Chapter 4

Minutes later, I was certain I had translated one part of dragon speech: the squawk. Not the high-pitched one that had Toothless shielding me with his wings, but the more neutral one that required no special work from me. It seemed to be some variation of Pay attention to me! I had great fun squawking and luring Hookfang away from Snotlout.

It drove Toothless crazy. At first, he had leaned back on his haunches and swatted at my back, then he had realized whom I was squawking at. A low growl from him had made the Nightmare pause.

I sighed. Toothless was so crouched over that when I raised my head, it rubbed against his neck. That seemed to calm him.

Astrid groaned. "Hiccup, let's try not to start a fight between the dragons."

I glared at her, offended.

Meanwhile, Snotlout marched up to a curious Hookfang and tried to pull her away, upset that I had usurped him. Not that Hookfang usually listened to him anyways. Take now, for instance: a gust of wind was buffeting Ruffnut's hair, and Hookfang was amazed by the swaying.

"So," Fishlegs said, "is he an actual dragon whisperer now?"

Everybody, and I mean everybody, stared at me. As much as I would have liked to say no, I tilted my paw side to side in a kind of fashion.

Which everyone immediately took to mean absolutely! Tuffnut barged forward, throwing Ruffnut aside, and asked, "Who does Barf and Belch like more? Me or Ruffnut?"

"Uh, me, obviously!" his sister said. "What kind of stupid question is that?"

"One that you just got wrong," Tuffnut said. He lurched toward her, and the horns on their helmets smashed together.

"Oh, yeah? You tell him, Hiccup!" Ruffnut said.

I looked at Astrid.

She strode forward. She put a hand on both of the twin's helmets and pushed them apart. "Okay, that's enough. No one's going to bother Hiccup about this, got it?"

"That's no fair," Tuffnut complained. "You're just going to ask him when you two are alone."

Snotlout suddenly snickered. "Hey, do you two still kiss, or do you just lick each other now?"

Astrid's face went red as they all giggled. She could put up with a lot of things, but our love life was one of the things that would always get a rise out of her.

She spat, "Either of those is still better than making out with my pillow."

That shut Snotlout up. He said, "I told you, I was half-asleep. I thought it was a hot girl!"

"Sure you did," Ruffnut said, stretching out the first word.

"A really hot girl!"

"Nobody cares," Astrid said. "Come on, Hiccup. Let's get out of here."

Oh, yes. I was in. I trotted – jogged, I guess – at her heels, and Toothless followed the both of us.

"So, now what?" Astrid asked me.

I licked my lips. Breakfast?

"You haven't . . ." She trailed off. "I guess you can't cook anymore. I'll get you something."

She carefully avoided the f-word. Toothless knew some Norse words, including: Hiccup, Dad, fly, fire, Astrid, fish and food. Which one of those last two was the f-word? Both, technically. They meant the same thing to Toothless, and once he latched onto the promise of a fish, good luck getting him to think of anything else. Even if the dragons had access to all the fish they could eat outside, it apparently tasted much better when it came directly from a Viking's hand.

But anyways, even though he had already eaten, once we were in Astrd's house, she tossed Toothless a couple of herring anyways. Mostly for a distraction. If he didn't get anything, Toothless might insist on sharing my food.

"Here." She slammed down a plate with bread and cheese in front of me, waking Stormfly who had been sleeping in the corner. The small meal was fine with me. What was a normal portion to her had morphed into a gigantic portion for me, so I didn't need more.

Toothless warbled. He put his head on the table and stared at my food.

"Not for you," I told him, even though I knew he wasn't interested. He ate fish, meat if he couldn't get fish, and the occasional bit of vegetation (nine times out of ten, when he ate something that wasn't protein, it was because I was eating it, too). Grain and dairy however, did not appeal to him.

He lashed out suddenly. Right when I had opened my mouth, he pushed my plate away.

"Astrid, don't encourage him," I said as she laughed. Toothless had moved it far enough away that I had to leap on the tabletop to get it. Stormfly keened as I did so; no doubt, Astrid had told her many times that dragons weren't allowed on the table.

Toothless pushed it away again. When I glared at him, the plates on his head stuck out. Something in his scent turned sour.

I pounced. Toothless pushed the plate out of my way again, and then hooked a claw underneath the edge. He flipped it. The bread and cheese flew into the air and plummeted to the ground, where Stormfly charged and began an abrupt game of keep-away.

"Toothless!" The sight of a charging, shouting Astrid shooed Toothless away from the table. "Stormfly, leave that alone!"

She scooped the food up and deposited it back on the plate. Also fine with me. We Vikings didn't care much for hygiene.

When she set the plate down, Toothless popped up right beside me. His plates flapped.

"Toothless . . ." He complained and dug in his claws as Astrid shoved him away from the table, and Astrid eventually recruited Stormfly to help her. Although the Nadder helped Astrid, Stormfly seemed confused as to why.

So I ate quickly (by which, I meant I tore pieces off and swallowed them. Chewing wasn't working out for me). No need to drag this out any longer than I had to.

"There. Done." I barked at Astrid.

Hearing that for what it was, Astrid released Toothless. He scampered up to me, and licked my face.

"Love you, too, bud."

Toothless snuffled. His snout rubbed against my scales as he kept licking.

"Okay . . ." I backed away. "I have no idea what's up with you."

Astrid picked me up, saving me from Toothless's greedy tongue. She looked just as confused as me.

I thought at first that it was her sweet scent or my close proximity to her that made my stomach twist. But then the pain got worse; it was like something was bubbling up inside my stomach, and the pressure inside was threatening to rupture the organ. I wheezed. My saliva became thin.

Oh no. Not here. Not while Astrid was holding me. She was unprepared for me to thrash, so I got loose easily and staggered outside –

The barely-digested contents of my stomach splattered onto the grass.

"Hiccup!" Astrid grabbed me, pressing the back of her hand against my forehead. "Are you sick?"

I didn't know. My stomach was apparently playing host to some tap-dancing giants with spikes in their shoes, but otherwise I felt okay.

Toothless waddled over. He plopped down, tilted his chin slightly downward, and gave me a look I needed no manual to translate: Told you so.

Maybe Toothless's aversion to grains and dairy wasn't just a personal preference.

After spitting out a last mouthful of bile, I scratched into the dirt: Can't eat.

Astrid scrunched up her nose. "Do you have the flu?"

I shook my head. Can't digest.

"Oh." Her voice reflected her understanding. "Then, did you want something else?"

I thought about it. I nodded.

"Okay, I can grab you a fish –"

Toothless's head shot up. His tongue slapped against the side of his mouth, and then slid over his lower lip.

"I already gave you some," Astrid said, trying her best to ignore Toothless's excited panting, and the way he circled her legs. "You can come along, but this is for Hiccup."

As she started walking, Toothless nudged me, as if to say: look, we're getting fish!

Both Toothless and a tagalong Stormfly ended up badgering Astrid enough to get a herring. She originally tried giving me a larger fish, but thought better of it when it became apparent the fish was nearly the size of me. Not even a teenage boy could force that much down his throat. So, I got a roasted herring, to Toothless's approval.

"Eat up!" Astrid downed a mug of mead. She had earlier made a motion as if to pour me some, but luckily, common sense had caught up to us both.

My mouth snapped close on the fish. Okay . . . now what? I had thought I could eat this fish the same way I would if I were still human, but that wasn't working. See, dragon jaws didn't move the way ours did. There wasn't enough side-to-side movement to grind food. Nor did they have the flat teeth required for that. And as I had discovered with the bread, they couldn't really chew. Which is why, in my haste to ground the herring into a manageable pulp, it fell out of my mouth. Twice. Astrid just watched me with pity.

Toothless hadn't eaten his yet. He had been too busy watching. But now he poked me, then very deliberately picked his up. He threw his head back, bobbed it a couple times more to get the fish in proper position, and then slurped it down.

I got it. I knew what he was doing. Well, here goes . . .

I bit down on the fish's tail, threw my head back –

It slipped from my grasp, and tumbled head-over-heels onto my tail.

Stupid fish.

The second time was more successful. I knew it was in the proper place; my throat had even begun to loosen in preparation for a fish sliding down. All I had to do was swallow . . .

Easier said than done. The human side of me very much objected to stuffing a solid object down my throat - choking hazards and all that. At the same time, hunger prevented me from letting go. I was stuck.

Toothless glanced over. He roughly started licking the underside of my throat, and before I could make sense of it, I reflexively swallowed.

Gah. I shuddered. That felt weird.

And I would only have to do it a billion more times. I tried not to pity myself, but Astrid had scrunched up made a noise of disgust, and from there, it was inevitable.

"It could be worse," she said. "You could be a raven, and stuck eating carrion . . . We should probably tell your dad about this. He'll need to know if you're not going to starve . . . Hiccup, he can't be that bad a cook."

I gagged and stuck my tongue out. Astrid had no idea. Dad at the cooking fire was like pre-Toothless me in a dragon raid: disaster. He'd start off okay, but then he'd reach the point where he had to wait, and get distracted by chiefly duties, or talking or whatever he deemed important at the moment. Meaning he overcooked everything. Then he made me eat it anyways, claiming it kept us tough.

She patted my head. "You could try Fishlegs. He'd love to have another dragon to cook for."

I nodded. That sounded good. It was well known around Berk that Fishlegs wanted to become the first chef for dragons . . . if he could get any customers. Meatlug ate his food, of course, and she seemed to love it, but the other dragons tended to avoid him at meals. Probably because Fishlegs's idea of finding customers was to run around shouting and chasing them.

On the walk there, I tried to keep up, but for every step Astrid took, I had to take five or six. And I was barely walking; it was more like hopping, if anything. Either way, it got some odd looks. Although those looks may have had nothing to do with my walking-hopping and everything to do with the chief's son becoming a dragon.

Just as Astrid had predicted, Fishlegs was delighted. He started asking all sorts of questions, like whether I liked my food spicy, or if I was partial to raw fish. Yes to the first, no to the second. I was a dragon, but I wasn't really a dragon.

"This is awesome! I can finally figure out why nobody will listen to Meatlug! I mean we've tried to get the other dragons interested, but all they want is their raw fish." Fishlegs made a face. "You'll tell them about my food, right, Hiccup?"

Sure, sure. As long as it kept me away from Dad's well-intended cooking.

Meanwhile, Toothless was hopping up and down, having heard the f-word twice. He glanced from Fishlegs to me, wriggling in excitement.

"Oh, I can make you both something right now!" Fishlegs was practically bouncing in anticipation. Meatlug, seeing her rider's excitement, panted. "Just give me a few minutes."

He ran into the house. Toothless looked at me and smiled.

Looks like someone was having a great day.

Review Response:

havic: Yes and no. While Toothless does recognize that Hiccup is now a Night Fury, he still foremost identifies Hiccup as his Viking. So, while there are changes to Toothless's behavior around Hiccup, there hasn't been a full shift in how Toothless sees him. As for your second question, I don't know myself.

Guest: Thanks!

Jazz: That I am XD

I imagine it's both the fact HTTYD2 was recently released, and that nothing from KH has been released for a while. People are bored without new material in KH to draw from, so they naturally delve into other fandoms that do have new material. Plus, I think the HTTYD fandom is just more active than the KH one in general.

Snowflake: Pretty much, yes :)

Charm Caster1127: And unlike Hiccup, it would be on purpose!

a random person: He's mostly "mumbling", as I call it. It's gibberish to the other dragons. If you want something more solid, in my head, he's making sounds similar to a baby bear.

dragon lifespan: That's good. I had assumed at first that people wouldn't like the ambiguity, but obviously I'm wrong here :)

I don't know if Valka's ever seen a Night Fury. She definitely hasn't seen any recently, if her comment about Toothless (maybe) being the last Night Fury is anything to go by... But ANYWAYS, that's a fair point about the lifespan. I would even suggest that if you want to go super-realistic, it might be better to base dragon lifespans off avian ones instead of reptiles, since dragons seem to have an active and competitive lifestyle closer to birds than reptiles [I, on the other hand, enjoy using the suspension of disbelief that most people have regarding dragons ;) ]. For crocodiles, I don't know that off the top of my head either, but I do know that snakes only need to eat once a month/week, depending on their species. I don't know if snakes are lazy too, but I think being cold-blooded contributes to that. Speaking of which, what's your take on that? Right now, I'm considering dragons to be warm-blooded, on account of their activity level and the fact that we never see them sunning.

Anyways, this AN is getting kind of long, so I'll end it here. Looking forward to hearing from you!