Hiccup
Zuko's story was a long one, and I didn't entirely follow all of it, but I got the gist. I had no idea what to say except "wow."
He grimaced. "So, you see, you might not have been as bad of a person as you thought, at least compared to me."
I shrugged. I didn't think anything would ever really erase my guilt about Toothless's tail, even if it didn't plague me often. I was more concerned with Zuko's past than my own (though I wasn't sure if that was a bad thing or not). I wasn't sure what to tell him, though. What do you say to a story like his?
He seemed to sense my struggle. "You don't have to say anything," he said, shaking his head. "It's in the past. I'd rather leave it be."
"You can still learn from it," I pointed out.
Zuko nodded. "I know, and I do. I'm just saying that I don't need therapy."
At that moment, Toothless barged into the both of us, knocking us to the floor. "Okay, Mr. Bossy," I told him. "We can go flying now. If that's good with you?" I added, turning to Zuko, who was dusting himself off.
"Sure," he said agreeably.
"Okay; I'll see if we can borrow Stormfly again."
Apparently Astrid was already out with Stormfly, so we got permission to use Meatlug instead.
Gronckles were notably less comfortable to ride than Nadders, but Zuko didn't complain—he just looked pleased to be on a dragon again. He was also confident. Most Vikings were a little nervous the first few times flying, but Zuko showed no signs of hesitating. I had to remind myself that he'd met dragons before, but even so, I was amazed at how automatically he was connecting with them. The only person I had even seen mesh that perfectly with a dragon was, well, (not to sing my own praises,) myself, and even for me, it had taken patience and trust-building. I guess it helped that Meatlug and Stormfly were already domesticated.
After returning Meatlug to Fishlegs, who was eating a potato for some reason, I introduced Zuko to blacksmithing because we had nothing better to do. He told me about weaponry where he came from and how he used a pair of thin, identical swords.
"Two swords at once?" I questioned. "That sounds heavy."
"They're made to be used together, so they're lighter than these," he clarified, gesturing to the heavyweight swords stranded around the smithy. "One of my friends uses a sword too; he forged it out of a meteorite."
"What's a meteorite?" I wondered aloud.
He explained as best he could about what he called "outer space," stars, and meteors. "So he made a sword out of a rock from the sky."
"Basically," Zuko said.
"That's...confusing but also really cool," I said.
"That sentence basically describes yesterday for me," Zuko said wryly.
I nodded. "Yeah, me too. It's not every day you get a fire-shooting scarred guy randomly plunked on your island."
Golden eyes darkened with bitter remembrance, flickering like strikes of lightning. I heard him mutter something that I thought might have been "better here than Ember Island."
I studied him. He'd mentioned wanting to put the past behind him and not dwell on it, and I got the sense that he was trying.
But Zuko's childhood was so traumatic and unforgettable that I wasn't sure he quite knew how.
Zuko
Hiccup and I distracted ourselves in the smithy for a while. He allowed me to mess around with the forge for a while while he worked on something upstairs. I messed around with the different tools and tried not to break anything. After a while, I ducked my head and climbed up the narrow staircase, curious as to what my friend was up to.
I found him in a small area filled with lots of shelves and a desk at which he was sitting. The shelves housed baskets, small tools, and clay pottery. The wall that Hiccup was facing was pinned with mechanic blueprints that fascinated me, as well as various sketches of Toothless.
Hiccup was poring over a half-finished blueprint, fingering a pencil and stuck in deep thought. He started as the door creaked and I walked in.
"Hey. Melt anything yet?" he teased.
"Not quite," I replied. "What are you doing?"
"Working on some designs," Hiccup said, beckoning me over.
"I want to update my prosthetic leg," he explained as I squinted at the drawings, "and see if I can make it a bit more convenient for myself. This one's for walking, that one's for flying with Toothless, and that one's for extra traction—you know, when I'm walking on ice and stuff." He pointed to each sketch as he described its use.
"Wow," I said. "I could never make something like this."
"I don't even know if I can," Hiccup pointed out. "This is just the planning stage."
"Good point." We went back downstairs to the forge, which had died down to embers while I was upstairs, resulting in a half-melted sword glowing faintly orange in a dying fire, its handle sticking out where I could reach it. I thrust my palm at it, and a tongue of flame burrowed into the coals. Soon, the sword's aura was the bright color of the fire around it. As a firebender, I wasn't bothered much by heat, so, out of curiosity, I grasped the handle and raised the sword.
It was sort of beautiful, in a metallic way. Carefully I gave it a little flick, and it sent embers spewing everywhere.
One of them floated over to land on Toothless's nose—he had been sitting patiently outside the shop. He went cross-eyed as he watched it float down, then sneezed as the burning speck made contact with his dark scales.
Hiccup looked amused and thoughtful as he watched his friend. He seemed to mull over something.
"Be right back," he said; "I have to write something down. This idea is probably stupid, but it's too good to lose."
