupt pyre, sending smoldering smoke into the night sky. Iza hurries away knowing she cannot be caught at a dragon's funeral, huffing as she climbs one-handed back up the ravine, tripping over her own feet as she hastens back to the village. As she nears the village, she drags the heavily soaked, fur-lined cloak around to her front, both to hide the egg and her destroyed tunic. Her only goal is to reach the highest hill without being seen, for she is in no right mind to answer any queries on her whereabouts during the battle against the dragons. Ever.
She skirts around the backs of longhouses, making note of how quiet the village is now. The battle must be over, then. Most of the village ought to be gathered in the Great Hall, the longest-standing longhouse in the village where many feasts are shared over the long winter and where, after battles, the injured are tended to as the Chieftain looked over them all. This is good, as far as Iza is concerned. If the Chieftain is in the Great Hall, then he won't be home – and that means that she can sneak the egg into her room and quietly panic over what she should do next.
Iza reaches the stout longhouse on the highest hill and lets out a quiet sigh of relief as she lets herself inside. The furthest corner of the hut, partitioned by shuttered wood hanging from the ceiling on two side to give her privacy, has been hers since she was a babe. It is in that corner where Iza swiftly makes a space for the egg, nestling it between her feathered pillow and the hay mattress on the floor where it is pushed against the wall. She covers the egg with her pillow and sits down on her rear, suddenly tired beyond all measure. She struggles with the clasp of her cloak, rolling her neck when the suffocating weight off her body. She'll have to hang it before the fire to dry the fur, but that bothersome task can wait a moment or two.
It has been a very long night.
And, when a heavy-handed thump sounds on the door, Iza can only commiserate that the night is about to be longer. Because she knows that knock and she is absolutely not ready to face him. She has very little choice in the matter, however. If she lets him continue, he'll knock hard enough to bring down the entire longhouse and feel no worse for it.
Iza forces herself to stand up, managing to answer the door before there is another chance to knock. Standing outside, sword at his hip and daggers tucked into the leather vambraces on his forearms, is the hope of the hunters of Forks and the bane of Iza's existence. Not because he is overly rude to her, which he has been when they both were younger; not because her father favors matching her with him, although he does; not because he is so proficient with a blade that he has killed more than men twice his age, though such a record is not endearing to Iza in the slightest. No, her problem with this young man, four summers older than her own sixteen, is that she does admire him.
For all that Edvard is an orphan, he has made something of himself – he is, by far, the most steadfast man in the village. And perhaps the most handsome, although Iza truly tries not to allow herself to be swayed by his copper-coin hair and eyes the same shade of green as the springtime glades. It's much easier to focus on his strange blend of intensity and aloofness. One moment, he doesn't seem to care about her at all, and the next, he is standing on her doorstep with a foreboding expression.
"You were not present at the battle," Edvard says, bypassing a nominally polite greeting altogether.
Iza stiffens, then pats the quiver at her hip. "I fight from a distance, as you well know." Then, before they can get into the same tired disagreement about the right and honorable way Vikings should fight – meaning, with a sword and not the safe distance of a bow – she tries to redirect his focus. "Is my father looking for me?"
"No."
Iza waits, but that single-word answer is all Edvard offers. Her mind tries to turn over the implications – if her father isn't looking for her, then why is Edvard here – but she struggles to find an explanation that fits into her worldview cleanly. And while she is so distracted, Edvard's keen eyes latch onto her ruined tunic.
His brow furrows and he takes a step forward. "Have you been injured?"
Iza blinks in confusion, then follows his stare. Her cheeks heat with a bright flush and she shakes her head quickly. "No! I am fine – just a small, uh, accident with a-a…a flint! Yes, the spark just got away from me for a moment, but I am fine!"
Edvard tilts his head, now studying her face. She can guess that she looks a right mess, wet hair sticking to her cheeks and her eyes a bit too wide, because his frown deepens. "Maybe you should see a healer in any case-"
Oh, no. A healer is the last thing Iza needs. If a healer thinks that she's even a little sick, then they will insist on replacing her bedding – the bedding where she has hidden a dragon egg. No. That cannot happen.
"No! As I said, and as you can see, I am fine! You can report my wellbeing to my father, now!" Iza says with a false cheer, quick to close the door in Edvard's face and latch the door lock.
"Izabela!" His shout is followed by a thump against the door and an aggravated noise that is swallowed by the rumbling thunder in the sky. Edvard calls for her once more, curses, and then seems to retreat.
Iza presses her forehead against the rough wood and closes her eyes, heart rabbiting in her chest.
She does not dare open her eyes for a long while, fearful that if she does, the world around her will be unrecognizable from what it had once been. It feels to her as though her entire life has changed in an alarmingly short time – she has been struck by lightning and become the keeper of an illicit dragon egg.
She does not know what to do next.
But she dares not open her eyes just yet.
A/N: I had a lot of ideas and an itch to write something new (since editing and copywriting is, apparently, not really my thing) and, hell, I haven't done dragons yet. While this is definitely a How To Train Your Dragon AU, there's probably going to be shades of other Viking-related and dragon-related shit thrown in, because why not?
As to names, we all know I like to mess with those, so I'm going to try to make all the canon names into Polish/Norwegian/Icelandic/Germanic equivalents, since those are languages most closely related to Norse Mythology. Which, speaking of, there are going to be a lot of Norse figures mentioned in this. Thor, as you probably know, was a God of thunder, storms, and fertility. Norns are weavers of destiny and fate, but unlike the Moirai in Greece, the main three Norns do not represent past, present, and future - and there are thought to be many, many more Norns, all serving different functions. Knowing me, I'll probably include some pagan rituals to lend realism to the story, so it might be best to mentally prepare for animal sacrifice (yay!). Just a heads-up.
As to updating, I'm updating as I write - that means typos. Live with them, point them out for me to fix, whatever. Frequency depends entirely on my whims. I'm in a weird headspace lately and stupidly busy, but here we are anyway. This is definitely a WIP.
As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.
~ Rae