Chapter 3

Castaway

::Did you try to get anyone else's attention?:: I asked as the six of us sped through the skies. I had told Hiccup and Astrid what Spitfire told me, and neither of them wasted any time in taking off to help.

::You're the only one here who understands both groups, Hawken,:: Spitfire pointed out. ::No one else would have figured out what I was trying to tell them.:: I nodded and sighed, before focusing again on our destination.

The southern inhabited portion of the island is relatively small, so the flight from the cove to the eastern edge only took about three minutes, at the speed we were going at least. As we crested the ridge separating the beach from the rest of the island, I immediately spotted what Spitfire had been talking about: almost directly below us were the remains of a small wooden dinghy, way too small to be used for seafaring even in good weather and clearly not from Berk either. One end was completely shattered, though to my eyes it didn't look like the damage a wave would produce, and it was overturned and dug into the sand. There didn't appear to be anything alive from our perspective, but we were still fairly high up and couldn't see underneath. I dove down and landed, morphing to a Viperwyrm and sliding up to the boat. The others landed nearby.

"See anything?" Hiccup asked, jumping off Toothless and running up to me as I stuck my head carefully through a hole in the side. Not two seconds later I jerked back, removing myself from the boat and scooting away for a moment.

"Y-Yeah, there's something in there," I said quietly, "or more precisely, someone." I morphed again back to Night Fury, and walked up to the vessel, digging my paws under the edge carefully. I couldn't just pull up though without risking the thing snapping apart however, so I nodded to Toothless. ::Hey Toothless, give me a hand here. Grab the other end!:: He sprinted over and nudged his nose under what was left of the railing. ::Okay, ready? One, two…three!::

The boat fell in half anyway, but we managed to tip it up and over the other direction and away from what was underneath. Lying there in the sand, completely unmoving, was a girl. She looked to be about our age, maybe 18 or 19, with pale skin and straight, brownish-red hair, not unlike a mix between Hiccup's and mine, at least in the lower light given by the overcast sky. She also sported a substantial tan; definitely not a local, nor even from anywhere within a few hundred miles.

More importantly, however, her lips and fingers were both tinted a dangerously deep blue, and I could see it slowly beginning to spread.

Astrid knelt down next to the girl and put her fingers to the girl's neck. After a moment, her eyes widened, and she said, "She's still got a pulse!" She looked up at me. "Can you carry her, safely? She needs to get to my mother, and fast! We don't have a moment to lose!" I nodded and, carefully, Hiccup helped Astrid lift the girl up and lay her across my back.

"Now go!" Astrid said loudly. "We can't waste any time. Hiccup and I will meet you there in a minute!" I nodded, turning carefully, and then pushed myself off the ground and into the air toward the village, being very cautious not to accidentally tip my unconscious passenger off my back.

Very shortly, I landed in front of Astrid's home, and called for her mother. "Sigrid? Are you here? We need your help, and pronto!" There was a moment's silence, then the door swung open, revealing Sigrid Hofferson. "H-Hawken? What happened? Why are you here?" she asked, stepping out. I turned to reveal our castaway. "Spitfire found her on the eastern beach, under a shipwrecked boat. She needs help, and quickly since she's already turning blue."

Sigrid ran over to check the girl, before heading back to the house and motioning me to follow. "Yes, bring her in immediately, she needs to be made warm," she said. I followed behind her, carrying the girl through the short hallway into the house, where Sigrid carefully picked her up and laid her out onto the nearest bed.

"Light the bedside fire there," Sigrid pointed, waiting for me to do so before handing me a couple of heavy quilts, "and lay her under these. If her temperature isn't brought up quickly she'll die of hypothermia. And this time of year that's an extremely high likeliness. I'll go get my herbs." I did as I was told, and waited. By the time she came back into the room with her bottles and jars of herbs and salves, Hiccup and Astrid had also arrived.

"Good you're here," Sigrid said, and handed Astrid and Hiccup both a bundle of bulbs and leaves. "Astrid, you know the recipe for the tea, you and Hiccup go and prepare a kettle's worth. And while you're in there start some water as well for the hot packs. I need to check her for other injuries." As the two other teens headed through the door into the kitchen, Sigrid carefully pulled back the quilts on one side, and began checking the girl over from the head down. Respectfully, I kept my head turned, until Sigrid whistled, and pointed to our patient.

Halfway down her abdomen, she sported a shallow but long gash. Sigrid looked up at me. "Can you heal this? It will simplify our other problems." I nodded and came over to the other side of the bed, carefully placing my hand above the injury and focusing, letting the energy flow from my hand.

Nothing happened. Just above the cut, the energy stream halted and turned, flowing back up to my skin. "W-What?" I asked confusedly. This hadn't ever happened before. I tried it again, and then once more, only to end with the same result.

"I-I don't get it," I said. "It always works, this isn't anything worse than we've dealt with before." I eyed the girl lying on the bed. "There's something strange about all this, about her." Sigrid nodded, getting over the shock at our shortcut not working, and immediately heading to grab the bandages in the cupboard nearby. "Well, she's not from the nearby mainland either," she noted. "That kind of tanning suggests a much further origin. Perhaps your abilities don't work on others like you?" I shrugged, not really agreeing with that possibility considering what I knew about Hiccup and company, but no other answer came to mind that really made much sense. Other than…

"Maybe God just has a different plan for this encounter," I said quietly. "I mean, the only reason I can do things like this is because of him, I'm sure he can stop it at any time too." I shrugged. "Maybe she's just supposed to get through this naturally for some reason. I doubt she'd end up here alive just to die, and I'm not getting any sense of her being a danger either."

Astrid and Hiccup reappeared shortly thereafter, and Sigrid began applying the herbs to the girl's injuries, and getting Astrid to help her wrap the more serious ones like the gash. Seeing as how my healing ability wasn't being helpful I could do no more, so I quietly backed out of the way and joined Toothless, Thorn and Spitfire outside.

::Well, she's in good hands now,:: I said, glancing back, ::but there's definitely something off about her. I wasn't able to heal the gash on her side, or any of the other issues she had.:: Toothless stood up upon hearing that. ::You don't think she's…she's another like you, do you?:: I shrugged and started walking toward Hiccup's house. ::Well, Sigrid suggested the same possibility, though we know I can heal you guys and you've been labeled in the same boat as me.:: I glanced upward as if expecting the answer to fall out of nowhere.

::Aslan, Coriakin and Lilianda are the only other "guardians" we've met thus far, and they all had something that just kind of immediately set them apart,:: I said, ::but this girl, well, I don't get any of the same vibes form her.:: ::There's still something not right about all of this, though,:: Thorn growled. ::Yes, I agree, but there's also nothing we can do about it yet,:: Toothless replied. We all nodded.

We reached Hiccup's house, and I opened the door, looking back at Thorn momentarily. ::Call us if she wakes,:: I said. She nodded and flew off, followed shortly by Spitfire. I walked in, followed by Toothless, saying hello to Stoick who sat near the fireplace carving, and informed him about the castaway we found. Then, Toothless and I headed up to Hiccup's room.

We had built a second bed up there for when I stayed over, plus a separate second workbench as well so Hiccup and I could both work in the same place, sometimes together but often on separate projects (his usually mechanical in nature, mine organic). I sauntered over to my desk and sat down, sighing, Toothless heading to the granite slab they had dragged up there for his place to rest.

"Toothless, what are we gonna do?" He looked up from his rock bed (no pun intended) at me. ::What do you mean?:: he asked. I smiled wearily. "About the newcomer. I don't get any negative vibes from her per se, and you know how a dragon's sense of things like that are. But, I can't ignore the feeling that there's something else behind all this. I feel like she's bringing a war to our doorstep, but I can't see how." Toothless shrugged and let out a stream of flame, heating up the rock he stood on before finally lying down. ::Well, we've had wars before, major battles. Against demons, even. If there's something really that bad, I'm sure we'll find a way to handle it.:: I sighed. "I hope so."

As Toothless began to doze off, I turned back to my desk, where I had stashed a collection of pens and pencils, paper (Hiccup couldn't thank me enough for being able to provide a ton of that), and a batch of collected dragons scales. Everyone on Berk knew that the scales of dragons had some rather strange properties, unlike those of normal reptiles, and I'd gone into studying them. The ability to withstand magma-type heat was one, and I had found that even after the dragon shed them the scales could still insulate even those who didn't have them built in. I had been experimenting, occasionally with Hiccup and Toothless' help, with manipulating the scales. We had managed to attempt melting, bending, and connecting them into rudimentary armor types, trying out various scales from different species. Not surprisingly, Night Fury was the variety easiest for me to work with, thanks to the one already living in Hiccup's house.

So far, our attempts hadn't been too terribly productive, however. Scales only melted at extreme temperatures (most required magnesium-style heat, 5,000°F plus, and some, like Nadders, Night Furies and Fireworms, required even more extreme conditions), and of course you had to keep them near that temperature to mold or at least bend, otherwise they cooled extremely rapidly and hardened again. Even more, go too hot and the melted scale would eventually burn, and once at that point nothing stopped it until it burned completely. The forge still had a couple holes from our attempts before we got good at getting the right temperature.

However, once the scales melted, if they were molded and then flash-cooled, the structure would then act almost like a stiff rubber, semi-flexible but still able to retain the insulating ability from heat and, with some species, cold. Plus, they were waterproof.

As I mulled this over, staring at my sketches of recent and upcoming experiments (and while I credit myself as being a rather good artist, Hiccup was far better so I let him draw schematics), an entirely different thought struck me. Toothless was asleep, and Hiccup wasn't nearby, and the latter had been struggling with Framherja for multiple months now. Aslan had said he was supposed to find out on his own, but I saw no problem in giving him at least a hint, especially not after all the work he'd put into it at this point.

I morphed Shadow Dragon, and flowed across the ground over to Hiccup's desk. Quietly so as to not disturb Toothless, I took his charcoal pencil (he still had yet to fully switch over to our modern version) and carefully drew a faint sketch of the bow, followed by a lightning bolt on a separate sheet, and lastly laid them to one side of the desk near a portrait Astrid had made of him.

I smiled, hoping this might be the push he needed, before flowing back to my own desk and getting to work again.

A/N-Things start to heat up (in some way literally) from here, so stay with me! And as always, make sure to leave a review and let me know what you think, or theories you have on what's to come! I like hearing speculations...