I love this movie! I've watched it three times just on DVD! I just love the twins! I started getting a few ideas, but I couldn't really string them together until I started listening to the soundtrack music. Hope this works!
Disclaimer: I don't own How to Train Your Dragon, or any of it's characters. Nor do I want to, for I would not have done it justice.
As night settled over the empty ocean surrounding the large ship, several lamps were lit along the deck as most of the crew went below to sleep. Only a few watchmen remained, keeping a lookout for land, dangerous reefs, or other vessels.
A head of silver hair caught in the moonlight shining through the window of above deck cabin at the stern, which pulled back quickly as a lamp-bearing sentry passed. A moment later, the head reappeared, carefully swinging the window open so as to not make any noise. A bag was carefully lowered to the floor, followed by the unbooted feet of a girl, who looked around quickly in case anyone was near. When no one appeared, she quickly paced over to the railing behind the cabin, placing the stuffed bag into the small boat in its launching rig.
After shutting the open window behind her, the girl silently clambered into the stern of the vessel, grabbing the ropes tied to the pulleys on either end. She let them loosen a tiny bit experimentally, and thanked her lucky stars that the metal was well oiled and didn't squeal. Lowering the boat quickly she managed to get it settled in the water just as the lamp-light from another watchman neared her now empty cabin. Holding tightly to the ropes so they wouldn't move, she held her breath as the man paused on one side of the stern, then the other when he'd rounded the end, scanning the horizon.
The girl sighed as the man moved off, letting the ropes loose so that they would come out of the pulleys the rest of the way. She leaned back against the tarp covering her partially-pilfered supplies as the ship slowly pulled away. When the ends of the pulley ropes slipped from the rail, she quickly reeled them in and untied them from the ends of her small craft, adding them to her stores. She didn't dare pick up the oars yet, in case someone heard or saw her.
"Not yet, Storm." She muttered. "Just need to wait for them to do the distancing for me." Just then, the girl, Storm, heard a small scuffling under the tarp at the other end of the boat. She froze, her mind conjuring images of someone who'd been sleeping in the boat; someone who'd sound the alarm; she'd be dragged back onto the ship and locked up!
Storm almost yelped when something furry brushed her leg, and then she saw the tiny pair of eyes, glowing in the moonlight and blinking up at her. She could've laughed in relief, but for the need for silence. "Coal! What are you doing here?" she whispered, scooping the tiny, pitch-black kitten into her arms. "Though I suppose I am glad of the company; alright then, we're in this together."
Eventually, the ship was far enough away that Storm could risk rowing. She folded the tarp a few times until the bench was exposed, grasped awkwardly at the oars made for two grown men, and pulled at them for all her worth. She had to stop several times, her body being unused to the labor, and she had several large blisters on her hands within hours. She called it quits for the time being just as the sky began to pale in the east, stowing her oars and pulling the tarp back up just so it reached past the bench. Crawling so her head and upper body were beneath the shade of the tarp, she laid her head on a bundle of ropes, and was soon asleep as the boat gently drifted in the Northeastern direction she'd been rowing.
Storm awoke several hours later, with the sun much higher in the sky, but still tilting to the east, and she saw that her course had changed slightly, so that she was drifting eastward. 'That won't do. If the captain manages to get the men to come looking for me, they'll catch up by the end of the day!' she quickly turned the boat northward, and started rowing again, the blisters on her hands and the muscles in her arms screaming in protest. Wincing in pain, she wrapped her hands as best she could, and pressed on, while Coal idly watched her from his seat on the bench.
As noon passed, the hunger she'd so stubbornly ignored gnawed at her stomach, and was joined by the kitten pawing at her leg, mewling. Finally, she gave in, reluctantly unpacking a little of the smoked meat from one of the crates. Giving some to her companion, she quickly wolfed down the small meal, washing the taste away with a few sips from one of her canteens, before continuing the labor of crawling across the vast waters. As the sun set, Storm shared another small meal with the tiny black cat, and re-entered her shelter for the night.
When she next awoke, Storm was delighted to find that it was raining, albeit being very cold. She quickly sat up on the bench, giggling at the sight of her companion huddling miserably against the damp. When her head left the bundle of rope, Coal scrambled into it, curling up in the warmth she left behind. Storm basked in the rain, her mouth open wide to receive the life-giving liquid, allowing it to wash away the salt on her parched skin and the blood on her hands from her blisters, soothing the burning sensations in her sore muscles. The icy rain soaked her bright blonde hair, which had become even paler under the unrelenting sun.
After she'd spent a good deal under the weather, Storm relented to the shivers running through her body, and covered the boat the rest of the way to shelter it from the weather before retreating under the shelter herself. Stripping out of her soaked clothes, she set them aside to dry later, and wrapped herself in the cloak she'd brought and left under the shelter, allowing her body to relax for the time being. She wouldn't risk rowing when she had no direction to go by, in case she'd gotten turned around and ended up going back the way she'd come. Pulling the fabric around herself more snugly, she let the sound of the endless rain lull her back to sleep.
It was mid-afternoon when she woke again, this time from Coal's plaintive mews and her own hunger. Seeing as it was no longer raining, she pulled the tarp back over the bench, finding the clouds beginning to thin out as she fastened her cloak around her neck. After spreading her still-damp clothes out in the sun, she pulled another piece of smoked meat from the crate, allowing them to indulge in a bit of sourdough bread to go with it. By the time they'd finished eating, the sky had cleared enough so Storm could pick her direction.
Storm switched the cloak for her tunic, being the only thing dry enough to wear, and again seated herself at the rowing bench, sighing heavily as she took hold of the oars again. Remembering the words of the men she overheard, she continued north, stopping every now and then to scan for any promising signs of land. Or of a ship, which would not be nearly as welcome.
Storm spent the next three days rowing steadily northward, her blisters turning to calluses and her muscles hardening along the way. As her body became accustomed to the exercise, she was able to continue rowing into the night, and was not completely drained at the end of each day. She took to playing with Coal during their last meal each day, tying his food to a piece of string to drag around so that he had to catch it. She always tried to tire him out each day, so that he wouldn't wander the boat at night and fall out while she slept.
Around mid-morning on the fourth day, Storm finally spotted the tell-tale haze that marked land on the horizon, to the north and slightly west of her. Her energy and hope renewed, she altered her course for the land-mass, and could almost make out the tree-line by the end of the day. She went to sleep eagerly that night, content, excited, and more than a little nervous that she would reach the island by tomorrow.
As it turned out, Storm woke the next morning to find that she had already run ashore during the night. Jumping into the water, she quickly pulled the boat as far out of the water as she could, weighed down by supplies as it was. When she was finally satisfied that it would not easily drift away, she set to exploring the area for someplace safe to stay. From the looks of things, pretty much the entire stretch of beach she was on was walled off from the trees above by a wind and sea-smoothed stone wall about seven feet in height. deciding on the spot, she turned to follow the sand to the left, which continued straight for a while before curving to the right.
Storm had almost made it to the bend in the sand when a little 'mew' revealed that Coal had followed her all the way. Scooping the kitten into her arms, she continued down the beach, stopping short again just when she'd reached the curve of land. Just a few feet ahead lay a tiny stream flowing into the ocean, snaking its way out of a cut in the rock. Walking up to where the miniature cliff met the sand, Storm set the cat down to take a look up the waterway.
"Huh. Looks like we can get inland through here, Coal. But we should bring the boat around closer. I'm not for lugging that stuff all around the beach." Storm finished, turning back to her tiny companion, only to find her lapping greedily at the fresh water. Smiling, the girl stooped to drink her fill also, before again picking the cat up and carrying her back to the waiting boat. After finally getting back into the water, it was easy to row around to the crevice and pull the vessel onto the sand. She didn't try to pull it up through the creek, in case a sudden rainstorm flooded the stream out. Grabbing only her bag and a full canteen out of the vessel, she made room for the now sleeping kitten, and placed her in the top of the pouch before setting off up the stream.
The shallow waterway went further inland than Storm thought it would, the narrow channel winding this way and that through the earth that gradually sloped upward. After the ground had been level with the stream for a while, she had to stop when the water extended from under the roots of an enormous tree, which seemed to have sprung up in the gap between two sheer rock faces that she couldn't possibly scale. Looking the tree up and down, Storm noticed a branch that she might be able to reach.
Pulling her bag off her shoulders, she opened the pouch to find Coal blinking up at her, still waking up. Giggling, she set the cat on the ground nest to her, where she promptly began cleaning herself while the girl pulled a length of coiled rope from the bag. Looking around, she found an oblong stone that she managed to tie one end of the coil around. Much to her companion's displeasure, she scooped the cat back into the bag, sealing it shut and shouldering it again before standing.
Holding onto the other end of the rope, Storm swung the rock quickly before letting it fly towards the branch. She cursed a little as it fell woefully short, and she had to reel the rope back in. The second time was closer, but still a miss. The third try, she actually managed to get the rock over the branch, and was so shocked that her hold on the end of the rope loosened, and it was jerked out of her hands and over the branch, to fall on the ground again. It took several more tries, but she finally was able to loop the rope around the branch and, bracing her feet against the trunk, scale the tree until she was straddling the branch and pulling the rope back up for the next one. It was late morning by the time Storm managed to get high enough to climb to the top of the rock face and sit down, worn out. When she finally looked around, her eyes widened at what she saw.
She was standing on a rock that formed a complete wall around a decent-sized plot of land, encircling a pond, which was both feeding the stream she'd followed and being fed by one in turn. The ground was patchy at best, some spots being sandy dirt, while others were coated in thick grass, with several large rocks littering the ground. The tree she'd used to climb up completed the enclosure, the roots on this side vaulting up from the ground, creating a large shaded hollow.
"Looks like we've found our new home, Coal." The girl said over her shoulder, laughing when she received an impatient yowl in reply. After making sure her rope was tied tightly to the branch next to her, she carefully lowered herself down into the little valley. As soon as she'd reached the ground, Storm released the kitten from her pouch, giggling at the sight of her companion's energized spring from its carrier. Walking over to the hollow space beneath the tree, she was glad to find that it was one of the spots where grass could grow, and she set to work emptying the contents of her bag.
Storm had prepared herself as well as she'd been able to with the stores of the ship she'd left behind. Because of the way the men had stored things, they'd been forced to put many of the supplies on the lifeboats instead of below decks. And no one had questioned her when she would be seen 'reorganizing' the supplies. It'd taken her a few weeks to switch the supplies she'd need to the boat by her cabin, but it was well worth it. Just out of her bag came things like rope, a folded bundle of cloth, fishing line and several hooks, a couple knives, a small hammer and many nails, scissors, and even a few luxuries like a small metal bowl and plate, and a few pieces of cutlery.
After she and Coal shared a quick lunch, she shouldered her now empty pack and set off for the rope still tied to the tree-limb, after looking back to see that the kitten had curled up on the cloth she'd brought, asleep. Confident that she would be safe for a short time, she quickly scaled the rock face, pulling the rope behind her as she descended the other side. Smiling a little, she set off back down the stream.
How's it so far? I try to get Storm's story in the 2nd or 3rd chapters. Review's please, and anyone who guesses the location correctly get's a COOKIE! Nom!
I have to say, I had a time picking my OC's name, as well as the title of the story. I wanted to keep with the 'Viking names' thing, while still having it work well for a girl. I have NO idea for a last name, though. Any suggestions?