The Courtship of Toothless Chapter 1

A/N He's a Night Fury. So is she, all of a sudden. They know they have to perpetuate their species, and they like each other. So how complicated can this be? You have no idea!

Welcome to "The Courtship of Toothless," a sequel to "Lightning and Death Itself" which many readers have asked for. It takes place immediately after Ending #1. The story is rated T for adult themes; the language is all K. ToothlessxOC.

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"So, uhhh... where do we get started?" For the first time in many, many years, Toothless wasn't quite sure what his first move should be. He'd flown to the cove to visit his fellow Night Furies, and had been completely blindsided by the sudden appearance of a brand-new, drop-dead-gorgeous female, the only one of his kind he'd ever seen (aside from Astrid, who had always been destined for Hiccup). What was worse, she seemed a bit more confident in this situation than he did.

She watched New-night-fury, Night-fury-mother-of-twins, and their twin babies as they flapped away, then turned back to face Night-fury. "I guess you're supposed to teach me how to fly. That's what dragons do, right?"

"Right! Yes! Fly!" He looked around, flustered. He'd given the other two Night Furies their first flying lessons in this very cove. Hiccup had been an apt pupil, while Astrid had been resistant to almost everything he showed her. What kind of student would Guana be? More importantly, could he teach her without irritating her? After all, she might very well be destined to be his mate... after she learned to fly, of course. Only strong fliers could handle a mating flight. That brought him right back to the newly-transformed dragon in front of him who was waiting for him to do something.

"All righty, then. I could fill your head with the theory of flight," Toothless told her, "but that won't help you fly, any more than talking about fish would make a filling meal. We'll start you with gliding back and forth across the water."

"Just like that?" Guana exclaimed.

"Yes, just like that," he replied. "You've got wings, you've got a tail, and you've got a complete set of dragon instincts. Those three are all you need to get started. Try not to focus too hard on what you're doing, and just keep an eye on where you're going. If you do something wrong, splashing into the water will be a lot less painful than crashing into the ground."

"But... I don't know how to swim," she protested.

"If you want to learn how to swim, ask a fish," he said. "The only question I ever asked a fish was, 'Do you taste good?' I'm a dragon, so I'm going to teach you how to fly. Like you said, that's what dragons do. You do want to learn to fly, don't you?"

"Yes – more than anything!" she burst out.

"Good. Climb up on that rock and turn to face me." She did so. "Spread your wings as wide as they'll go." Again she complied. "Fan your tail fins in a V-shape, and try to keep your tail straight." She had a little trouble with that, but she eventually got her tail to cooperate. "Now, just jump straight ahead, and let the wind beneath your wings carry you across the cove."

It didn't go so well. She took off leaning slightly to the right, which carried her around in a right-hand turn. When she tried to straighten out, she over-compensated, fell away on her left wing, and wound up raising a huge splash in the shallows.

"I thought you said I had a working set of flying instincts," she sputtered as she shook herself dry.

"You do," he nodded. "But you've spent most of your life standing upright and moving your hind legs, and thinking that that was the best way to get anywhere. You've got some old habits you need to unlearn, as well as some new moves you need to learn. Balancing yourself in three dimensions isn't a bit like balancing when you're on the ground. Try it again."

She tried again. She flew straighter this time. Her eyes went wide with amazement as she realized she was really gliding! She looked back at herself in delight, which caused her to dip one wing, and she was suddenly splashing again.

"You can't blame the dragon instincts for that one, I'm afraid," he said sadly. "That was a simple case of not looking where you were going. That will get you in trouble, no matter what kind of body you've got. Try it once more."

Again she leaped off the rock. She remembered to keep her tail straight and her wings level. She fought the urge to look back at herself. "It's working!" she shouted, and flapped her wings twice in her excitement.

"No!" shouted Toothless. "You don't know how to –" He was too late. The extra height and speed from those two flaps carried her clear across the cove to the far side, where she plowed headfirst into the cliffs that surrounded them. She fell to the ground, half-senseless, as Toothless ran over to her.

"For some reason... I thought this would be fun," she said shakily.

"Did you break anything?" Toothless asked anxiously.

"I don't think so," she said slowly. "What did I do wrong?"

"Halfway measures are the worst," he answered. "If you'd just glided with straight wings, you would have landed on the grass behind you. If you'd kept flapping, you might – mind you, I distinctly said you might – have gained enough height to get out of the cove altogether, although you probably would have hit a tree instead. Those two flaps set you up for the worst of both worlds. Get your head together and rest for a minute before you try again."

"That sounds good," she sighed, and lay down. He sat a short distance away and watched her for a moment.

"Aside from making face-prints on rocks, how do you like being a dragon?" he finally asked.

"It's a dream that could never come true, except it came true," she said. "I used to look up when the dragons came to raid Berk, and as much as I hated them for stealing my sheep and hurting people, there was just something so graceful and powerful, even beautiful, about them..."

"Even the Gronckles?" Toothless asked, with some amusement.

"Well, maybe not all of them," she admitted. "But if I'd been offered the choice, I think even being a Gronckle would have been better than being Guana, the crippled little shepherd girl with the burned face. Of course, I never would have told the other Vikings that." She sighed again. "I'd watch you all fly away, and something inside me would cry out, 'Please take me with you!' I'd try to imagine what it was like to be a dragon... it was hard, because of all the scary stories I heard about dragons when I was growing up."

She smiled a dragony grin. "I remember one tale I was told by one of my babysitters. It was about a huge dragon, bigger than a Monstrous Nightmare, who loved gold and silver and precious stones. He killed people and took their valuables, until he had a hill-sized hoard of coins and gems and other beautiful things. Then he just sat on them, because that's all he could do with them!" Toothless joined her in chuckling at that ridiculousness of that mental picture.

She stretched out her left wing and admired it. "I keep thinking I'm going to wake up soon, and find out that this was all just a wonderful dream, and I have to get back to my sheep." She noticed Toothless smiling at her. "Is there some dragon humor in there, that I don't get yet?"

"I was just remembering Hiccup and Astrid's reaction to becoming Night Furies," he replied. "They desperately wanted to wake up and return to being human."

"Then why did they let you transform them?" she asked, puzzled.

"Technically, they didn't," Toothless answered. "I kind of hit them with it in mid-air."

"You what?!"

He was taken aback by the intensity of her reaction. "Guana, when you're a human, and you're surrounded by other humans, whether they like you or not, you don't have to worry about whether your entire race is going to vanish tomorrow. You can choose a code of ethics that's based on being fair and nice to everybody. Until very recently, we Night Furies didn't have that luxury. For all I knew, I was the last of my kind. I saw a chance to triple our local population, and I took it. I had to. I knew Hiccup would adjust, and it was just a matter of time until Astrid came around as well."

The other dragon turned her back on him. He tried to get in front of her, but she kept turning away. "Guana, I did what I had to do! What was I supposed to do, ask them politely? 'Pardon me, mademoiselle, monsieur, I know this is a terrible inconvenience, but would you object if I were to turn you both into Night Furies? What, no reply? That's rather rude! Oh, but of course – you can't understand dragon speech! How silly of me!' Even if they could have understood me, what if they'd said 'no'?"

"You didn't have the right to take their own bodies away from them!" Guana retorted sharply. "If you want to play 'what if,' then what if they hadn't been able to adjust? What if they'd gone insane? Who do you think you are – some kind of god, playing games with other people's lives? You had no right!"

"Guana, you're judging me like a human. I know it's an old habit, but it's one that you're going to have to break. We dragons live by a different set of rules – we have to. Our lives are too uncertain to play around with sentimentality. We have to do whatever works. If it makes us feel good, that's a nice bonus, but we can't afford to live our lives that way."

She lay down, curled up, and hid her face under her tail fins. "This is not what I envisioned dragons to be like!" came her muffled voice.

He sat next to her. "You envisioned a race of noble beasts, living in pure freedom, unencumbered by greed and pride and selfishness and all those other nasty human traits?" He waited until he saw motion under her tail fins, which he took to mean she'd nodded in agreement. "You were pretty close, actually. We do love our freedom, and we don't have any greed, because we don't have any possessions. That's the up-side to not having an opposable thumb. I think the average dragon is a better person than the average human, but we certainly aren't perfect. We're free-willed and intelligent, so some of us do get proud, or selfish, or lazy."

"Or arrogant!" She whipped her tail aside and raised her head; her eyes were angry slits. "Can you hear yourself, making excuses for something that was basically a life-long kidnapping? You ripped them out of their families, their culture, their own bodies... and gave them a new destiny that suited you, take it or leave it, except they couldn't leave it! I'll bet you even tried to make them attack their own village!"

Very quietly, Toothless replied, "Good came from it."

Guana's mouth fell open. "You're not serious!? I was just exaggerating! You actually... no! You're not what I thought you were! You're some kind of monster! I don't want to be like you! Leave me alone!" She ran this way and that, desperately looking for a way out of the cove, but the cliffs barred her way and – a fine dragon she was! – she couldn't fly. She'd entered with Hiccup and his family by jumping off and using her wings to slow her descent, much like the way she'd gotten down from the Nest back in the village; she couldn't go back up that way. She was a prisoner in this place, until she'd taken some more flying lessons from a being she suddenly detested with all her heart.

Now she wished this horrible dream would end so she could wake up. Even going back to her sheep might be better than this.