Tuffnut couldn't find his sister

...and it was irritating him.

Usually he could find her at the end of his spear, buried beneath his shield, tangled in his hair. If he wanted to find her all he usually had to do was send kick to his left and or a punch to his right. But on a wide mountain path, beneath a canopy of trees to avoid the sunny day, Ruffnut Thorson was no where in sight.

When this had happened before he had rarely noticed- he was usually distracted by chores, babysitting, hunting, his best friend.

"Ruffnuuuut?"

And on those rare occasions of noticing he was alone, he appreciated the silence. He was always grateful to have an hour where he wasn't at the wrong end of his sister's sword, but today it made him paranoid. His foot kept tapping his fingers jittered in their place- in his pockets or on his hilt- they found no rest.

What if she'd been taken?

"Ruff?!"

What if she'd left on her own, hunting without a buddy, or on a quest to save Astrid?

"RUFFS!"

What is she was headed foolhardily to her death and doom? Was she lying somewhere, already wounded or dead? ...Had Tuffnut perhaps spent too much time listening to the Elder's horror stories?

Tuffnut realized he'd been running and slowed, making his breaths painfully stretched out to stop his heart. As he pushed uphill his pulse still thrummed through out all of his extremities and instead of feeling calmer Tuffnut was very tempted to scream. But no he wouldn't. He wouldn't be so stressed just because he couldn't find his sister

Tuffnut Thorson doesn't care. Caring too much was the ultimate weakness.

Calling out for his sister, Tuffnut reached the head of the path, where it evened out into a terrace. Not quite the woods, but the pines grew bigger and carpeted the floor with pine needles. His footfalls were quieted here, and with the over all silence of the forest he began to worry that his calls were also getting muffled.

"Ruffs? Ruffnuut. Ruffian!"

Tuffnut was beginning to really hate looking for Ruff, especially because she was his twin sister; Annoying sister only a minute older than him who loved to get into his business- in his face- from the day they'd been born. Yeah, usually she could find her death on her own time and that would be fine.

But now Astrid was gone. His best friend had disappeared, no where to be found. Her mom- as usual- had a theory. Her dad was in denial. Her little brother wouldn't stop worrying over the broken archer's bow. And the thing is- he hadn't even found it at where they thought Astrid would be posted. It was caught by the wind and nearly took Rek's head off- the only reason he had caught it was that it had crashed into some trees and became a literal stick in the mud.

And Tuffnut was without his best friend. After Astrid was, well, his sister- with Fishlegs a close third. And for the first time, Tuffnut was disturbed by the fact that Ruffs had so much in common with Astrid. They were both brawny, light on thier feet, ferocious warriors, and apparently... stealable.

"RUFFS!" Tuffnut felt his entire body go into making that one, and he finally heard a response. Over a fallen tree and cutting through a game trail, Tuffnut almost kept rushing past his sister, who was kneeling on the ground.

"I've been looking all over for you." He said with a glower.

She squinted up at him and twisted her face into a snarl, "I saw you like 30 minutes ago."

"That was over an hour ago!" Was it? just an hour? Ok, he was definetly being paranoid.

"Well, Excuuse Me." She said, putting her hands on her hips but not bothering to stand up. "Now stop blocking the sun. And don't step here. Or there! You'll mess it up."

Tuffnut ended up doing a complicated sort of dance, looking for somewhere to stand. In the end he fell to his own knees and carefully crawled up next to her. He could see now that she was carefully measuring an imprint , like they did when they were tracking a downed dragon but where usually she measured against the width of her fingers and notes made on her forearm- she was using a small booklet- like the kind Fishlegs carried around and a real measuring tape..

"Did you steal that from mum?"

She immediately pulled it back, wrapping the tape around her wrist with a practiced ease. "Shut up."

"She's gonna kill you for getting dirt on it."

"I said shut up~" She singsonged as she started measuring the twin imprint, just to her left.

"She uses that for tailoring y'know. As in measuring Other People."

Ruff smacked him with one hand and managed to keep measuring with the other, "I'll wash it, kay? Now shut up."

She made a notation in her notebook and Tuffnut tried to read what she'd already written. "Why are you using that, anyway?"

She smacked him for not shutting up and he elbowed her. She then elbowed him to his gut and before he could throw another punch, she explained herself. "Because this isn't like animal tracking, Bloodbrain. These are the bootprints of a pirate!"

. . .

"Dragonshit." He spat, in absolute certainty. For which he got a slapped in the face. His sister rarely slapped him, it was mostly kicks and blows that were Really designed to hurt. So in the shocked silence, Ruff found ample time to prove herself right.

She forced him to step carefully around the mud until he was at The spot, where the trees ended and provided a perfect view of the beach. this is wear Astrid would have been, and looking down he saw them, the dried mudprints of boots, just the right size. He mimicked a pair of prints that seemed to go together and found himself in the Archer's standard stance as one took aim. Just standing in this position, his body memory imagined a bow and arrow in his hands, hs focus angled downward toward the beach.

"Ahem."

Tuffnut twisted around to see his twin, peaking out at him from behind a tree. As he walked back to her he noticed, she was stepping around funny. It was only when he was below the trees again that he saw, Ruff was walking around footprints that matched the one she'd been measuring.

Tuffnut twisted back around to where Astrid had stood and began shadowing her footsteps. After only a few steps he found himself facing his sister, who having continued to follow 'the pirates' prints was further back and behind another tree.

"So if I'm Astrid and you're the pirate, why didn't she just shoot him?"

"Because, dumdum, this place was foggy as hell, thats why the footprints are so clear. It was seriously muddy cuz everything was seriously thick."

Tuffnut understood bu he couldn't help saying, "You seriously need to stop talking like that."

They continued to follow the seperate footsteps, going in the same direction. For the sake of arguing Tuffut protested, "Just cause someone else was here, doesn't mean it was a pirate."

"Well if it was a friend, why didn't they just come out where Astrid could See them?"

Tuffnut didn't have an answer for that and so inwardly he agreed with her, it was a pirate. Outwardly they argued about the reasons for depth of the imprint, what the size meant, the conditions, and 'how do you know it's a boy?'

"The woman who attacked Fishlegs wore heels!" ruff defended, as she stumbled over a rock just as the pirate had.

"Not all women wear heels!" Tuffnut said, slightly alarmed about how much he sounded like thier mother.

"But daughters copy thier moms."

"That's weak and you know it!"

She huffed and paused, looking back at him, "I still think it was a boy."

Tuffnut imitated another of Astrid's loaping steps and frowned, " Why are your legs together like that? Half facing me?"

"This is what the bootprints do." she said, her voice shrugging it's shoulders.

Tuffnut had been carefully matching Astrid's steps, just parralell to the actual foot prints. He'd done it because that was the way his siter had been doing it, despite the fact it had made him bump into a couple trees. "So you're saying... that the pirate Stopped. And Waited for Astrid to catch up?"

Ruff looked down, then up , then down, then at her brother with ever growing eyes until she nearly lost balance in whipping out her notebook to scribble this down.

"Ha!" tuffnut said triumphantly, accidentally smearing half of Astrid's left foot, "Who's the smart one Now?"

Ruff glared briefly but then a smug smile cropped up as she continued to follow in 'the pirate's footsteps. "Fishlegs. He's Always the smart one."

Tuffnut stopped in a split, bridging together a place where Astrid had apparently leaped, "Ew. Gross."

"It's true."

"but still, EW. EWWW, that was Such a Mushy answer! You're being all gushy and love struck..."

"No I'm not!" Ruff said, darting forward. Actually trying to outpace her brother while sticking to thier ghost of a path.

"Yes you Are!" cried Tuffnut, bounding after her- delighted to have found a new way to rattle his sister- and finding it easier to match Astrid's pace. They were far from the view from he ocean now, the path slowly arching in the opposite direction of the way they'd come up.

The prints got harder to see here and they had to go back and slowly retrace the steps. Tuff endlessly teased her as they both performed wobbly splits, trying to connect one step to the next. Ruffnut was soon just huffing at him, too engrosed in the prints was she to even look up anymore.

The twins shared a rare silence, studying the traces. But an evil smile twitched to life on Tuffnut's face as another thought occured to him. Neither looking up from thier chosen tracks, Tuffnut began, "Hey Ruff?"

"Hmmn?"

"I know you guys basically spilled your guts to eachother while y'know Fishlegs was loosing his guts."

"Mm-hm..."

"But you and Fish ever become an actual thing?"

"OfCourseWeAre!"

"Really? So what are you?"

"We- we're..." Ruff was suddenly nervous, the thought had never crossed her mind. Her tunnel vision focus shifting up from the prints to her brother- and her heart leapt to her throat.

"TUFFNUT, STOP."They had reached another ledge and Tuffnut was on the very tip, looking straight down. He looked back at his sister and his dark expression terrified her. It reminded her of stories of people who were driven to madness and killed themselves. Ruff stood there, frozen until Tuffnut stepped away from the edge.

It was just one step but the air refilled Ruff's lungs. But all was not well. Tuffnut's expression was stony but as he made his way to Ruff, his expression began to waver.

"She...As...Fe...'strid."

Ruff ran forward, taking him by both hands and leading him slowly, further from the edge. And Tuffnut's mask of calm broke; like an egg shell, everything started to leak out in a goey mess and horror leaked out from his eyes, acrid and pungent.

"Ruff, Astrid- she... she went over the... the-"

"Shhh. Sssshhh, calm down. We don't know if that's tr- Wah!" The ground she had been counting on to be behind her was for some reason a step lower and Tuffnut siezed her by the arms to keep her to pull her upright.

"What the hel did I-" Ruff stopped short as she looked down. "Oh shit." Ruff whispered.

"Dragonshit." Tuffnut spat, in absolute recognizing the formasion of the hole Ruff had nearly fallen into. They'd found tracks like this all the time...

Spidery gashes in the front, with serpentine impressions in the back? Try claws in the front and a long tail in the back. The prints left when a dragon arched it's back and then launched into flight.