Dimmadreki Chapter 12
A/N
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Two darker-than-dark shapes glided easily on the night wind, watching the ships below to make sure they went back the way they came. When they saw the dim shadow of Outcast Island in the distance, they knew where the ships had come from, and they also knew their battle was over for tonight. They'd won.
"Can I ask you something?" Dimmadreki asked as they lazily returned home. "When we first met, you were a terror on two wings – you were smacking me around, making demands, giving orders as if I belonged to you. But tonight, now that I do kind of belong to you, you didn't do any of that. You practically begged me not to attack; you made all kinds of emotional appeals. I don't miss being smacked around, but what caused the sudden change?"
"It's because I'm carrying life," Myrkrid replied softly. "That changes everything now. You aren't just a male who might make a father for my child; you are that father. I can still wallop you with my tail if you really need it, but I probably won't, because that won't make you want to stay and help raise our little one. It's not about what's best for me now. It's about what's best for that tiny dragon inside me. I will smack you around, or treat you as an equal, or humble myself in front of you, or run away from you and let all the other dragons think I'm a coward, if that's what I think is best for that new life." She paused. "That gives you a lot of power over me."
"That's not a power I'd ever want to use," he said reassuringly. "I never had power over anybody before, and I never wanted it, even for revenge against people who might have deserved it. Now I've found someone who is actually nice to me; why would I want to be unkind to you?"
She didn't answer for a while. At last, she said, "That kind of attitude is very rare among dragons."
"It's not so common among humans, either," he said sardonically.
When they landed, she fluttered her tail fins along his side, the way she'd done just before they'd gone to Berk to meet Fishlegs. This time, he closed his eyes and purred.
"Somebody has power over somebody else here," he whispered, "but I don't think it's me."
o
Fishlegs was making his way through the forest, trying to be quiet. He wasn't doing a very good job of it.
Some of Astrid's relatives from her mother's tribe had sailed to Berk for a family reunion. There was no way Astrid could wiggle out of that, not even to search for dragons that might not be there. He'd decided to use his day off to continue the search by himself, not because he expected to find anything, but mostly because he had nothing else to do. The other teens were still shunning him because they thought he was under disgrace.
I hear a waterfall, he thought, but I haven't seen one. That means there's someplace nearby where I haven't looked yet.
He found the stream that must be feeding that waterfall, and he could hear the water tumbling over a cliff somewhere nearby, but the dense trees and rocks kept him from just following the stream. He turned aside, found a narrow way through an assortment of moss-covered boulders... and stepped into another world.
It was a sunken grotto dominated by a clear lagoon. He might be the first person ever to set foot in this place. The waterfall was to his right, and it was making the only sounds he could hear. The grass was green and soft, the air was still and clear, and the two black dragons were standing side by side about sixty feet away, staring at him.
He froze. He had no way of knowing if either of these dragons was Hiccup. Even if one of them was his friend in dragon form, this wasn't a nice safe place like Berk; this was the dragons' own habitat, and they might want to defend it against intruders. He hadn't even brought a shield with him this time, just a lunch. What should his next move be? He waited for some kind of brilliant idea to flash into his head.
It was the dragons who made the next move. One of them made some kind of decision, and leaped at him with a roar. Even if he could have moved, he couldn't have gotten to safety in time, and he was paralyzed with terror. But the other dragon roared something at the first one, which dug in its claws and skidded to a halt less than a foot away from him. It glared at him with bared teeth, and sniffed him from head to toe.
"Uhhh... nice dragon, nice dragon," he stammered. Night Furies were not large dragons, but they were a heck of a lot bigger than he was, and a lot scarier. The two dragons had a quick conversation that sounded like they were planning to tear him apart. Then the second one took a few steps toward him, and wrote on the ground with its claw.
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
"Umm... that's a long story, and it's kind of hard to tell a story like that when there's an angry dragon who's about to eat me."
The dragons exchanged words again, but the angry one didn't back off.
I SMELL FISH. IF YOU SHARED
YOUR LUNCH WITH HER, SHE'D
TAKE IT AS A PEACE OFFERING
"Well... okay, if you say so." He opened his bag and pulled out the fish roll. The angry dragon quickly switched to a curious face and backed off a step. He broke the roll in half and held it out to her. Then he realized she was about to bite at it, so he tossed it to her to save his fingers, and SNAP! It was gone. She swallowed, then fixed her eyes on the other half of the fish roll. He glanced at it sadly and said, "Oh, well. Alive and hungry is better than not-alive," and tossed it to her. SNAP! She looked him up and down again, and backed away from him to stand next to Hiccup.
SHE'S A LITTLE JUMPY THESE
DAYS. EXPECTANT MOTHERS
CAN BE LIKE THAT, I'M TOLD
"Expectant... you mean there's going to be a cute little baby dragon? Can I see him when he's born? I mean hatched? I bet he's going to be the most...uhh... wait a minute! If she's going to be a mother, does that mean you...?"
The Hiccup-dragon almost looked embarrassed.
IT'S COMPLICATED, BUT YEAH.
WE ARE A COUPLE
Fishlegs sucked in a breath through his teeth. "You and her...? I mean, uhh... your dad's not going to like it when he finds out his only son married a Night Fury. Not that there's anything wrong with that."
WHAT DOES HE THINK OF HAVING
A NIGHT FURY FOR A SON?
"Well, he doesn't actually know about that yet. I mean, I told him, but he didn't believe me. That's kind of what I'm doing here."
YOU PROMISED US A LONG STORY
"Okay. This is so weird, standing here, talking to dragons! I don't think any Viking ever did this before! I mean, Gobber talks to the dragons in the training ring, he calls the Gronckle an overgrown sausage, but that's not quite the same thing as –"
THE STORY, PLEASE
"Oh. Sorry. Anyway, Astrid found the runes you wrote, and it got back to the chief, and they had this big meeting where they tried to figure out who wrote them. They didn't believe it was you because, you know, they thought it was impossible, and they couldn't prove it was me, but they all think so, and now I've been thrown out of dragon training and apprenticed as a baker, and everybody looks at me funny when I walk by, and I don't think I have much of a future in that town anymore.
"Astrid figured that, if we found you, we could ask you to come back to Berk and prove to your dad that I was telling the truth, and that would get my reputation back. So we've been trying to find you ever since, and today I got lucky, and here we are."
ME WALKING INTO A TOWN FULL OF
DRAGON-SLAYERS DOESN'T SOUND
LIKE A GOOD MOVE.
I KNOW MY LADY WILL BE AGAINST IT
"Your lady? Oh, her. Yeah, I guess that could be a problem. But you were always the smart one, even if your ideas never actually worked, and I figured maybe you could think of a way to clear my name without getting yourself in trouble."
SO IF I HELP YOU, YOU CAN GO BACK
TO DRAGON TRAINING AND RESUME
LEARNING HOW TO KILL ME?
"Ouch. Okay, I admit I really haven't thought this thing through. Honestly, the dragon training thing isn't that important. I was doing terrible at it anyway. I kind of like being a baker; the ovens never try to bite my hands off, I don't have to compete against anybody, and I get to eat my mistakes with my supper. I just want people to stop thinking I'm a liar; that's what matters to me. Hey, where are you going?"
The Hiccup-dragon walked right past him and stood next to a boulder. It rubbed its shoulder back and forth on the rock for a few seconds, then stepped away and gestured with its head for him to look. On the boulder's face, and on the ground next to it, were a dozen shiny black discs, about three-quarters of an inch across. Fishlegs picked them all up and looked at them in wonder.
"Night Fury scales! These will prove that I really met a Night Fury! Thank you, Hiccup!"
MY NAME IS DIMMADREKI,
REMEMBER?
"You're seriously changing your name, for real?" he asked dubiously. "Don't you think that's a bit melodramatic?"
NO. I'VE CHANGED, AND
MY NAME HAS CHANGED
"No argument on the 'I've changed' part," Fishlegs decided. "I should get home soon, but would it be okay if I came back here in a week?"
YOU NEVER WANTED TO
TALK TO ME WHEN I WAS
HICCUP THE USELESS
Fishlegs hung his head. "Yeah, I know. I was afraid to, because Snotlout would have given me the same treatment he gave you." Then he brightened. "But now, I'm the ultimate dragon geek, and you're the ultimate dragon! Snotlout will never know about us, and if he did, he'd think I'm lying again. This is my chance to learn things about dragons that nobody else knows! You can talk to me, and understand me, and answer all my questions, and..." His face fell again. "...and there isn't much for you in this deal, is there?"
MY MATE DOESN'T LIKE HUMANS.
IF YOU COME ALONE AND
UNARMED, MAYBE WE CAN ALL
WORK SOMETHING OUT.
MAYBE
"Okay," he answered, not wanting to get too hopeful. "Whatever else happens, my dragon training days are over. I won't even try to kill any more dragons. That's a promise, Hiccup."
WHO?
"Sorry. I meant Dimmadreki."
I'LL SEE YOU ANOTHER
DAY, THEN, FISHLEGS
"Thanks!" The burly young man scooted out the cove's entrance and headed back to the village.
"What was all that about?" Myrkrid demanded.
"He might be our first human ally," Dimmadreki replied.
"I don't trust him," she shot back. "Even if he did feed me fish."
"Will you at least let him try to earn your trust?" he asked.
"I'll think about it," she said after a moment. "I don't like it that one of them knows where our lair is."
"He won't say anything," Dimmadreki replied firmly. "For one thing, I know him; the chance to visit us and talk to us will mean a lot more to him than the chance to make trouble. For another thing, if the village thinks he's a liar, then they won't believe a thing he says anyway."
"Okay. That makes sense," she nodded. "Let's get back to sleep." She curled up on the ground, he wrapped himself around her, and they were soon blissfully asleep together.