A/n: A continuation of the parrot thing a few chapters back. Still TNT's idea.
"So, who's this?" Johan wondered aloud. At Hiccup's request, he had taken his parrot back. Now, what had been affectionately dubbed 'the infernal creature' by the residents of Berk was no longer allowed out of Johan's sight.
"Gruff," Valka said, introducing the dragon.
"It's blind?" he said curiously, noticing the clouded eyes. "How does it fly?"
The question wasn't intended to be an offence, but Gruff took it as one, turning red out of anger. "So, is he a bit useless when it comes to flying and stuff?" he continued, digging himself even deeper into his accidental hole.
"Useless! Useless!" the parrot chirped helpfully. It was only then that Johan realised his mistake.
"Um... Sorry about that," he told the dragon, not sure whether to be sheepish or embarrassed to be talking to a dragon like that. Though the Berkians had started training dragons five years ago, he hadn't spent enough time on the island to get used to their constant presence. "He doesn't know what he's saying..."
Gruff didn't respond, only huffed and turned away pointedly. Valka looked at the apologetic trader disapprovingly, then moved onto a different dragon after whispering a few words to Gruff in a language Johan didn't recognise. She motioned for him to follow, and he complied, muttering another weak apology to the blind dragon as he moved along.
"This is Cloudjumper."
"Oh. Okay. Uhh... what's wrong with this one?"
"Nothing!" Valka snapped. "Not every dragon has a disability!" she explained irritably, still not forgiving Johan for his mistake with Gruff. The two had been wandering around for a while now, and they'd seen a few of the dragons that Valka had rescued. To Johan's credit, it had appeared that each one had some sort of disability, each brought about by one of Drago's traps, so the assumption wasn't at all outlandish.
"Useless! Useless!" the parrot repeated, as though it knew exactly what Valka was so annoyed about. Johan chuckled nervously as Valka sighed. Cloudjumper tilted his head in confusion, and Valka spoke again in that strange language that Johan couldn't translate.
"What language is that?" he asked in a tactful change of the subject, "I don't even recognise it."
"Really?" Valka's irritation turned to amused surprise, "You should do. Cloudjumper," she said, quickly tuning to her dragon, who nodded, and made a collection of growls and roars.
"Oh... Oh!" Johan said, realising what language it was. He really should have recognised it, then, for all the times he'd encountered dragons on his travels. "You can speak dragon?"
"Dragonese," Valka corrected. "Yes. Hiccup taught me." she revealed, pride for her son evident in her words.
"Really?" Johan was impressed. He knew Hiccup had a way with the dragons that no other Berk resident had managed to achieve, but to work out their language? It was truly an impressive feat, especially since he couldn't have started working on it that long ago; he hadn't even mentioned anything of the sort the last time Johan came to Berk, and that was only a few months ago.
Then again, a lot could happen in a month, especially on Berk.
"So, who else is there?" Johan asked. He hadn't seen that many of Berk's new residents so far, and his curiosity was officially peaked. There didn't seem to be any more dragons hanging around the village than usual, though, and he'd only seen two so far in the forest. The rest had been in a small clearing near some cliffs, but that didn't seem big enough for the hundreds of dragons that Hiccup had described. Perhaps they had another home...
"Drop that parrot off at your boat, and we can go see the scuttleclaws." Valka said, mouth twitching into a barely concealed mischievous smile.