SUMMARY: Ruffnut has a rare conversation with Gustav, a young Hooligan who looked up to the Dragon Riders and wants to join them.
CHAPTER 16
"It's me, ah-Gustav!" Gustav said to Ruffnut.
"Gustav?" Ruffnut said with surprise.
Gustav stood over her finally, and Ruffnut saw how much he had changed from twelve to fourteen. His hair had been shaved on one side, which allowed a weft of sweeping, dark-brown bangs to drape freely over the opposite side of his face, leaving one eye underneath a curtain of hair. His wrists had the same thick and worn leather wound around them which had both turned dark-green from age.
He wore a dark, hip-length tunic with a draping chest that showed muscles that had developed from dragon-flight training since he was in his pre-teens. His shirt's hems were connected by frayed lace, and above his heart was a laced baby-tooth from his Monstrous Nightmare dragon, Fanghook. At his hip was a weighted talisman of stone shaped in the face of a menacing fabled creature with a villainous, geometric smile.
Gustav's smirk on his lightly-freckled face copied the talisman on his belt from above, and the coiled ram horns on his helmet pointed upwards into the sun, casting a shadow onto Ruffnut's indifferent face.
Ruffnut shoulders slumped at a short laugh of greeting behind her that she wished was Hiccup's. "What are you even doing here?" She groaned.
"I just have a teensy tiny favor to ask-I think it's high time I was finally, officially initiated into your group."
"Initiated?"
"You know! Bring out the creepy hoods and flaming rocks that I'll have to walk across with my bare feet while carrying a goat! I'll do whatever it takes to become a Dragon Rider with you guys on Dragon's Edge!"
"None of us have been to Dragon's Edge for at least a year now. And, Gustav, we don't do that sort of thing-we don't even have an initiation." Ruffnut said with a frown. "And your version sounds totally lame! Ugh!" She added, looking curious, "Aren't you already a Dragon Rider? Astrid put you on an auxiliary team to protect Berk while we were away at Dragon's Edge for those few years." And so you could finally leave us alone, she thought.
"Hello? The auxiliary is a bunch of old people, 'sides me. Now, since there's been no attacks on Berk, everyone's just...retired." Gustav sighed as his face went slightly limp with dejection. "I never have. And I never will."
Ruffnut made space for Gustav to sit beside her. Gustav perched at Ruffnut's side and hung his grey-black, furry boarskin boots over the edge of the raised cliff overlooking the lake where the other underwater-basket-weaving apprentices were resting before their training resumed.
"Gustav, I know you probably don't get this yet, since your brain is smaller than Tuffnut's," Ruffnut began.
"Hey! What're you trying to say?!" Gustav defended.
"It's over. There is no more 'Dragon Riders'. We've grown up." Ruffnut surveyed Gustav's silent stance, and then lamented to the preteen, "It's time to let it go." When he was still quiet, Ruffnut huffed and explained, "a lot of time went by, and before we even knew it, all of the dragon raiders got the message. There's not a threat to us anymore."
"But what if there is?! For all you know, there could be some crazy, psycho, dragon-hunter out there who controls two pet dragons with their own venom and wears a dress."
Ruffnut replied, "You're being way too dramatic. Even for me."
"I'm just saying!" Gustav chuckled, snorting once. "You never know. There's no way you can just quit the Dragon Riders now. Weren't you the same group that made the whole village stop killing dragons in the first place?"
Ruffnut reflected some, and then spoke. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we don't love dragons. We still take care of our own dragons and ride them every now and then. I'd die for Barf! Well, it depends. He'd have to have a really, really good reason. Anyway, now, there's no reason for us to ride together anymore. Everyone in Dragon's Edge sort of...went their own way. Are y'smelling what I'm cooking? Hey! Gustav, where are you going?"
Gustav paused from his retreat and looked back slightly to Ruffnut, only exposing his profile. "I looked up to you guys. I told myself when I grew up, I'd be just like you. Or Hiccup. Or any of 'em. Some dream." Gustav then departed back to the village alone.
"Tsk," Ruffnut muttered when he was long gone. She moved to stand when her class regathered at the foot of the cliff she perched on to resume their practice. As Ruffnut trudged through ankle-length weeds to return to the lake below, she still felt guilty that in some way she had taken away Gustav's hope for the future, or worse, his innocence.
Words: 792
