Alright, I'm back from my brief period of being AWOL! Now, let's get back to what we were doing, shall we?
Chapter 11
A New Tail
"…And with one twist, he took my hand and swallowed it whole!"said Gobber, telling us a story atop one of the guard towers while we ate our dinner. Most of the class was eating lamb or chicken, but I was roasting a fish on a stick, which was something I thought I wouldn't touch in a thousand years after my third encounter with the dragon that I called Toothless.
"And I saw the look on his face," Gobber continued, everyone absorbed in the story but me. "I was delicious! He must have passed the word, too, because it wasn't a month before another one took my leg!" The class gave an impressed gasp, other than Astrid, who seemed to be immersed in thoughts of her own. Probably devising a strategy for tomorrow's training.
"Isn't it weird to think that your hand was inside a dragon?" Fishlegs asked. "Like if you still had control over it you could have killed it by crushing his heart or something." Astrid, who had been sitting next to Fishlegs, looked at him like he was crazy.
"I swear I'm so angry right now!" Snotlout growled, trying to ssound tough, but coming off more like a moderately irritated Terror. "I'll avenge your beautiful hand and your beautiful foot! I'll chop off the legs of every dragon I see!" he promised Gobber. "With my face!" he added, making a fool out of himself.
"Mmm, mmm, mmm, no," said Gobber, finishing some chicken he had in his mouth (he had a whole one on his skewer attatchment). "It's the wings and the tail you really want! If it can't fly, it can't get away. A downed dragon is a dead dragon." This sent my mind flying. 'Tails… Downed dragon… dead…' my mind struggled to make a connection. 'Toothless!' I realized. 'He can't fly because of what I did to him. If someone stumbles across him, he'll be as good as dead.' I had an idea come to me, so I got up and silently crept away.
POV: Astrid Hofferson
With his last comment, Gobber stood up and yawned. "Well, I'm off to bed," he told us. "You should be, too. Tomorrow we get to the big boys. Slowly, but surely making our way to the Monstrous Nightmare. But who'll win the honor of killing it?" With that he hobbled off, leaving us to go to bed at our leisure.
"It's gonna be me!" said Tuffnut. "It's my destiny, see?" He rolled up his shirt, but what it revealed I didn't see, nor did I care, Just then I had noticed something: Where Hiccup had just been there was nothing but a smoking, untouched fish.
"You're mom let you get a tattoo?" Fishlegs asked excitedly.
"It's not a tattoo, it's a birthmark," Tuffnut said as I stood up to investigate Hiccup's sudden departure.
I looked down the walkway and saw Hiccup quickly but quietly moving down the watch tower. I dismissed this as him leaving to go to bed and returned to the others.
"Uh, I've been stuck with you since birth, and that's never been there," Ruffnut told her brother.
"Yes it was," argued Tuffnut. "You've just never seen me from the left side before, that's all!"
"It wasn't there yesterday," Snotlout pointed out. "Is it a birthmark or a today-mark?"
I paid little mind to this, instead pondering the events of that day, especially the presence that awoke in my head.
POV: Hiccup Haddock
I crept into Gobber's stall without incident. I went over to my desk and pulled out my drawing of Toothless, this time adding the tail that I had erased. I worked throughout the night, furiously making rods, disassembling broken weapons, creating moveable joints, and cutting leather. I finished early in the morning. Early enough to test my new invention.
HtTYD
I arrived at the cove about an hour later, hefting a large sack of fish and my invention. "Hey, Toothless," I called out seeing the dragon in front of me and alerting him to my presence. "I brought breakfast!" I grunted, setting the sack down and kicking it over. "I hope you're hungry." The contents of the basket spilled out, allowing the stench of dead fish to fill the air. "Okay, that's disgusting," I said as Toothless approached, sniffing.
"Okay, we've got some salmon, some Icelandic co, and a whole smoked eel," at the mention (and probably the scent) of the eel, Toothless backed away, growling. I picked up the eel, assuring that this was the source of the problem. It was, and Toothless backed away further, giving it a horrified and disgusted growl.
"No, no, no! It's okay!" I said, tossing away the eel. "Yeah, I don't really like eel much, either." Toothless came back and began to eat his fish.
"That's it. That's it, I said, creeping around him towards his tail. "And don't mind me… I'll just be back here… Minding my own business…" I edged around to his tail, undoing the straps fastened around my new invention: a prosthetic left tail fin. I sat down and slid the new tail fin over to his real tail. His tail slid away. I slid the fin further and again, the actual tail moved. "It's okay!" I said to him placing my hands down to keep his tail from moving. When this didn't work, I straddled his tail and began to secure the fin onto it. "Eh, not too bad. It works," it works, I muttered. Behind me, however, I didn't notice that Toothless had stopped eating and spread his wings…
Moments later I found the ground shooting from under me. I managed to grab the only secure thing within my reach: Toothless's tail. "Woah! No, no, no!" I screamed, holding on to the tail for dear life. I noticed the ground beginning to get closer, and then the prosthetic flapping uselessly in the air. I took hold of the device and spread it out. Sure enough, we began to climb into the air. "Oh my Go- It's working!" I yelled in excitement and I extended the fin further, banking us back to the cove.
As we were flying past the cove, Toothless must have noticed me, because he flicked me off of his tail, sending me into the lake. He followed suit moments later, unable to stay airborne. The test had worked, but it required the aid of a human to allow Toothless to stay in the air for more than a few seconds. "Yeah!" I yelled in excitement and satisfaction.
No notes today. Tune in next time to learn [REDACTED: SEE NEXT CHAPTER TITLE FOR DETAILS]
