Hellooo! *Dodges flaming axes* I KNOW! I got writer's block! My computer's broken! I succumbed to the temptation of baking! WHATEVER, I'm back now! P.S My Autocorrect's on the fritz, so there might be some errors. P.P.S I'll check out every story from anyone who comments! CIAO!
I shook my hands, trying to shake off the sheen of nervous sweat that slickened my palms. I smoothed back my hair, despite the fact that it was braided, and took a deep breath.
Dragon training. Finally.
Since Hiccup had taken over, dragon training had turned into something much less life-threatening. Sure, there were still some burned limbs here and there, but there hadn't been any fatalities as of yet. Each of the original team of six had taken over a different aspect of the training, though Ruffnut and Tuffnut still teamed up to teach their class. The lessons rotated, with each aspect being featured in shifts. If my info was correct, they would start off with Dragon Feeding Tactics today, taught by Fishlegs.
I started to giggle, unable to control the butterflies in my stomach. Wink squeaked along, her wings flapping wildly with joy. I reached out to scratch her back, but she flew away, already distracted. Oh well. I was almost there. I couldn't wait until Wink was trained so she could lead me around, without me worrying about tripping over stones and roots.
As if on cue, I snagged my boot on something and did a face plant into a snowbank. Wink screed in alarm, and dove towards me, wrapping her tail around my arm. Tugging with all her tiny might, she only succeeded in setting me more off-balance.
"Wink! Quit it!" I unpeeled her tail, accidentally slicing my fingertip on her incredibly sharp little wings. I winced and pulled my hand close to my snow-encrusted face, trying to survey the damage. Usually, I'd just place my finger in my mouth to "clean" the wound, but I felt that for some reason I should actually use my poor foggy eyes once in a while.
Let me explain. In Viking terms, I'm blind. Blind, in our culture, means unable to see a Viking longboat coming in from sea. So, I qualify. However, I can see some things. I can't see colours- never have. But I can see vague shadows, movement, and bright light. It's like being in a deep fog with your eyes squinted- you can see, but you have no idea what you're seeing. I've learned to identify people and things by sound, smell, and touch, but sometimes I'll understand what the strange shadowy figures are. So far, I know Wink, Mother, Father and the moose head over my bed. Still, I hardly ever got a good enough "look" at something to determine what it was. Without my other senses, I'd be completely lost. I'd almost fallen off cliffs so often that people had started calling me IceBirg.
Hiccup had tried, along with Gobber, to figure out mechanisms to help me out. Bells, whistles, leashes; nothing worked, and eventually I'd just given up and figured that I'd live the way I was meant to. Hiccup tried to relate, seeing as he was missing a leg, but it was completely different. I'd always been blind, so for me, there was nothing missing. Even when I was young, and could still see things a little, I was still different, impaired in my daily perceptions of life.
Finally getting enough of a look/feel of my cut finger, I figured that it wasn't gushing blood, so I was okay. Getting up, I felt Wink hover in front of me, squeaking her worries and apologies.
"I'm okay, Wink. You haven't done me in yet. Now come on- we're going to be late for our first day!"
Well, let me say this: Hiccup had turned Dragon Training on it's head. From what I'd heard, there were no weapons left at all in the arena. The racks of axes were replaced with dunes of dragonnip and hillocks of haddock. The steel bars above were still in place, but they were used instead as a way to keep dragons from taking off with their hapless riders. The old dragon pens were mostly unused, except for one- just in case some pesky dragon tried to murder someone. All in all, it was completely pro-dragon training.
As I entered the cavernous space, the sheer amount of sound bombarded me. Every little thing, from a nervous breath to a tapping foot was amplified tenfold. Factor in my super sense of hearing… Yeah.
Amazing to myself, I could still discern certain sounds from others, and the people those sounds came from. It helped, though, that I knew who was supposed to be there.
Birdlegs, Fishlegs' cousin, was shaking, his colossal knees thudding rhythmically together. I only hoped that he wouldn't puke from nervousness.
Kirstrid, Astrid's younger sister, was one of the two new recruits who was impatient instead of nervous, the other being Pickler Sleeman, son of a very important Viking- the general contractor. Both were fidgeting, but I could tell- how, I can't really understand- that they were just wanting to start their training.
Bigbelly was so incredibly terrified that his entire body was shaking. Of course, that could just have been the wind. Despite his name, Bigbelly was the thinnest Viking Berk had ever seen. His strength, however, was somewhat of a conundrum, which made him unpopular due to Viking brain capacity. He could lift an ox if he wanted to, and do it without sweating. He was also a pacifist, which was yet another nail in his skinny little coffin. Yet another problem- he's my best friend.
Other than that, the other recruits were fairly foreign to me. Obvoiusly we'd met before, because Berk was the size of a fishscale, but I didn't know them by name. So I didn't care.
The only other truly distinctive sound was the creaking that signified Hiccup's presence. For a technical genius, he was still hopeless at finding a way to stop his fake leg from getting rusty and stiff.
"Well, um," Hiccup seemed completely out of his element in front of us, as if we were immeasurably scarier than our dragons, "today, ah, class, we'll review basic training techniques. Um, Astrid will handle that. Um, okay. Go!"
Hiccup, the wordsmith.
Whatever. It was time to start training! This would be fun!
Boy, was I wrong.