Dimmadreki Chapter 2
A/N
A lot of reviews for chapter 1 have centered on one question that seems to be of vital importance to you: "Will Toothless be in the story?" He will play a small but important supporting role, much later in the story, and under a different name, but yes, he will be here. Okay, that's settled. Now, on with the story!
o
When the sun rose on Berk the next day, there was no sign of the chief's trouble-prone son. Stoick had no time to worry about him; he had to get the town back on its feet, figure out how much food was left, decide how to replace the lost food before winter came, find dwellings for the families who had lost their homes, visit the wounded, honor the dragon-slayers, and do all of the hundred other things a Viking chief has to do after the hated lizards have raided his village. Hiccup would show up sooner or later; he wasn't dead, or his body would have been found by now. Anything that didn't pertain to the town's survival was a low-priority task, and Hiccup had never done anything that might have aided the town's survival. He might have aided a few dragons' survival, but that was a separate issue. First things first.
Out in the woods, a long, black-on-black shape was stirring. Hiccup had slept poorly; everything about himself felt wrong, and lying on the ground instead of in a bed didn't help. No matter which way he rolled, his wings kept getting in the way, and as soon as he fell asleep, his tail twitched and hit something and woke him up again. His first act was to look at his hands and hope it was all a bad dream. No such luck.
He realized he was hungry. Where could he find food? With a nasty shock, he realized he didn't even know what "food" was anymore. What did dragons eat? He knew the dragons usually stole sheep and fish, so that might be a good starting point. Did Night Furies eat what other dragons ate? His teeth felt short and stubby, not long and wickedly pointed like the teeth of other dragons. They were still sharp, though, as he learned when he passed his tongue across them. The moment he pulled his tongue back in pain, he felt his teeth snap down into his gums! He tried to work the various muscles in his lower jaw, and eventually succeeded in putting his teeth back where they belonged. This was all very entertaining, but it wasn't filling his belly.
He had nowhere to go. He had no one to see. He had nothing to do. His only priority was to stay as far away from his own village as he could. No one would wander into the woods and find him by accident; everyone in town would be too busy rebuilding after the dragon raid. He had a few days, at least, in which he'd be safe. No, that wasn't true; the tree-fellers would soon be looking for timber to rebuild the burned houses and shops. At least they'd sing and talk and make noise as they entered the woods, so they wouldn't take him by surprise. He could avoid them.
But Astrid... Astrid liked to practice with her axe in the woods. Astrid wouldn't make a sound as she crept through the forest. If she saw him, she wouldn't hesitate to practice on a live target. Astrid could kill him before he knew he was under attack. He didn't dare relax. He went deeper into the forest, looking for places where there were no footpaths.
Oh, the gods hate me! he thought. Some people turn bald, or turn gray. No, not me! I managed to turn into a dragon! He pushed a tree branch aside with his foreleg, and snarled in pain when it snapped back and hit him in the face. His new voice also took some getting used to. He tried not to talk to himself; hearing those grunts and growls coming out of his mouth was as unsettling as the sight of his black, scaly, clawed paws.
Just ahead of him was something that looked like a low cliff. He peered over the edge cautiously. About ten feet below him was more forested terrain, much like where he'd already been, but at a lower level. Then the edge of the cliff gave way beneath him – he wasn't used to weighing so much – and he found himself down on that lower level. He wasn't hurt, but he probably couldn't go back the way he came. If he kept going down without knowing how to get back up, he'd soon find himself in a place where he couldn't get out.
Maybe it was time to see if those wings on his back were good for something better than snagging on low-hanging tree branches.
It took him some trial and error just to figure out which muscles he should use to make his wings move; it was a lot more complicated than he'd thought it would be. Once he finally figured that out, making them flap wasn't hard. But he wasn't rising off the ground, either. He could feel himself floating slightly with each down-flap, and then each up-flap pressed him harder onto the ground. He tried angling his wings slightly on the up-flaps, and the pressing-down effect faded. But he was nowhere close to flying. The accursed dragons made it look so easy! Choose your words carefully, Hiccup, he thought. You are an accursed dragon. Maybe more accursed than most.
He wandered aimlessly. He found a stream and took a drink, and began to learn how his new mouth and throat worked. He saw a small fish of some kind in a pool and tried to catch it, but he was far too slow and clumsy. He was getting hungrier, and there was nothing in sight that looked remotely appetizing.
As the sun was going down and he approached the end of his first day as a Night Fury, he decided that the only way he could eat would be to go where the food was – the Mead Hall. He knew where the leftover food got dumped; unappetizing as the thought was, it was better than starving to death. Of course, thanks to the dragons, there was no leftover food most of the time. He might be making a dangerous voyage into hostile territory for nothing. But he was running out of options.
The first challenge was getting back up that collapsed cliff. The ground was loose soil and gravel, and it crumbled under his weight. By taking a running start and flapping his wings, he was able to scramble up until he was back on solid ground. He wasn't completely sure where he was, but his superb night vision helped him find a footpath, and he knew that any footpath on this island had to lead back to the village eventually. He walked as quietly as he could, and waited on the outskirts of town until it was fully dark.
The next challenge was getting past the night watchman. His biggest fear was that his stomach would rumble and give him away, but that problem, at least, didn't plague him tonight. He knew the watchman's route by heart; he'd long since mastered the art of sneaking to the forge in the middle of the night without being noticed. He waited until the man walked past, less than a hundred feet away, his torch flickering in the night breeze. He counted to twenty, then followed him, confident that they wouldn't pass anywhere near each other until he stepped aside and crept to the back of the Mead Hall.
They had served chicken tonight. There wasn't much left but the bones, but after nosing around for a minute or two, he found a half-chicken that had barely been touched. That was when he realized he had no way of picking the meat off the bone any more. Reluctantly, he swallowed it whole. Less than a minute later, it came up again.
I guess I can cross chicken off my list, he thought. That doesn't leave much. He sadly made his way back to the relative safety of the forest, wondering how long he could live without food. He knew he'd never get near the sheep; they were supervised during the day and guarded at night. He didn't think he could make himself kill a live sheep anyway. That left fish. There wouldn't be any fish drying on the racks, not after last night's dragon raid. He'd already seen that he was too slow to catch them with his mouth, and he doubted his paws would work any better. No one had ever seen a dragon eat anything, so the entire process was a mystery to him. Either he'd have to figure it out on his own, or he'd starve to death.
He slept poorly again. The noises of nocturnal creatures and insects kept him awake, the ground was hard, and his wings kept getting in the way. He finally gave up on sleeping on his side and tried to lie right-side-up. That helped with the wings. His ear-flaps flicked involuntarily whenever something buzzed or whined too closed to his head. He was glad for those reflexes, and wished he had some other reflexes that would point him to the nearest food and help him catch it.
He wondered what his father was doing, and what Gobber was doing, and what Astrid was doing. Did anyone miss him at all? He'd seen and heard no signs of search parties. Of course, the town would be busy rebuilding, but wouldn't they at least try to find him? They could send a few of the teens, who wouldn't be very useful at putting up new houses, but would be effective enough at combing the island to find the chief's missing son, wouldn't they? Surely his father would send somebody, wouldn't he?
Then he realized he was wishing for the executioner's axe to fall on his neck. If the Vikings of Berk came looking for him, they'd eventually find him, and once they found him, they'd kill him. What should he hope for – that the town would show its concern about him by slaying him, or that the town would show its contempt for him by letting him live?
"I can't win," he said out loud. It sounded like a warbling grunt, but he knew what he meant.
"Who said that?" came a voice from nearby. He rose and looked all around in a panic. No matter who it was, it was bad news. Which way should he run to hide? Where could he hide? The voice didn't seem to come from any particular direction. Was it a male voice or a female voice?
He realized, with a shock that almost knocked him off his feet, that the voice had come from above him, and it was female... kind of. It was the voice of another dragon. He resumed looking for some kind of hiding place, then realized he was far too big to hide in any of the places that would have suited his needs as a human. Then he remembered that another dragon wouldn't attack him anyway, or at least he hoped not. He couldn't think of anything to do, so he did nothing but stand there.
With a heavy flutter of wings, a darker-than-dark shape settled gracefully to the ground about thirty feet in front of him. She was another Night Fury, much like him, only she was obviously a lot better at being a dragon than he was. "Well, well, what do we have here?" she said, and walked closer, eyeing him from head to tail as though he was a tasty meal of some kind. "I guess that Terrible Terror was right when she said there was a male Night Fury in this neighborhood! What's your name, handsome?"
Hiccup had the terrible sensation that all the troubles he'd been facing were just a warm-up for what he was facing now.