SUMMARY: Hiccup, Astrid, and Tuffnut make a decision to return to Dragon's Edge with the Riders.


CHAPTER 18

Astrid and Tuffnut skipped under the rain to the front door of the tucked-away cottage. The rain sounded louder in their ears when they were at last still and peering inside of the dim-lit windows in hopes of glimpsing no one.

The door sounded as if it had been left unoiled for decades when Astrid nudged it first. It closed sharply, and then she and Tuffnut were left alone.

"It reeks in here, like an armor ship full of old metal," Astrid whined in the dark. Her arms wiggled in front of her to search for a wall.

Tuffnut felt around for flints at his feet, which were usual tools near the door to any cottage he knew of. His hand finally formed around a couple of rugged stones, and he used it to light a torch near the doorway. He quickly unhooked the torch and found many candles to bathe the room in light.

Suddenly, Astrid's nose bumped into his chest. She made a small noise of shock with Tuffnut. Astrid's cheeks turned color in the flickering flames Tuffnut upheld near her face and her eyes blazed like sapphires. Astrid glanced once at Tuffnut's lips, which were so close she could see they were still beaded with miniature raindrops.

"Gods, Astrid," Tuffnut's voice said in a volume that was gloriously deeper than Astrid thought he could muster. "get outta my way."

Astrid's eyes pinned instantly. She gave him a sharp shove to his chest. "You bumped into me!"

Tuffnut at last let loose his snigger and whapped Astrid's shoulder heartily when he admitted he was only pulling her leg.

Astrid followed Tuffnut into the dark of the cottage and felt her racing heart begin to calm.

Candles around the cottage were all lit in order until the house was an auburn-red hue. On both ends of the small house, tables full of tools and calligraphy styluses bordered the walls. The walls themselves were cluttered with drawings and maps pieced together by indivudual parchments of precise landmarkings. More metal contraptions littered the sides of the cottage's floor, evenly distributed in sizeable piles wherever corners laid. There were a couple of saddles slouched against one another on one side of the cottage.

In the middle of the house was an unusually large rug with black, charred rings, and two old chairs-one with a bear's hide cloak with two glinting medallions. In another room, Astrid and Tufffnut found a hearth for cooking that a bubbling pot stewed over, and a jagged wooden stick on the floorboards, still shiny with a mysterious slobber.

"I got one question. Who cooks in the dark?" Tuffnut said.

"Whoever it is, he's not here." Astrid pulled a chair near the hearth. "Let's just warm up, and then keep walking home. The rain will be over soon." She whispered after Tuffnut sat by in his own chair, "we shouldn't be here."

"I was just following you," Tuffnut said.

"There was nowhere else to go," Astrid said quickly. She squirmed in her seat and felt slightly more comfortable. "Shut up and get dry."

They both outstretched their hands towards the fire. The flapping and crackling of the flames filled in the gaps of their small-talk.

"That dinner smells so good."

"Don't you dare," Astrid warned Tuffnut before he got any ideas about stealing food that wasn't theirs. Yet, the fumes were savory and made her stomach growl.

"The rain is not gonna stop anytime soon." Tuffnut said, lowering his arms and his helmet.

"So...?" Astrid said with invitation. "How was your day?"

"Bad." Tuffnut shrugged. He looked her way and saw she was looking contently into the flames and waiting for him to complain about Gobber. Until now, Tuffnut thought.

The front door squeaked open and Astrid and Tuffnut jumped in their seats. They were too shocked to flee, but they could sense the owner's perplexion at their presence when his boots plonked to their location near the hearth.

"What in Thor's name?"

"Hiccup?!" Astrid said.

"Hiccup?" Tuffnut echoed. "What are you doing in the middle of nowhere in an abandoned, creepy house?! I didn't think you were that type!"

"This is my house! Er, technically."

Tuffnut and Astrid observed Hiccup in plain clothing as he pried off his boots and stood near the hearth to dry. He took a moment to lift the boiling stove pot with a ladle, and grinned at the incense of steamed onion and roots. "I call this place my other extra toolshed, since I keep running out of space to keep all this stuff. It's not...much, but it's mine, and it came with an outhouse. I come here ta y'know, tinker with stuff..."

Astrid remembered the stockpiles of metal gadgets all over the floor in the front room and understood that it was the 'stuff' Hiccup referred to.

" Usually it's just Toothless's tail, which he decided to break...again."

Hiccup hoisted up a broken, tail- wing-shaped specimen in his reach. It flapped uselessly like a tongue of snapped wire and chaffed, painted leather. He set it down, humored by his friends' amused expressions, and continued. Talking to them after nearly a year didn't appear so hard after all. At that moment he was forced to confront his fear of seeing them again and hoping they were forgiving of his outrageous schedule as their chief.

"Sometimes, I work on other things I sort of...put together. Like this really awesome new weapon I think that works even better than my flamesword. I'll show you after we eat. Uh...you guys hungry?"

Astrid nodded along with Tuffnut's outburst of "of course I am!"

Astrid blew on her spoon of stew and mentioned to Hiccup: "You've been keeping really busy."

Tuffnut watched Astrid lean her weight towards Hiccup at the cottage's small mealtable and set a concerned gaze over Hiccup's shoulder. Hiccup seemed to soften at Astrid's closeness, like a brother would to a sister when she would tell him a truth he couldn't evade. Tuffnut tensed his jaw as he looked away from the pair.

Hiccup's eyes dimmed as he pivoted in his chair to face Astrid. "I'm sorry I've... appeared...to have been avoiding you. It's this whole chiefing thing. It's not me." Hiccup shared his recent discreet action of appointing a second cousin for the throne, which came as a complete shock to Astrid. Hiccup explained that his father always wanted for him to take his responsiblities, but only later in his life did his father realize that he was more like his mother-a free spirit with a soul kinship to dragons, which he wished to always protect from the hands of evil. "I'm going back to Dragon's Edge."

Tuffnut perked steadily across from him and then looked to Astrid.

"The more I spend away from Berk," Hiccup sighed, "the more I realize... I'd rather be somewhere else! Anywhere else."

"Me too," Astrid smiled. "Right, Tuff?"

Tuffnut returned a soundless chuckle and bent his chin once when Hiccup faced him, too, looking relieved at their agreement.

"What about you guys? If I went back..." Hiccup finished feebly, "would you want to come with me?"

There was an electric anticipation in the air that caused each of them to grin.

"Yes."

"We're in." Tuffnut said. "I don't know about Ruffnut and Fish and Snotlout."

"I met 'em yesterday." Hiccup smiled demurely. "They've told me the same thing. Ruffnut said...she would come with me on 'two conditions'." Hiccup nearly winced at his own words. "She wants to finish her training, and...Gustav has to become a Dragonrider, too."

Astrid groaned and helped herself to more stew.

"Well, it's not like we couldn't use one more rider. Who knows what we'll be up against?"

"True," Tuffnut said. He and Astrid accepted the unspoken challenge silently.

In the early morning, Ruffnut and Tuffnut left for the front docks of Berk while their father slept off his ale from his late night at the tavern. They balanced sacks of their belongings gingerly down the long flight of steps, and then paused. Their father startled them at the landing of the stairs that descended from their room, looking crossly at them with hooded, glassy eyes and a firm lip, and barring their exit with both of his arms on the worn, wooden guardrails.

"What is all this talk about leaving 'ere 'when he falls asleep?!'"

Ruffnut kept her voice calm along with Tuffnut to not show submission as their father chortled triumphantly. "We're leaving." She said. "We're Dragonriders, not fieldhands."

"Ye're not going anywhere but to the shed to hitch a pike and mind that garden!" His next words came out in a pitiful mumble. "I don't have nobody else to do it. Yer me own flesh and blood. Thought I could depend on ye. I put the roof o'er yer heads, there's always plenty to eat. Ye and yer sister have a good bed, and there's even room for all your ugly knick-knacks that ye keep bringing home from e'ery tradepost you sneak off to!"

Tuffnut watched his father tremble indignantly at him.

"Oh, I know. I knew for years. And I know about that Hofferson lass you bedded last night right under me nose!"

"We're leaving," Tuffnut repeated coolly, with an edge of repugnance.

Mister Thorston turned to his usually more responsible daughter. "Where are you going, girl?!"

"With him," Ruffnut said to her boots.

After a tense moment, Tuffnut shoved past his father and immediately felt a fistful of his tunic being wringed in his father's grasp. Tuffnut's boots struggled to stay on the floor when he was slammed backwards into the hard wall and felt air burst from his lungs.

Ruffnut shreiked and struggled to push them apart, begging her father not to hurt him. Mister Thorston forced her a ways down the steps, enough to make space for her to leave him to his unfinished business with his son. Ruffnut scrambled up to her brother's rescue, forsaking her satchel, but froze when she saw Tuffnut currently taking advantage of his sudden upper hand in the scuffle.

Tuffnut kneed his father's middle twice, not too savagely, but with enough firmness to cause his father to snort and loose his grip.

"Gah!" Mister Thorston clutched his throbbing stomach in reflex, but then starting immediately after his son. "You hog!"

In hurried puffs, Tuffnut stumbled down his stairs and raced behind Ruffnut out of his home, urging her to keep moving and not stop until they were out of the farm.

"Chicken!" Tuffnut yelled, in hopes she would hear him and follow. She did, thank Thor, and flapped into his arms. Tuffnut cooed at her for a stolen moment. She was heavy and pregnant, but then he was running too fast to care.

Mister Thorston yelled behind his children, aiming his next words at Ruffnut. "Go on, leave! Run away! Yer just like your mother! I pray ye end up like her!"

"He's drunk," Tuffnut panted when Ruffnut slowed suddenly. He grasped her arm to continue and saw she was fuming red.

Ruffnut turned once to Mister Thorston, heaving through her teeth and almost screaming words that would follow him to his grave, but then her face wrinkled in disbelief, and she staggered forward in tears and continued to run away. Tuffnut, in stunned compassion watched his sister go ahead of him, until Chicken cawed and spurred him after her.

Mister Thorston's voice shrank in Tuffnut's ears, yet Tuffnut managed to hear his father's final, bloodcurdling decree that he wouldn't amount to anything.

Astrid stopped squinting in the distance and looked exuberant along with Hiccup and Snotlout and Fishlegs when Tuffnut arrived at the shore beside Ruffnut to greet their Two-Headed Zippleback. Ruffnut was uncharacteristically despondent to Snotlout's comment about her sloppy pigtails and she fell into a steady pace of hitching Barf's saddle and guiding braces.

Just before take off to the Edge at Hiccup's jovial order, Astrid warily sidestepped the female Thorston twin and approached Tuffnut eagerly.

"You made it," Astrid greeted. The breath was flown from her at Tuffnut's tight hug.

She hesitantly fixed her arms around him, laughing nervously in response to Fishlegs's and Hiccup's bewildered stares aboard their dragons.

"You okay?" Astrid said to Tuffnut's ear.

"Just, don't ask me right now" was the reply she got in response.

"Are you... going to let go of me any time soon?" Tuffnut's body felt rigid for a moment, and Astrid felt like facepalming herself.

"Yeah," Tuffnut sighed lightly, withdrawing from her and then boarding his dragon with Ruffnut.

The Dragon Riders and Gustav sailed in flight towards Dragon's Edge with their former lives and jobs left with their already fading memories of Berk. Jokes and pointless ramblings ensued as they usually did years ago on the group's flights around islands and archipelagos.

Astrid leaned forward for Stormfly to speed ahead in the sky so she could catch up to Tuffnut.

"Hey."

Tuffnut spotted her with widened eyes. "Oh, hey."

"I'm sorry." Astrid apologized, knowing from his expression that he knew why. "What happened?"

Tuffnut trained his eyes ahead. "Something that shoulda happened a long time ago." Ruffnut stayed quiet beside him.

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Maybe later." Tuffnut replied. He felt a smile sprout on his face at her concern. He glanced to Astrid, and then placed a friendly hand on her shoulder just before Belch glided forward swiftly with Barf.

Astrid looked at the waves glimmering below her in the sunrise. The sea raced by her boots as fast as her heart was flying at the brief contact from Tuffnut's hardened yet gentle palm on her skin.

"Astrid!" Hiccup shouted with Snotlout, the Twins, and Fishlegs.

Astrid gasped and immediately yelled for Stormfly to dive low under a monstrous, jagged, natural buoy of rock that was zooming between her eyes. Stormfly resurfaced in altitude to the sound of Snotlout's jeer and the sight of Hiccup's concerned glower.

"Are you alright?! That isn't like you!" Hiccup called at her immediate left. Even Toothless held a crooked brow.

"I'm fine, Hiccup. How long are we now?"

"Dragon's Edge is a few knots right after that searock you almost impaled yourself with," he chuckled uneasily. "We'll be there in no time."


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