Things were looking up for Jack as he soared over the forests of the kingdom of Dun Broch, where he spied his friend Merida, racing him from below on her horse, Angus, and he laughed and sped up, lowering himself enough to taunt her.
"Give it up princess! I'm immortal, I've got higher endurance!" He stated, chuckling.
She scoffed, playfully and replied, "Princess? Who're you callin' a princess, ye sissy little snow queen!"
Tooth glided past them expertly and giggled calling back, "Thanks guys, your flirting slows you down for me!" They both gawped as the feathered girl took the lead and instantly geared up, going straight back into race mode.
Eventually, as she sometimes did, Merida thought it was time to play dirty. She had a hidden quiver of arrows, but instead of using them, she pulled out a few jam filled pastries her brothers had stolen for her, and she retracted her lesser used weapon from a pouch at her side; a slingshot.
Cackling with mock insanity, she began to aim and fire at her aerial friends, and she laughed heavily as Jack turned around to see what the heck was wrong with her only to earn a bright, sticky, purple face.
If that wasn't bad enough, it also threw him off course, and in order to regain his flight stance, he summoned a heavy wind to carry him before he fell from the distraction...
but unfortunately, for some reason, the world chose that moment to suddenly become encased in a massive blizzard.
"Ack! Jack! What the heck?" He heard Merida calling, mistaking the weird change in weather to be his direct fault.
"Hey! Don't blame me, I didn't summon this blizza-aaaaaaaahhh!" A heavy gust of wind that he didn't summon either took him all the way off course and caused him to crash land in a massive heap, having fallen through a random cottage in the woods.
Suddenly, an angry old lady shrieked as the cold winter air destroyed a bunch of vials, and books and whatever was simmering in her pot began to fizzle out and a faint purple smoke began to curl from it followed by a foul smell.
Jack got up as fast as he could without slipping on the ice and was glad at a time like this that grown ups couldn't see him, but as fate would have it, this old lady was in fact a witch.
"YOU!" she screeched, causing Jack to scream and try to fly away.
The witch was taken aback at first at how the boy could manage such a feat, and mistook him for a rival sorcerer who was trying to destroy her work or something, and with a sneer she cackled and tossed a vial which he hadn't broken at him as he tried to fly away.
"Since you've had your fun with the cold, I'll give you something new to behold! Instead of frost, and glittering snow, let there be fire and let it glow!" She hollered before vanishing on he spot.
Before he had a chance to work out what had just happened suddenly things began to change. His vision grew oddly clearer, albeit dimmer in color and suddenly the backs of his shoulders began to stretch painfully, and he screamed as a ripping sensation made itself known, and he grasped his hair tightly, only to recoil as claws that he didn't know he had began to form in his slowly morphing fingers and hands which grew wider and amalgamated together in a webbed sort of way and his feet too, and he screamed again but this time instead of his own voice, a shrill and reptillian sound came from his throat and he began cursing and shouting, trying to make words form but his jaw and teeth were altered too much by now to have any affect, and lastly a stabbing pain near his temples erupted and through his scaly fat hands he felt two thick horns growing in their place.
He was unable to bear the pain for too long, and soon passed out, the world growing black. He didn't know how long he had been carried by the wind as he mutated, and he didn't know where he was, but was grateful to be done with the ordeal.
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Hiccup and Toothless had this habit of spending particularly lazy afternoons in the warmth of the sun, laying around in the valley where they met and just sleeping, or chatting, although it was always more Hiccup talking and Toothless listening, although he knew not what his master would say. Not to the fullest extent anyway, for dragons are smart creatures and they learn very fast.
Toothless knew many words, and what they meant. He also could understand the gist of a sentence if said with the right inflection or physical cues to aid his understanding.
He nodded as Hiccup finished a sentence and pulled a big dragon smile, his teeth retracted and the gummy crescent caused Hiccup to snicker a little before Toothless unsheathed his teeth.
"You're a good listener, buddy." He said, scratching him behind the ears. Just then suddenly a cold ari blew past, and at first it was fine but then it began to get harder, and stronger. Toothless sat upright, ears keenly listening to the changes in the environment and eyes scanning the distances around and above them, his left wing wrapping protectively around his master.
"Whoa! What is with this sudden storm?" Hiccup cried just as a familiar dragon and rider fell to the safety of the valley, nearly landing in the lake.
"Astrid!" Hiccup called as the girl huddled by the warmth of her own dragon, "Astrid, come closer, what's going on?" He asked hoping she may have arrived with news regarding the sudden change in weather.
"I'm coming! And... You know just about as much as I do!" she hollered over the wind as she and her dragon made their way towards them and then huddled together.
"The village is covered in a sheet of snow already! The storm came out of nowhere, and the dragons are all distraught! The cold isn't good for them." She commented, petting her own sympathetically.
"Man..." he whispered, peeking out from under Toothless's wing at the very slowly dying gust which carried with it a million little snowflakes.
His eyes widened and his jaw dropped when the wind finally ceased and the dragons let their wings sit back in place.
"Astrid... the lake is frozen over... The-The snow... but it's the middle of summer!" he grasped her in his arms as she began to shiver, to which she reluctantly drew closer to him.
"Not that summer here in Berk is really that... OH MY GOSH! RUN! FALLING DRAGON COMING THROUGH!" He and the dragons and Astrid backed away as a blue, brown and silver coloured dragon fell from the sky and crash landed into the frozen lake, cracking the ice and slowly beginning to sink until his form was too wide to fall any further beneath the surface.
"Oh, no the poor thing..." Hiccup began, "Toothless! Come help me get him out! He might be hurt!" he ordered, and Toothless complied.
After about ten minutes they had the sleeping dragon up on the frosted over grass. Hiccup winced at the cold skin as he touched his face to its chest. He heard a heartbeat but it was fast and irregular.
"We'll need a lfeet to haul him to the village. This looks like a rare breed. He may be the last of his kind..." astrid deducted.
"You can go and manage to get some help? I'll stay here and Toothless can help us keep him warm until then." he proposed. She nodded and then the two left.
"It's okay buddy, you're gonna be alright." He spoke to the sleeping form. Toothless looked on with sympathy and as promised he used a steamy breath to melt the frost around them and squatted next to the stranger.
Compassion for strangers was something Hiccup had taught him. He rested his head over the others' neck so that the heat in it might help revive him temporarily.
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.: Bold = Dragon Speak/Thoughts :.
Toothless nudged the now warmer figure and grunted in his throat.
"Wake up! Wake up!"he screeched, nuzzling the strange dragon's face and licking it for extra measure.
"Ugh... Five more minutes, Tooth..." it replied.
Toothless jolted to his feet and backed away... "How he know Toothless name?" he wondered.
He lowered his posture and growled, "Who are you? Why you know Toothless name?" he demanded.
The strange dragon grunted in confusion, "Toothless...?" he thought.
He sat up and then he realised with a shrill scream, or roar more like it, that he was looking into the ice at a reflection of a strangely colored dragon, screaming straight back at him.
"I'm a dragon! I'm a DRAGON! I'M A FREAKING, FROSTY DRAGON!" he began pacing around and leaping and rebounding off of rocks and other things of the like, trying t wake himself up from this nightmare.
Toothless stood up straight and sat on his haunches, regarding the confusing display and then thought, "Wow, this guy lose him brain. He crazy."
"Too much frost?"
He asked the strange dragon. The other dragon paused mid stride and then his eyes locked with his. They were blue eyes, and his face was white under his chin, with brown fading up into blu past his eyes and the crest on his head was jagged and white. The brown scales followed a trail up his temples to two almost antler looking horns with reminded Toothless of something, but he couldn't place it.
"Too much frost?" He repeated casually.
The other dragon's pupils dilated for a moment before shrinking in fear and confusion and he screamed again, "THE DRAGONS ARE TALKING TO ME! I'M A FREAKING DRAGON!" He carried on.
Toothless deadpanned and hunched his shoulders in irritation. "Shut up! Toothless get headache, you stupid brain!" He groaned.
The other dragon finally calmed down, and flopped to the ground for a moment, whimpering like a sissy
He sat up suddenly and then stared at him again... "wait.." he thought, "Toothless... as in Hiccup's dragon?"
He cautiously approached him, trying no to look intimidating or to accidentally break some dragon law he didn't know about. In regard to the seriousness of that last point, he decided to stop a few metres away and then sighed, his heart beat still racing.
He inhaled deeply and then spoke, "Are you the dragon Toothless?"
Toothless nodded, grateful that he had ceased his little tantrum.
"Yeah, you go crazy. Too much frost, bad for dragon. Yeah?" he said, pulling his lips back in one of those awkward smiles Hiccup had taught him how to do.
Jack sighed with relief knowing he was in safe... claws? Wings? Whatever... and then he noticed their surroundings.
"Wow, yeah there is a lot of frost... but it's the middle of Summer!" Jack commented.
Toothless looked at him oddly and then leaned in closer, "You talk like Hiccup. Hiccup say Summer too, but Toothless don't know what Summer is." he explained, which Jack took as his cue to define summer.
"Oh, well Summer is the human way to say, It's really hot outside... and, uh... there usually isn't any snow. Ever." he said.
Toothless coked his head to the side and then drew closer still, sniffing him gingerly. Jack instinctively reached out what would have been his hand and placed it on his nose, accidentally sending a little frost patch up his nose.
Toothless shrieked and drew back, the patch melting instantly. "Jack Frost?" he thought. Only Jack could do that to his nose, but this was a dragon! He wasn't a human at all.
"Who are you! How you know Toothless name?" he repeated.
Jack pulled his best 'dragon grin' and it came out as more of a smirk and he replied, "It's me, Jack! I got turned into a dragon!"
And now it was Toothless's turn to flip out.
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To be continued
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