SUMMARY: On the way from work, Astrid and Tuffnut have an important discussion, but are quickly interrupted by rain. They race to a mysterious cabin in the woods.


CHAPTER 17

"We're closed."

Astrid froze when she saw that her next customer was actually Tuffnut, who looked more interested in the blooming display of petite flowers and sprouts that wreathed the facade of Phlegma's greenhouse. He was still dressed in an apron over a hard tunic striped with metal lacquer and soot, and he smelled like a fireplace.

"Ready to go?" he asked.

"Don't worry about it," Astrid murmured in a polite, trying voice, starting on her own way home.

"C'mon!" Tuffnut called, catching up to Astrid's pace. "Was it something I said?"

Astrid paused. To Tuffnut, her stance looked confused, almost offended, before she turned to face him. "You said I have no friends. I have...friends...!"

Tuffnut chuckled at her hesitation in an honest way, since he was nearly in the same situation ever since the Dragon Riders and his sister became more busy with their own lives. There were acquaintances he knew from other isles, but there was only so many times he felt like hanging out with them because he always ended up with broken bones, a hangover, or he'd finally come to in a haystack. The mindless delirium from their adventures would be enjoyable while it lasted, but his happiness would drain quickly until he was left with an emptiness he couldn't quite fill by himself.

Astrid looked reluctantly upset, Tuffnut noted, and he realized that she must have thought he was laughing at her, not with her. Then, his mind was changed when Astrid allowed herself to smile back. He could sense she understood why he had laughed.

"I'll take y'home." Tuffnut said. When Astrid followed along, he assumed they were both in normal territory again, a familiar place to both of them where he didn't have to apologize for hurting her feelings, and she could give him one punch on the shoulder to forgive anything he had said to twist her braies.

"It's just that," Astrid spoke up audibly after a while of trekking from the main square of the village. Tuffnut looked over to her, and he saw her skin was starting to dim to an ivory shade from the rainclouds that had clustered overhead and blanketed the sky in foreboding grey and violet tones. "When someone points that out, it...stings a little," Astrid chortled with a weak shrug and a weaker smirk.

'That' meaning they were the only two Dragon Riders that still saw each other everyday, Tuffnut reasoned mentally. He nodded, and Astrid nodded too. His heart fell slightly at a thought that she had just given him a cue to apologize. As the moment passed, Tuffnut accepted it was too late to say anything, but not without a feeling of sheepishness reddening his ears.

"Does it bother you, too?"

Tuffnut acknowledged Astrid's statement with a small tilt of his head. There was a lot he wanted to add in agreement, like how he hadn't spoken to Hiccup in near months, and how all of his memories on the Edge, even their final days of packing to leave for Berk, were blurring together as if they were wet ink. "S'just how it is," he replied.

Astrid grunted once, out of humor for the fact that nothing fazed Tuffnut, and also out of spite for the small truth in his answer.

She then remembered Tuffnut's hushed reply to Ruffnut when he had told her that when he returned to Berk, no one would need him. Just as she had thought, no one would need her either. Berk had been fine since she and the Dragon Riders had been away, and it no longer needed their protection. But, Tuffnut had been wrong. She needed him, simply because he was a friend. At that thought, Astrid turned to give him a peaceful smile.

Tuffnut felt Astrid's eyes on him and glanced her way, and then he quickly faced forward as her bright, blue eyes twinkled in his memory. He thought about fighting his own smile, but then he revealed it to her in return.

Think of it like fishing, Tuffnut remembered Gobber saying. You first gotta cast a line.

Before either of them realized it, they had slowed to a pause halfway through the village's forest with locked eyes and gentle, curious expressions.

Plip!

Astrid double blinked and screwed up her nose. A fat raindrop rolled down her chin.

Tuffnut looked up just as rainfall began to trickle faster onto their heads. In seconds, sheets of water began to drench them and sink their boots into the dirt as they raced through the forest to find a quick shelter. To Tuffnut's surprise, Astrid grabbed his wrist and led him towards a blurry cottage shadowed by windblown, dark-green pines.


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