I actually got some pretty good feedback concerning the last chapter, so here's the next one as a present for all you lovely reviewers, favoriters, and followers!


In a very small village quite aways south of the Barbaric Archipelago, a pair of children were out after the first major snowstorm of the winter, searching for any animals that hadn't survived the night. If they came across something big, like a deer, then they'd have to share it with the other families in town, but they were hoping to come across some squirrels or other small game, to feed just themselves and their father for a few nights. They'd already had a bit of luck, with two small frozen rabbits, a frozen crow, and a large frozen squirrel.

The older of the two, an eleven year old girl called Luna, kept needing to remind her six year old sister, Eria, to stop wandering off and that they needed to stay close to eachother if they didn't want to get lost. Eria wasn't listening very well, as she was looking for 'snow gremlins', which would supposedly give you five wishes the first time you caught one, but take them all away if you ever caught one again. They also supposedly traveled in sleds that left big tracks through the snow sometimes, although walking was more common, according to Eria.

"Luna! Luna look! I found something!" came Eria's voice.

Luna looked around and realised that her little sister wasn't anywhere close to her, and that she most likely hadn't been for the past few minutes. "Eria!" the older girl called sternly, "Get back here right now or I won't let you come with me next time!" She started walking back the way she'd come, looking left and right for the small red headed form of her sister.

"But Luna! You have to come see! There's a boy and he looks cold," Eria's voice could now be pinpointed as coming from Luna's left, and the older girl altered her course accordingly.

"What do you mean, there's a boy there? Everyone except us is at that gathering thing back in the village," Luna said, getting closer to where she thought Eria was. She stepped between two pine trees that were slightly farther apart than the others in the forest, and found herself in a clearing about fifteen feet across on all sides, expect for a narrower portion off to her right.

Eria was on the other side of the clearing, and Luna was relieved to see that nothing looked wrong with her, but then she saw the boy her sister was talking about. He was on his back in the snow, his right arm bent at an odd angle and his left ankle looked to be twisted. There didn't appear to be any blood anywhere, which Luna was glad of. She could be rather squeamish when it came to blood. The boy didn't appear to be moving at all . . . or breathing, for that matter. Luna quickly made her way over to where her sister was trying to wake the boy up by poking his shoulder.

"Eria, stop. You're not helping anyone," the older girl said sternly as she got closer. She kneeled down next to her sister and leaned over the wounded boy, lowering her ear to his chest to listen for a heartbeat. After a moment, she heard a quiet, almost hesitant little ba-bump . . . ba-bump . . . She gave a sigh of relief. The boy, whoever he was, was at least still alive. No sooner did she have this thought than she remembered that they were out in freezing temperatures at least five miles away from their home, with no fast mode of transportation to get the boy back before he froze to death.

"Is he okay, Luna? Why is he sleeping outside?" Eria asked, not helping the situation with her six year old curiosity.

"He'll be fine, as long as we can warm him up and get him back to the village soon," Luna said reassuringly, more to calm herself than her sister.

Eria nodded, "So where did he come from?"

"That I don't know," Luna said, looking around for clues as to how the strange boy could have ended up where he was. There was a long trough carved through the snow, as if something big and heavy had fallen from the sky, and the boy was right next to it, the ground around him looking as if it, too, had been disturbed by something falling from the sky. The trail from the boy's fall seemed to branch off of the larger one and stop where he lay. The larger one, though, continued on, with a few broken trees along the sides of it that made it stand out more.

Luna stood and was about to investigate the larger track, when she remembered that Eria needed to be occupied at all times or else she'd run off and get lost somewhere. She turned and said to the younger girl, "Eria, get a fire started, over . . . there," she pointed to a nearby patch of ground that had less snow on it, "Clear away the snow first, and once you've got it burning, make sure the boy isn't too close or too far away. If the boy wakes up, ask his name and tell him yours, and see if he'll tell you how in the heck he got here," Luna gently dragged the boy closer to the spot where she wanted Eria to make the fire before standing up and going to check out the larger trail of destruction.

Looking back assured her that Eria was doing as she'd been told, so Luna followed the track until it ended at a place where the ground looked very disturbed, like something big had crash landed there but had gotten up again and walked around looking for something. What was odd, though, was that she couldn't see what it was that had been there. Judging by the size of the markings, whatever it was had been very large, so it shouldn't be too hard to see it. So why wasn't anything there?

Luna crouched down and touched the ground, trying to make out any specific tracks, when she heard and felt something breathing just behind her. It sounded big, and through her peripheral vision she could tell it was of a dark coloration. She knew it had to be some sort of animal, most likely predatory, so she braced herself for a claw swipe or a bite from whatever it was to finish her off. Nothing happened, however.

Slowly, Luna stood up. Whatever it was didn't react much, except that the breathing was now angled slightly differently, as if it had moved its head to keep looking at hers. Just as slowly, she began to turn around, to find herself face to face with a dragon. She jumped back, both hands coming up to stifle a shriek of alarm. The dragon wasn't attacking her, which made no sense because that was what dragons did. They attacked people. But this one, all it did was cock its head curiously at her and make a warbling noise in the back of its throat, almost questioningly. Its head came forward, and Luna flinched, but all it did was sniff her up and down, before suddenly drawing back and growling, its pupils narrowed into slits.

At first, Luna's thoughts were along the lines of, 'Oh, crap, it's going to eat me now, I know it,' but then she saw exactly where its growls were directed. She had a hunting knife strapped to her belt, and the dragon didn't seem to appreciate the fact. On a whim, Luna pulled the knife out -causing the growls to get louder for a second- before tossing it to the ground a few feet off to her left. The dragon's eyes went back from slits and it looked at her again, as if judging whether she was to be trusted or not.

She never got the chance to see what it would have done next, as faint sounds of talking drifted back to them from up where Eria was. The dragon's ears perked up and it bounded away toward the noises, giving Luna the chance to see that it had a saddle on its back and that its left tailfin looked manmade. She had a few seconds to wonder about that before realizing that the dragon was heading up the track she had come down . . . which meant that it was headed straight for a six year old girl and a severely wounded boy.

Luna ran as fast as she could to get back -hopefully in time to stop any harm to her sister and the boy- but was surprised at what she saw. Eria was, of course, looking nervous and a bit scared, but it was the boy and the dragon Luna was looking at. The dragon had its nose pressed up against the boy's chest and the boy seemed to be . . . petting it (with his left hand, that is. His right arm was curled into his chest as though in pain).

The boy looked over at Eria and said, "Come on, he won't hurt you. He's just-" the boy was interrupted by the dragon's tongue sliding along his face a few times, at which he said, "Ah! Eeew, Toothless, stop! Bad dragon! Stop it, Toothless, that's disgusting!" his protests didn't seem to do much to stop the dragon's display of affection, and truth be told the boy didn't really seem to mind.

Eria giggled and walked closer to the dragon, hand out like she wanted to pet it. The dragon looked up and froze, seeming to consider the hand, before leaning its head closer so the little girl could touch its snout.

"See? He likes you," the boy said as Eria started to rub all over the dragon's head. The dragon really seemed to be getting into it, when the boy said, "Wait, stop. Don't scratch him there," Eria paused, her hand coming away from a spot under the dragon's neck. The dragon looked disappointed, when one of its ears twitched and it turned its head to look at Luna. The boy followed the dragon's gaze and seemed about to say something, but Eria beat him to it.

"Luna! Come look! He woke up and he has a pet dragon! Come look!" the little girl said, as though her sister couldn't already see for herself.

Luna uncertainly started to come forward, stopping at what she judged to be a safe distance from the dragon. "You're . . . You're friends? With a dragon?" she asked incredulously.

"Yeah, I trained him," the boy answered. He then appeared to remember something and looked around at their surroundings, "Would you mind telling me where exactly this is?"

"You mean you don't know?" Luna asked, her mind still trying to catch up to what was happening.

"Nope, not at all. We sorta crash landed," the boy tried to stand up, using his good arm to get into a sitting position but falling back down the moment he put pressure on his leg.

"Don't stand up," Luna admonished him immediately, "As for where we are, I don't think you'll have heard of it. Rudich isn't exactly on any maps . . ."

"Rudich?" the boy seemed to think for a minute before saying, "Nope, never heard of it."

"Most haven't," Luna agreed. The boy shifted and suddenly clenched his arm closer to his chest with a small hiss of pain. Luna grimaced when she saw the weird bone alignment when he moved the arm, "You need to get back to town. Like, right now,"

"Yeah. Way ahead of you there," the boy said, his voice strained as he tried to mask the pain. He reached up with his good arm and patted the dragon, causing it to draw its head closer. "Toothless, think you could get down so I can get up there?" the dragon obliged, lowering itself to the ground. The boy tried to get into the saddle, but his injured arm and leg stopped him from getting too far. Luna stepped forward to try helping the boy up, and after a few failed attempts, he was up, although the physical exertion seemed to have taken quite a chunk from his energy reserves. Between deep breaths he said, "How would your village react to . . . this?" he gestured at himself and the dragon.

"How say you know how to train dragons?" Luna replied with her own question.

"Well, yeah," the boy said, his tone indicating that he didn't think he was really, really good at it, more like adequate, but Luna thought that if you were able to do something that amazing then there wasn't such a thing as 'only adequate'.

She grinned as she said, "Well, they'll probably welcome you as a gift from the gods if you can get dragons to stop attacking us, especially that kind," she made a gesture at Toothless, "Let's just say there's a bit of a Night Fury problem around here,"


Okay, so I hope you enjoyed that! I hope none of the OCs were Mary-Sueish at all. If you notice anything Sueish about anything, tell me so I can fix it! I don't want any of that kind of stuff messing up this story!

Do review! Questions, comments, criticisms, praises, pizzas and pies are all welcome!