Hey again, everyone!
To start off, this chapter was a lot longer than I originally intended it to be, and yet I still didn't get in quite everything I wanted to. I
Astrid didn't want to wake up, though it seemed to be unavoidable.
She'd been having a strange dream in which she had turned into a dragon - a dragon, of all things! She could remember something about Hiccup and Toothless, an acidic trap that had felt surprisingly realistic, a cave and a howling storm and a fire and then a blissful, dreamless sleep, but outside of that, she could recall few specific details.
Nonetheless, she was glad that the nightmare was over. She didn't oftentimes have nightmares, but there were a few occasions in which she dreamt of things that sent her bolting upright in bed; Her falling off of Stormfly hundreds of feet above Berk, Hiccup leaving Berk forever, her parents being killed in dragon raids, even when they had long since ended. Now she had yet another to add to the list. Luckily, she knew she was at home, safe in her bed... Her oddly hard, cold, blanket-less bed… Something wasn't right.
Groaning, she tried to sit up, only to find that her hips and legs could no longer bring her up vertically at all. Her entire body ached like it did after she spent hours training in the wilderness, or got saddle sores after riding on Stormfly all day. Oddly, however, the pain seemed to be going away miraculously quickly, her body feeling easier to move with every second as she slowly woke up. Yet at the same time, everything felt so… Unnatural.
Opening her eyes, she realized that she was in the cave she could vaguely remember from the night before. Hiccup was asleep on the floor, looking quite a bit less comfortable than she felt, and oddly small, or at least smaller than she was used to seeing him. Stormfly was also asleep near the entrance to the small cave, and she could see what looked like a rocky beach outside. Toothless…
"Astrid! You're awake! Are you okay? Do you remember what happened? Do you remember who you are? Wait, that's a stupid question - Or maybe it isn't. Are you alright?" The thoughts pierced into her mind without warning, creating the same unsettling feeling of unconcealable exposure that she had experienced the day before.
Do I remember what… The thought slowly disappeared from her mind, and with a feeling quickly growing to the worst of despair and regret making her heart fall down to her stomach, she looked down at herself.
Rather than the night-dressings or at least day-to-day clothes she hoped to see, her eyes met what she had least hoped to see.
A grey, scaly surface covered her entire body, which was at least three times the size of what she was used to. Her legs were stumps almost half the size of her old pair, and much stockier, with claws replacing her toes and nails. Her arms matched them in length and shape, creating a perfect set of four. Worst of all, she could see a grey tail wrapping around below the bottom of her feet, with two tailfins opened up fully on the end. Though she couldn't see them lying on her side, she felt two unmistakable appendages protruding from her upper back. She could have looked closer, but she already knew well enough what she would find.
Seeing her horrified inspection, Toothless tried to reassure her. "Astrid, I know you might be a bit… unsettled, by everything that's happened, but don't freak-"
Hearing Toothless in her head again was what did it. Bolting upright, she tried to stand up on her hind legs, only to crumple down onto her front two with a screech, the stance feeling horribly more natural than she wished it was.
She saw Hiccup stir in his sleep, but luckily she didn't seem to have woken him just yet. Horrified, she adopted an incredibly illogical thought that nonetheless grew stronger in her mind with each moment that passed: I'm a freak. A FREAK. Hiccup can't see me like this. He CAN'T.
Panicking, she bolted out the front of the cave. She was met with a crisper-than-normal world - everything she could see was amplified in color, and she could hear birds that she somehow knew were in a large tree several hundred feet to her left, could smell the scent of bitter pine and the morning dew following the storm of the night before… But she payed no mind to it.
About fifty feet outside of the cove, she came to the horrible realization that she was running on all fours, and ended up tripping over her own feet, sending her face-first into the ground. Then it got even better.
"... Astrid? Are you okay?" Toothless was in her mind again, having caught up with her incredibly easily in comparison to what she knew must have been her unbearably inefficient running. Shakily lifting herself up on all fours, she turned to look at the Night Fury, trying to make an evil look that likely came out more comedic than she wanted it to be. She didn't care.
"Do I LOOK okay to you?! I'm a DRAGON for the gods' sakes! I'm a freak! Gods, what am I supposed to DO? Run off into the woods forever? I can't go back to the village - what would I do then? Get a rider of my own? Oh, wouldn't Snotlout and the twins love that. They'd say it was payback for calling them stupid for all of these years, and who knows? Maybe I deserve this. No, on second thought, I don't. Why couldn't I just die and go to Valhalla? Everything would be better off for everyone that way. I can't be a dragon for the rest of my life. This can't be happening. What have I become, a… a pet?! My Gods, what would my parents think? What would Hiccup think? He'd be fine with it, probably. I bet he'd think I'd be easier to deal with as a dragon. I mean, what next, do I lose my memories? Go feral? HUH?!"
Toothless looked up at her with horror on his face, and replied in a timid, quiet voice, "Astrid… You need calm down. Could you, maybe, um…"
Though she hadn't realized it, Astrid had tackled Toothless in the middle of her rant. All four of her talons were sunk into the sand around him, which was the only thing keeping her from strangling Toothless. Out of the corners of her eyes, she could see the edge of what must have been her wings unfurled to their fullest.
Terrified of her own strength, she slowly stepped off of Toothless, feeling her talons slide back into her feet seamlessly.
"Thanks, Astrid," Toothless responded, his shoulders relaxing a bit as he started flipping himself over. "I was really getting worried there for a-"
"What have I become?!" Her mouth fell open. She stared at her feet for a moment, frozen in place, before tearing off down the beach again, her wings dragging in the sand some and causing her to trip several times, but not fall as badly as before. She had no idea where she was, or where she was going, but she didn't care. Hell, she didn't even know what she was.
Blinking through her tears, she saw a small rise ahead of her, that steadily grew higher towards the back of the cove, making the edge of the forest higher than the beach as it went on, creating a cliff edge and a wall in the back of the cove. Though it evened out nearer to the ocean, the spot she was headed towards was raised a few feet above the ground - if she wanted to go any further, she would have to jump.
Closing her eyes and speeding up her pace, she lept up as soon as she thought she was near it. She felt her feet hit hard ground, and her hind legs… didn't quite make it. She felt her back feet hit the side of the ridge only a foot or so above the bottom, and turned around to see the tail, her tail falling to the ground. She could hear Toothless's worried thoughts in her mind, fainter than they had been before, but growing stronger by the second. He was still somewhere behind her on the beach, she knew, but he was gaining on her.
Clenching her eyes shut once again, she extended her talons out once again, digging into the dirt and pulling herself up, before jumping back up to her feet, taking off into the forest.
Her wings clipped on some underbrush, and smaller trees in the forest, most of the pain coming from the fact that she was being forced to acknowledge their existence. Luckily, as she sped up, they seemed to catch some air underneath themselves, making her speed up slightly, lifting her front feet lift up slightly, and making her feel almost as though she could fly… She hated it.
Toothless's voice was getting rapidly quieter in her mind, which a small part of her mind told her didn't make any sense - she had seen him make jumps like that all the time, so what was wrong with him?
Turning her head around mid-run, she found out. He had made the jump, but his tail-fin was caught on some underbrush, and he was trying to get it out without ripping it. Closing her eyes for a moment, she turned her head back around. She was alone, she had gotten away, and she would be away from all of them - the village, the twins, Snotlout, Fishlegs, Toothless, Stormfly, Hiccup. Nobody would ever see her as a freak, no one would have ever seen what she had become… If she hadn't run into a tree and knocked herself out.
Groaning, she woke up a few minutes later, wondering how many times she had passed out that week - just thinking about it gave her a headache.
Opening her eyes, she was glad not to see Toothless hovering above her nor hear him in her head as she had earlier, though somehow she knew that he was nearby. Her vision was still slightly blurry from the crash, and so she waited for it to clear before trying to lift herself up, until she remembered, again, her new form.
Collapsing back onto the ground, she closed her eyes and tried to cry, only to find that no tears would come. She considered trying again for a moment, before dropping the idea. After all, that was what she had done her whole life - just try harder. If there was ever a solution to a problem that only needed skill, she would just practice and practice until she could solve it. If she needed new ideas, she would go to Hiccup. Fishlegs had some knowledge, but he always seemed to lack motivation, or get nervous around bending the rules in Berk, but Hiccup… He had always been there - always. And when she had to be there for him...
A memory popped into her mind - it had been years before, and she was surprised she was even able to remember it in the detail that she did, but nonetheless, it was there, suddenly crawling out of the darkest corners of her mind.
It was about a year before Hiccup had shot down Toothless, and far before she had started dragon training. He still made the occasional messes and mistakes, but not many more than any other teen his age, and so everyone really just recognized him as the Viking boy who couldn't seem to grow - nothing more, nothing less. Yet still, everyone knew that Hiccup was… Different, by then. He couldn't seem to grow muscles - even working as an apprentice in the forge - and could barely even lift a sword or axe. But it wasn't just that - Hiccup didn't even seem interested in fighting - she had noticed as much about him. When the other boys his age like Tuffnut, Snotlout, and even Fishlegs would get into casual brawls, Hiccup would just disappear, silently slinking back into the workshop. Snotlout would beat him up every now and then, especially when Hiccup tried to correct him on something, but on the occasional challenge, Hiccup would just back off, create an excuse, or give his challenger a "raincheck", whatever that meant. Hiccup just wasn't very… Viking-ish. That was, until he learned about the Night Fury.
It was a tradition in Berk to teach the younger generations about dragons long before they started fighting them. Of course, not all of those who learned would end up training in the ring - most of them would become the farmers, bakers and blacksmiths of the village, but at the time, the raids happened often enough that everyone needed to know how to fight, regardless of their day jobs.
'The Dragon Talk,' as it was called, had become a tradition in Berk, and was seen as a rite of passage for children in the village who received it. The younger someone was when they got the talk, the higher the respect that was given to them by their peers. Getting the talk at a young age meant that their parents were proud of what they had achieved in their lives thus far, and thought that they were mature enough to learn more about the dragons than what they had gathered from their friends and watching the raids from inside the great hall and their houses. The talk, she had heard, was still present in the village even after the war, but of course had been modified greatly to make the dragons out to be friendlier, and she knew it no longer held as much importance as it had when she had gotten it.
Ever since the Flightmare had frozen her uncle when she was young, Astrid had been determined to become a warrior. It wasn't purely for revenge - she only wanted to ensure that something like that never happened to anyone in Berk again, especially her family. At least, that's what she told herself. Her parents had seen that, and so she had gotten the talk when she was only seven years old. She became popular in her circle incredibly quickly, but she didn't notice it until she was much older. It just didn't matter to her.
Hiccup, on the other hand, didn't get the talk until he was twelve, making him the last of his age group to receive it. The reasoning for it was more than justified, of course. He didn't spend time around the other kids, using most of his hours experimenting in Gobber's workshop. He left a trail of destruction wherever he went, made sarcastic comments that were borderline offensive to the other Vikings, and overall just wasn't like anyone else. The Chief, she knew, had held off on it long enough, and finally had to give him the talk.
By that age, the talk meant less to most of the teens in the village, their "maturity" shining through when they began to take more interest in fighting, hunting, and slaying their first dragons. It was likely that Hiccup had already learned almost everything about the dragons from the almost nightly raids, books, and people in the village, but nonetheless, the talk likely cleared up a lot of confusion and questions he'd had in his earlier childhood.
The talk itself was simple enough - it mainly consisted of all of the information in the Book of Dragons, including the rough estimates of how fast and how strong certain dragons were, how hot their breath could get and certain shot limits. The talk was passed down through families and bloodlines, and so each one was different. It wasn't all too uncommon for the parents to tell a story of the first dragon they had taken down, or a legendary, victorious battle with one that was supposedly accomplished by one of their ancestors. She knew that Stoick had dozens he could tell, many of them having happened within Hiccup's lifetime.
No one in the Village was quite sure what caused Hiccup's obsession with it - Stoick claimed that he had barely mentioned it during the talk - but after that day, Hiccup devoted all of his time and energy to taking down the Night Fury that had become the main problem during the raids, Toothless.
About a week after the talk, and many sleepless nights in the workshop, Hiccup carted out his first official invention - a miniature catapult designed to launch flaming rocks with an accuracy nobody had ever thought was possible. It was his first of many failures to come.
Though they encouraged him and told him he was making good progress to his face, most of those who found out about it were slightly worried, due to his Hiccup's less than reliable reputation. Though the concern quickly faded away as the Vikings took interest in other things in the village. After all, how much damage could one boy do?
Far more than anyone expected. During the next raid, Astrid heard that whilst Hiccup was searching for the Night Fury, the contraption misfired horribly, almost killing him and setting two houses and six sheep on fire. She also heard that he had apologized for his mistake and promised that he could fix it to work perfectly the next time, but she didn't ever see the catapult again. It was likely thrown into the ocean, or burned up during the misfire - it came to happen all too often with his inventions.
With each week and each raid, Hiccup's mechanisms grew closer and closer to success, but created worse and worse disasters with each attempt. One day, Stoick had had enough.
He approached her himself one day, taking time out of his daily routines to talk to her - something she knew had to deem some importance. He had found her out in the forest behind the village, throwing axes at targets she had made herself, many of them rough drawings of dragon's heads or specific parts of their bodies. He would have startled her if she hadn't heard him tromping through the woods a few minutes before he arrived.
"Listen," he had told her. "Hiccup, as you know, has been causing a bit of… Unrest, in the tribe. We're all glad to have him here, and I myself am… proud of what he's accomplished, but I just think that he'd be better of trying his hand at some, ehm, simpler things. You know - swords, axes, and shields and the like."
Astrid nodded understandingly, before asking, "So, uh, why are you telling me this, Chief?"
Stoick sighed, once again choosing his words carefully. "Well, you see, I've tried talking to him, to tell him that that dragon doesn't matter that much, that he'll get another chance to prove himself later on in life, but he just doesn't listen. I thought that since you're, ahem, closer to him, you might be able to, you know… Get through to him."
She nodded again, realizing his intent. At the time, she was old enough to know and understand that most of the boys in the village had crushes on her, including Hiccup. Normally, Stoick would never lower himself to such a degree as to ask her to use it to manipulate anyone, especially his son, and she knew he wouldn't force her to. But she also knew that the situation must have reached a new height if he really was turning to her for help - it was a last resort.
Curtly, she replied, "I'll… I'll do what I can, Chief."
He had nodded back at her, his face relaxing slightly, and walked back to the village, another problem solved.
Later that night, after steeling herself up, she walked to the workshop, a few town folk staring at her as she stepped inside. She refused to return their gaze.
Dominating the room was a large, crossbow-like mechanism secured to a wooden base with wheels. Gobber was kind enough to let him use the shop alone, but during the day he expected him to be doing work building weapons that the village needed for the raids. Later on, she remembered Hiccup talking to her about a system he had invented and proposed to Gobber that could make and repair tools and weapons at twice the rate they were already working at, but the blacksmith had refused, saying that he preferred the old way, or nothing at all.
A soot-covered Hiccup had been tending to a fire in the back of the shop, pumping a bellow whilst simultaneously holding a thin, delicate metal rod over the fire, doubtless another piece of the crossbow-like mechanism in the center.
"Uh, hey Hiccup," she greeted him slowly, but still startled him nonetheless. He dropped the metal into the fire and fell on top of the billows, creating a large FWOOSH as the sudden wind made the flames whip up into the chimney.
He muttered something about uselessness under his breath before addressing Astrid, blushing.
"Hey, Astrid. You, uh, scared me a little bit there. I just wasn't expecting to see anyone…" His voice trailed off, and he looked away. She had rolled her eyes and offered him a hand up, which he took after a moment.
"So… What are you working on?" She'd jabbed her thumb behind her in the direction of the crossbow.
"Oh, that?" He replied, bringing his charcoal-covered hand up to scratch the back of his head. "That's a bola launcher. It's supposed to help me launch bolas, because, well…"
He spread out his arms, looking down at himself with disdain, before suddenly grinning back up at her.
"I'm going to use it at the next raid. I figured that my last few attempts all had the wrong idea. See, then I was just eyeballing where the Night Fury was flying. This, on the other hand, has a full aiming system. A bit of recoil, maybe, but other than that it's fully adjustable to whatever position I want it to be in. Other than that, I've been tracking the Night Fury - I think it follows a pattern of some kind when it's taking down towers. Of course, I've tried to talk to Fishlegs about it, but I don't see him very often. At least not since he got to join firefighting with you and the others. Of course, once I take that beast down maybe I can-"
She'd cut him off suddenly with a wave of her hand - she had heard enough.
She didn't know Hiccup as well then, but she knew enough to understand why Stoick needed her to step in. Hiccup was far too determined to listen to anyone, and she knew for a fact that he got uncomfortable around his Dad, and probably did his best to block him out during the conversations they had. It was her turn, and if she couldn't do it, nobody could.
"Hiccup, listen," she began, "I know you have a lot of great ideas, and I and everyone else in Berk thinks that it's great that you're trying these things. But… You need to know when to stop. I know that you feel like you need to prove yourself, or something, but there will be plenty of opportunities for you to do that later on in your life. I know you know this, but your inventions have put a lot of people out of work, out of their homes. I just… We think you would be better off if you stopped going after the Night Fury."
She looked up at him, to find him gaping at something in his hand. Looking down, she realized she was holding it rather firmly, and she promptly pulled it away. He cast his eyes down and turned away from her. She would never forget his face - he had every right to be angry or even disappointed, but instead he just had a determination in his eyes that she knew she could never achieve.
"Astrid… I know why you're here. I'm guessing my dad sent you, but I'm going to hope that he didn't, that maybe…" He looked back up at her. "I don't know, Astrid. I don't know why I'm so… Different, from everyone, alright? You might not understand, I mean, of course you wouldn't - you're like Berk's role model warrior-in-training, but I… I'm not. I'm not my father. I don't think I'm my mother, from what I've heard. I don't even know if I'm a Viking… But this dragon, this dragon is everything to me. If I could just shoot it down… It would change my life, forever. I'm sorry if you don't understand, but that's just me, I guess. Thanks for coming by Astrid, but… You can tell my father I'm not going to quit on these inventions. I'm sorry."
He had turned back to the fire, leaving Astrid in shock. She had expected him to stumble, to agree with everything she said like he and all of the other boys she ever talked to did. But it hadn't played out that way - it hadn't gone according to plan. Instead of the shy, clumsy boy she thought she knew, she had been met with a strong, determined young man, one who had as much confidence as any warrior, as any chief. It was too much for her to handle.
Frowning and backing out through the doorway, she'd uttered words she would come to hate herself for for years afterwards. She had prepared them before as a backup plan, in the unlikely case that he said no. Still, they were nowhere near appropriate for the situation."I expected more from you, Hiccup. I guess I was wrong. You're right about one thing - you aren't a Viking."
She remembered storming out of the doorway in confusion and anger, before the memory slipped out of her mind as quickly as it had appeared.
Opening her eyes, she took a shaky breath through her nostrils, which felt incredibly strange and natural at the same time. Blinking, she turned herself over to face the direction she thought she thought Toothless was. Some of the adrenaline of running through the forest earlier was still present, but quickly fading. Her head hurt, but she didn't feel injured outside of that. She could at least hear her heartbeat, if a bit too easily.
As expected, she saw Toothless lying there, pawing halfheartedly at something in the dirt, having not noticed that she had woken up yet. Above him, she could see that the sun had risen higher than she remembered it being when she had woken up. Either she had been passed out for a while, or she had been engrossed in her memories far longer than she preferred.
"Toothless…" She directed the message at him. It didn't quite come as easily as it had before, but she could still manage it nonetheless.
A moment later, his ears perked up, and he turned to look at her. He began to get up, but then sat back down, thinking better of it.
"Astrid, I'm sorry for scaring you earlier… I should've woken you up more, uh, softly, I guess. Anyways… Are you sure you're okay? I know you're probably tired of me asking that, but-"
She sent another thought across to him, stopping her from receiving the rest. "I'm sorry that I freaked out on you earlier, too. It's just, that, well, I got turned into a dragon for Odin's sake. How am I supposed to handle that? Nothing makes sense to me right now. I just… I wish I was back home. Before, when we were at war, It was easier to figure things out, and now… What's happened to me Toothless? What am I?" She looked down at herself, finally forcing herself to acknowledge what she had become. "I guess, just waking up and having a dragon talk in my head just sort of set me over the edge. I mean, Hiccup always told me that you were like any human, that if you could talk, you would sound like just about anyone, but I guess I didn't…" Her thought trailed off until she refocused. "I'm sorry, I just want everything to go back to normal, as soon as possible. What… What did I do wrong, Toothless? Why am I like this?" She looked at him desperately, hoping that he knew some answer, some fix for what had happened to her.
That was when she made a decision - talking to Toothless was likely one of the highest points on the list of things she didn't expect to happen to her over the course of the past few days. So, until further notice, she decided to ignore that aspect of the problem and pretend that Toothless was just another Viking in the village that she was talking to - he acted enough like one to trick her brain into thinking that way, and so, until the problem was fixed, she would ignore it, pretending that the weird mind-messages they were using was just like normal talking. It wasn't the best solution, and she figured that it was probably among the things that would make her more dragon than human, but she knew that if she had to solve this problem without talking to anyone, dragon or not, she would go crazy.
Toothless seemed to process her words for a moment, considering his reply, before sighing and letting a huff of air out of his nose. "I don't know, Astrid. I don't understand what's happened, alright? You think you've got problems…"
She looked up at him, raising her eyebrow. "I DO have problems, Toothless. What are you talking about? I was just turned into a dragon for NO OBVIOUS REASON WHATSOEVER-" Her eyes widened suddenly as she considered a possibility she hadn't thought of before. She tried to stand up, but ended up settling for rolling onto her stomach and
"Toothless… Did… Did YOU do this to me? Did you use some weird dragon magic on me to make me like… like this? It makes sense, I mean, you've been the only Night Fury anyone's seen in years - did you getting a bit lonely, perhaps? Wanted a… a mate, or something?" Some of her previous energy had returned, and though she still felt far too sore to stand, she tried anyways.
"Astrid, I - wait! Astrid, Just sit back down and rest a moment, please."
"I'm tired of resting! Now give me an answer!"
"Or you'll what?"
"I'll… I'll…" Her thought failed, and she managed to stutter mid thought - something she hadn't believed was possible, though that applied to just about everything that had happened in the past day. She collapsed back down on the ground, defeated - a feeling she'd never experienced before.
Toothless sighed, relaxing, and rolled his eyes. "Astrid, even if for some terrible reason I DID want to turn you into one of us, I have no idea how I'd do it. We don't really have much magic or anything like that, and all I know is that that metal-string-fire-liquid thing you picked up earlier had something to do with it. I'm as clueless as you are. If the queen was still around… No, that's not how I should be thinking. So, to answer your question, no, I don't think I did this to you. At least not intentionally. If I did, I'm pretty sure I would know. Do YOU know anything about… What happened?"
She sighed and relaxed some, before replying, "No, I… I just remember picking up the shield, and then there was something on my head and a lot of pain… then… I think it started from that scar you gave me when we were by the Great Hall yesterday… Then, these…" -She stopped to look at one of her hands, no, paws- "Scales, started growing out of my skin… The rest is kind of blurred."
Toothless considered her words for a moment, then told her, "I didn't really know what was happening at first. That stupid rope-ball thing, what do you call them? Bola, made me unable to see you, and I couldn't turn my head. I heard you screaming, and I figured there must have been something attacking you. Luckily, Hiccup taught me how to get out of those a few moons ago. When I got out of it, I just saw, well, a… Dragon, lying there, and I found your furs and hide on the ground. I just thought, well…" His thought faded in her mind, but she was able to understand the meaning. She still remembered what happened the first time she woke up, if a bit too well.
"I went and found Hiccup and brought him back to where I'd found you. He was confused a bit at first, and we probably would have gone back to your… Nest, to get help, but the storm was getting worse, and he said we needed to get you under cover. I tried to tell him otherwise, after all, I've survived worse on my own, I figured that you would be fine." He stopped for a moment. She was about to get mad at him again for almost leaving her out in the woods, but swallowed it, deciding to keep her pride, despite all that had happened.
Toothless, somewhat reluctantly, continued, "Well… It turned out he was right. The storm was really, really bad. I mean, I haven't ridden or even seen wind like that since… Well, ever. The Nadder - what do you call her, Stormfly? Well, Stormfly and I were able to carry you to the cove we were just in, with Hiccup's guidance. Apparently, he saw it when we were flying earlier. I mean, why would he even remember something like that? Sure, we might spend a lot of time together, but honestly - even I don't get him sometimes. Anyways, we laid you down there, and I think Hiccup planned on waiting out the storm until the morning, and, well… Here we are." He gestured at the trees around him with one of his paws.
It was then that she realized something, something she had thought of the night before.
"My Gods… Hiccup! So he knows about this… Well, of course he does. I mean, Hiccup's smart! He reads tons of books that talk about this stuff, and Fishlegs does, too. They can figure this out, they can… fix this."
Toothless's ears flattened against his head in response, and he frowned at her, giving her a sinking feeling in her stomach. "About that… See, Hiccup, uh…"
As if on cue, Astrid heard a familiar voice calling out somewhere behind Toothless, coming from the direction of the cove. A moment later, Hiccup, her Hiccup, stepped out through some brush into the shaded part of the woods they were in.
"There you are, Toothless! I was wondering where you went. Gods, I was terrified that you two had run off or something. Not that you would do that, but still, I was a bit worried, there! So where's-"
He never got to finish his sentence. Astrid had bounded forward past Toothless, nearly pouncing on top of Hiccup before remembering her newfound size and backing off at the last moment. She couldn't hug him, and she obviously couldn't kiss him, so what was she supposed to do, lick him? No, she wasn't a dragon - she was Astrid Hofferson, a warrior who placed second in dragon training, rode the Nadder Stormfly and lived on Berk under the direct command of Chief Stoick. That was all she was, all she ever wanted to be, and who she would be again as soon as Hiccup fixed everything.
The boy nearly panicked, obviously not used to being approached in that way, and backed up into a tree behind him. She stayed back, but began an odd rant consisting of both the sort of thought waves she had just been sending Toothless, and some verbalization that she realized must have just sounded like growls, but it didn't matter to her. Hiccup was there, and he was going to help her. He was going to fix her.
Another strong thought from Toothless interrupted her."Astrid, stop it! He doesn't know!" Her energy died down, and the sinking feeling returned as she processed what he had said. Cautiously, she replied, "Doesn't know… what?"
After a moment's hesitation, she heard him in her mind again, much quieter this time. "He doesn't know that… That it's you." When the thought reached her, she took a moment to bring her head down from the clouds. She realized that Hiccup was holding his hands up to his face defensively, as if protecting himself against something dangerous. She had seen him do that after her threats plenty of times in the past - all boys did - but this time it was different. She recognized the way he held his hands inward, but not in fists, because she had seen him do it hundreds of times. It was what he did whenever he encountered a wild dragon.
Reality finally dawning on her, she backed up as far as she could away from him whilst still being able to make out the details of his face. She wanted it to be the last thing she saw before she left.
She was about to turn into the forest behind her and bolt, leaving behind all traces of her old life - the village, Stoick, Gobber, her parents, Stormfly, Fishlegs, Snotlout and the twins - before a reassuring thought entered her mind. "Astrid, please don't run off again. I need you to keep your head - Hiccup always tells me he admires you for that, and you can't give up on him, especially now of all times. We can solve this - we can find some way for you to talk to him, to tell him. I mean, he and I almost can - I'm sure we can figure something out. He even tried to teach me to speak your language once. Just… Please don't run away. You can't do that."
She turned around and looked back at the forest again, clearing her mind to consider the pros and cons of her situation. She was a dragon, or had turned into one anyways. She didn't know why outside of the fact that a trap of some sort had initiated it. Luckily, her mind still seemed to be intact, as she hadn't attacked anyone or gone feral and didn't feel much different from what she had felt like before. But who knew? Toothless seemed human-ish, and he was the most dangerous dragon in the village. Maybe she had already turned… But she didn't think so. She hadn't started craving fish yet, anyways.
She turned her head back towards him slightly, figuring it would help send the message if she was facing him at least somewhat. "Does it even matter anymore? Toothless… I'm a dragon. You're the only one who knows it's me - not even Hiccup does. That's all there is to it - I'm not a Viking anymore. I'm not me anymore. You and I both have no idea why this happened, and I... I just…"
Her thought faded out of her mind. Toothless looked back at her, and replied. "Listen, Astrid. I've seen your courage in battle and in your nest. Whenever you see a problem, you never run away from it. Now isn't the time to start, alright? So, maybe you've turned into a… Dragon. We can fix this. All three of us. Besides, we've all been in much worse situations than this. This time we're all together. It doesn't end this way."
She thought about it - not just what he had said, but the situation as a whole, and more logically than she had at first. So, she had been turned into a dragon - on a scale factor of the worst things that could happen to her, she thought it would be up with being captured by Daggur and being surrounded by about fifty Nightmares, but she couldn't be sure - she had never thought about it before, of course.
With that said, she understood that whatever had turned her into what she was must have been or possessed some sort of magic. Magic, of course, wasn't entirely unheard of on Berk - it was just rarely seen. While nobody was quite sure what made most dragons able to breathe fire, turn invisible, or able to do any of the other strange abilities some of them had, it was always assumed that these things were simply a part of them, just as eating and walking was to humans - not some strange curse or spell. Until then, it had simply been considered something that dragons did that had no major effects on others. But did it?
In all of the tales and stories of old, whether true or not, the heroes and warriors always seemed to know not only what happened to them, but why. There was always a witch or angry God who announced a great curse or spell's properties just before it happened, and stated the great and genuinely quite obvious crimes justifying the curse along with it. So what was she being punished for? She thought about all of the bad deeds she had done in her life. Could it be making peace with the dragons? It seemed fitting - turning her into a Night Fury, of all things. But then, Hiccup hadn't been transformed, at least not yet, and he seemed more responsible for it than her.
Brushing it off, she moved on to the next step in problem solving - finding the source of the problem, which, given the circumstances, pointed to the trap that had nearly killed her the day before. It was likely set by that girl they had been chasing in the woods earlier that day, confirming any doubt she had that she was a spy from some rogue force, likely one of Daggur's spies or anyone who had something against Berk, which represented a lot of tribes. Of course, it hadn't seemed to have much in terms of magical properties when she saw it, but she hadn't gotten a very good look at. She would have to go back and look at it, which meant that…
She sighed and looked at Hiccup, who was still cowering near the brush, his hands held out defensively in front of him with what was probably a justifiably confused look on his face. Concentrating, she tried to talk to him, hearing the growl she had expected come out instead. She tried again, this time doing her best to make the odd gurgling sounds coming out of her mouth sound like words, but it didn't work. She just couldn't make the same sounds with her throat that used to come to her so easily. An old saying came to her - something her grandmother had often told her when she was still alive. "You will never truly appreciate things until you don't have them anymore." She would say this to Astrid whenever she would complain about the smaller things in life when she was younger, like not getting enough presents at Snoggletog, or not getting to try mead despite the fact that Ruffnut and all of the boys her age had gotten to already. Well, all of the boys but Hiccup - She heard that he hadn't ever had any even then, though it was probably for the better.
Though she was pretty sure that her grandmother hadn't been talking about turning into a dragon when she told her that, the truth of it still applied nonetheless. She, just like anyone else on Berk, had lost a lot even from a young age. Few of her blood relatives had perished in the raids, but in Berk, everyone was family, and so every life lost affected the entire tribe. Then it had all stopped, the deaths, the raids, the fire... all because of Hiccup. Which was why she couldn't give up.
She turned back to Toothless, trying unsuccessfully to raise an eyebrow.
"Uh… Any ideas?"
He rolled his eyes. "Don't you think I've tried? What am I supposed to..." He paused, thinking, then turned his head back to Hiccup, who looked even more confused than before, and did something strange. He purred, pointed to his mouth with one of his paws, and scratched in the dirt twice.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Astrid asked the Night Fury.
"It means that-"
"So… You can understand me?"
She whipped her head back around to Hiccup, who had finally broken the silence in the forest. She rolled her eyes and nodded.
"Amazing! I wonder if all Night Furys are like that. I mean, can all dragons understand human language? How would that even work? I guess maybe their ears have some sort of built-in translator, or something. Weird. Hey, so-"
He had started to move closer to her, lowering his hands. Instinctively, she backed away, keeping a few yards between them.
An expression lit up Hiccup's face, and he snapped his fingers, as though he had just remembered something.
"Gods, I almost forgot. Man, some dragon trainer I am, huh, bud? Hey, listen, it's okay. I'm not going to hurt you." He raised his hand up to her, in the same gesture she had seen him use dozens of times on dragons, whether it was in the forest or the killing ring, the town or an abandoned village. She reared her head back, horrified. She knew exactly what he expected her to do, and she hated him for it.
"Oh-ho, NO. I am not some kind of pet dragon. I don't care if he thinks I'm one of you - there is no way I am doing your weird nose-hand-bond thing. That is for dragons, and dragons-"
"Astrid, just do it."
She turned to him, incredulous. "What?! Are you crazy? I should have known - you ARE going to turn me into one of you. I bet you've got a saddle back home, just waiting to be strapped onto my-"
"For your information," He interrupted her thought with a stronger one. "I am not a PET. Neither are any of the others of the blood in the nest. You should learn that - I'm surprised Hiccup hasn't taught you that yet. And I know this seems like we're flying backwards a bit from trying to tell him what's going on, but just hear me out. You've been there enough times to know that this works every time. Listen, I know that you're Astrid to me, and I'm sure we'll explain that to Hiccup soon enough, but to him, you're just one of the blood, I mean, a dragon, that he found in the woods near a human-made fire-spitter. I'm sorry I have to tell you that, but it's the truth."
She turned away from him, feeling as though she were on the verge of tears. After a moment, he continued, his thoughts seemingly quieter, but still present in her mind. "He's… He's used this method to calm us since he freed me, and it's worked every time. If he tried it on you and it didn't work… Well, I don't know what he'd do. Astrid, this is the only chance we have if you ever want to talk to him again. If you ever want to be yourself again. So, just… Do it, Astrid. Please."
She considered what he had said, and decided he was right. She was a warrior - if this was what it took to fix this mess, she would do it - she would play the part of a dragon, if only for a moment. She had been selfish and weak enough already. It was time to toughen up.
She whipped her head back around, closing her eyes for a moment before sending another thought to Toothless. "Alright, fine. Let's get this over with. What do I do?"
"Great! Well, you, um.. Just kind of…"
She stared at him for a moment. "How can you not know?! You do this with Hiccup, like, every day."
"Well, it just kind of happens on its own. I don't even think about it. It's like I have some sort of… Connection, with him, and it moves me without thinking about it. I don't know."
She rolled her eyes again. "Fine, I'll just figure it out on my own. You two really ARE just like each other, you know that? You certainly annoy me equally."
She saw Toothless smirk out of the corner of her eye, before she turned back to Hiccup. He was looking away from her, back towards the cove - something he would do sometimes when the dragon he was taming was more protective or personal - she had no idea why, but the gesture seemed to mean a lot to dragons, for some reason.
She shifted slightly, and started to move closer to him… And then it happened.
It was just like Toothless had described, and yet nothing could have prepared her for it. It was like her body had been possessed, and she was unable to control what she did or even thought. Though the most horrifying part of it was how unbearably natural it felt - it came almost easily to her, and she didn't feel the rush of adrenaline or resistance she expected. It just felt… Ordinary.
Although she didn't think it could, it got even weirder. Her body gently guided her into the crest of Hiccup's hand. His fingers and palm were damp with sweat, and felt calloused from working in the shop, but to her it was a familiar feeling in the world of confusion she had been plunged into.
What happened next could only be described as a connection, in the purest of its forms. A stream of information passed into her mind, and for a moment, she thought that it was Toothless, but she knew it couldn't have been - it wasn't his thoughts, wasn't his memories.
For those few seconds, she was Hiccup. She saw the world from his eyes, saw his ideals and dreams of a world where all dragons and humans alike worked and lived together in harmony, where he was free to build and do as he pleased, to fly on Toothless over a vast, endless ocean for the rest of his life, and she wanted it, too. She saw his struggle when he was younger, and how he was cast away from the other kids his age. She experienced how he was ignored, if he wasn't being yelled at by his father. How he was bullied and beat up by Snotlout, Ruff, Tuff, even Fishlegs, and… By her. Years of memories passed through her mind over the course of a mere few seconds. She felt all of his emotions and thoughts pass through her, many of which she recognized, but even more that she didn't. She felt his excitement at finding another Night Fury, and his simultaneous worry and concern for her well being in the back of his mind. It felt as though it must have been too much to take in at once, and yet it kept coming, endless and vast.
And then it stopped. All of a sudden, the feelings retreated back to where they had come from, the emotions and worry and concern leaving her mind as quickly as they had entered. The memories all faded, leaving behind only the things she had known before, and she was barely able to recall even the most obvious and simple of some of the memories, despite all she had seen and known a moment before. She was left with nothing but a single memory in her mind - the first time he had bonded with Toothless. She hadn't been there, she hadn't even known at the time, but it was still fresh in her mind.
There was a yellow sun in the sky, dying everything in the cove she was able to recognize pink. She heard the rushing flow of a waterfall behind her, and saw a lake out of the corner of her eye. Dominating her vision, however, was Toothless. He looked the same as he always had, though he didn't have the saddle or the red tailfin she had come to recognize him for. She watched as her hand, no, his hand raised up to Toothless's face. He growled at her, and Hiccup's hand pulled back some. Then, her vision shifted, turning to face one of the stone cliffs in the valley. She felt his hand raise up, and for a moment, she felt Toothless's nose slowly creep into Hiccup's hand, like a nervous pup, before the memory suddenly cut off.
She was torn back to reality all too suddenly, but she knew that she could probably still recall the memory if she tried. Astrid shook her head slowly and brought it backwards, astonished. She slowly turned back to Toothless, and timidly asked him, "Is… Is it always like that? When you… You…"
A small smile crept its way on Toothless's face, and he nodded. "It's amazing, isn't it? To think that all of the years, we of the blood - dragons, I mean, have killed and set fire to your nests and, what do you call them? Homes. The queen, she, she could have made us her slaves forever, but… Hiccup, he… He's really saved us. He's brought us to see a way we couldn't ever have even thought of before. It's incredible." He was grinning at her by the time he finished his sentence.
"It's…" She began. She considered agreeing with him for a moment - he was right, after all. If humans knew what the dragons experienced when they went through that, nobody, not any clan or tribe, would distrust the dragons anymore. They practically became human for a moment when they went through it, or at least she had.
But she couldn't let Toothless know that. She wouldn't let him have that control over her, and there was no way she would admit to having the same experience as a dragon, especially after all that had happened.
"...Stupid," She finished. Toothless dropped his grin. "That was WAY too weird for me. I don't know how or why you still do it, honestly. At least it's over with - I never want to do that again, and with any luck, I won't have to." She sent those thoughts to him, but a small part of her still relished in the connection she had shared with him. After all, she had never quite understood Hiccup. This had been the most crystal-clear understanding of who he really was that she had gotten in years, and yet she still had more questions than she had before the link was formed.
Toothless rolled his eyes, luckily seeming not to have received Astrid's true thoughts. "Well, I guess you're not truly a… Dragon, anyways. So what now?"
She stared at him for a moment. "What do you mean, 'what now?' You're the dragon here. You've practically mastered talking to Hiccup, I mean, what do YOU do when you need to tell him something important? Growl?" Toothless responded by hissing at her, a thought passing to her mind in what she figured must have been the dragon's equivalent of a mutter.
She turned back to Hiccup, clinging on to one hope that she felt could only work with him, of all people. If she had received all of those memories from him, all of those thoughts and ideas and emotions, then maybe, just maybe, he had gotten something from her - an experience like that simply could not be one-way.
Hiccup was looking at his hand thoughtfully, and for a moment, she almost thought he knew, that he understood, that this whole mess would finally come to an end because she was finally able to get something across to him… Then he grinned and turned to Toothless.
"Well, I guess that's two Night furys down now, huh, bud? Not too bad, though who's counting, right? Honestly, there's so much I can learn from you both, I mean, this is definitely going down in the Book of Dragons. I'll have to write a whole new book's worth of notes when we get her back to the village."
His words hit her like the blunt end of an axe to the face. Writing! of course! She felt incredibly humiliated - she wasn't one of the twins, so how could she be so stupid as to forget the one way she could talk without her voice? Though, she was willing to forgive herself for it - she had, after all, been through a lot. Still, a true warrior should always keep their cunning and wits about them, and she had failed to do so from the moment she woke up.
Enthusiastically, she tried to grin at Hiccup, feeling her mouth widen and her long tongue slide unnaturally along her sharpened teeth, but she didn't care. It wouldn't matter once Hiccup found out. He and Fishlegs used to study all kinds of this stuff when they were younger! He probably already knew how to fix it.
He didn't seem to notice her, lost in his own thoughts. "Man, wait until Astrid hears about…" His voice trailed off for a moment, and the excited expression on his face dropped into one of worry. "Oh, Gods… Astrid! Toothless, she's still out there somewhere, and that girl, too! The spy! Gods, we need to get Stormfly and go find her, now, before anything else. I shouldn't have bothered myself with this dragon..." Before she could respond, he had rushed over to Toothless, hopping onto his saddle and clicking his leg into the tail fin-adjuster.
Toothless didn't take off, instead turning to look at Astrid with a tired look on his face.
Seeing him turn, Hiccup looked back over at Astrid, an expression of relief relaxing his worry. "Oh, that's right. Toothless was trying to tell me about something between you and her. Did you get in a fight or something? Did you save her? Either way, you must know where she is. Just lead the way and we'll fly behind you."
She sighed - why couldn't he just figure it out? - and bounded over to him. She began to write her name in the dirt with one of her talons, which was extended at the time.
Hiccup's mouth dropped open, and he slowly climbed off of Toothless.
"Incredible… You know how to write?! What on Berk are you? Where did you come from? I mean, if I had known, I could have taught Toothless to write years…" His voice trailed off as he read what she had written - it was her name in the simplest possible form. When he finished, he looked up at her, and she gestured sharply at herself.
"Yeah, so you know where she is! I don't even know where you got her name from, but you can explain that later. Now, come on, let's go."
Astrid let out a groan, which came out more like a growl than she would have preferred, and wiped away the message with her paw. She started again, trying to be more specific. If this try doesn't work, she thought to herself, nothing will.
In clear, bold, simple letters, three words were written out in the dust in front of her:
I AM ASTRID
She quickly underlined the word "Am" with her claw, then pointed to herself again, even more sharply than she had before.
"I… Am…" He began reading it out loud, before his voice trailed off, and he slowly turned his eyes up to stare at her. She watched as his went through several different expressions at once, each of them containing some form of bafflement. His entire hand shaking, he raised a finger up to her, his breathing became rapid as he replied, "You… You have… Her eyes…"
He stumbled back, and brought his hand up to his forehead, leery. He tripped and fell onto Toothless, who caught him before he slid off his saddle. All the while he kept his gaze firmly set on her, a terrified and awestruck expression slowly creeping across his face.
"You're… My Gods, you're… Astrid…?" His last word came out in a wheeze, and she nodded quickly.
"Dear… Gods…" He looked as though he wanted to say something more, a lot more, in fact, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he passed out, falling back on Toothless.