Chapter 4 The Tail Fin


When Hiccup finished his work, packed up his stuff, he peeked out the window and saw the sun was rising from the east. He just realize he had spent the entire night working for the dragon's new tail fin. He was exhausted both physically and mentally. But luckily, today was sunday, so no work in the forge or warrior training.

He had a entire day for Toothless. What a silly name for a dragon which had teeth but that what struck him.

He knew he really need to get some sleep, but not after he finished testing the fin.

But before entered the cove again, he needed to find some fish, lots of them for Toothless to eat. He couldn't use the ones from the store house, because dragon obviously like their food being fresh.

He couldn't steal from the fresh ones from dock because he would get spotted, which was not good to the already awful condition of his repulation. He needed to work for it.

He went to the long wooden dock, and saw Bucket and Mulch were ready to sail for a fishing trip. Hiccup was welcomed when he asked if he can join them. As a result, he earned him a basket of fish.

When he entered the cove, the night fury seem to be waiting for him.

"Hello, Toothless. I bring you breakfast today."he said in a innocent tone and hiding the prosthetic behind his back.

He called me TOOTHLESS! What kind of stupid name is that! Don't he know I have teeth. Oh well, at least he bring me some fish. I am starving.

He flipped the basket and poured the fish out. The dragon immediately dug in. It suddenly stopped grizzing its meal, gave a facial expression and a annoying growl like it had sensed something nasty. The dragon picked up an eel with disgust and swung it to Hiccup's face.

" OW! That hurts! You don't like eels?" He asked in surprise. Everyone thought dragons would eat any meat they could fit to their mouth. That made a lot of sense, wasn't it. The dragon nodded.

" Well, I don't like eels either." Which was a lie.

It continued its meal and Hiccup quickly sneaked up to its tail. He grapped hold of its tail, prepare to tied the fin to the tail,then he heard a curious croon. He looked back and saw Toothless was stearing at him, wanted to know what was he doing on his tail with that thing. Wait! It looked like his fin, was he tried to...

"Oh, ah... " He wasn't sure whether the dragon could understand him or let alone had the concept of a prosthesis." Well, you know you can't fly since your left tail fin was ripped apart because of me." He said with guilt. " I want to fix my mistake. I want to help you fly again. So I make you this." He extend the fake leather tail fin to let the dragon had a good look of it.

At that moment, he saw the dragon' s eyes were enlarged, pupil dilated like it was overwhelmed. "Yeah. I know you won't expect this. A viking, mortal enemy of dragons for the last three hundred years, tried to help a grounded dragon fly again by making you a new tail fin. Now, could you allowed me to tied this to your tail?"

Oh my thor! I am talking to a dragon .

It sat down for him to do the work. It just felt so wrong for Hiccup. Surelt there were very intelligent animals out there, but the dragon in front of him seemed brought it to the next level. It was like it could understand him perfectly. Either dragons had the unknown ability to read minds or it understood Norse. He decided that he had to ask it even the question sound crazy and silly.

" Do you understand me? I mean do you understand my language?" He asked while he was checking the newly attached fin. The dragon thought this boy was smart, able to find this out so quickly. He was indeed very different.

It nodded. He fell to the ground in shock. He caught his breath and continued.

"Then do what I said. Sit like a human like you did yesterday and then run around this lake for two laps" The dragon seem annoyed but did what Hiccup asked anyway and impressed the boy.

"So you do understand Norse. Does other dragons taught you our language?"

It nodded again.

His curiosity was ignited. If the dragon could understand Norse, there was no doubt dragons had their own language system otherwise they would not have the concept of one.

"Can I learn your language? Can you teach me your language?" He didn't have much hope for a positive answer as there was a high chance dragon language was physically impossible for human's ear to hear let alone to spoke it.

It first nodded and then shook his head. A yes and a no.

"Do you mean I can understand it but I won't be able to speak it." He gave the most logical answer. If he couldn't hear it, how could he learn it. Hiccup couldn't believe the answer he received. Imagine how great was it able to communicate with a entire different species let alone the amount of knowledge he could learn from it. That also let him wonder just how intelligent night furies was.

He got back to his feet, smiling " But right now, help you get back your ability of flying again is more important." He checked the fin one more time. " Okay, its done. Now, take off and see if it works."

Toothless walked to the edge of the lake. He moved its tail, feeling the added weight. Then with a powerful flip, he took off. At first, the fin seem worked perfectly. Then Hiccup saw it collapsed in itself under the pressure of the wind and the dragon immediately lost its balance fall down into the lake.

Toothless swam back to shore and shaking himself like a dog. " I saw it couldn't extend under the pressure of the wind. Would you allow me cling on your tail and extend it while you are flying?" He knew this was a absurd request but hey he was a viking. And viking did crazy things all the time. To his surprise, Toothless nodded. Oh my god. This is really happening. I will become the first viking ever to ride a dragon although not properly.

He clung on the tail, extended the fin with one of his hand. Then, without any warning, the dragon took off. He screamed in fear but in joy at the same time. He could sense the force applied to the fin by the wind was way more powerful than he expected. " Its working! Now put me down!" The dragon heard his cried,and landed softly.

" WOW! That is amazing!And...terrifying." He claimed himself down and took a deep breath. " " But I have to find a proper way to extend it. I can't hang on your tail every time." The dragon agreed with a croon. " I have to let you control it with your own. Can you let me study your right fin. I mean touch and move it with my hands so I can figure out how it works and made a new fin for you." The dragon responded by move his tail close to him. " Thank you." He started to take measurement of it, study its structure and mechanism and asked a lot of Yes No questions about the working principle of the fin. When he finished, a brilliant designed started to take shape in his brain.

Before he left, he remembered something very important. "Oh, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Hiccup. And I can't believe I didn't ask you that. Are you a boy?" Hiccup didn't know anything about the gender of the dragon but he felt it is a he. The dragon manual said nothing about it. The only way you could know is to kill and gut it. "Yes" "Does it mean yes?" It nodded. " See you tomorrow, then."

He spent the afternoon sleeping and constructed the new fin in the forge at night. Gobber ignored him as usual since Hiccup always building useless inventions at night. The smith knew once the boy made his mind, no one could change it. He could only sigh when he saw Hiccup was constructing his inventions which would fail nine out of ten times and wasting resources.

/

For the next six days, he stayed in the cove for two or three hours with Toothless everyday when he was free from the training or the work in forge. And he stayed up late at night to work on his own project, which exhausted him but he knew it was worth it.

He played with Toothless and shared his own miserable life with him. From his Dad's disappointment of him to how he always bullied by Snotlout and the twins. He never felt so warm and happy simply because someone actually listened to him and cared about him instead of ignored him.

He also learned a bit of dragonese everyday. He found out it was way harder than he think at first. It was very difficult to identify different words let alone a whole sentence of this alien language since dragon were stuck with a limited range of noise like growl, croon, warbles, chirps and whistles. A tiny difference was enough to result a different meaning. It was incredible that the dragons could formed a language as complex as humans' with this limited number of sounds they could make. The process was slow and frustrating sometimes, but he enjoyed it simply because he could stay with his best friend, a non-human friend, who gave him more happiness in seven days than all of the people of his village combined in fourteen years.

"I finally finished it. Toothless will be able to fly on his own tomorrow." He let go a yawn and a black circle around his eyes could be seen as he sacrificed half of his resting time for his project. He packed up his stuff, tidied the forge and went back to his hut to sleep. His best human friend Fishlegs noticed how tired Hiccup was during training. He knew Hiccup must stay up very late to do his own personal project which was unusual as he never worked this hard on his own device before, at least not affected his rest. It let him wonder what kind of invention Hiccup was building.

That day, after the sun disappeared into the horizon, two shadows flew into the cove.

"Hello, long time no see, how was your day?" A brown female zippleback asked.

"Very good Vofa!"

"It seems you really like that boy. Tell us something about him."The nadder said.

"Wow! Unbelievable. Did he really make you a new tail fin?" The nadder squawked after Toothless finished.

"Yes, of course. Humans have no limits on their creativity. He felt guilty of his act so he did that. He is different from the others. Anyway, nothing goes wrong right?"

"Nothing. A couple more joined us." The zippleback replied with satisfy.

"Good. How was the raid?" The night fury said.

" Went pretty well, the casualty didn't increase. Last raid before winter. Sharpshoot and I could have a long break. We still can't get used to it, all those blood, wounds and screams."

" If you two get used to it, this means our quest had failed horribly."

"Will you stay here after he fixed your tail? I mean, if his, no, your new tail works?" The nadder asked him.

"Yes, I will. Hiccup needs me. From what I know, I am the best friend he ever have in his life. I can't just leave him here. Besides that, I do enjoy staying with him."

"You start to love him. The love between friends. He may be the human for you." Vofa said.

" Maybe. It is just so ironic that my human come from a dragon slaying village... tell all this to Stormfly and good luck."

"You too" The two dragon said before they left.