Hiccup's Bride Alternate Chapter 38
The foursome returned to Megadeth's house; Hiccup and Astrid had parked their dragons in the back yard. Toothless and Stormfly both leaped to their feet at the sight of their human friends. Thuggory approached them slowly. "So this is... Stormfly?" he asked hesitantly.
"That's her," Astrid said as she gave her dragon's spiny head a hug.
"She's kind of big," he observed.
"Size isn't everything, you know," she replied archly. What was she trying to tell him? The dragon crouched and Astrid sprang lightly onto her back. "You sit behind me," she ordered him, and patted the dragon's back just behind her. He hesitantly climbed up behind her and rested his hands on her armored shoulder pads – that seemed like a safe place to touch her, seeing how there was nothing else to hang onto.
"You'd better hold on tight," she instructed him, then turned her attention to the dragon. "Are you ready, girl? This is going to be fun! Give us a good ride! Go, girl!" The Nadder sprang into the air with such force, he would have slipped off her back if he hadn't been holding on.
He could feel the powerful wing muscles tensing and relaxing just beneath him as the dragon flapped hard, gaining altitude quickly. He told himself, She wants me to admit I can't take it, but she won't try anything dangerous. That would be stupid, and she is not stupid. Anything she can handle, I can handle. Then the dragon went into a fast triple spin, and he had to redefine what "not dangerous" meant.
He'd barely regained his sense of up and down when the dragon pulled up into a loop, and hung at the top for several seconds. He was on the verge of falling off when the Nadder finally swung down... and kept going down. He felt the dragon dropping out from under him; he was hanging onto Astrid's shoulder pads as he floated upward. She leaned forward so his weight didn't pull her off the dragon's back. When they were barely twenty feet above the ocean, Stormfly pulled out of her dive and zoomed upward again. Thuggory slammed down onto her back; he hoped the impact didn't irritate the dragon.
Astrid looked over her shoulder at him. "How are you doing back there?"
"It's starting to get interesting," he replied.
"Okay, then," she smiled. "Stormfly, Level Two!"
Thuggory had never forgotten the ride Hiccup had given him on Toothless, back when he was on Berk for Thora's wedding. That had been good training for this ride. He now realized that Hiccup hadn't been trying to scare him or make him look bad; he was just showing what a dragon could do. Astrid had left "making him look bad" behind a long time ago, and he suspected that she was actually skirting the edges of "dangerous" now. He held on as tightly as he could to her shoulder pads as the dragon went through unheard-of maneuvers at high speed in three dimensions, apparently with the goal of bucking him off. He realized that Stormfly could probably catch him if he fell, but he was completely determined not to let that happen. He was thankful he hadn't started this adventure with a full stomach, because it probably wouldn't be full anymore.
At last, the Nadder leveled off and looked back at him with a puzzled-sounding squawk. Astrid didn't know what to make of that. "Well? Go on, girl! Give us some more!" The dragon squawked again, and glided straight and level.
"I guess she doesn't want to give us any more," he said woozily.
"You haven't passed my test," Astrid said testily, "but it looks like you've passed hers, whatever that means."
"Would I be right in guessing that it's impossible to pass your test?" he asked. "It's just a question of how hard you have to push me before I fail?" She gave him a very dirty look, then faced forward again and guided her dragon back to Mogadon's back yard without another word. Thuggory slid off the Nadder's back, grateful to feel something solid under his feet again. Astrid stayed on her dragon.
"How did it go?" Hiccup asked innocently.
"We're going home," Astrid snarled.
"Just like that? Not me," Thora answered. "At the very least, I have to say goodbye to my parents first."
"Take all the time you want," Astrid raged. "I don't need to follow you home; I know the way. Up, Stormfly!"
The dragon shook her head and didn't budge.
"Come on, you useless reptile! What is wrong with you? Take me home!" Stormfly turned to glare at her, and didn't even spread her wings. She plainly meant to go nowhere.
Thuggory turned away from her for a few seconds. "Hiccup, how perceptive are dragons when it comes to people and their feelings?"
"Toothless amazes me sometimes," Hiccup answered. "He seems to know how I'm feeling, and how other people are feeling, and just the right way to get a message across to them."
"Is it possible that Stormfly knows there's something going on between me and Astrid?" Thuggory went on.
"It's very possible," Hiccup replied. "The way she's acting, I'd say she expects the two of you to be getting along, and it bothers her that you aren't."
"Stop lecturing me about my own dragon!" Astrid cut in.
"Well, somebody's got to do it," Thora exclaimed, "because you aren't listening to your own dragon! Or anyone else, for that matter."
Thuggory looked up at Astrid, who was glaring down at him from Stormfly's back. "Astrid, I don't know how we got off on the wrong foot, but it's not what I want. We're going to be spending the rest of our lives together, and –"
"Do you have to remind me?" she interrupted sharply.
"Astrid, knock it off!" Hiccup burst out. Astrid and Thora both stared at him in shock – neither of them had ever heard him shout like that. "You're just mad because you can't beat him at something. Do you know what? You'd better get used to that, because marriage isn't about winning! It's about getting along, and the sooner you get that through your thick Viking skull, the happier you'll be. Even your dragon knows that!" Stormfly squawked as if to agree. Then there were a few seconds of shocked silence.
"Astrid, can we talk woman-to-woman for a minute?" Thora called up to her. When Astrid ignored her, she went on, "It doesn't look like your dragon is going to take you anywhere soon, so you might as well come down, and once you're down, there's something I need to tell you."
"Are you going to hit me in the arm and say, 'That's for being such an idiot'?" Astrid asked harshly.
"No, that's your line," Thora replied. "And I wouldn't call you an idiot. If I was going to call you anything, I'd probably call you Thora."
Astrid's face went blank. She finally said, "Fine, I admit it, I have no idea where you're going with that, and you've made me curious." She slid down off Stormfly's back, and the two young women stepped away from the men.
"Do you remember what I told you about my original plans for Hiccup?" Thora asked her.
"I think it had something to do with dominating him and running the show all by yourself," Astrid replied without looking at her.
"Yup, that was my plan," Thora nodded. "To this day, I'm thankful that I started to see the real Hiccup before I had a chance to put that plan into practice. I don't like to think about the mess I could have made – of his life, of my life, of our marriage, of everything. It was your mother, of all people, who helped me realize that if married people don't win together, then they lose together. Anything you try to do without him as your willing partner is going to be a domestic disaster."
"Thora, I'm not like you!" Astrid began, but Thora cut her off.
"Yes, you are! You're a strong-willed girl who won't be anybody's doormat. You want your marriage to benefit you more than anybody else. You want to call the shots, you want to win, and you'll walk all over anyone who tries to take that away from you. You're exactly like the girl I used to be.
"But, Astrid, can't you see that Thuggory isn't looking for a doormat? If he was, he never would have gone up on Stormfly with you, and given you the chance to break him! He's looking for a life's partner and a friend, not a live-in cook and housekeeper and baby-maker."
"Are you telling me he won't expect those things from me?" Astrid burst out.
"Of course he will – every Viking man expects those things from his wife. If those things were all he wanted from you, then you'd have a right to complain. But he's already offering you something that a lot of Viking wives never get – respect! Maybe you're used to getting that on Berk, but on this island, that is something rare and precious for a man to show to a woman. He's approaching you as an equal. Don't spit on that, just because you can't beat him at something."
Astrid took a deep breath. "Thora, I don't want to sound cruel when I say this, but you don't know what it's like to walk in the boots of a beautiful woman in a Viking tribe. Ever since I started to look like a woman, men have looked at me and all they think is, 'I'd hit that,' and they don't mean with a sword. I have had to fight, every moment of my life, to prove that I'm just as good as they are, and that I'm not just a pretty face. Fighting men and beating them isn't some kind of personality disorder with me – it's my entire existence! It's all I've ever known! It's the only thing that works! How am I supposed to set that aside, just like that, because this total stranger is supposed to be different from every other Viking man I've ever met?"
"Did you fight Hiccup when you were younger?" Thora asked quietly.
Astrid hesitated before she answered. "No. At first, he seemed so harmless that I didn't see him as a threat. Once I got to know him and saw how strong he is on the inside, we already had a good relationship, and I didn't want to fight him."
"There's your answer," Thora replied. "Stop judging Thuggory by what you see, and by what you expect him to be. Get to know him on the inside. That's why we came here in the first place, isn't it?"
"Did you judge Hiccup on the outside?"
"Yes," Thora said firmly, "and I totally despised him. But when I started to learn who he really was, that changed everything. I can't promise you that, if you get to know the real Thuggory, you'll fall in love and everything will be wonderful. But I can promise you that doing things your way is never going to work."
"It always worked before," Astrid said, no longer so sure of herself.
"You were never getting married before," Thora replied softly.
Meanwhile, Thuggory had leaned over and murmured to Hiccup, "That was quite a ride she just gave me, and it's given me an idea."
"What kind of an idea?" Hiccup whispered back.
"She's going to be the Meatheads' first dragon rider, and I'm going to be her husband," Thuggory said. "But I'm also going to be the chief of the tribe, so I can't ride behind her. So if I'm going to be married to a dragon rider and share her life, that can mean only one thing: I need a dragon of my own."
Hiccup thought about that. "Training a dragon isn't like owning a pony, Thuggory. Toothless is more of a friend than he is a mount. A dragon takes time, and energy, and more patience than I ever imagined."
"I've noticed that," Thuggory replied. "If I can handle the commitment of marriage, then I'm sure I can handle the commitment of working with a dragon. But I don't know where to find dragons, and I don't know the first thing about training them."
"If it won't make things worse between you and Astrid, then I'd be glad to help," Hiccup said, and stuck out his hand. The two future chiefs shook on it.
