Fell In Love With A Girl
"I have no idea." Exasperated, Astrid exhaled; sitting on the earth below her slowly, heart still pounding in her chest.
There was a long moment of silence before she spoke again.
"Do you ever think about… this?" She asked, thoughts going a million miles per hour.
It was common, to come to the point where the odd pair would realize how strange they truly were, but they never really discussed it, because they never really had to. Love was a confusing thing, but so was life. Nothing ever seems to exactly as planned, if there was one at all. And so they had an unspoken agreement against talking about it.
What was not common was crashing a dragon. Which happened to be the cause of turning the subject of their relationship into a conversation.
20 Minutes Earlier
"And we're going where exactly?" Astrid shouted, competing with the sound of the wind in their ears.
"That would just ruin the fun in surprises." Hiccup replied. Ignoring the cold look he received from his passenger. He had insisted on riding on only Toothless, and with some resistance, Astrid had bid goodbye to Stormfly, and they took off.
But that had been an hour ago.
"Well, the surprise of this taking so long was really fun." She deadpanned, with the sarcasm she had unknowingly picked up, mostly from talking to him.
"It shouldn't be too long now," he replied, shifting briefly in his seat, "we're nearly there."
"Hurry up. My butt is going numb." She complained. If you had been sitting on a dragon, that's in flight, behind someone else that took up nearly the entire saddle, for an hour, your patience runs out. And Astrid's expired as soon as they hit the 23-minute mark.
After another 2 minutes of flying, and 3 minutes of silence, she continued. "Why do we have to fly so far north? My hands are freezing." Astrid was anything but fragile, but it was no lie that it was bone chilling.
Then, there was a sudden squall, striking Toothless, and sending them spiraling of course. As they hurdled out of control, the trees of a forest on a nearby island, somehow unseen to the trio at first, came into view. They were gaining momentum, plummeting toward the cliff. They should've pulled up by now, but there was a problem. Toothless' tail fin had frozen, keeping it solidly in the gliding position.
The Night Fury did his best to slow down, opening his wings in panic. They violently tore through the trees, and ever so calmly, the pair of riders on the back of the dragon, screamed as loud as they possibly could.
The rest of it, if not all of it, was all a blur.
In the end Toothless some how managed to land in a small clearing, now littered with leaves and twigs. But the three of them did not go without injuries. Somewhere along the way, Hiccup had gotten a good whack to the face, most likely from an inconveniently placed branch. Astrid had gotten a fair amount of cuts and bruises on her upper arms and a bloody scrape to the knee. Toothless had gotten hit nearly everywhere probably a dozen times, but had endured far worse in the past.
Hiccup was the first to stumble off the exhausted dragon, and even after all that, he offered a hand to help Astrid down. Which she gratefully accepted, because at this point, being offended by the gesture and punching him wouldn't do either of them any good.
Hiccup's head was pounding as he reached for the bag attached onto Toothless's saddle. There were barely any medical supplies, for that was not his thing, to worry about a worst-case scenario every time he went anywhere.
"I'm sorry, I haven't got much, just this." Hiccup told Astrid, holding up a small amount of fabric.
"Hiccup, your lip is bleeding, so is your nose and your eyebrow," Astrid said shakily, "Your face in general is a bloody mess."
Hiccup sighed, "Yeah, I can feel it." Obviously she wasn't going to just let him give her all the treatment. "But your leg is bleeding too."
"Its fine, I can still walk." She responded, taking an unsteady step to demonstrate, "Kind of."
"You need it more than I do." He insisted, walking towards her slowly.
The two were still shaking, clearly rattled by what had happened, "But what about your face." Astrid trembled.
"Cleaning it won't make a difference," sighed Hiccup, "It'll still bleed."
"You could at least try." She argued.
"Just take it." It was clear that Hiccup wouldn't change his mind that his wounds were of the least importance. So she reluctantly took the strip of wool to bind her leg.
"Well, there's not much we can do now. We should find shelter before it gets dark." Astrid stated, looking around for the first time.
"Can we just not do anything for a little bit?" Hiccup mumbled tiredly, sitting down on the mossy floor of the island.
There was a short silence before the weary boy spoke again, "Even when we find shelter, we need to wait until Toothless' tailfin thaws before we can fly, and then what?"
"I have no idea."
Wow. I actually wrote something. That never happens.
