Speedy chapter for you guys!

This week, I also re-discovered the beauty and genius which is the How to Train Your Dragon soundtrack. "Test Drive" and "Romantic Flight" really inspired this next scene. Josh Powell is a beast at composing.

Enjoy!


Viking tradition dictates that any infant deemed too small, too weak, or too sick by the elder to be left in the cold to die on its own.

It's cruel, but it's tradition, and I've seen it before.

It's what good Vikings honor and know. If I was a good Viking.

My arms grow sore and the water tries to grasp my chin. I kick back to shore and drag myself onto the grass, coughing as the cold finally catches up to me- coughing and coughing and coughing before it subsides into heaves, and the rest of my body is drying but not my face. I reach up and realize I'm not cold- I'm crying.

I'm crying.

Because I don't care to kill the dragon, but still care too much to let it die.

Viking tradition dictates that the dying must die alone, whether it's a weak infant or a sick woman. Child and mother die apart, because seeing someone in their supreme moment of weakness is remembering said Viking as weak, as lifeless, as listless. Life without honor is not life at all.

"If I was a good Viking," I mutter, sniffing and wiping my face. If Astrid was here, she'd say I was disgusting for crying so much.

Then I realize- the dragon's silent. He's stopped struggling.

I look up.

Then, his tail swishes out of the water, a black fan.

And my heart sinks.

He's free. Oh gods, he's free—

I start to scoot backwards, legs paralyzed.

-to eat me or roast me or slash me or kill me—

Suddenly, the Night Fury roars and launches out of the water, and I scramble back, hitting my head on the back of a boulder and my vision is swimming and I press my back against the solid rock, bracing myself—

The dragon's rushing at me with incredible speed and stops and shrieks inches from my face, his wings spread in a threat as large as four Vikings with their arms out. I can't scream, can't seem to do anything but see the dull sheen of his scales, count his eyes: one two.

Luminescent yellow with pupils in slits as sharp as his talons.

One two.

He growls as nostrils twitch as he smells me. Gobber says dragons can smell fear, that they're attracted to fear. I wonder if the Fury thinks I smell delicious.

I don't want to count the teeth so I count the eyes again: one two.

His mouth opens and I smell fish and ocean and some kind of other meat (please let it not be Viking, please). The tunnel of his throat is a dark thing, raw and red, with powerful folds for swallowing (please, oh gods, please)—

-Hiccup, please

-and the dragon licks me from my knees to my hair.

"Hey!" I yell, scrabbling to stand up as he nudges my hands, drowning them in thick saliva. "Hey! Gross..."

I put my palms out in peace and the Fury sticks them in his mouth. I brace myself for the razor sensation of teeth, but all I feel is soft gum on my hands and his warm tongue around my fingers. He moves his warm pink gums on my fingers like he's biting- like Phlegma's little boy when he was growing teeth- like the Fury tastes something but won't rip my fingers off. And it's such a surprise that I don't even try to fight.

The Fury's tongue slips over each of my fingers, his eyes curious and pupils perfect circles.

Fish, I realize.

Before the attack, when the mob of dragons was just a flock of dark shapes in the evening horizon, Phlegma had pushed me to help load the weeks' catch into a storage cave under Berk. I remember swearing my hands would smell like fish for years.

The Fury licks my palms like my yaks with feed and I nearly laugh in surprise.

Thank gods for fish.

Thank ocean for fish.

"VEL!"

There's a popSHOOPsound as the Fury rips his head away and his teeth suddenly reappear. He lunges back, growling, eyes narrow, teeth shining- all this in one motion so fast my hands are still outstretched, still feeling warmth and the dragon's tongue touching my hands.

"Vel, are you hurt? Are you okay?" Hiccup appears out of nowhere, waving his arms. When he sees my fingers are intact, he advances at the Fury.

"No, don't!" I shout, knocking Hiccup into the ground before I even know what I'm doing. "He's scared, Hiccup, I know it's hard to understand and I sound crazy but maybe I'm crazy and we need a little crazy right now to understand what's happening!"

Hiccup wiggles to look at me with his mouth half-open. My arms are slung across his chest and I quickly rearrange my hold into a lock to keep him down, one hand pinned on his shoulder, the other grabbing his fur vest. I'm so light it wouldn't be a challenge for anyone else to knock me off, but Hiccup's a lightweight and I'd bet a month's worth of yak milk that even I'm heavier than he is.

"Wait- Vel? What?" he says, voice wheezing a bit because I'm basically lying on top of him, but I don't let go.

"Don't hurt him, Hiccup," I plead, my face squished on his chest. "I don't know what I'm doing, but you can't hurt him, Hiccup!"

"Oh, um...you should probably know something about me—"

"I know you're a Viking and need to show your dad that, and I need to show people too, but don't kill him, Hiccup, oh gods..."

And darn me, I start crying again.

"I don't- it's really important, actually, what I have to tell you," Hiccup interrupts weakly. "Vel, are you okay?"

I curse myself for being so emotional, but I remember when we were ten and Snotlout grabbed my long brown hair and sheared it short like a boy's. I cried so hard, Astrid slapped me. For some reason, the memory only makes me cry harder.

"You- you can't kill him," I insist, passing an angry hand to wipe my face and managing to poke myself in the eye in the process. "Ow."

"Hey," Hiccup says, starting to get up, but I lurch forward and pin my knee under his chin. He makes an oomph sound like he's deflating.

"Sorry," I whisper.

"Ack, there's something reallyreallyreally important...I think you'll quite like it, actually, given the circumstances—"

A bird chirps and I look up. The light's turning a darker shade of dark, marking the dawn of the morning. Whatever happens here, it has to be done fast.

I take a deep breath.

"You're not going to hurt him," I say, trying to sound calm. I lean over so I'm looking directly at Hiccup's face. I try to conjure up as much storm as I can in my gray eyes. "You are not hurting this dragon, Hiccup."

"Don't you get it- I would never hurt Toothless!" Hiccup exclaims, throwing his hands up onto the dirt. "I've been trying to tell you all this time that I—"

"Toothless?" I blink at Hiccup.

Suddenly, I'm scooped up like a newborn lamb, staring into a pair of glowing, yellow eyes.

"Toothless," Hiccup says slowly, rising to his feet. "Toothless, just...just put her down, nice and easy—"

The Fury looks at me and I look at the Fury.

We look.

"Don't worry, he won't hurt you," Hiccup says, putting his hands up and shuffling closer.

How do you know? I think, heart racing.

"Toothless?" I yell down at him. "Is that some kind of sick joke?"

And suddenly I notice something glaringly obvious that anyone would have noticed before.

The dragon.

Has a saddle.

Has a saddle.

"I know it's strange," Hiccup's saying, and from somewhere far away I feel him touch my foot. "But dragons aren't who we think they are—"

But I can't take my eyes off that saddle and these big yellow eyes.

The Fury looks at me and I look at the Fury.

We look.

Maybe we even see.

Hiccup's talking again but I don't hear a thing.

I press my forehead onto the black scales, softer than I expected.

Suddenly, Toothless cocks his head and I almost slip off, but then he tips his neck up, sliding me down and bumping the saddle.

"Vel?" I hear.

I hesitate for a second and feel Toothless ripple with so much power- untapped power no Viking ever considered exploring before.

If I was a good Viking, I think, swinging my other leg around the saddle and feeling a rush of dread and joy.

"Oh gods, Toothless!" Hiccup says frantically, but scrambles out of the way as Toothless bounds forward to take a running start. Wind ripples through my hair, and my breathing gets shorter, matching each beat of Toothless' feet on the ground. "Vel! The tail, Vel!"

I look back: flapping with every step, Toothless' tail is a half-fan. The other half is made of some sort of fabric and a bit crumpled from where it was stuck under the boulder.

"Your left foot!" Hiccup yells, further now but running after us.

Connected to the edge of the makeshift tail is a strand of leather tied to the foothold of my left. This must be how to keep Toothless steady. I turn forward again- we've got a good hundred paces of cove left before it turns into cliff, but with this speed—

I experimentally push my toe down and the tail flips. We catch a good three paces of air before landing down again, hard. Toothless mewls and glances back, sensing an unsure rider, and we're going on fifty paces of cove—

-thirty paces—

I lean forward onto his back. Onto a dragon's back.

-ten paces—

I tighten my grip on the saddle. If I was a good Viking...

"Now!" I cry, bringing my heel down hard.

Toothless flaps his powerful wings and I struggle to keep my foot in the same position as we climb, higher and higher, clearing the cliff by a clip. I hear Hiccup whooping somewhere that seems far below. We climb higher than the trees and soon we're headed straight for the stars. My world spins once again as Toothless levels just below the layer of clouds. Lights under us are Berk, passing with the blink of an eye.

I can barely catch my breath from the altitude and the rush and the view. Eventually, I lean slowly onto Toothless' back.

"The world just got a whole lot bigger," I say.

The world just stretches on.

It doesn't take long to learn that pressing my heel down allows Toothless to rise while pressing my toe eases him into a descent. I should lighten the foot if we want to soar, and never, never press down too hard, as I learned when we nearly barreled into a formation of rock, were it not for his plasma blasting it apart before we narrowly slipped through the falling boulders.

That same plasma that inspired so many "Get down! NIGHT FURY!"s and "the unholy offspring of lightning and death itself" quotes...the same plasma that just saved my life.

His scales aren't anything like I expected. They're not slimy and sharp, like a fish's. They're softer, smoother. Dragon scales feel like running your hand over a thousand stones: the kind perfect for skipping on a lake.

I look back. We've left land far behind. Ocean stretches in every direction, whispering and shiny in the moonlight. Waves are barely moving, and I see the spines of some sort of water dragon slit the sea, then disappear.

More dragons, I think. A world of dragons. I've just never seen it before.

We soar higher, and I feel the familiar pressure on my foot to press my heel.

Dampness clings to my clothes and dew forms on Toothless' scales as we pass through the clouds. The brightness above is so startling, my foot loosens and I sit for a while, mouth open.

Up here, the air is colder, but in an ice clear, so-sharp-it-almost-hurts sort of way. Oranges and pinks and blues surround us like the air itself, like I can reach out an arm and touch it. I know it's ridiculous and not possible, but I try anyway. I press my toe and we dip...then rise, then dip, then rise, then dip into a spectrum of wonderment and awe and it's all I can do to stay upright, to not lie back and just...be.

Toothless glances back at me, like he's smug.

I press my forehead to his spine and try to keep the feeling in me, try to place it somewhere deep inside.

After a while- minutes? Days?- we break the clouds into the first watery rays of dawn and I close my eyes. I let Toothless fly us home, me occasionally feeling the pressure in my foot to lift or stall, but I keep my eyes closed.

I keep my eyes closed until we land, until I hear Hiccup's pounding footsteps and him yelling my name, until Toothless rolls me off his back, gently. My feet land on soft dirt.

"Are you okay? Vel, are you okay?" I feel Hiccup catch my shoulders and shake me. "Vel?"

And then I open my eyes.

"I don't ever want to forget," I say. "Not ever."

Hiccup smiles his crooked, relieved smile.

"Don't worry," he says. "You won't."


I'm really excited for this story! I've written more than 40 pages for you guyes- will update after debate fanatics calm and when I have time to proofread. I really get inspiration from music, and the tone in my story will keep changing as I experiment a bit :) Highly recommend the soundtrack, especially to fellow authors...but not exclusively.

As always, thanks for reading and leave a review!