Welcome to the second collaboration from LesserWraith and I! I will identify at the beginning of each chapter who wrote what.
This is Absi B's chapter. Enjoy!
I love to fly.
I love the feeling of the air rushing over my scales, the roaring in my ears that sounds so like my own. I love how when I push down on the air with a beat of my powerful wings, the air pushes right back, propelling me upwards.
But, most of all, I love the crazy tricks that Hiccup and I practice when nobody's around. Things like Hiccup jumping from me and over things, then landing back on me on the other side. I love the pure thrill of it, the adrenaline rush that comes from the fact that without him, I have very little control over my flight path. Unless you count a crash landing into the ocean a viable flight path.
Granted, we haven't got it right every time, but I've never missed catching him if he falls.
My favourite trick involves us flying to cloud level, then diving down, Hiccup and I facing one another as we plummet. It's the only time I can ever see his face whilst flying, and so often it's a happy one, grinning madly even though he is falling to his death if I don't catch him.
Not many dragons and riders have the unique bond we share that lets us do this.
Not many dragons have the skills to do this either.
I'm enjoying this moment, watching Hiccup grinning and whooping, returning it with a lopsided Toothless grin and a poking tongue. As he falls, I reach out and spin his body, rotating it in mid-air. Each time he turns back around to face me, a new expression has appeared on his face. I laugh harder and harder, eventually my laughs turn into a coughing fit.
In between juddering coughs, I feel Hiccup clicking back into place upon my back, and opening the tail mechanism once again. I spread my wings wide, my body losing its streamlined bullet shape, and slow us down marginally. I'm still coughing violently, which makes keeping in control rather difficult. But I manage it.
Night Furies are known for their agility and skill when flying.
It's like someone is tugging at my insides... my soul. It's getting harder for me to breathe... I can't stay up any longer. I have to... get down...
I realise that I won't be able to accurately navigate all the way back to Berk without getting lost somewhere, since we often fly a fair distance before attempting any stunts. Hiccup thinks his dad would probably yell at him and ban him from flying with me if he got caught doing any tricks. I guess that's just overprotective parents for you.
I steady my body for long enough to catch a glimpse of some kind of landmass close by. Gesturing my head and coughing in that direction is enough to tell Hiccup that's where we'll be landing.
"You got it, bud," he replies, adjusting the tail fin and allowing me to surge forward in between coughing fits.
I cough and shoot out a plasma blast towards a landing spot on the island. Temporarily losing control, I end up veering extremely close to the ground. But I recover, and land with a bit of a smaller jolt than I would have done.
Hiccup still gets thrown from my back nonetheless.
The island we've landed on is barren and brown. We are on a dusty, rocky platform near a beach, with only a narrow, treacherous path leading down to the beach or upwards to the top of the tall cliff. The ocean can be heard violently bashing against the rocks seemingly hidden underneath the waves, and white horses often rear their heads in the surf. There are no other signs of life, save for a few exotic flying fish dancing in the waters further out to sea.
I don't notice much of this at first; I'm concentrating too hard on trying to draw a raspy breath into my starving lungs.
Once Hiccup has picked himself up from the floor and dusted himself off, he looks with a concerned expression across at me, still coughing and struggling for breath nearby.
"Are you okay, bud? Was it when I made you laugh?"
My reply is only another coughing fit.
I don't know what's happening to me. Dragons are never ill. I mean, not without reason. But... I haven't seen any of those flowers, or anything else that would make me sick, around the island lately.
As I ponder in confusion, Hiccup catches me a fish and holds it out to me like when we first met. I immediately stop coughing, and look at him pleadingly. For me, this means dilating my pupils as much as I can, and trying to look as innocent as possible.
Not that I really need to do this anymore to get food from Hiccup. He tosses me the fish, and I catch it deftly between my gums. I swallow it whole, not bothering to chew it, savouring the taste that remains in my mouth.
Instantly, my insides set themselves on fire and pain is the only thing I know. It feels like knives have burst forth from my organs, and are trying to worm their way out through my skin. The pain is all pervading, and agonising. I fall to the floor, curling up in anguish. Behind me, I can hear Hiccup's voice faintly behind the pounding of my head.
"Toothless! Are you okay? Talk to me, bud."
Why do people invariably always ask whether you are okay when it is very obvious you are not?
I whimper quietly, massaging my stomach. What had once been a stabbing pain everywhere had concentrated at my stomach. Now the general agony had become ultra- concentrated torture. In between the undulating levels of pain, I draw in shallow, grating breaths.
Thankfully Hiccup appears to understand what is happening to me. Sometimes I really wish I could just talk to him properly, rather than having to resort to all these silly gestures and charades.
I growl as another wave of pain comes crashing done upon me, smothering my senses and invading my mind.
I roll over onto my back, noticing that the sun is already well on its way to ending the day for us already. My wings are gently crushed under my own weight; Night Furies are not meant to lie on their backs for long like this. But another torrent of torture is bearing down on me; I cannot move from this position. Now the creaking and cracking of my wings is adding to the groans and rasping breaths I am already making. My body is becoming a cacophony of disrepair and sickness.
"Okay, Toothless. I'm going to look for help. Stay here."
Well, where else am I meant to go?
As he turns on his heel, I summon up my remaining strength and gently swipe at his back, spinning around and causing him to lose his balance.
"What is it, Toothless? I need to go and find somebody."
I want to burst out, yell at him. Tell him that he isn't going to find any help here. I can see from the terrain that nobody is nearby. But obviously he does not know this.
Oh, I wish I could talk to him properly!
I motion my head at the floor, and swipe my paw round in a circle, trying to tell him to stay here and sleep with me. It's all I really can do, since that last swiping movement took all the strength I had left in me. Now I am powerless to any attacker, and unable to protect Hiccup. If he went looking for help, and encountered a nefarious creature along the way… I wouldn't be there to save him.
He could lose his life for me. No. He was willing to risk his life for me. I can't let him do that. I need to be the one that protects him. I am the mighty Night Fury, the unholy offspring of Lightning and Death itself, you know. Not many are able to match me in a fight.
Luckily, my crude charade manages to convince Hiccup, and, sighing, he positions himself near to me on a mossy rock. But he doesn't sleep. He just sits there and watches me. I think about him for a minute, think that this is one of the few times that our roles have been reversed. Now I am the one who is helpless and sick. I close my eyes, a new pain washing over me and pushing me over the edge into the black oblivion.
A/N I hope you enjoyed the first chapter! This is more of a prologue- the plot will begin properly in the next chapter, which should be up soon.
If you want to read our first collaboration, it's on LesserWraith's profile and it's called Anything for Life. There's also a link to it on my profile.