"Astrid," Tuffnut greeted politely, flicking the spine out of a fish with practiced ease. "What brings you down to the fishier part of Berk?"
"Same thing as you," Astrid replied, upturning an empty bucket and sitting down on it. "Working here for the day, or as a real occupation?" She had not anticipated meeting Tuffnut here, and her curiosity was piqued.
"I've been avoiding the salmon," Tuffnut offered, pointing to one of the barrels in particular. "Help me out and focus on those."
"You didn't answer the question," Astrid observed, pulling a salmon from the top of the barrel and sticking her knife into it. She didn't have to pay any attention to the actual process of preparing the fish, having long since committed the common task to muscle memory, so she could focus on Tuffnut, who seemed to be at least as efficient in his own fish-gutting skills.
"On and off," he said in reply. "It doesn't pay well, but nothing really does, and it's miserable enough that Ruffnut wouldn't be caught dead doing it, even if she's bored."
"Seems reasonable," Astrid agreed.
Tuffnut smiled slyly. "I like the new Astrid. I don't have to worry about being lectured for laziness."
"I would never have lectured you for not wanting to gut fish for a living," Astrid said firmly, sure that even her past self would not have been so obnoxious and demanding. The only time she ever lectured anyone, it had been Hiccup, about taking dragon training seriously.
Though that looked absolutely terrible in retrospect, so maybe Tuffnut had reason to suspect she might have been as bad about a different topic…
In any case, she was not going to do so now, so the point was moot. "I'm here because I want some spare fish," she revealed. "Think they'll let me take whichever I like?"
"Just steal some and then refuse payment for the day's work," Tuffnut advised. "You get all the good reputation of working for free, the fish you want, the knowledge that you've not actually done anything all that wrong, and that amazing glow only felt by pulling the wool over someone's eyes and having them thank you for it." He sighed nostalgically.
"I think I'll just ask." And if the answer was no, which was possible if the Viking in charge didn't like her… "And I'll have you hold onto the fish I pick out. Just in case."
Tuffnut practically beamed with approval, saluting her with a fishbone. "A cunning plan."
"Not my only one recently," Astrid murmured to herself, recalling how she had decided to handle Tuffnut's involvement in Toothless's immediate future. "Do me a favor and say no to the next thing I ask. Seriously, just say no. I can explain why afterward."
"Okay. Hit me."
"Would you be willing to take over handling the dragon?" Astrid asked, hoping that Tuffnut wouldn't try and go off-script.
"No."
Astrid nodded. "There. I can say I asked, and I can say you refused."
"But really, the answer is actually no," Tuffnut said seriously. "Maybe if I hadn't just made that particular dragon wantto rip my guts out and use them as earplugs, but probably not even then. I don't get what you do with it, not really, and that seems like a fast end to my life no matter how I look at it."
"Fine by me," Astrid agreed. "I was only obligated to try. Nobody said how hard I had to try." She could count that part of the agreement with her parents fulfilled, in word if not in spirit. That distinction didn't bother her anymore; it was somewhat dishonorable to play technicalities and twist the intent of an agreement, but she no longer cared.
"Who made you promise to try and get me killed?" Tuffnut asked curiously. "Was it Ruffnut? I would consider that progress, given she can't go back to normal if I'm dead."
"No, it wasn't Ruffnut. And I'd make sure it wasn't a deathtrap if I actually wanted you to take over," Astrid argued, miffed that he didn't think she could manage that much. "I just don't want to let you take over. It's my responsibility." And her duty, and her friend, and the best part of her life at the moment. But she didn't say any of that; Tuffnut didn't need to know, even if he probably would keep it all quiet for her.
"How's that going, anyway?" Tuffnut asked casually. "Clearly not well if I'm considered a viable replacement."
"Two steps back, and then three steps forward." She shrugged her shoulders, choosing her words carefully. "I think I'm past a few issues I didn't know were in the way before. It should be fine."
"It had better be. I hear the Windy Isle tribe is hard to impress." He waved his knife in the air for emphasis. "Fishlegs says they can belch loud enough to kill a man at close range."
"I think he was talking about Thunderdrums, not Vikings." She recalled that description from the Book of Dragons, and there were no Vikings in that.
"Eh, close enough. I zoned out when he started talking about books." Tuffnut grimaced and stabbed the fish currently on top in his barrel, piercing its tail and lifting it up like a fresh kill. "He seems to think not pranking means… scholarly." He shuddered dramatically.
"Clearly not," Astrid observed, trying to picture the scene and coming up with a fairly hilarious mental image. "What, did he corner you in the Great Hall and start offering to loan you books?"
"Of every kind," Tuffnut confirmed. "Books about Viking heritage, books about trade routes, books about old Viking hand signals, books about dragon myths… I asked if he had any books about how to kill annoying people, just to shut him up, and he asked whether I was interested in poison or dueling!"
"Did he have anything on those?" She wouldn't mind a book about dueling. Books were good when they had practical knowledge.
"Ask him. I'm no scholar." Tuffnut twirled a fish around on the end of his knife, sending slime slinging everywhere. "Even this is better than that."
"Maybe I will. Later." She had too much to do and figure out at the moment to go digging into what sorts of knowledge Fishlegs was hoarding in the form of stained parchment. "And save that fish for me. It looks like a good one."
Tuffnut stopped twirling the fish long enough to examine it. "What makes this one good?"
"You've already gotten all the slime off of it," Astrid said bluntly.
"Does the dragon like them slimeless?"
"Who said it was for the dragon?" Astrid retorted.
"Come on, who else would it be for? Got a sudden craving for raw Cod that the Great Hall won't satisfy?"
"Okay, so maybe it's for the dragon," Astrid backtracked, not wanting to let Tuffnut get started with the jokes at her expense that he was so clearly trying to think up, his eyes crossed and the fish dangling from his knife, slowly sliding down as the blade cut through it.
"Honey and the hatchet?" he asked curiously. "Does that work? And does it require an actual hatchet?"
"Just a gift." She was going to have to apologize for lying to Toothless next time she saw him, because she had told him she would be back the next day. Thanks to her mother insisting she spend the day in the village and asking for her to be at the Great Hall at noon, she had no choice but to break that promise. The fish was going to be a part of her apology.
"Sure. Pull the other one."
"No, seriously." She wasn't sure why she wanted him to understand, given it would be easier to let him believe what he thought now, but she did. "I figured out what I was doing wrong, what I was thinking that made everything so hard. It's not a reward, or an incentive, or anything like that. It's just going to be a gift."
"So that's the key to a dragon's heart?" Tuffnut asked rhetorically. "Gifts and soft words and kindness, I suppose, because if there's anything no Viking has ever thought to try, it's that."
"Respect and equal treatment and understanding," Astrid shot back. "You're right, no Viking would think to try those." She was pretty sure somebody had to have been desperate enough to try simple bribery at some point in the last few decades; it just wouldn't have worked. Nobody had ever figured out how to tame dragons because those few who might have tried would by extension have gone at it from the wrong perspective, just like her.
"I'll remember that," Tuffnut threatened. "If you ever get too high and mighty, I'll hunt down a worthy dragon and respect it into submission!" He stood, brandishing the knife in one hand and a whole Cod in the other, striking a heroic pose. "Tuffnut Thorston, Respect-Giver Extraordinaire, rising to defeat the evil Astrid the…"
"The…" Astrid prompted.
Tuffnut shrugged helplessly. "There aren't any good alliterative words for you."
"Sure there are. Astrid the Ambitious. Astrid the Audacious." Neither of those sounded entirely positive, which she figured fit nicely given in this scenario Berk was giving her the name, and they didn't have a good opinion of her. They'd respect her boldness, but little else. Maybe 'Astrid the Addlebrained' if they were particularly spiteful at the time of giving her a title. She wasn't creative, but she had come up with all of those, so Tuffnut shouldn't be having a problem.
"Yes, but those are generic," Tuffnut complained. "I could sling those titles at any big bad Viking and they'd stick. I want something unique!"
"Gut fish while you think," Astrid suggested, tossing one at him. "It's just a hypothetical, anyway."
"If Berk keeps giving you grief about all of this, maybe it won't be," Tuffnut said slyly. "It'd be fun, hunting you down. Our battle would be legendary!"
"I'm loyal to Berk," she replied firmly. Even with her new mentality, she was loyal. Berk would have to spurn her for that to change, and so nothing so far had come close to that. The Chief approved of her, and the village followed suit in action if not word or opinion.
"Even more interesting. The loyal dragon tamer and the dark dragon of peace, driven from Berk by raging mobs led by… Mildew! Yes, old Mildew, leader of the rebellion against Loki-spawned dragons and riders." Tuffnut stabbed a fish with his knife and began waving it up and down, making it seem that the fish was walking on its tail. Its dead eyes stared at Astrid.
"Is the fish me or Mildew?" Astrid asked, amused in spite of herself.
"Either way works. I think Mildew, given it's stinky and liable to go rotten if left in the sun," Tuffnut quipped. "Come on, get your own fish and join in!"
"I'm not Ruffnut."
Astrid winced the moment she heard what she had said; she might not have cared in the past, but these days people who didn't mind her were rare, and she didn't want to drive Tuffnut away.
"No, you're not." He waved the fish half-heartedly. "I didn't think you were. It's just that you seem so much less uptight than normal."
"This is my new normal," she explained, feeling that she owed him an explanation in recompense for her thoughtless comment. "Or at least closer to it. I don't know. I'm just-"
"Doing what feels right, playing it by ear, abandoning the old facade you held for so long," Tuffnut cut in. "Sounds familiar."
"I guess it would." Now that she thought about it, that was exactly what Tuffnut had said he was doing, back when she had asked. "I guess we're both figuring out who we want to be."
That got her a small smile from Tuffnut, who had given up playing with his work in favor of gutting it like he was supposed to. After a long moment, Astrid smiled back. It was good to have someone who understood at least a little of what she was going through, and could talk back.
"Sorry!" Astrid yelled, waving the fish. "Look, it wasn't my fault!" She could have told her mother that she had other obligations, but with the mood Asa had been in, that would have resulted in being told to stay in the village and a lecture. Given that ignoring her mother's orders would almost certainly rebound to inconvenience her and Toothless even more, she really hadn't had a choice.
It was possible Toothless might understand that, and it was also possible he'd understand the fish she brought as an apology, but both of those required him to be around to be persuaded. He might not even be mad; maybe he just wasn't close enough to his den to hear her.
Astrid thought otherwise, which was why she was waving the fish wildly and yelling her apologies at the trees around her. She had the unshakable feeling that she was being watched, and around here the only one who would be doing that was Toothless. He had proven himself invisible in the forest when he wanted to be, so not being able to see any signs of his presence meant absolutely nothing.
"Come on, do you really want to watch me wait around all day?" Astrid called out. "At least be mad at me to my face!" She actually didn't want a Night Fury mad at her to her face, or at all, but she was pretty sure it would be a petty, mild anger, and that she could handle. This taunting absence felt equal parts playful and malicious, unless she totally missed her guess. They both knew she hadn't done anything worse than not showing up for a day when she said she would.
"This fish will get old and gross if you don't show yourself," she tried, sitting down on a fallen log just within sight of the mouth of his cave. "I'll let it get old and dry and rotten, and when I leave tonight I might just take it with me to throw away," she threatened, before very elaborately opening the neck of her satchel and sliding one of the fish back in, hoping her theatrics would get some sort of response.
Nothing. The fish disappeared into the satchel without a peep from the forest around her, though she was still positive Toothless was watching. He either didn't understand the implications, or thought she was bluffing.
He was about to learn that Astrid Hofferson very rarely bluffed. Even more rarely than she wasted food. Astrid stood and made her way to the nearby cliff, standing at the edge and staring at the tree line behind her.
"Last chance," she said firmly, holding the satchel out at arm's length. "Show yourself and accept my apology, or watch as the fish get it." She held the satchel out over the cliff, dangling them above the long drop and deep water below. The irony of threatening to throw dead fish back into the ocean was not lost on her, but she kept a straight face.
And sure enough, Toothless came running out of the forest, sliding to a stop well short of her and snorting at her as if he had not just scrambled to reach her in time to save the food.
"Oh, there you are," she said cheerfully. "Sorry for not being able to come yesterday."
Toothless snorted again, looked away from her as if bored, and then flicked his ears in the direction of the satchel, feigning nonchalance.
"Yes, they're for you," Astrid agreed, slowly bringing the bag in from over the brink and reaching in with her other hand. "Want one?" She found playing along with his little pretense of casualness more entertaining than calling him on it.
He crooned hopefully and leaned forward, his mouth open and very much not in any way toothless.
She tossed the fish into his mouth, thinking it wise to stay away from his sharp teeth. It was gone almost instantly, swallowed whole.
"Looks like those are either for intimidation or fighting, not eating," she observed, tossing him another. "No chewing with those." Maybe she would tell Fishlegs that; it seemed like the kind of thing he would want to know, and didn't hold any practical value that could be used against Toothless later, so it was safe to share.
Toothless warbled in response, eyeing the satchel greedily.
"Sure," Astrid decided, emptying the satchel on the ground between them. "Take the rest." She had eaten more than usual earlier that morning, so as to not have to bring her lunch in a bag that also contained day-old raw fish. The only thing she had brought besides her ax was her apology.
Once the remaining fish had disappeared down Toothless's gullet, Astrid felt comfortable moving away from the edge of the cliff and wandering off into the forest. Toothless followed her, as she expected he would.
She tossed the satchel back to him the first time he nosed around her waist, looking for more. "This had all I brought," she said firmly. "So, if you're still hungry, you can go hunt something yourself." A firm hand was necessary in dealing with Vikings looking to share her food, and she had no issue turning that same attitude on a dragon doing the same. Though, usually the only one who actually tried that was Snotlout, so maybe she was being too harsh on Toothless…
Toothless flung the satchel right back at her, catching her by surprise, and walked ahead, now leading the way. He led with far more purpose and direction than Astrid had, though his path still meandered enough that she didn't think he had a destination in mind. She caught up after shoving the satchel through a loop in her skirt's waistband, opposite her ax.
The forest was quiet. Aside from the noise of her boots crushing small plants underfoot, the wind was all that could be heard.
Something snapped in the near distance, close enough to be heard but far enough to not be seen snapping.
Just like yesterday. This time, Astrid was positive there was someone around. Toothless freezing and staring in the direction of the sound was a good indication that there was more to it than some newly developed sense of paranoia on her part.
"Don't make any sudden moves," Astrid hissed, trying desperately to think through the situation before anything else happened. If there was a Viking out here, he or she was disobeying the Chief, meaning he or she didn't feel inclined to do what the Chief said, meaning nothing was stopping them from attacking Toothless or even her.
By extension, she reasoned as Toothless looked over at her dubiously, they might be armed with dragon-killing weapons, things with range. Throwing spears or bola or even a bow and arrows, as rare as that was. This was deadly serious.
Which made Toothless snorting and tossing his head in annoyance all the more important. He began creeping toward the source of the sound, a particularly thick cluster of branches and pine needles, something large enough to hide a crouching Viking.
"No!" Astrid hissed. "At least let me go first!" She tried to catch up to him, but being as silent as possible trumped speed, as it seemed the Viking hadn't noticed them yet, strange as that was. She was reduced to whispering at him. "Stop! Wait!"
Toothless looked back at her with a pointed glare, his ears slanting angrily.
"Right," Astrid hissed. "Please stop," she requested, hoping her frustration with him wanting courtesy now didn't show through in her voice.
No such luck; he shook his head and glared all the more insistently, pointedly taking another step forward. He didn't seem to care that this could be life or death, or that she was the one far more suited to handling it. All he cared about was her being polite and not ordering him around!
"Oh, come on," she hissed. "Fine." If he wouldn't listen, then she would just have to go with another plan.
She darted forward, taking out her ax and passing him in seconds, making far too much noise to be at all stealthy, and leaped over the bush, falling and rolling and springing up to level her ax at-
A loud, porcine squeal of absolute terror rang in her ears as a wild boar thundered off into the forest, fleeing both her and Toothless, who pounced only moments too late to catch it where it had stood rooting around in the ground behind the screen of pine needles and branches.
Toothless cast her a truly disgruntled look, his ears back against his head, and started off in the direction the boar had fled, walking slowly with his nose close to the ground.
Astrid trailed after him, her face burning with humiliation. It wasn't exactly her fault she had totally misinterpreted the situation… But it definitely felt that way. She hadn't even thought about the possibility that there were other creatures capable of breaking twigs in the forest. In all likelihood, the noise that had made her so cautious yesterday was just more of the same.
Yes, she had screwed the hunt up for him, but it wasn't over yet. He was trailing the boar, slowly and steadily to avoid alerting it by accident, the way she had. The least she could do was follow along and not interfere again.
As she walked, she thought about something else, more to distract herself than anything. Her thoughts kept circling around to the same issue.
They really needed to come up with a reliable way of communicating, one that didn't have the undertones of broken trust and suspicion that he rightly felt with her trying to give orders. If this incident was any indication, he wouldn't listen to her unless she made it very clear she was asking politely, and she just couldn't do that when they were in tense situations, even if she wanted to be polite. It just wasn't going to happen.
Her fault, again. If she had not corrupted and misused the commands, maybe he would happily listen…
No, probably not. They were commands, one-way communication. She had meant them to be, and there was no changing that. She needed to come at the problem from a totally different angle, to make something new and better. Reusing the old clearly wasn't working.
She squashed the almost reflexive thought the moment it appeared. She could do this, even if it was something far more suited to someone like Fishlegs or Hiccup. She could come up with an answer, it just might take her a lot of thought where it would be easy for them. Despairing before she had even started was stupid.
Besides, this wasn't like being asked to build something from scratch. She just had to think of a way to communicate that didn't come with any of the debilitating flaws politely commanding Toothless did. All she needed was to think about it.
Astrid continued to follow Toothless through the woods, but her mind wasn't on hunting.
"I am sorry," Astrid said vehemently, holding out a hand to the Night Fury in front of her. "I thought it was something else."
Toothless licked her hand and crooned happily. He certainly didn't seem to care anymore, though they had never caught up to the boar. He was probably going to go back to hunting it, but he had led her off the trail and to the forest's edge, just in time for sunset, so he knew that he would be hunting alone.
"This time either tomorrow or the next day," Astrid promised, knowing better than to just promise tomorrow again. Her mother might be of the mind to make her alternate between the village and the forest, and she wasn't going to defy her outright.
Toothless rubbed his face along her arm, rumbling contently, and leaped up into the trees, disappearing from sight in an instant.
"Yeah, that boar is dead," Astrid said to herself, turning and leaving the forest. Now that she thought about it, he had probably been holding back in trailing it so that she could keep up. There was no way even a flightless Night Fury would normally take all day to track down an overgrown pig on a small island.
As she made her way across the fields toward Berk, she went over what she had painstakingly decided on while trailing Toothless all day.
They needed to communicate, and they needed to do it in a way that was inherently polite, so that she could use it in stressful situations. Ideally, it would be something Toothless could somehow reciprocate, to avoid it feeling one-sided. And it needed to be ambiguous when seen from the outside, something that was not obviously polite or going both ways, just in case. She wanted to be able to choose whether people who saw them together understood the truth.
Astrid smiled to herself as she passed between two huts and into the village proper, despite the scowls and rude comments her very presence drew out from Vikings all around. She stared proudly ahead and didn't hear them, simply because she was basking in her own success.
It had taken her a while to conclude that it couldn't be a spoken way of communicating, but she had eventually realized that important fact. Once she had that, it all fell into place. She had heard about the solution only the day before, after all. It was fresh in her mind.
Then she realized that she was already at her hut and put all of that from her mind. The answer had been determined, and she couldn't do any more work on the problem until she had it in her hands.
"Just in time, we're having stew," Sighvat called out. "Your mom's at the Great Hall, helping Bucket and the others serve dinner."
"Really?" Astrid opened the door to her room and tossed her ax onto her bed and dropped the satchel on the floor before closing the door. She would put them away properly once she had eaten.
"She felt it would help our image," Sighvat sighed. "And she wanted me to talk to you, which is why we're eating here tonight."
"About what?" Astrid didn't like the sinking feeling in her stomach; the prospect of talking to her father shouldn't fill her with dread, especially now that being told that a husband had been selected for her was off the table, if not for reasons she would have preferred.
"The future," Sighvat said simply, setting two bowls of stew on the table and sitting down across from her. "How are things going with the dragon?"
"I'm making progress in some ways," Astrid said carefully, picking up a rough wooden spoon but not using it. She didn't want to eat until this was settled, no matter how hungry she was. The rolling unease in her stomach would only go away once this talk was over, and until then she feared she wouldn't be able to keep anything down.
"And in others?" Sighvat asked neutrally. He hadn't started eating either.
"It's difficult. I think I'll be ready for when our visitors get here, but it will be close." If her father asked, she was talking about the prospect of flying with Toothless, given the new tailfin wouldn't be finished for a while yet, but she also meant the difficulty of totally scrapping the commands she had taught Toothless and starting over with something else entirely.
"What's the status of handing over control to Tuffnut?"
"It's not happening," Astrid admitted. "Both he and the dragon refused to even consider it." She was glad she could say that without lying.
"Who is next in line?" her father asked curiously.
"Nobody. Tuffnut is the only one who might have been able to do it." She could have given a list of candidates, but she knew how her parents worked. She would have had to go through and get denials from everyone on any list she put together, and then things would be right back where they started.
"And…" he said promptingly. "What is the solution?"
"Simple. I take it with me when I go." She was improvising now, but it was easy enough. She just had to think about the worst-case scenario and then try to make it as bearable as possible. Making it sound reasonable was another matter. "But I don't make that obvious. I pretend I'm going to leave it, our ship sails away for the last time, and then I fly it out to the ship. I can just hide in the woods while you and mom leave."
"The point of this was to leave the dragon behind and start over," Sighvat objected. "How does this do that?"
"I guess it doesn't, but I can't leave it with a clear conscience, so it has to come with me." Hopefully, that would be enough to convince him. If she couldn't honorably abandon the dragon, what other recourse was there but to bring it?
"Yes, you can," Sighvat said sternly. "As your father, I'm ordering you to leave it here when we go."
Astrid flinched. She honestly hadn't thought he would do that; he usually avoided outright telling her to do anything. It was a sign of respect, an unspoken promise to consider her opinions even if he didn't have to.
But now he had, and there was only one answer she could give. "Understood."
Only one answer he would accept, anyway. Only one he could hear. But she was not going to abandon Toothless here, and she wasn't going to be parted from him. She still intended to find some way to stay on Berk, which would be a solution, but if things fell out badly enough…
Astrid couldn't look her father in the eyes, but thankfully he took her silence as acceptance, not brooding. Why wouldn't he? She had never defied him before.
She also hadn't been able to comprehend breaking her word once given, either. Now?
If there was any other way to get what she wanted, she wouldn't do it, and she could see plenty of ways to sidestep the future he and her mother had set out for her, plenty of ways to get them to rethink things, or to otherwise thwart them without direct defiance. Uncertain ways, possibilities, chances that might not come to pass, but ways nonetheless. She hadn't decided to break her word and defy them. But she had decided it was an option, a last resort. That was enough to calm her nerves and let her eat. It was all in the future, anyway.
"You want to borrow a book?" Fishlegs asked incredulously. He looked like he was about to faint and fall down the steps leading up to the Ingerman household. Or maybe he was just tired; she had waited until after he got off work with Gobber.
"Yes," Astrid responded simply, not feeling like explaining. Fishlegs didn't need to know. "I heard from Tuffnut that you had one on old Viking hand signals?"
"Well, yeah, but nobody even knows them anymore," Fishlegs explained. "We tend to prefer yelling orders, and it's not like we do sneak attacks. So…"
"I still want to borrow it," she replied. "Can you get it for me now?"
"Sure!" Fishlegs shut the door right in her face in his haste, leaving her alone on the doorstep.
Astrid ignored the insult; she really couldn't care less, and it was obviously not an intentional slight. Or if it was, he was way more subtle than she ever gave him credit for.
A loud series of thumps resounded from behind the closed door, and then a familiar yelp. The door shuddered under one large impact, and then the house fell silent.
A few moments later, the door swung open. Fishlegs' face was redder than before, and there was a pile of books on the wooden floor behind him, but he had an old, leather-bound tome in his hands.
"Return it whenever, and try not to read it while eating," Fishlegs requested. "I learned the hard way on that one."
"I'll take good care of it." She took the book from him and quickly flipped through it. There were runes, illustrations of hands doing various gestures, and a lot of stains on certain pages. "But it's already stained."
"I know," Fishlegs said guiltily. "Just don't add to it, okay?"
"I won't." She certainly didn't plan on eating while looking at it. If Fishlegs knew more, he would be more worried about Night Fury drool.
"No drooling," Astrid warned, letting Toothless sniff the book and then setting it on a nearby rock. "It's not for eating."
Toothless grunted and sat down across from her, his eyes wide and curious. He seemed to be waiting to see what she was going to do.
She flipped the book open, quickly locating the right page, though she had already committed the gesture she wanted to explain to memory. It was a simple one, and one with a simple meaning. A meaning Toothless already knew, which was the most important part.
"Come," Astrid requested softly, holding out her hand and pulling two fingers inward with a deliberate, exaggerated motion.
Toothless obligingly walked over, apparently satisfied with her tone. He eyed her hand curiously.
"Come," she repeated, again doing the gesture she had gotten from the book. It was a simple one, and honestly one she could have come up with herself, but simple was best.
This time, Toothless definitely knew that she was trying to tell him something besides the obvious request. He stopped right in front of her hand, his eyes fixed on it.
"You get it," she said softly. "It means the same thing." More specifically, she wanted him to understand that it meant exactly how she had said the command, not just the meaning. If this worked, the gestures she planned to introduce would all be automatically considerate and polite.
Of course, that could be used to abuse his trust again; it would only work if she didn't misuse it to order him around. The difference this time was that she had the right intentions. She wouldn't misuse these, if he understood-
Toothless abruptly warbled happily, backed a few steps away, and held up one of his front paws, extending it out toward her.
Astrid was shocked to see two claws extend and painstakingly bend downward and then inward. She hadn't know his claws could bend, though in retrospect it only made sense, as Toothless had grabbed her arm with his paws in the volcano. She could see little joints midway down their lengths now that she was looking for them, but it really didn't matter.
What was even more shocking was the gesture itself, though, not how he had done it. She knew too much to assume he was just mindlessly imitating her.
She rose and walked toward him, heeding the request. What else could she do? She had wanted two-way communication, and had anticipated him responding as he normally did, with looks and sounds and movement. But if he could just do the same thing she did, wasn't that all the better? It wasn't language, they wouldn't be talking to each other, but it was a step above inferring and guessing his meaning in the moment.
"One down," she declared, stopping in front of him and smiling broadly. The shock had faded as quickly as it had arrived; she really shouldn't have been surprised. If he could learn and memorize a verbal command in moments, why wouldn't he be able to understand a gesture he could perform himself? It made perfect sense as long as she kept in mind that he was no mere animal.
Toothless rumbled happily and stepped around her, quickly approaching the book and pointedly staring at it. He looked up at her with eager eyes and barked loudly.
"Definitely," Astrid agreed. "We're not stopping at one." The deadline that had previously seemed tight now looked to be lax, at least when it came to this aspect of preparing. They would be more than ready to put on a show for Berk and the Windy Isle tribe when the time came, if the speed at which Toothless learned was any indication.
And it would be a show. Everyone expected to see control, but that wasn't what this was. This was communication, plain and simple, equal because they were both equally capable of making their intentions clear.
Astrid crouched by the book, looked up at Toothless, and began flipping through it, looking for another good signal for them both to learn, smiling all the while. She couldn't wait to see what they could do once they could work together more easily.
Author's Note: Just as a bit of clarification; this isn't going to evolve into true talking in the sense of complete, complex conversations, or even simple ones. It's basically the same idea as the commands Astrid used earlier, only working both ways, and with gestures instead of words (because Toothless can't exactly speak). I've done plenty of stories in which the dragons in some way talk, with dialogue and such, and this story just doesn't accommodate that, being far more grounded. So regardless of how intelligent Toothless may or may not be, there will never be a point where he 'says' something as such. Not much is really going to change aside from him and Astrid streamlining the guesswork and carefully worded requests they've been working with up until this point.
Basically, I guess what I'm trying to say is that this isn't a big plot point, though it very well could be if I wanted to take the story that way. It's hard to tell whether I've adequately conveyed that through the story itself, especially here, where we leave off before seeing the results of the new development.