Another week has come and gone, and it's time for another chapter update!
Enjoy!
Chapter Five: Wounds of the Spirit
As the next few days dragged by, Astrid found herself thinking obsessively about Hiccup's secret.
Her initial anger at the insolent boy's victory over her in the dragon training arena was gone...for now.
And replacing it was a bizarre mixture of previously inconceivable jealousy and deepest curiosity.
Of these two emotions, the former was a Viking reliance, but the latter one entirely foreign and quite frankly, most unwanted.
Once, she did have a single moment of self awareness, noticing how odd it was that she now spent so much time thinking about the boy, especially considering how much of a nothing that he had been in the past.
One afternoon, Astrid was sitting with the gang out in the meadow behind Berk, deep in contemplation.
Fishlegs and the others were all discussing Hiccup's amazing win over the Gronckle, and how it had so easily succumbed to his touch, without showing any aggression at all.
He just seemed to have this...way with the beasts.
Astrid blinked, her mind slowly noticing that someone was trying to get her attention.
"Yoo-hoo! Astrid?"
Her head snapped around to Tuffnut. "What?" she shot irritably.
"I was just saying," began the blond Viking boy, "Hiccup's better than you ever were –" His sentence was cut short by a punch and snarl from his sister, and the twins engaged immediately in a violent tussle, intent on tearing out each other's hair.
"Take no notice of them, Astrid," said Snotlout in with pathetic attempt at sugar-coating his words. "I thought you were just great in the ring."
The teen Viking shifted a little closer to Astrid, hoping that she wouldn't notice.
"Mpf..." Astrid merely grunted, entirely unimpressed, and went straight back to her train of thought, leaving Snotlout quite put-off.
"What's going on with you, Astrid?" asked Fishlegs, a slightly worried look on his pudgy features. "You talk so little these days."
"She's just jealous of Hiccup's success –" teased Tuffnut, resurfacing briefly from the swirling melee with his sister to make a snide comment, before once again having his head pummelled into the ground.
"'Legs has a point, Astrid," put in Snotlout, and, for the first time in ages, without that sickening attempt at a pick-up tone that he usually used.
"This is so not...Astrid. Normally you'd be all too happy to discuss Hiccup's weird behaviour, and how he's always disappearing off into the forest –" Snotlout continued, before being cut off by Fishlegs.
"Yeah. As soon as we were finished in the ring the other day, he was gone. Took off straight into the forest, heading towards Raven's Point. I think that's where he's gone now."
Astrid had only been listening in part to 'Legs and 'Lout talking to her, but had been paying enough attention for that last sentence to have registered in her mind.
"Towards Raven's Point..." she murmured, eyes fixed on the ground.
The other two still paying attention glanced at each other furtively, and Fishlegs said cautiously "Astrid, seriously, is everything alright?" But once again, Astrid's moment of realisation was both sudden and unexpected, especially not by either Snotlout or Fishlegs.
The pair of them jumped with surprise as the blond Viking before them leapt to her feet, an unfamiliar look of comprehension dawning slowly on her face.
Running off through the green grass back towards Berk, Astrid was faintly heard calling "I'll see you later!" Fishlegs and Snotlout stared for a moment at her retreating figure, and then at each other, both utterly perplexed.
Snotlout shook his head.
"Has the world gone completely mad?
Astrid jogged up the hill through Berk, heading towards the chief's house, her mind totally focused, thinking things over.
On the night of the last dragon raid, Hiccup had claimed to have shot down one of the most mysterious and feared dragons of all, a Night Fury.
"It went down just off Raven's Point! Let's get a search party out there, and -" As usual, no-one had listened to the boy's incessant babbling, and Stoick had simply given his son a sever telling off in front of the entire village, sending him home in disgrace.
But for Astrid, however, two things about what Hiccup had said now, strangely, began to sound plausible.
A Night Fury, and Raven's Point.
A Night Fury!
Astrid could scarcely believe that the great black beast upon which Hiccup had ridden was the most dangerous and feared dragons known to Vikings.
Astrid's second realisation, however, was both far simpler and had much more immediate consequences.
If Hiccup was out at Raven's Point, then he wasn't at home.
"Odin forgive me for what I am about to do," the girl thought nervously to herself.
Reaching the chieftain's house, Astrid quickly checked to see that no-one was watching, before slipping quietly inside.
Viking's saw no need to lock their doors, as mutual trust was meant to be an inherent part of their culture.
Theft, along with betrayal and surrender, was one of the worst atrocities a Viking could commit.
But it wasn't like Astrid had any intention of stealing anything; she simply wanted to find out what it was that made Hiccup tick.
Admittedly, there did not seem to be a downside for Hiccup in the betrayal of his tribe and new-found friendship with one of its arch enemies.
But surely the instinctive power of self-preservation present in all Vikings would had been enough to hold him back from even making contact with the black dragon...wouldn't it?
Apparently not.
Astrid had only ever been in the chief's house once before, and that was a long time ago, while she was still very young.
At roughly the age of six, she and Hiccup had gone, or rather, been sent up the stairs to Hiccup's room to play together while Stoick and Astrid's parents had talked business.
Sure in the assumption that the chief's son still occupied that same room, the blond Viking girl made her way nimbly up the staircase and, upon reaching the top, cautiously opened the door to her immediate left; Hiccup's room.
Closing the door gently behind her, Astrid turned and surveyed the room before her with keen eyes.
The early afternoon light seeped gently in through the single window, which looked out over the green meadow behind Berk.
Through this opening came an unusually warm breeze, fluttering the many pictures and paintings which hung from the walls.
A few items of clothing hanging off the end of the bed also shifted a little with the air currents.
The room was, overall, very tidy, with only the things which Hiccup used more frequently sprawled over his working bench.
For a Viking of his age, Hiccup was an unusually diligent person when it came to neatness.
Moving over to the table, Astrid examined the items which lay there.
A loose collection of sheets of scribble parchment, some used some not, a mug half-filled with water, several sticks of charcoal used for drawing, and a pair of leather-bound books.
Picking up the loose sheets of parchment, Astrid began to flick through them, one at a time.
The first two were blank, and the next few were covered in rough sketches of several machines and contraptions which she had seen before, such as the bola-thrower, with which Hiccup had claimed to have shot down the Night Fury.
Even as draft copies, the detail and effort which Hiccup had used was quite impressive.
But if Astrid had found these drawings intriguing, the next few were that extra bit incredible.
The young Viking girl now found herself looking at sketches of what was unmistakably a dragon's tail-fin.
Only they weren't; these were actually highly detailed designs of how to build an equivalent fin from leather and light metal.
And if the detail in the other images was excessive, it was nothing in comparison with the highly intricate drawings of the Night Fury's left tail-fin upon which she now looked with wonder.
"Of course..." Astrid murmured, eyes glazing over as she thought back to the great clearing where she had seen Hiccup with the dragon.
And although the Viking girl had indeed noticed it at the time, it had not then clicked for Astrid that the artificial fin which was attached to the Night Fury's tail was actually in replacement of the natural one, which would otherwise have been there.
"Perhaps...he crippled it when he shot it down," mused Astrid quietly, staring at the sketches, deep in thought.
Perhaps a part of what had driven Hiccup to gain the dragon's trust was a sense of guilt and regret at what he had done to the beast.
Astrid thought back to one of Gobber's earlier teachings.
The chief's son had indeed been present when the recruits' trainer had mentioned that "A downed dragon...is a dead dragon." But the only issue seemed to be that the Night Fury was now dependent on having a human rider to retain the power of flight.
Such a situation would, undoubtedly, require a special bond between human and dragon, something more than just trust; a real friendship and closeness.
Placing the sheets of parchment back down onto the desk, Astrid now picked up one of the bound leather books, opening it timidly.
Afterwards, the teenage Viking would look back and see that she wasn't intentionally encroaching on Hiccup's privacy; she had simply been curious about what drove the young boy on.
Inside the cover there was nothing aside from Hiccup's signature scrawled in the bottom left corner.
Turning over the first page, Astrid at first wondered why the page appeared to be totally blank...until she noticed a single date in the top corner of the page, marking a time several months previously.
The second page contained another date, and also a small amount of other writing indicating the occurrence of some significant event.
Clearly, this was a diary.
Hiccup's diary.
Astrid began to read, quickly at first, skimming by the pages, taking barely any notice of what she was looking at.
But, gradually, phrases began to jump out at her from the page.
"No-one understands … I was just trying to help carry the fish out …" "They must really hate me. All they ever do is laugh at me..." "They could at least try and tell me what I'm doing wrong … instead of simply spiting me." Occasionally Astrid would notice that parts of the more emotional sentences were smudged and smeared, the parchment crinkled as though it had once been wet … perhaps with tears?
Astrid's hand went to her mouth, and her heart pounded with guilt as the sentences became more and more emotionally powerful, sagging with the full weight of a young boy's inner pain.
Finally, Astrid arrived at a page dated no further than a few weeks ago.
And although the entry contained only one word, the message it gave had a truly profound meaning.
"Toothless." Looking over the next pages, Astrid saw that the diary entries no longer contained words, but pictures, little images of what Hiccup was experiencing.
Grand sunsets along the coast were exquisitely captured and contained in simple charcoal lines, dense pine-forests found a new meaning to life in a master's art, and an immense flock of dragons soared effortlessly over a seemingly infinite oceanic expanse, every wing and tail drawn to perfection.
It seemed that, for Astrid, Hiccup had just re-defined the meaning of beauty.
A sudden slamming sound brought Astrid sharply back to herself.
As the great beat of time returned to its normal pace, the Viking girl could hear the sounds of someone coming up the stairs outside the bedroom.
Panic, along with many other rushed feelings now flowed through Astrid, and she quickly placed the book back on the desk, now searching desperately for somewhere to hide.
Pausing for a moment, she noticed the unusual humour of the situation.
She, Astrid, was afraid of direct confrontation with Hiccup – But, out of time and out of mind, Astrid now heard the door creak, and turned to see the wooden beams swing wide.
And into the room walked none other than the boy in question, the un-Viking upon which all of her thoughts for the past few weeks had been focussed.
Hiccup.
Now, I have a request for you all, a question that needs answering.
At the rate of one chapter per week, you're going to catch up very quickly with where I'm currently writing at.
My question is this; would you prefer me to cut back the update rate to one chapter every second week so as to keep the regularity of the uploads possible for much longer, or should I just stick with updating every Sunday?
Bear in mind that the latter option will mean that as soon as you catch up with where I'm currently writing at, there will be longer waiting times, and certainly no regularity.
Please tell me what you think by review.
And once again, thank you all for the positive comments and constructive criticism!
I really do take not and appreciate it!
Lumpyness.