Hello, everyone!
There will only be one chapter this weekend. I will probably update with one more in two weeks!
I want to thank CallMeUrmo, Epclaymore, JustAnotherRandomPoster, Lightbrightfury, TheFuriousNightFury, NomexGlove, toothlessgolfer, VigoGrimborne, Athnay, elRancho, and all anonymous guests for your wonderful, thoughtful reviews! I am very sorry I haven't been able to reply to them, but I want you all to know that I read every single one, and get so excited when I get a notification about a review!
Additionally, I'd like to thank my betas, Crysist, kwizjunior, ReclusiveShadows, Antisept, and Dragon-Crusader for all of your help! Many of them have fics of their own; I highly recommend you check them out!
That's all for now. I hope you all have a great day!
Chapter 3
Hiccup
Haugaeldr, being the most perceptive dragon I had ever met, saw us first.
"Hiccup! Toothless!"
I perked up on Toothless' back, looking off towards the forested part of Berk. For a moment, I saw nothing, squinting against the bright midday sun.
There was a flicker of movement, and Haugaeldr emerged from the sunlight like a mirage. His golden-orange scales gleamed in the sunlight, giving his nameー"burial mound fire"ーsome merit. He had grown a lot since we'd first found him, although he was still shorter than Toothless. His body was lithe, graceful, and serpentine. Winding horns sprouted from just behind long, deer-like ears, and nubs behind his nostrils and under his chin suggested that tendrils would grow as he aged. He undulated in the air as he flew towards us.
"You're back!" he cheered, spinning in joyful circles around us. "It's been two weeks, one day, and a few hours!"
"You counted the hours?" Toothless asked, bemused, as he pulled into a hover.
I grinned. Of course he did. He was Haugaeldr. "What are you doing out here?"
"Scouting mission!" he announced, puffing his chest up and lifting his chin. "I thought I would look out here, since there's much less dragons and humans around to keep watch. Then I thought I would draw what I saw. Can I borrow your sandbox to practice?"
I nodded, making a mental note to just make one for him already. He practically owned it at this point, he asked for it so much. I was honestly surprised he wasn't carrying it with him.
"Excellent!" Haugaeldr cried. "Let's be off, then!"
With that, he was gone, a flurry of reflected sunlight and spinning excitement.
"Well, at least he isn't moping anymore," I said to Toothless, who huffed in agreement.
"He'll be happier now that Stormfly and Hookfang are back," he said. He turned his wings into the wind to follow Haugaeldr, who wasn't waiting for us in his haste. The forest sped by below. A light fog shrouded it. The rich smells of earth and pine rose in the air.
"I still think there's no harm in taking us with him on our trips," I said.
Toothless rolled his eyes. "Yes, so he can stick his nose where it doesn't belong so much, he needs a babysitter?"
I grimaced. Haugaeldr had a knack for focusing on things he wasn't supposed to.
Like magic.
Toothless didn't need to look at me to understand my sigh. He hummed with an understanding overtone. We reached the outer edge of Berk and he dipped a wing to take us deeper into the village. The colorful, dragon-shaped buildings below looked almost like the inside of a nest.
"I just don't like it," I said. "It's not fair. I remember...when...well, when we were being controlled all those years ago...having restrictions only made me want what was forbidden more."
Toothless had stiffened up at the mention of the Queen, no matter how indirect. "We are not like her," he spat. A few of our nestmates who were close enough to hear jolted at his sharp tone, zipping away hurriedly or snapping their heads up in surprise.
I purred soothingly until I felt the tense muscles of his back relax. "We aren't. But I really think we're going at this wrong. We can't send him on scouting missions or hope he feels better when his friends come home forever."
Toothless sighed. "I know," he eventually said, albeit grudgingly. "But I don't want him to get hurt. What if something happens?"
By then, we swept over the smithy, banked, and landed just outside its entrance. Haugaeldr paced impatiently in front of the entrance. Since Gobber was helping Dad with trade, he wasn't explicitly blocked from entering, but he knew he wasn't allowed inside. Mostly because last time, he'd knocked over a basin with molten metal and had gotten a nasty burn from it.
I hopped off of Toothless and stepped inside. Toothless was allowed inside—as if he would ever follow a rule that separated the two of us—but he stayed outside for Haugaeldr's sake. They began chatting about our most recent trip; who we saw, any new developments, how relations were going. I slipped past the haphazards of smelting equipment and slipped into my "office".
Inside was the familiar smell of paper, coal, and fire—the scent of inspiration, of hard work, of success and failure, of staying up too late working on something no matter how much I knew I would regret it in the morning. The walls were so littered with drawings, concepts, and blueprints that I had even installed some shelves just to stack them. The wallspace around my workbench was the most important, a stark contrast of order against the chaos.
The sandbox. The pencil-holder. The parchment rolls. The satchels to hold them, designed to fit snug against the body to reduce air drag and coated with dragon-scale paint to be weatherproof and fireproof. Even the lightweight armor, meticulously positioned so that it could be easily put on and off again.
All things I would need once I returned to my dragon form. The ball of light at my forehead, once an empty shell, warmed me with anticipation.
I grabbed the sandbox and put the strap attached to it over my shoulder with a small grunt of effort. It was as heavy as it looked, and with it hanging from my shoulder, it was nearly as long as I was tall. Rolling my shoulders, I turned to leave.
I glanced back at my desk one last time. A surprised grin bloomed on my lips.
"Oh, there it is!" I said to myself. My rough draft of my Book of Dragonese had been under the sandbox. I'd looked all over for it before we left two weeks ago. Eventually, I had thrown my hands up in the air and assumed that I had left it somewhere at our house instead of in the smithy. Toothless had griped about me being disorganized for days and worried that it had been lost for good, forcing me to start over, but I'd known it would show up eventually.
I took the book as well and walked back outside. "Oh, Toothless," I said in sing-song. "Look what I found!"
He looked over and sighed with relief. "It's a miracle you found it in all that mess!"
"I found it in a few seconds!" I retorted. "And you complained about it for days!"
He rolled his eyes in exasperation and started to speak, but Haugaeldr bounced past him.
"Thank you! Do you have parchment!" he shouted. When I produced some, he grinned in delight and padded in place. "Excellent! I don't think we have a map of the tall, snowy mountains!"
We did. Several of Berk's sailors were pretty good cartographers, and once they were on the backs of dragons, they had been eager to test out how much easier mapping was.
"Hm, maybe not," I said, sharing a knowing look with Toothless. I handed the sandbox to Haugaeldr, who took it in his teeth and set it down.
The sandbox was a communication device, meant to be used anywhere—especially where there was not dirt to scrawl in. It was, essentially, a wooden box with a lid that slid off to the side instead of opening on a hinge. A handle stuck out from the right edge of the lid, and when pulled to the left, the top half of the sandbox rolled on a well-oiled track, all the way out until stoppers at the far-left edge kept it from falling off. The inside, shockingly, was full of dense sand. There, a dragon could use their claws to write, or, as Haugaeldr often preferred, use the pencil-holder made of leather straps. When used slowly, it acted like a calligraphy pen, making fine lines just as small as any human could make. For this reason, the top lid of the sandbox had a wooden lip on it. There, parchment could be slid under it and secured.
In order to close the sandbox, one only had to grab the lid, slide it down the track to the right, and then push down to snap the lock on. The inside edge of the lid had a thin bar sticking out of it that flattened the sand as it closed. In this way, the sand could be smoothed into an even edge very quickly, when "speaking" quickly was necessary.
Haugaeldr lay down in front of it, grabbed the handle , and pushed the sandbox open. He craned his neck to me, gently nipped the parchment out of my hands, and then slipped it under the lip of the lid. Then he nosed the pencil-holder into position, slipped his paw through it, and tightened it to a comfortable fit with ease. With his other claws, he clicked the charcoal stick into place. Humming a happy tune, he began sketching with the charcoal stick in the sand.
All of this passed in just a few moments—as quickly as I soon hoped to achieve. As easy as it looked, it was an incredible feat. It took Toothless several minutes to get the same thing done, mostly because he struggled with the straps of the pencil-holder.
Haugaeldr quickly drew a sketch of Berk's tallest mountains, closed the sandbox and opened it again to flatten the sand out, and sketched them again—this time, much more precisely. Then he got to work on the parchment, referencing his drawing in the sand to create an impressive copy on the paper. His paw was steady and his strokes slow, careful, and focused.
Toothless and I watched him: me with pride, and Toothless with bafflement.
"It's beyond me how you caught on to this so fast," Toothless said.
"It's all about balance!" Haugaeldr said. "Making sure to use just enough force to hold it and not break it."
"Yes, but I mean...this," Toothless gestured with his head at the map. "Making pictures from your head."
Haugaeldr paused a brief moment to look at him, head tipped aside with a frown. "But it's so easy. You think it, and then draw it." He turned back to his map and began drawing again.
"Oh, yes, it's just so simple," Toothless huffed, rolling his eyes. "That's why every dragon on this island but you struggles with this, right?"
"Hiccup does just fine!" Haugaeldr retorted. He seemed to finish then, putting his paw down. He craned his neck over the parchment and tilted his head side to side, eyeing it from all angles. Then, with a satisfied snort, he nipped at the straps to the pencil-holder, released it, and set it in the sandbox. He pushed the whole thing closed again and slipped the parchment out with reverent care. Then he turned to us and displayed it with pride.
"Very good!" I praised him. "Soon you'll be mapping out the whole island!"
He puffed up with pride. "I already have!" he said around the parchment. "Well, but not on paper. Here!" He handed it to me. "The King asked me to scout, but I scouted and made a map!"
"I'm sure he'll be very impressed," I said. I knew I was. Like Toothless said, it was nothing short of amazing that he had learned all of this so quickly, especially when older and wiser dragons could barely wrap their heads around the concept of writing. Or maybe him being so young was why it was so easy for him. Either way, he was the only dragon in all of Berk who had learned to draw with my sandbox, although I had tried to teach our nestmates several times.
"Do you think he'll let me do more?" Haugaeldr asked, his eyes wide and overtone anxious. "I always try to exceed what he asks of me. I want to show him I'm ready to do anything!"
"You can do a lot," Toothless said with a warning tone. "But you also stick your nose where it doesn't belong far too often."
He let out an exasperated breath and squirmed, tail thumping the ground with agitation. "I won't cause any problems! I just want to learn about new places!"
"And someday, you will," I said with a reassuring overtone. I held up his map. "Especially with work like this!"
He brightened, annoyance forgotten. "Let's go show your father!" he exclaimed. There was a gust of wind and a fiery blur, and he was gone.
Toothless raised an eyebrow at me. "You shouldn't encourage him like that—telling him he can come with us someday."
"But he might," I pressed. "When he's older and less…" I waved my hands around. "All over the place."
"Like now?" Toothless said, pointing with his nose where Haugaeldr had gone. He was twirling in erratic, happy spirals, forcing all of the dragons flying around him to scramble out of the way to avoid a collision.
I grinned sheepishly. "He'll grow out of it?" At Toothless' flat look, I sighed, looped the sandbox over his neck, and climbed onto his shoulders. "Well, hopefully he will. Maybe we can turn this into a learning opportunity for him!"
"Oh, yes, I'm sure the lesson will hit this time!" Toothless chuckled. He took off and chased lazily after our hyperactive ward.
As he flew, I studied the map. It really was impressive. Haugaeldr had even tried to add elevation lines, which I knew he'd learned from studying other maps. It was nearly perfect, except for one thing. There were lines that stuck out into blank space, unlabeled. I frowned thoughtfully, tracing them with a finger and trying to imagine the real thing in my mind's eye. It seemed the lines were connecting to noteworthy landmarks on the map; I recognized the general areas for bridges and abandoned buildings, but other lines lead to places I didn't know.
I glanced up at Haugaeldr in the distance, my eyes widening in realization. Was he trying to…?
With a grin, I put the map into our Book of Dragonese.
I had a job for him that he would be ecstatic to work on.
o.O.o
We spent that night at home, after being gone for so long. After two weeks of sleeping outside under the stars, I couldn't help glancing up at the ceiling every now and then with a frown. Our house still felt like home, but in a claustrophobic, cozy kind of way.
Dad and I sat at the fire with Toothless resting beside us and Haugaeldr fawning over his map. Dad had been just as surprised by it as me, which may have filled Haugaeldr's head with too many ideas.
I flipped through the Book of Dragonese. It described all aspects of dragon communication, from body language to general tones to overtones. But it was no dictionary.
Except, maybe, until now.
"Haugaeldr," I said in Norse. He perked up. Glancing at Dad, I said, "I think I have a job for you."
"What is it?!" he cried, leaping over to us in a flurry of flailing limbs, knocking over a table in the process.
Dad chuckled and gave me a see what I mean? kind of look. I couldn't even imagine how eager Haugaeldr was when we weren't home.
"You know how I've been working on this, right?" I said, showing him the book.
He nodded. "Of course! I think it's a wonderful idea, although I've no idea how you plan on converting our language to Norse."
"Exactly," I said. "Norse doesn't have the ability to convey Dragonese."
Toothless audibly groaned at the name, just like he did every time I said it out loud.
"But," I said, giving him a playful cuff over the head, "I think that's why I've had so much trouble with it. I've been going at it all wrong, trying to squeeze Norse into dragon sounds."
"Yes, our vocalizations are far more complex than a human's," Haugaeldr said, nodding sagely. He grimaced and glanced at Dad. "Oh, um, sorry."
Dad lifted an eyebrow and looked at me, clearly recognizing the apologetic tone but having no idea why it was being directed at him.
I shook my head to show it wasn't important. "It's hard because dragons layer their sounds. You can only make so many unique noises, but with tone, pitch, length, overtones, and by making more than one sound at once, you're able to speak full sentences. With humans, we make every individual sound of every part of a word, because we can do that and it works. It's why it takes us much longer to say something than it takes you to say the same thing."
That was one of, if not the largest, barriers to other humans learning Dragonese. Dragon-speech was fast, efficient, and detailed. It required essentially listening for several different things all at the same time—like dunking your head partway underwater and listening to the air and sea at the same time. Most people couldn't detect the subtle differences, hearing just "one" sound when there were many. That was why dragon-speech sounded like mangled grunts and roars when each small variation, no matter how subtle, changed the meaning of what was said. Individual words sounded different depending on if they were in a sentence or alone.
This made learning incredibly frustrating, because a human could memorize what each word in a sentence sounded like and ask a dragon to actually string them together, only to hear something that sounded, to them, completely different. The sentence would likely come out only a little bit longer than the words themselves, but significantly more complex in sound than any individual word. Because of this, most adults struggled immensely to understand real, fluid Dragonese, and not simple, one-word answers that were neatly cut out from other sentences for their convenience.
It was also, on the other hand, why many dragons still struggled to learn Norse. Human speech was slow and emotionless and boring to many dragons. They felt like we went on and on and on just to say the simplest thought. It was a struggle to decipher emotions and implications without overtones to help. It was why many dragons called Norse "flat", meaning that it had no variation despite the complexity of the sounds themselves. Ironically enough, many dragons who hadn't learned Norse thought the same thing about human speech that humans thought of dragon speech: that it was all just the same sounds over and over.
This, in turn, made writing and reading almost impossible for our nestmates. How could they decipher a symbolic form of such a strange language that spoke so much to say so little? Even drawing was hard for them because of this. Taking spoken word and thought and changing its very form, while still communicating the same idea, was not a concept any dragon had ever heard of until now.
These barriers made both species learn how to communicate with body, expression, and tone more than anything, which essentially forced both sides to develop an incredible emotional intelligence for each other. In all honesty, that probably helped bind human and dragon culture together much better than spoken language over the past few years, because it forced understanding between the two groups. But now, it wasn't enough for us.
There was hope, however. I'd begun to notice the younger children of Berk trying to imitate the sounds of their dragon nestmates, and the dragons encouraging them in response.
This meant that this crazy dream of mine, which I had been so worried was impossible, had some wind beneath its wings.
"Haugaeldr," I said, "can you help me write this book?"
He stared, stricken.
With a crash, he began bouncing around the room, knocking over everything that wasn't screwed into the floor. "Yes! Yes! Yes! That sounds wonderful!"
"Mind the furniture!" Dad laughed, although he did look nervously at the chairs and tables that were getting thrown around. Haugaeldr settled down immediately, schooling himself into a calm, poised posture. "Well, I'm glad we've found something for you to work on. How do you think you'll go about...this?" he gestured at the book.
"That's why I need your help," I said to Haugaeldr, who wiggled with pride and excitement, tail thumping so much he sent vibrations through the floor. "I need help writing down dragon speech in a way that humans can read it."
"I'm sure we can transcribe it!" Haugaeldr crowed, all four of his feet tapping rapidly on the ground.
"And then, maybe with being able to read it, it'll be easier to listen to it as well," I said, glancing at a now-skeptical Dad.
"Well," he said. "Maybe if dragons spoke like Toothless, that could help."
"You—mean—like—this?" Toothless asked, speaking in the slow and methodical way he had once used when I was still learning Dragonese. It was basically speaking dragon the way humans did: dragging every little sound out, one at a time, and removing the overtone. It got the point across, but was incredibly difficult for dragons to understand, as we had learned the hard way.
Dad nodded. "Yes—just like that," he said. "When you speak like that, I can tell the different sounds apart much easier. Although I haven't a clue what half of them mean."
"But that's a really good start," I said. "And once you get to the point where you understand most of it, then overtones and multiple sounds at once will be much easier."
Haugaeldr hummed. He got up and began to pace around, muttering to himself.
"What do you think?" I asked him.
"Shh!" he said, flapping a paw at me.
I stopped, bemused. Toothless snorted with irritation, shaking his head. Dad also shook his head, but much more out of exasperation.
After a solid minute of being lost in his own world, Haugaeldr sat down in front of us again, his expression more serious than I had ever seen before. "I know how to do it."
"Already?" Toothless asked, lifting an eyebrow.
Haugaeldr nodded, eyes glinting with purpose. "We start by categorizing each type of sound. You have to do most of that, Hiccup, since I don't know how human ears perceive us. Each type of sound will have its own family of symbols. Then we go into groupings, pitches, and tonation and how those change meaning. These will alter the symbols in a predictable and recognizable way. Then, once we've laid the groundwork for deciphering sounds and meaning, we translate the words. That is how we describe spoken Dragonese."
Toothless gaped, but I couldn't stop smiling.
"Haugaeldr," I said, "I think you're the perfect dragon for the job."
o.O.o
Shadows.
They engulfed me in a thick sludge, sticking and pulling and tearing at my flesh. I opened my mouth to scream, but I was sinking into it and it was compressing my chest and I couldn't breathe. It hurt, deep in my heart, piercing through my body. I reached for the light of my magic and it dissolved into nothingness, leaving behind a cold shell. I wrenched a hand free and reached out, out, trying to grasp at the formless energy as it dissipated into the emptiness.
A human figure emerged from the darkness that consumed me. A sword glinted in his hand.
"D-Dad," I choked, writhing against the net, my wings and tailfins crushed against my side.
"I will kill you," he said, but not in his voice. I stared at him from the cage as he held the sword over Toothless' neck, digging it into his soft flesh, forcing spasms through his limbs as he gave a high-pitched keen of helpless pain.
"Let him go!" I cried, but my voice was faint. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe.
Not real. It's not real.
"Or maybe you will," he said. Toothless curled against the bars of his cage, sobbing in the aftermath of what I'd said then, my words striking deeper and truer than any sword, and I lied there, helpless and stupid and worthless.
I tried to reach out to him, tried to apologize with all the guilt in my heart on my lips, but I couldn't breathe and the shadows were still here, still here, they just—wouldn't—go—away!—and they never would,and the despair crushed my chest and crumpled the empty shell of my magic, and there he was, holding that sword over me, screaming that he would kill me, Drago and Dad and myself, and I was helpless there, I was going to die, I couldn't breathe and no, no, this was wrong, this was wrong, it couldn't be real, but the sword flew down and it. STRUCK. Tearing ripping rending burning—
"Hiccup!"
My eyes snapped open and I sucked in a huge, rattling breath. My hair and clothes stuck to me, my entire body dripping in a clammy, cold sweat, and I couldn't stop shaking. Each breath felt like it left me before it could get into my lungs, and I was forced to suck in air faster and faster. Spots filled my vision. An enormous weight compressed my chest, making each inhalation labored and weak.
"Hiccup, look at me. Look."
I blinked my eyes open, having not even realized I'd closed them again. Toothless was there, always there, and he curled closer and rested his head on my chest. I reached up and hugged him close, as if the only thing keeping my soul and my heart in my body was him.
"It is fine," he crooned, nuzzling deeper into our embrace. I could feel his heartbeat, thump thump thump, slow and steady against my hummingbird-panic flutter. "It is fine. It is fine."
I closed my eyes again and focused on that slow thump thump thump. I counted my breaths to each one, drawing in deep, ragged bouts of air and letting them go.
I don't know how long it took. Eventually, I realized that the squeeze of my chest had loosened and that my limbs had gone limp. Now my whole body ached with deep exhaustion.
"Thank you, Toothless," I croaked, although I didn't let go. He purred, vibrating deep into my chest, as if he could help calm the racing heave of my heart. Just to be sure, I reached towards my magic. The sheer relief of finding the warm magic still there doubled down on my fatigue, because it was still there and I was still safe and we were still home.
It was just another nightmare.
"Do you want to talk?" Toothless murmured some time later, when the stars and moon had glided across the horizon but neither of us had slept.
"The same as always," I said. "Dad...the sword, being captured...almost dying all those times...me almost…" I choked on the thought, unable to even say it out loud. I had wanted it back then, when we were trapped in the shadow-nest, truly meant those lethal words as I spoke them, and I had always thought of it since.
Toothless did, too. He didn't need to tell me.
"You're here," he said. "I'm here. And I always will be. We survived—you survived. We're home, and we're safe here."
I knew that—I knew that, and frustration and anger and sorrow fought within me that something inside me was still so broken that I couldn't feel that way. We were home. I could be near my father without flinching away in fear, without always checking his hand for a sword he meant to use on me. I didn't have to constantly look over my shoulder. I could walk through Berk without needing Toothless there, no longer ready to leap onto his shoulders at a moment's notice. And yet…
"I feel like a horrible person," I said. "Today was great! I was happy—I really was! But this keeps happening, and I keep holding this over my head...over everyone's heads. I can't move forward, even all these years later."
"You're not horrible, and you're not holding it over anyone," Toothless crooned. "You were hurt. It was real. And that changed you." He nosed a little closer. "It would change anyone. And you have moved forward. I'm so proud of you for all that you've risen over." This brought a small smile to my lips, and he purred. "See?" Then he sobered. "But moving on doesn't mean leaving behind. Some things shouldn't be. Some things become part of us as we grow and change."
I sighed. "Sometimes I wish that I didn't have to change. That the gods did to me what they did to Sphere. Just...erased the sorrow away."
"I think that's wrong," Toothless said. "You are who you are because of it. When you fall down, you always find your feet. You always keep going. No matter how much it hurts or how scared you are. You have been hurt, but you find meaning in it and change. That is one thing that I admire about you so much."
His words made my throat choke up so much that all I could squeeze out was a shaky, "Toothless..." I flung myself around him, hugging him close and sighing as the tension clutching my heart faded. "I can't tell you how much that means to me. Thank you."
He returned my embrace as best as he could without actually crushing me. Then he pulled back to meet my eye.
A spark, and our link flared to life.
The fresh memory came as a shock even to him—that my brain could conjure up such a perfect horror. That even now, all these years later, these nightmares happened so often. That every now and then, the cold shadowy emptiness descended, no matter how happy I knew I should be, and sucked the color out of the world around me. But he countered it with his love and reassurance, with memories of new Berk, of having a home, of Dad and him and me and Haugaeldr as a family, of all the progress we had made together. He pushed the profound confidence that nothing, nothing, nothing in me was broken, and he hated that I believed that and wanted to tear it from me so I would never think it again, because everything was real, but the healing was real, too! And, after all, the healing didn't just stop, so why should I feel guilty and remorse for something I was still working on as best as I could?
That thought struck me. I felt tears prickle at my eyes and rubbed at them with a small smile. "I guess I've never thought of it that way," I said around a lump in my throat.
"Of course you didn't, you fledgling," he teased softly. "You never give yourself the benefit of the doubt. But that's why I'm here." He rested his head on my chest again and met my eyes. Our link brimmed with sorrow and love both.
"And I'll always be here, no matter how long it takes. And forever after as well."