ON WITH THE SHOW!
Nightfall, Part Eleven
The storm wakes them with a flash of lightning and the crack of thunder right above them, and two heads come up from sleep filled with nightmares to identical alertness, vibrating with excitement and surprise at the sound of it.
They love storms. Where others will hide from the sky's wrath Hiccup and Toothless, halves of a whole, embrace them and love them and challenge them. The sound of the sky roaring at them and the flashes of its claws striking at them is daring them to face it as the smell of the wind blowing in from the sea into their cave sets them free, because this is a safe space that they can hide in away from the nightmares that are pfikingr killers-of-dragon-family and the sickbadwrongthing that is still out there, but it is a hiding place that is a trap, where the wind cannot reach them and they cannot fly.
Toothless cries storm-air-warning joy excitement challenge storm-air rough-winds challenge fierce daring and his dragon-boy-half shakes with their need to take off into the storm and fly with it, making sounds of want want want want that are all but lost under the roars of dragon and sky.
Safer to stay and wait to heal more but they need to go and they have been afraid too long, grounded too long, trapped in this place filled with nightmares too long. They cannot count or articulate three weeks now but they do understand too long, too many. If it hurts them, if it kills them, they must fly, they must; and they'll fall together if they fall.
Hiccup misses flight the way a human might miss walking if abruptly deprived of it. The sky is his natural habitat and, one way or another, he has lived in it most of his life, whether on the back of his dragon-love Toothless or with the wind gliding under his own wings as he catches thermals and rides sea breezes. He has been carried by flock-mates in joyful and exhilarated waking and he has slept undisturbed in the careful paws of Cloudjumper as they fly home.
Being trapped on the ground has been driving them mad, and there is enough madness in this place without it.
In an instant Hiccup is on the bigger dragon's back and they dash out into the wind. Toothless stops on the lip of the ledge and roars back at the storm, accepting its challenge.
They are immediately soaked as if they have been fishing for hours but they don't care, and the heat of the black dragon's heart-fire and the flame of excitement in their souls keeps back the cold of the northern rain. Toothless charges into it, leaping from rock to rock and galloping across treacherous slopes heedlessly, carelessly, too quick and too exhilarated to fall, and his companion keeps his balance instinctively and readily, urging him on and screaming his own sounds of joy into the storm.
They run run run! and the wind follows them. Dragon and dragon-boy mark every gust and map every pattern completely unconsciously as they go, heading across open spaces to feel the wind and climbing ever upwards, looking for the highest point they can find to launch from.
In the dark and the wind and the speed it's almost like flying, and the sensation only increases their desire to fly again. For the first time since they crashed they are not afraid, and for a few moments nothing can scare them. They are in their element. They can forget the nightmares they've both been having, which are getting worse the longer they are on the ground, like being shouted at from within their heads, relentless and never stopping, getting louder when they sleep and shadowing their movements during the day, waiting to strike like a soaring enemy far above between them and the open sky. The surrounded and the grounded have eaten away at them but in the heart of the storm in the dark as they run they are free again.
They have explored this island extensively in the past few weeks, even staying away as they have done from anywhere that there are too many pfikingr – like the nest on the other shore that they have seen from afar several times since the night they fled from it, and where the dragon-killers will all be hiding from the storm, so tonight the pair of dragons are free. Toothless heads for the biggest cliff he can remember. If he must be on the ground he will make it regret keeping him there, and his claws dig into the earth and tear through it as he runs, head down and wings in tight and his Hiccup-beloved on his shoulders where he belongs, pressed close to his scales and crying out in pure joy at the race and that they are together to race it.
Up up up up up! Hiccup yowls with delight as they ascend a bluff that overlooks the sea and faces into the wind that is pushing at them tonight, urging them into the sky. They are answering it as fast as they can.
When they reach the edge that overlooks a great and distant fall to the rough waves below they gulp in the storm air and the taste of lightning as if dying of thirst, which they may as well be. Toothless paces back and forth, judging the wind as it moves and changes, anxiously waiting for the right moment to launch. He does not dare to take off from the ground on his own yet, not on the wing that is still healing, if rapidly. Although they do not know this, and neither do the humans, dragons' wings are so essential to them that they have evolved to heal quicker than almost anywhere else on their bodies. Everything from their nature to their own minds is urging dragon and dragon-boy back into the sky.
But the wind will carry them and make their launch easier, and maybe, just maybe…
The black dragon trembles like a cat about to pounce, tail lashing furiously as his wings spread and his partner-love on his shoulders sets himself for flight, tension of his own running through Hiccup's shoulders and back as learned reactions and lifelong empathy pull on muscles as if trying to spread wings that are not there, never grew, and exist only as reflections of his own desperate need to fly, so much so that he made them be rather than wait any longer. But his body still reacts as if they were there, and part of him still believes that one day they will be. When that happens, he will be ready, his body will already know how to use them; he has learned from the way Toothless moves his body and has learned to reflect it in his own.
They hunt the wind. They hunt the sky. They will catch it like the biggest fish of all.
They could hurt themselves even more doing so – the wing is not yet fully healed – but the risk is worth it for the chance to not be afraid for a little while, and the chance to fly again.
They must succeed, they must fly again, and Hiccup will do anything to make that happen…even stay on the ground.
He slips from his dragon-love's back and steps away.
Toothless whips away from his stalking of just the right wind to stare at his other half in surprise, chattering, You up you we fly us flying go flying we fly storm storm good storm flying!
The dragon-boy struggles to communicate that Toothless will be lighter without him on his partner's back, weighing him down, and that the wind can blow him more easily if it is only trying to lift Toothless. Flying you flying storm-air good no helping go Hiccup you flying no storm-air…he chirrs and whimpers, at a loss for words he can use, gesturing and posturing as he tries to explain. They carry things with them sometimes when they have been hunting for the flock or raiding for things Hiccup wants or when the nest's hatchlings get tired and try to rest on them to be carried, and Hiccup understands that it is harder for heavier things to fly. He has trouble explaining this knowledge; it is too abstract.
His partner understands him anyway, cutting off his frustrated whines with a sharp snap at the dismounted dragon-boy. You! Toothless orders. No no no you me we fly us together together together yes good you up us fly us we fly! And he sits down sharply, glaring through the dark of the rain.
Either they fly together, or they do not fly at all.
You me we us together good good safe comfort worry safe you me together, Toothless croons, point made, and nuzzles his Hiccup-self, who wraps his paws around the bigger dragon's head and touches their noses together, singing back love love love adoration devotion love joy together yes yes flying good love you love.
Reassured, Hiccup takes his place on the black dragon's shoulders again, chirping into the wind even as he does that good flying good happy flying falling bad bad bad uncertainty ready-me-launch-sound together glide-together, a mixture of concepts and ideas and emotions and some long-established cues for when they are flying together and Hiccup needs to tell the other dragon that he is going to do something, like leap from his back and glide alongside him for a while.
Toothless huffs, laughing a dragon-laugh. He understands the joke buried in that, and the other joke behind that. You careful you?
Hiccup drums his paws on his partner's skull briefly and purrs, the sound more a feeling running through them both as a vibration against the noise of the storm.
Their laughter and joy and the wind from the sea and the rain drenching them as they anticipate flying again washes away the weight and pain of the last many days and nights they have been grounded here. Want – Hiccup cries out, dreaming of the day when they are properly free again. Want –!
The wind is good, coming at them just right and catching Toothless' wings perfectly when he spreads them properly, which feels completely and absolutely right as the cramps and imbalance stretch away. The dragon shrieks into the wind for joy, hearing his delight matched perfectly by his partner.
He rears to his back feet as if preparing to pounce on the wind like prey that they are hunting and know that they will catch if they do it just right.
Fly! Hiccup roars, and they do.
Tonight they have only to ride the storm wind and it will carry them just as Toothless carries Hiccup when they are flying, and that is flying and it is good. Tonight they are only really gliding and letting the wind bear them, subject to the wind and where it sends them until they can jump to another wind that the sky is full of, but it is glorious and perfect like the first breath of air after a deep dive, or the return to the warmth of a nest full of their kin when the ice is thick in the water and the air.
Dragon and dragon-boy scream with absolute and pure ecstasy into the storm, back in the air at last.
They are alive again.
The wing holds – it hurts but it holds – and they play together in the storm, letting it blow them inland and then diving from one gust to another until they find one that roars away up and back from the cliffs and lets them gain height. The wind blows them wildly and they let it, surrendering to the sky because it is infinitely better than the ground.
Hiccup yelps their ready-me-launch noise and they fly in parallel for a while, dragon chasing lighter dragon-boy and twining around him in midair. The sky is theirs to dance in together, and it is with relief that they rejoice in it. They are not trapped and they will not be trapped forever, so they will be free again from this island that stalks them with nightmares.
Up up up and they ride the winds, gaining altitude erratically but determinedly. It is too dark to see far with the night and the storm but they wish they could get high enough to see all the way home. One way lies safety, and their family, their flock, and one day soon they will set their tail to the sickbadwrongthing and fly home. They cannot see it from here, but they can try, until the storm becomes sneaky and shoves them back down. That the island beneath them is the crux of it all is something they do not think about right now, too caught up in the exhilaration of flight regained.
By then Hiccup is back on his dragon-love's back and they are flying together as one again. The night and the sky are all theirs.
Finally the whims of the winds blow them all the way out to sea, and Toothless chooses to land on one of the sea stacks that surround this island for some distance, alighting with a crash that shakes their bones more because he cannot be bothered to slow down properly and be careful than because he cannot land any better. He wants to feel the landing and know that he has been in the air to land from.
On his shoulders, Hiccup screams a sound of pure joy as their brief flight ends. Toothless joins him and they roar together.
Toothless drops to his belly on the new island – a different ground beneath their feet, the relief of it! – and rests his jaw on the ground, breathing in the storm air and the smell of the sea and the scent of his Hiccup-beloved as the dragon-boy unfastens the binding straps easily with clever paws and slips down to join him on the ground, rubbing his cheek along the bigger dragon's and purring so hard he is shaking with it.
The dragon-boy whimpers with the strength of the relief that washes through him. The wing has borne the stress of the flight, although they are not yet ready to go very far. Soon they will be free again, and strong enough to fly home.
His nightmares have been Vikings and old and horrible memories resurrected and the sound of wing bones snapping and the feeling of falling from the sky, but they have also been of traps and of never flying again, being imprisoned in a single piece of ground and never returning to the sky where he belongs, where they belong together, that he and Toothless who are a single person will be exiled to the ground.
Now they have hope. With it and each other they can hold back everything else that dares to challenge them.
He sings all this to Toothless, who croons and nuzzles him, licking a swipe up his face and through his fur that washes away instantly in the rain. The bigger dragon's ribs heave with great gasps for breath from flying and sheer excitement.
Then Toothless sits up with his dragon-boy-half beside him and roars out into the storm, a single wordless and complex and fearless sound full of meaning: it challenges everything that is out there, pfikingr and sickbadwrongthing alike.
They do not scare the ones who are Tt-(click)-th-phuh-ss together, who are together and fierce and beautiful and unafraid, and if the things that threaten come for the two-who-are-one then it is those things who should fear.
When they are together the skies are theirs and they are as bold and as brave as the king of dragons himself.
Now they have hope and they will be brave enough to fight rather than hide from now on. Soon they will be free and unafraid.
Toothless roars his declaration of war to the storm and the skies and all the seas, fueled by the love of the dragon-boy who has absolute faith in him.
Then the nightmares will belong to those who send them as the pair screams defiance and a threat of their own to the skies and all that is in them.
They will be free and fearless again.
Later, once the storm abates a little, they make their way back to their cave-nest, swimming most of the way because Toothless' wing is aching from the exertion, arriving back just before the sun comes up behind fog and clouds and climbing tiredly to the nest, dragon-boy draped sleepily over his companion's shoulders. He wakes up enough to get down before the black dragon shakes himself roughly, shedding seawater and rainwater and splattering it around the cave, unintentionally washing off some of the chalk drawings that litter the rock walls. Hiccup is undisturbed by this – it happens all the time at home, and he is too tired to protest, stretching and yawning and curling up in their nest with a paw over his eyes.
He is asleep almost before Toothless steps over him delicately and joins him, although he shifts in his sleep to get closer to the rumbling purr that is as much a part of him as his own heartbeat and the heart-fire warmth that is as essential to him as breath.
The next day Hiccup sprawls out on a sunny rock and sleeps through most of it, relaxed and pleased and comfortable on his back with his paws over his head and the sun on his face and his throat and chest full of purring, until Uh strrrTT shows up. He has come to expect and somewhat accept her presence, and through practice has even learned to say her name a little more closely to the tangled sounds she makes for it.
Still, when she arrives he shifts on the rock, rolling over so as not to expose vulnerable stomach and throat to her. She has not tried to attack him yet, but she is a pfikingr, a dragon-killer, and he does not trust her. But she has fed him and, more recently, Toothless as well, bringing fish from further away than those that swim past the edges of this island, and she draws some, and she tries to talk to him even though she does it very badly, and she chases away loud and armed pfikingr who are either enemies or strange-dangerous, and she is not St-t-t-t-t-t-kk.
She brought the St-t-t-t-t-t-kk here, but he is an Alpha and she belongs to him so she must obey. Hiccup has removed any responsibility for that from her. She did not shout at him and ask him angry questions that hurt so so so badly.
So she can stay.
He watches her through half-closed eyes, head resting on folded paws, as she looks around for him. She is happy to see him when she does see him. She is worried about something. She is tired. It is beyond him how she can be talking so loud and still insist on shouting sounds at him. Doesn't she know how much she says all the time anyway?
He complains pfikingr stupid to Toothless, who is too far away to hear him. The black dragon has waded out into the sea water and has spread out his sore wing into it to go cold and numb after last night's flight.
Hiccup has accepted her presence, but he is not particularly attached to her. She is better than the alternative, and not as bad as she could be, but he would leave her behind without a second glance, and fully intends to, as soon as possible. When they leave he will miss the silly small-cousins who like to talk to him and play with each other all around him and are fun to watch much more than he will ever again think about a human.
He has hated and been afraid of humans too deeply and for too long for him to see her as anyone he might empathize with. He will tolerate her, and play her strange games with her when he is bored, but he does not sympathize with her the way he does not know she sympathizes with him. They are too irreconcilably different.
She calls his name – still wrong, maybe she can pronounce his name no better than he can pronounce hers – and waves a greeting wave. She does not try to signal come here you to him because he refuses to go anywhere near her when she does, and whenever she tries he ignores her until she goes away. He doesn't come when called by pfikingr. His nest-mates, yes. The king of dragons, yes. Toothless, always.
Uh strrrTT, no.
She has, eventually, learned this.
He watches as she looks up and around watching for small-cousins, who do not like her. She must overlook the one sleeping on a tree branch behind her, because she does not grimace and move away, but instead puts the food she has brought on the beach wrapped in rough folding kkkn-ffsss which is many many small strings all together and sits down on her rock waiting for him.
Hiccup does not want to play the game of sounds today. He wants to go back to sleep and dream of flying and being at home in the nest with his kin. They have been away so long now. Cloudjumper will be worried and angry and will scold them, and there will be eggs he has not talked to, and there will be ships traveling through that he does not know about. There will be games better than the game of sounds to play and good hunting to do and more drawings to make. He misses their own home-nest that is just right for both halves of him together where they are comfortable and warm in the safe smells and sounds of the nest. When they are in their own nest with their family there will not be nightmares.
Homesick, Hiccup thrums, placing his jaw against the rock and humming into it to make a different noise, lonely flying no returning lonely empty.
Lonely is not the best way to translate the half-hummed, half-cried noise – Hiccup is never lonely, he is never alone – but it is the sound of a dragon without a flock. He is with Toothless, and this much at least is right with his world, but they are alone together, and for a little while longer until it no longer hurts them to fly he can only dream.
But he is not so comfortable around Uh strrrTT that he can sleep while she is there, and he knows from experience that she will go away faster if she has talked at him.
So he stretches, squirms against the rock briefly to itch itch itch away sand, and leaps down to the shore. Before he goes anywhere, he calls out to Toothless-heart-of-mine, joyfully celebrating flying flying we flying us flying good happy happy happy us!
Toothless raises his head and calls back good yes us good happy flying. The seagull he is stalking flies away at the noise, but maybe there will be other seagulls stupid enough to land on the water near a dragon. Seagulls are stupid, and there are many of them, so many of them are very stupid and can be eaten, he reasons subconsciously.
That is good, and Toothless is well, and there are no other threats in sight, so he advances on the food with slightly less caution than before. It has not been a trap before, and it has not made him sick before, but it may do so. Hiccup watches Uh strrrTT as he approaches the food. She does not look excited or tense or hunting in the ways he has learned that she does, and she talks so loudly when she does not know she is doing it that she would if the food was a trap.
So it is safe for him to eat it, and he does, taking the kkkn-ffsss as well because it is made of strings and he likes to play with strings. He rubs the feeling of it across his paws and picks it apart for them as he eats, tying knots he doesn't remember learning how to tie.
As he does, he keeps a wary eye on Uh strrrTT, who has gotten to her feet and has come a little closer to him. He watches her suspiciously, but makes no attempt to move just yet.
She continues to approach, stopping and sitting down with her legs awkwardly folded every few slow steps, and he lets her, because she has no sharp thing and he knows that he is a dragon stronger and faster than she is and his claws are sharp. For many days now she has been doing this, and always she has stopped and moved away before she is in range for him to attack her.
Today she does not. She reaches out a paw towards him and asks a question he does not completely understand, but he can guess: she is asking a question, she is trying to touch him, she has not done so yet and her paw is still where it is. He guesses that she wants to know if she can touch him.
Hiccup has warned her before when she tried to touch Toothless. She is the enemy, a killer of dragons, and touching them is not good. She is not one of his flock, she is not even one of his own kind: she may not get that close. Before when he threatened to kill her if she tried it again he had meant it. But last night there was flying and he is very, very happy today.
So rather than killing her, magnanimous after knowing they will return to the sky soon, he only bares his teeth and growls at her, staring at the offensive paw, until she puts it down and backs away, going scared-pale and moving in a worried way.
Hiccup decides he is not so hungry for pfikingr food after all, and puts down the remains and backs away as well, watching her all the time as he crouches down and flattens some of the muddy sand to make a place to draw.
She makes sad noises and moves as if she was apologizing to him. Then she gets slightly upset but not enough to shout at him. He suspects she is scolding him, but he cannot imagine for what – or what gives her any authority to scold him. Cloudjumper may do so, which is common and sort of good because Cloudjumper tries to protect them, but it usually has only slightly more effect than her scolding does. Dragon-kin who are guarding eggs may do so because eggs must be protected. The king may do so, which is like being crushed to the ground whimpering in fear and shame and being kept there by the king's great claws.
Being scolded by a pfikingr she is like being scolded by seagulls, and makes about as much sense. There are lots of 'no' sounds in there, but he does not know whether she does not want him to do something or if she is not going to do something or both.
Eventually she realizes he is ignoring her, and she gives up and comes to draw in the sand with him, although this time she keeps her distance. They have played this game before over the many days since the St-t-t-t-t-t-kk hurt him with bad questions and made him remember a very old and strong reason why he hates and fears pfikingr so much.
Hiccup is drawing his joy at flying last night in the storm and he scuffs out his thoughts before she can see them. He instinctively tries to keep secrets from her, because her movements sometimes say very loudly that she is hunting him and he does not like to be hunted. She has never seen the two-who-are-one fly, either together or gliding separately; when he talks to Toothless he does not tell her what they are saying on the rare occasions when he knows how to say it in a way that she would understand. He will not tell her that Toothless' wing is healing and they will leave soon.
He will not leave tracks for her to follow and she will miss her pounce when they fly away soon now. Hiccup does not think to question why she is hunting him because he knows deep in the heart of himself: she is a Viking, he is a dragon, pfikingr hurt and hunt and trap and kill dragons. She is stalking very slowly but she talks too loudly and he can see her hunting. When she springs they will not be there to catch.
Today she has brought him a piece of paper, which he looks at with interest although he cannot see what is on it – the mere fact of it being paper is still enough to get his attention even though he has seen more paper on this island than in his whole life before. She holds it out to him as if offering, but he will not take it from her directly, that would mean getting too close for comfort.
He waits until she remembers this, and she leans forward, puts it down, and backs away. Only then does he retrieve it and bring it back to his place on the ground to look at.
It is another picture of Cloudjumper, but not as good even as the one before that he had made better. Still, he hums with pleasure and happily says the dragon's name as (click)-shhh-prrr.
Uh strrrTT tries to say the name and cannot even begin. She grimaces in frustration.
"Herrr?" Hiccup asks her hopefully. Why do they have so many pictures of Cloudjumper if he is not here?
She shakes her head in the way that means no.
The dragon-boy is sad, hopes dashed again. He croons regret lonely no family flock Cloudjumper here.
Next she points at the paper and asks a word that he cannot pronounce properly but he knows that some things are "bad" and those are things they do not like and some things are the other noise and those are things they do, although they do not always agree on which various things are.
"Issss," he says instead, agreeing and purring in case she does not understand. Cloudjumper is very good. He tries to explain, drawing on old memories that he did not know he had until they had been used to hurt him. Cloudjumper, he says the proper way that he says it, and then digs through the scraps of pfikingr words he knows to come up with, "mama hrrt."
This is a word he learned many days ago. They had been talking about Toothless, and she had used a word in between their names that he did not know and was full of sounds he could not pronounce. She had then looked sad and amazed and confused all at once. It had clearly been an important word.
Hiccup had whistled his questioning noise and she had said it again, then thought, and come up with a different sound. "Hrrt?" he had asked, not understanding but at least somewhat able to say it.
She had put her paw on her chest and repeated the sound, flapping the paw up and down in the sound of – a heartbeat, he had figured out, and he had chirped with amusement at understanding.
"Hrrt," he'd repeated, satisfied with his translation of what she had said. "Tt-th-ss (click)-phuh hrrt. (click)-phuh Tt-th-ss hrrt. Issss."
Now she looks sad and amazed and confused again. She points to the picture of Cloudjumper, then puts her paws over her heart with the word he cannot pronounce – it has an uffff noise in it – and asks, "mama – Aka?"
He nods yes, and draws in the sand Cloudjumper with wings spread over himself and Toothless together, very small, to show her that because Cloudjumper had been their mother's mate he had protected them.
Uh strrrTT clenches her paws and says a new word.
Hiccup tries to repeat it, because that is how the game of sounds is played. "uh thrrr." He thinks he can hear an ffff noise in it as well, but he cannot get his mouth to do that at the same time as all the other sounds.
"Mama hrrt?" she tests.
The dragon-boy shows he has learned the new word by pointing at the picture of Cloudjumper and saying "uh thrrr."
But she is not happy. She goes very quiet and sad and a little scared, and then she mutters something that contains the sound St-t-t-t-t-t-kk. The dragon-boy hisses angrily at the familiar and unwelcome noise, and she ducks her shoulders and apologizes in her posture and voice.
Hiccup growls at her; this game is over. He looks away from her pointedly and goes back to drawing. After a while, she picks up a stick to do the same.
Before she can draw anything, though, the small-cousin asleep in the tree wakes up and sees Hiccup. Pleased, she darts over to him and hovers around his head telling him happily about all the fish that had been caught in the storm that her flock had fished out, that storm good fish storm us hungry fish hungry fish storm good!
The dragon-boy lifts his head and chirps back to her happily, but he can see that Uh strrrTT is a little afraid and mostly angry.
He makes a questioning noise at her. She's only a single small-cousin, why is she afraid and angry?
She shrugs her shoulders, a gesture he recognizes, and says a question back to him.
Hiccup searches through his few scraps of words she understands and comes up with "Drakkkn nuh bad. Uh strrrTT nuh –" but he doesn't know what she would call it and flinches while growling, like she's doing even if she doesn't know she's doing it because she can't talk properly even though she sort of tries when she knows she is talking to him, but only sometimes.
The small-cousin on his shoulders squawks in outrage to hear the noises from him, wailing in her confusion that bad noise bad noise strange-far-dragon-cousin bad noise.
He purrs at her, and she calms down, her mutterings to herself about strange-far-dragon-cousin confused confused bad strange becoming fine fine fine as he pets her.
The pfikingr she grimaces unhappily, trying to talk.
As she does so, Toothless returns to the shore, shaking himself dry and padding over to Hiccup to lean against his back as if trying to knock him over. Paying attention to Uh strrrTT is temporarily set aside so Hiccup can greet his dragon-half-beloved's return with croons of love and joy. The small-cousin takes off from his shoulder, protesting her displacement with angry you big you big me fight me fight angry angry shrieks.
The big black dragon lets her buzz around him for a while before knocking her out of the sky with his tail. Mine! he snarls at the little dragon picking herself up out of the algae-coated muck at the base of a rock. She puffs herself up and fearlessly threatens to blast him with her small fires.
They growl at each other. Hiccup laughs a dragon-laugh and vaults to his love's back, sprawling across the flying-with and pressing his cheek to the back of Toothless' neck. The scales are warm under his touch and he hums a soft sound – of course mine, he and Toothless are a single being.
From there, he looks back over at Uh strrrTT, who has been drawing while she thinks – which he understands completely and takes for granted, so ignores – and now has figured out what she is going to say. It is very important to her, he can see.
He looks at her curiously.
Encouraged by his attention, she says something slowly, and then stops to let him sort it out.
Something about dragons. Something about food, or maybe eating. Angry. Scared. Mostly angry. Dragons eating Viking food, and she doesn't like it.
He shrugs; dragons must hunt. She knows this. She brings him food. He cannot say this aloud, but he gestures it to her because she understands that better sometimes, pointing to her and saying her name, to himself and saying his, beckoning the way she asks him to give her things, and pretending to eat and saying "ffssh".
She raises a paw and points it at him, and he instinctively draws back just a little. Toothless growls, reassuring him with his protectiveness, and she lowers the paw.
Finally she gets to two sounds he does recognize, those for dragons and one he associates with her leaving but he can't quite pronounce. He hears it as: "Drakkkn kkko." From those and other sounds like those for no and bad, he figures out that she wants dragons not to be here, but it is also as if she expects him to do something – she is looking at him like she is waiting and anxious like the game of sounds where she says something and waits for him to repeat it or guess what she means.
Hiccup looks around, confused. There are many dragons on this shore, himself and Toothless and the sulking small-cousin, who is pretending that she never picked a fight with a much bigger Toothless. They were here first, and then she came. Why doesn't she go away? And if they are hungry, then they must hunt.
He shrugs again and says, "Drakkkn herrr," which he can do, and tries to say that dragons get hungry, but although he knows the word he has trouble saying it. He does not see why this is his problem.
This makes her angry. She does not say it with her noises, but she says it very loudly with her body. Her paws are clenched and her jaw is set, and she wants to growl but doesn't.
Hiccup stares back at her from his dragon-love's back, unthreatened and unimpressed. He and Toothless will go away when they can, and no amount of snarling will make them go any faster than they already want to.
Toothless is less tolerant, growling back, and she gets up, frustration and annoyance and giving-up in her walk, and goes away angry.
Sometime later, he thinks to look at what she had drawn in the sand while she thought about how to talk and while Toothless and the small-cousin had argued. He figures out that it is a picture of dragons and Vikings fighting, and growls at it, scuffing it out with his claws angrily.
Otherwise her visit does not bother him, and her departure even less so. She is a hunter and a killer of dragons, not a person the way he and his family are. She's pfikingr. She's human.
Except that night Toothless has nightmares, worse than ever before. He growls and snarls as he shudders in his sleep, inadvertently waking the dragon-boy pressed against his side. Hiccup rolls to all his paws, awakening in distress and fear to reflect his Toothless-beloved although he has not been dreaming the same dream.
"Tt-th-ss!" he cries aloud, anxious. "Tt-th-ss!" He whines and mewls and scratches his soft-claws down the black dragon's side to wake him from whatever horrors are chasing his love where Hiccup cannot follow him to protect him.
To his shock and horror the bigger dragon pulls away from him, lurching awkwardly to his paws and stumbling towards the mouth of the cave with his head down so that his nose almost brushes the ground. His eyes do not open and his steps are wrong and strange and for the first time Hiccup can smell the sickbadwrong stink that Toothless had complained of before, terrifying him as the reek of it chokes him. It smells of death and hunger and fear, of madness and emptiness and power, of rotted meat and the deepest and darkest sea caves where no dragon goes.
Hiccup snarls a fierce and dangerous sound worthy of any dragon faced with an enemy, and acts on instinct. If the sickbadwrong is in his Toothless-half then the Hiccup-half will defend them both.
He leaps at his dragon-love, digging soft-claws into the vulnerable spot under Toothless' jaw and snarling. Toothless is so much bigger than him and stronger too, but Hiccup will not let the sickbadwrongthing take his love from him.
They go together, or they do not go at all.
Toothless stumbles on, indifferent to the strike that should have interrupted his breath and made him cough to get it back. He has not even noticed, as if he is already dead. Dragons do not normally sleepwalk, living as they do so often on cliffs and over oceans, and Hiccup is terrified by this unexpected and unnatural occurrence. The dragon-boy crouches between the sleepwalking black dragon and the cave mouth, wailing a keening sound of horror and distress and grief and loneliness, of absolute despair and unconditional love.
When Toothless makes no direct attempt to get him out of the way, simply walking forward in that unnatural pace, Hiccup wraps his paws around his dragon-love's head and screams a cry of loss and love that echoes through the cave. Toothless could bite him in half like this, or burn him to ashes, but he doesn't care. He doesn't care.
And Toothless stops, and the wings that were spread to launch him into the air and fly him away from half himself drop, and his eyes wake up and open as his ear-flaps twitch towards the agonized sound.
Hiccup senses the change the moment it happens, the instant the sickbadwrongthing leaves his beloved other half, and his wail of pain turns to one of joy and relief as he trembles. He slumps to the ground as all the tension and fear goes out of him with the source, and then he bounces instantly back up to press against Toothless where he sits puzzled and afraid.
Wordlessly, the dragon wraps a paw around him and holds them together. Hiccup whines deep in his throat against black scales, desperately worried and demanding to know what has just happened.
Calling, Toothless says, in between licks at his dragon-boy's fur and face whenever he can reach them. He purrs reassuringly before it turns into a growl. Hungry calling hungry hungry frightened. The black dragon cowers slightly, hunching his shoulders and pinning his ear-flaps back to his head. It's a submissive pose, the look of a dragon being given an order he can't refuse.
Wrong bad wrong bad hate bad scared you mine mine mine mine mine! Hiccup shrieks into Toothless' scales.
Toothless purrs a counterpoint to calm him, agreeing absolutely, and then pulls back. When his dragon-boy looks at him in shock, he purrs again and then drops one shoulder, indicating get on.
Together, they leave the cave and look around them.
The black dragon's sensitive ears catch something that those of the dragon-boy cannot. He looks up, ear-flaps perking up and head turning back and forth to track the progress of many dragons flying overhead and past them, in towards the island and away. Angry fighting pfikingr dragons many fighting angry fighting hungry many scared hungry, he relays, listening.
Hiccup doesn't see what any of this has to do with them or the wrongness that had tried to take his heart from him. Dragons raid Vikings, and Vikings don't like it, but no one cares what pfikingr like. Raid dragons raid fine yes why scared bad bad threat?
Toothless shrugs, still listening. They stay there for a while longer, Hiccup nervously tangling his paws in the flying-with in case something is going to try to take Toothless away again.
Eventually, as the night wears on, their patience is partially rewarded.
Dragons stream by loud and low-flying overhead, weighed down by carrying red meat prey and with claws and jaws full of fish from far away like the pfikingr she has been bringing them from the human nest, all calling together. Some of their wingbeats sound wrong, as if they are tired or hurt. There are many of them, maybe a whole nest, and they are all shrieking. They do not sound like a flock going home from a successful raid.
They sound like they are going somewhere terrifying, but they cannot stop themselves. And they are going the way that Toothless thinks the bad thing he can sense can be found. Why would they do that? the black dragon wonders, fretting in low and worried croons and soft wails. Can they not feel it? But they are afraid! Why are they going towards the bad thing? It does not make sense.
Frightened all over again, he dashes back into the cave. When Hiccup slides from his shoulders he wraps his paws around the dragon-boy and curls up, hiding his other half in all of him, paws and wings and tail and head, in case the sickbadwrongthing tries to take his love from him.
Fear, Toothless dragon-whispers. Bad bad bad…
Hiccup reaches out from the tangle of black dragon to place a reassuring paw on his nose. He settles himself comfortably in the other dragon's embrace and purrs comfort and love. Guard, he says, we flying us home flying us together.
They must leave and they must leave soon.
To be continued.