5. Let's plan
By the time Storm got back to the camp Hiccup was rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. She put away her dragon skin then went to sit down by Shadow who was obviously asleep as he didn't get up to look her over. Hiccup looked better after the nap, the color, which they didn't notice was gone, was back on his face. She waited until he was completely awake before speaking, otherwise it all would go over his head, but surprisingly he started talking first.
"You got that look on your face, what's up?" He said fixing his prosthetic on his leg, his voice betraying that he wasn't fully awake, yet ready to listen. She forgot what she wanted to say for a second.
"What look?" she exclaimed instead.
"The same look you had when you hunted me down to tell me that you saw Dagur and Mala kiss at the feast." He deadpanned, Storm crossed her arms and pouted, mumbling something along the lines of 'You would've done the same.'
"While you were sleeping I went back to the village and behold your group of teens were in the plaza, and they weren't teens anymore! My guess is that they're part of the Berk guard now, because they were talking about patrols and surveying missions, and we got very lucky Chief, because they're surveying the skies for dragons, at night at least and-"
"If they're surveying the night sky why haven't they come for us!?"
"Let me finish! Snotlout got sloppy and thought that one night of beauty sleep won't hurt so he missed us landing yesterday," at that he let out a relieved breath, hiding on a hostile island is one thing, hiding while they're trying to find you? A hundred times more difficult. "And they talked about some kind of meeting next week, we have to figure out at least where it'll be and when. It doesn't really matter what the meeting's about someone is bound to ask about the threat especially if they made no progress."
After listening to everything she had to say, Hiccup silently tried to figure out the best plan that didn't get them caught and interrogated. Storm waited patiently, knowing that he needed time to figure everything out, she started walking around the camp getting more of their rations for both of them. They would need to start fishing or hunting tonight, both preferred fresh food rather than dried up meat and stale bread, but it would have to do for now. She had sat down and handed Hiccup his food when he started talking.
"There's nothing more we can do besides staying and listening around, so we go back to the village just after the sun sets, we split up this time, you taking the hiding stop next to the Meade hall and where you were near the plaza, and I'll try to get close to the academy and walk around the village a bit. We should hopefully gather some more intel this way, especially in the teens are doing patrol, they need to meet up somewhere to go over paths and action plans, my bet is they're either doing it at the academy or plaza, so we got that covered."
Storm nodded and continued to eat, having him walk around the village was a bit risky, but it would be as risky if not more risky for her. They both had metal legs and one reckless step could draw attention, but Hiccup knew that island and village better so he had an advantage. Still she was worried that being in the village and walking around it, or the academy, would make some bad memories surface for him, and Hiccup tended to freeze if it became too much for him. Storm trusted Hiccup with her life and she had to trust him with this too, but she couldn't help but worry.
"We won't be able to fly these two if they're watching the night sky," She added, gesturing to their dragons. Without flying dragons get irritated and cranky, they basically become like toddlers throwing tantrums, while gliding helps a little, dragons, especially those two, can't go a week without proper flying. Flying helps them get rid of excess energy also dragons just really love flying, and a dragon who hadn't flown in a long time gets reckless, less attentive.
"So we have about a week before they blow our cover," Hiccup chuckled, patting Toothless' head as the dragon let out an annoyed snort. Storm let out a huff and slumped against Shadow, the exhaustion finally setting in, they were used to running on little sleep, the nap she had on Shadow helped, but an hour of sleep helped her out only half the day if she had stuff to do.
Now having free time all she wanted to do was sleep, it was a good thing Hiccup had already woken up when she returned or she would've probably fallen asleep leaving them without any alert guards. The dragons would hear someone approaching sure, but the chance that they would wake the riders too late, was too great. They knew that there had to be one of the alert at all times, overconfidence in their dragons could kill them for the simple fact that they are used to them and their expressions. Having been living with dragons for years made them overlook certain warnings that the dragons made, especially while sleeping or having had just woken up. Having one of them awake could give the other the needed time to wake and arm themselves if needed.
She was ready to just close her eyes and sleep, but Hiccup shoved the jar with salve into her field of view. Storm smiled, knowing that taking care of her leg, or lack of leg, was important, just as she had said to Hiccup earlier. While she was dealing with her limb, Hiccup started to walk around the camp just as she started to fall asleep, cuddled up to her skrill.
Having nothing better to do and feeling energized after sleeping for a few hours, Hiccup started exercising. Doing push-ups, jumping-jacks and other work outs had become easier after years of doing them. Thinking about how bad he was at exercising at fifteen made him cringe, having had given the time and energy to actually get stronger made him more confident, and he could only think about what it could have done to his self-esteem when he was still the village pariah. Having seen Hiccup do this hundreds of times, Toothless sneaked over to him and plopped his head onto Hiccups back as he was doing push-ups, effectively pinning him to the ground with a grunt.
Spending time with Toothless while Storm slept sounded good to him, Hiccup thought about going to the cove to catch some fish for dinner. Eating dried and stale food more than a few times in a row got old quickly. 'Yes,' he thought, 'I'll do that.'
