Hello, this is the author speaking. The last seven days of Karma's punishment start now, I think that I'll go a little further after that with this story by maybe a chapter or two.
Italics = thoughts
Randomest Disclaimer:
Me: Karma!
Karma: You!
*both run gracefully at each other before breaking into an intense kung fu fight*
Random Guy: He owns nothing!
*both throw balls of energy at him*
Hiccup and Astrid were strolling through the village, or more like Astrid in her chair and Hiccup behind her pushing. It had become too cold to train, so Hiccup was confined to venting out his stress by taking abnormally long walks; the only difference was that Astrid had insisted to come along this time. They had wandered most of the town and were now taking a romantic walk/wheel down the beach just off the pier, though it was at sunrise rather than sunset, because the sunsets were generally colder for some reason. How her wheels could find traction was beyond her.
Astrid was thinking about her son before realizing that that was a very unvikingly thing for a mother to do, then again it was unmotherly for a viking to not at least stew about it. If it was this cold here, she wondered how cold it was on Anglerock isle (Karma's current location). Hopefully nowhere near as chilly; she was having to bundle up pretty heavily just being here, yet Karma probably didn't have anything to do the same but his pelt. She shuddered at the thought of a viking flavored popsicle; Hiccup noticed this and passed it off as shivering.
"You alright? Maybe we should go back to the house-" He started up his worry sprees again, Astrid was getting tired of them.
"I'm fine! Why do you always do that?" Astrid rebuked, she had just gotten out here and didn't want to leave just yet.
"Do what?" Hiccup asked confused.
"This! You get me out of the house for two seconds and now you want stick me back in there!" Astrid playfully shouted, Hiccup wasn't taking it as a joke.
"But you wanted to come out, I didn't force you or anything." He mumbled, downed by his wife's outburst.
"A likely story." Astrid accused, though she was truly just messing with him. Now he was catching on.
"Oh you madam are playing a very dangerous game, playing on this much pure husbandness!" Hiccup was playing along completely, pushing his wife's wheelchair faster and faster down the rocky sand. They crashed in a heap, howling with laughter and rolling about in the sand/gravel; they'd feel that tomorrow.
(scene change)
When I awoke, the sky was still as black as pitch, I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face. Wow, what a good power nap if I'm feelin' this good before dawn, I thought to myself as I sat up. I felt something soft and smooth, yet bumpy, brush along my forehead as I arose. That, coupled with a slight crack of light appearing at the bottom corner of my vision, was what made me realize. Oh, that's why, I thought to myself as I pulled Glint's wing off from over me. I the cold air greeted me with a slap to the face and a punch to my bad eye, advancing through my warm tissue in record time. I pulled the wing back over me and huddled up against Glint's belly for warmth, which eventually came. I had seen it this cold, it's not that hard when you live in a place where two days of sunshine is a godsend, but usually had had my coat with me; as it was, I was unprepared for this kind of weather, even my thick brown pelt wouldn't stop the cold.
There was a slight shift in my black covering, and I saw Glint looking at me through the opening he had made. He started to lift his strong membraned wing; quick as a cat, I snatched the edge of it before too much cool could get in and held it down. He snorted at my attempt to stay warm and spread his wings to their full capacity, dragging me across the frigid ground as I held on tight. Now fully exposed to the brunt of the cold, I let go reflexively and started to hug myself in an effort to warm myself. Soon I had to use one arm to cover my eye, which was being fussy and achy over the chill, letting in more cold air to penetrate my torso. My teeth chattered, letting out a blast of fog into the icy morning air. Glint on the other hand, stretched out lazily and yawned like he didn't have a care in the world. I narrowed my eyes at him.
"Your lucky, you don't feel the cold like I do." I said, coveting whatever allowed dragons to stay warm in this frosted weather. I ran in place for a few seconds, trying to get my blood pumping. Glint eyed me like he didn't know what I was doing, yet I knew he'd seen me do it before. All part of the morning routine, I huffed at myself, seeing my breath rise like a smoke. Glint finally got the message that I was cold and apologetically came up beside me, heat radiating from his scales and into my side. How can he put out so much heat? Was he always so warm?
No snow had fallen . . . yet, but the clouds gave away the fact that it probably would start to snow . . . or hail. It was quiet this morning, nothing moving, nothing leaving its burrow or cave, everything had retreated from the cold, everything except me and Glint. It was probably a good Idea to find a cave or dig a hole, but the ground had frozen and I didn't feel particularly daring to check for a vacant cave, considering what happened last time I saw a cave; I shuddered at the memory of the cove. Wait! Glint had to have lived somewhere before I met him, maybe he had a cave!
"Hey Glint, where do you live?" I asked him as he purred. It took a second for the question to register, but when it did, there was a flurry of action that I didn't expect. The ground shot past me as the Night Fury grabbed me around the waist and took off in flight, as such I lost any form of calm I had attained before. We barely cleared the tops of the palms, I almost collided with one on our way up. I screamed with terror and vertigo when I got a good look at how far below the ground was getting! God's above, don't let him drop me!, I half prayed half wailed mentally.
"Pumedown! Put! Me! Down! Gliiiiint!" I shrieked at the soaring reptile, desperately trying to climb up his foreleg, my legs flailing crazily. The tree tops were now just little models in the distance, I hated to think of what would happen if I fell from here. The wind was chilly up there, dozens of degrees more so than the temperature on the island; Glint held me closer beneath him, almost like a hug. He was gliding down now towards what I could make out as the highland I had tried to find during my encounter with T.J. and the Nadder. I had forgotten about my search after my encounter with the "cave screecher", too late now that I didn't need the high end to see the whole island; I was a lot higher than any ground elevation now.
I guess it wasn't too bad, I had stopped screaming on instinct at least. It was still hard to fathom how high up we were, even though we were gliding down now and still below the clouds, but view was fantastic especially the way the ocean shimmered in the early dawn. We were diving now, slicing through the air at speeds unheard of, Glint clutched me a little closer as if to reassure me. We swooped up at the last minute, Glint landing solidly on his hind legs before propping me on my own. I turned and grinned at him, that was such a rush! He looked confused before parting his scaly lips in a toothy smile, the exact opposite of the ones that Toothless would give with his teeth retracted. It was comical, and I had to laugh; I just had to! And laugh I did, filling the trees with my guffaws and cackles. Glint joined in too, not knowing that I was laughing at him, the sound was just too rich for me to ignore. It sounded like this: "Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh". Haha! This kind of fun beats practical jokes ten to one! Wait, did I just think that? Nononono!
Our laughter subsided after a good five or ten minutes, until I figured out that it was still freezing out here. Glint nodded in the direction of the cliff and picked me up, gently this time. He jumped off the cliff and parachuted down using his wings; just below the cliff's edge was a deep alcove carved into the stone face. We landed inside, and I jumped off in the same fashion as our previous landing. The depression in the cliff's wall was about nine feet deep, and had walls whose appearance made me question how this cave was made.
We sat in there for the longest time, watching as the sun paraded across the sky until it was a few hours shy of setting. My eye had been holding up great until then, but now the pain was beginning to descend on me again like a shroud and it had started bleeding again. I convinced Glint to take me down to the beach bed, he grudgingly complied, picking me up and sailing lazily down to the soft sand where sea meets land. I didn't find myself particularly glad to have to use salty sea water to clean my eye out, but using dad's evaporation method just takes too long.
I untied the knot that bound my eyepatch to my head and stripped the patch off my face; it didn't hurt too bad so I continued, Glint watching me with a worried expression. I was still mad at the gods for letting the injury happen, but at least they had had the decency to spare my eyelid. From my reflection in the water, a thick, jagged cut ran up from just below my cheek bone to just above my eyebrow. Chicks'll dig the scar from that, I thought bitterly. The blood stains on my face had mostly tracked from the crack-like incision, so that was where I started; I pulled some leaves from my pocket, and dipping them into the frigid water before scrubbing at the stains around my closed eye. It stung as the salt water worked its way into the cracks in my skin, otherwise it was doing a great job of washing the the crusted blood off. I stroked gently at my eyelid, not wanting to awaken the agony that lay dormant, good thing that it didn't have much for me to clean.
"And now for the really icky part." I announced to no one in particular, but Glint looked up anyway. I didn't want to risk tripping some forbidden switch by opening my eye regularly, so I pried it open with my thumb and forefinger instead. What I saw in my reflection, behind that thin membrane of skin, was ghastly! The white of my eye was now a sleep deprived stain of yellow, my blue iris was now a fine line surrounding what I call a monstrous deformation of my pupil! It was freaky looking and unnatural, but the worst of it all was the fact that I could see to my right side now. I could still see with my right eye contorted into a slit! What could have caused this? Did it grow together wrong? What happened to my eye! The long awaited snow began to flutter down from its confines in the clouds.
Glint noticed me recoil from the water's edge and scuttled over, his eyes asking "what's wrong?". I covered the ugly eye, it surely wasn't mine, taking in deep gasps of air. Glint was now fully alert that something was wrong, and started nosing my hand away. I closed my eye, wincing at the pain it caused, before Glint could get past the barrier of my hand. I pushed his head away from my own, awkwardly fastening the eyepatch with my free hand. He kept pushing, even trying to nip the patch off, his body language screaming "TELL ME WHAT'S WRONG". I refused to be muscled; pushing back with both hands now, but it was nowhere near strong enough to resist his muscled body.
In no time at all he had me on the ground, his forelegs holding down my arms. Teeth retracted, he softly bit down on my eyepatch and slid it off my face. No fight left in me, I opened my eye; Glint almost immediately recoiled his face, eye's rooted on the monster's slit that had replaced my right eye. He looked ashamed as he took his paws off my shoulders, and I felt ashamed at the ownership of such a sickly thing as I retied the patch back on. We flew back to his cave in an awkward silence, neither daring to look at the other for fear of what the other thought about them. I'm a monster aren't I? I accused myself before sleep came; little did I know that Glint was thinking the same thing about himself . . .
Days of punishment remaining: 6.
So yeah, he has a slit for his right pupil now. I like it because it kind of demonizes him, doesn't make him seem so happy go lucky all the time. I have been asked a very good question "is he turning into a dragon?", the answer is sadly no, his eye had constricted wrong while starting to heal, thank you MadMax for bringing that up. A little bit of hurt/comfort at the end there, just adding a bit of lavender spice to the meal. Please tell me your thoughts, whether you hate it, or like it. Constructive criticism is great food for my soul!
Me: ||-355 7|-|3 |3\/770/\/
Karma: What the crap did you say?
Leet filter: Press the button!
