Night Furies: the Next Generation Chapter 1

A/N
A pair of humans and a pair of Night Furies decide to find a way for dragons and people to talk to each other. That would be enough of an adventure for anyone... but then they need that new skill as they embark on a life-or-death quest without equal in dragon history. Rated T for a bit of gore in chapter 3; the rest of the story would be K+, and the language is all K.

By public demand, here is the next portion of the "Lightning and Death Itself" story. Some of you wanted to know more about Night-fury-makes-one-heck-of-a-bang and Night-fury-six-shooter; several wanted to read about Night-fury-smallest-girl and Night-fury-newest-boy; and a few wanted more about Agnarr and Agmundr. I hope all of you find what you were looking for in this story.

Note that I do not attempt to follow actual geography in this story. If you try to map out the dragons' journey on a map or on a globe, you will almost certainly fail; the landforms I describe either don't exist where I describe them, or are too far apart for a journey of the designated length. This is a work of fiction about talking dragons; realistic geography wasn't high on my list of priorities. Besides, if I put that kind of time into the necessary research, I'd never get the story written. It was hard enough to do the research to find good names for... ummm... for some new characters whom you'll soon meet.

o

"Hiccup, how long do Night Furies live?"

Agnarr was paying one of his frequent visits to the Nest, but he wasn't there just to scratch behind Night-fury-smallest-girl's ear flaps this time. Of course, it was inevitable that he'd scratch behind her ears as soon as she made sad eyes at him. He sat on the floor, she laid her head in his lap, and he scratched away while she purred. But he had asked a serious question. Hiccup thought for a moment before replying in his sand table.

TOOTHLESS ONCE SAID, "WE LIVE UNTIL THE VIKINGS
KILL US." HE'S JUST UNDER 100 HIMSELF. HE SAID HIS
MENTOR'S MENTOR WAS 304 WHEN A CATAPULT GOT HIM.
NO ONE KNOWS HOW LONG WE CAN LIVE IF WE CAN
AVOID THE SPEARS AND ARROWS

"But… that's not going to happen anymore, right?" The young smith's apprentice and his twin brother had spent years coming up with clever ways to fight and kill dragons, but that was in their Berserker past, not their Berk present. Now that they understood that dragons were intelligent, reasonable creatures, they had no interest in harming them in any way. Indeed, they counted several dragons as actual friends, and that was what lay behind his initial question. At least, that was what Hiccup guessed. He swept the sand flat with his tail and wrote a question of his own.

DOES THIS HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH YOUR
BROTHER AND MY TWINS?

"Yes," the young man replied, a bit sadly. "You've obviously noticed that Agmundr and I have… kind of paired off with Night-fury-makes-one-heck-of-a-bang and Night-fury-six-shooter. We love flying together. Actually, we love doing just about anything together. But we were talking yesterday about how much we enjoy each other's company, and that got us wondering… how much time do we have together?

"My brother and I are Vikings; we'll live fifty years if we're lucky. If you guys are going to live for hundreds of years… that's a long time for our Night Fury friends to be missing us. It's not a happy thought."

Astrid sidled over to the sand table.

IT MIGHT MAKE YOU CONSIDER BECOMING
NIGHT FURIES YOURSELVES.

"Yeah, it might," Agnarr admitted. "My brother is still weighing the pros and cons of that one. Me, I still can't see myself as a dragon. But it's starting to look like a more attractive option." He looked pensive for a few seconds, then stood (which ended Smallest-girl's ear-scratching session) and made his way down the stairs, lost in thought.

"You're really determined to see those two turned into Night Furies, aren't you?" Hiccup asked his wife with a smile.

"They have every attribute we need – they're brave, they're very smart, they aren't afraid of heights, they get along well with dragons, and they adapt to new situations well," she replied. "They're the kind of people who will make good Night Furies, and we still need as many as we can get. Besides, they like us and we like them."

"And our two daughters will need mates someday, right?" he added.

"I'll admit, the thought crossed my mind," she nodded. "Toothless and Guana's young one is a fine-looking dragon, but there's only one of him. Agmundr likes Night-fury-six-shooter a lot, and you can see how fascinated Agnarr is with Night-fury-smallest-girl. We're Night Furies now, but we used to be Vikings, and I still think of marriages as things that get arranged by the parents. That's us."

"The days when we could hit them with our Power and force them to accept a transformation are long gone," Hiccup said absently, as he watched a light-blue Nadder gliding across the town with her three young children just behind her. "Even if we still had our Power, which we don't. Guana could do it; the twins could, once they're older; but it has to be the boys' decision. They just aren't leaning toward joining us."

"I know," she said. "I guess all we can do is watch and see how it plays out."

o

The two sets of twins met on the beach later that afternoon for one of the young Night Furies' favorite rituals. The dragons would roll over on their backs; the boys would don their heavy gloves from the forge, throw handfuls of sand on their dragon friends' bellies, and rub vigorously, giving the dragons a combination belly-rub and belly-scratch that they totally loved. When the Night Furies had finally had enough, they would wade into the surf to rinse the sand off, and come out feeling perfectly relaxed.

Today, Night-fury-six-shooter wanted some extra attention from Agmundr while Night-fury-makes-one-heck-of-a-bang rinsed off. She glanced at her human friend as she wriggled on her back, and let out a happy yowl. Agmundr had no idea what she was trying to tell him, of course, so he glanced at the other Night Fury, who was right-side-up and able to write. He came out of the water far enough to find some sand to write on.

SHE SAYS RUB A LITTLE MORE TO THE RIGHT.

"Thanks, Bang," Agmundr smiled, and did as his big black friend had asked. "How's that, Six?" She closed her eyes and let her tongue hang out in bliss. Then the young man's face darkened for a moment. "We really need to do something about the language barrier between us."

"It's not that big a barrier," Agnarr noted, then ducked as his own dragon-friend shook himself dry. "They understand us very well – their parents raised them bilingual. We understand them when they write in the dirt; it just takes them a minute to write what they're thinking."

WE DON'T MIND WRITING FOR YOU.
YOU'RE VERY PATIENT WITH US.

"Thanks," Agmundr replied, "but it's still frustrating at times. You guys can't talk to us when we're in the air, and we're in the air together a lot."

"There isn't much we can do about that," his brother replied. "They're physically unable to speak Norse, and we're physically unable to speak or understand dragon speech."

Agmundr stepped aside and took off his gloves as Night-fury-six-shooter rolled right-side-up and dove into the surf. "I know Hiccup told us that dragon speech is full of overtones and undertones that we can't hear, but how big a deal is that?"

MAY I DEMONSTRATE?

"Go for it, Bang," they both said in unison. The dragon let out four warbling roars in a row.

DID THOSE FOUR SOUNDS SOUND DIFFERENT TO YOU?

The human twins glanced at each other. "They all sounded the same to me," Agmundr shrugged; his brother nodded agreement.

FIRST I SAID, I'D LIKE TO BE YOUR FRIEND.
THEN I SAID, I WISH I COULD FLY LIKE YOU.
THEN I SAID, I LIKE YOUR COLORATION.
THEN I SAID, I WOULD LIKE TO MATE WITH YOU.
THE OVERTONES DO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

"I guess they do!" Agnarr blurted out.

Night-fury-six-shooter rejoined them on the beach, and added her own thoughts to the discussion.

THERE ARE TIMES WHEN WE UNDERSTAND
YOUR WORDS, BUT NOT YOUR MEANING.
LIKE WHEN YOU SAY SOMETHING IS A BIG
DEAL. HOW MUCH DOES A SMALL DEAL HAVE
TO GROW BEFORE IT BECOMES A BIG DEAL?

"Umm..." Agmundr stammered. "Agnarr, do you want to try and explain that to them?"

THERE'S NO NEED – WE FIGURED IT OUT.
WE'VE LEARNED TO UNDERSTAND THE
TWO OF YOU PRETTY WELL. WE MIGHT
NOT DO SO WELL WITH OTHER VIKINGS.

"Okay, we're agreed – there are a few issues on both sides of our communication," Agnarr nodded. "But, all in all, I think we do pretty well understanding each other, considering how we're two completely different species."

I AGREE.

ME TOO.

They all looked at Agmundr, who hadn't responded. He finally said, "I think it would be great if there was a language that we all could speak and understand."

I DOUBT VERY MUCH IF SUCH
A LANGUAGE EXISTS.

That was Night-fury-six-shooter. Her human friend read her runes in the sand and shook his head.

"Then we'll just have to invent one."

Agnarr knew that look on his brother's face. "We're starting a new project, aren't we?" It wasn't a question.