Chapter One
The Heiress of Outcast Island
7 years later
Starla Svanhild had known that she was the heiress of Outcast Island for as long as she could remember, and that that meant she would be the leader of her tribe when she was ready. Her father, Chief Alvin the Treacherous, had come up with the idea to have her work all over the island so she could get an idea and understanding of what each job entailed. She started when she was five and helped in the Healer's Hut for a year before working with the yak herders for a day which was when the village learned that their heiress was allergic to yak hair. So instead, she spent the next year working with Mr. Aaberg, the village blacksmith, and helping him and his son, Arne, who had become her best friend, around the Forge.
Now she was working with the village carpenters, who were the Dowsings. They had a little girl a few years younger than Starla, named Audor, but Mrs. Dowsing was very overprotective of her daughter, so Starla couldn't really play with her. Starla thought that it was because Audor was their first daughter who survived her first winter so she didn't push to play with Audor unless Audor asked her mother. But Starla was still kind to the younger girl and often carved wooden toys for her as she was about the age of three. They also had a 13 year old son named Magnus, who had this weird delusion that she had a crush on him and that he would be her husband someday. Starla wasn't remotely interested in him besides she was seven for Thor's sake! Why did he think she had a crush on a guy that was six years older than her? At least the middle child, another son who was about 10 and half and was named Ragnar was mostly normal! He was a little annoying, but he mostly avoided her. Starla thought Ragnar avoided her because of his brother. Either way, she didn't really have a problem with Ragnar, because she never really saw him and rarely talked to him.
Starla was walking through the dry woods with her father, excited to learn how to set traps from him. She didn't get to spend a lot of time with him, since he was often busy with taking care of the tribe, but he always spent at least one day every month with her and no one was allowed to bug him. She wished she could be with him more but he had always told her that she wasn't quite ready to follow him helping vikings around the island every day of the week from dawn till dusk, and she knew he was right in that regard since she was a night owl similar to her mother and liked to stay up late watching the stars move across the dark, night sky. Plus, he often checked in on her when he could throughout the day and always asked how her day was when they ate dinner, so she didn't really have anything to complain about.
Her father stopped at a large tree and looked over at her and nodded at the tree before saying: "This one should be strong enough. Think you can get up there?" He, then, nodded to the big tree branch that was slightly hidden. Starla smiled before running at the tree and jumping up to the lowest branch. She pulled herself up and climbed up and over to the branch that Alvin had nodded to.
"Tada!" She chirped, once she got to the big branch. She sat on the branch as if it was a horse, with one leg on either side. Her father threw her up the rope and told her to tie it into the knot. The two worked on the trap for the next couple of hours, her father teaching her as much as he could, making sure to add the finer details which she always picked up quickly. Soon, they had a working net snare trap. It wasn't big enough to catch a fully grown dragon but it could hold a yak or a boar. Starla was so excited to find out what the trap would catch. She just hoped that it wouldn't be another viking, she would feel really bad if it was.
Once they tested the trap and then reset it, the two headed home as the sun was beginning to set. It was dark by the time Starla and her father made it back to their hut. They made a quick dinner, cooked salmon with salt, before heading to bed.
A week later, Starla wondered if the trap had caught anything so after convincing her dad to let her, she walked to the trap by herself. It was a ten minute walk from the village and on the other side of a hill, but the seven-year-old didn't mind. She had always loved the woods, the sound of the wind blowing through the trees and the distant waterfall that the largest river on the island flowed into. Before she knew it, Starla was in front of the net snare trap which, to her shock, had a small, pure white dragon in it.
Starla grabbed a nearby stick and poked the dragon with it. The white dragon moved and the young girl cried out startled, due to her believing that it was dead. She tripped over a root and fell on the ground. She looked up at the trapped dragon and for the first time, she saw the creature's bright blue eyes. She breathed heavily and until she felt tears forming in her eyes. I did this… why did I do this? She asked herself, feeling guilty for trapping a beautiful creature.
Despite the years of learning that dragons are dangerous monsters that kill on sight, Starla slowly moved towards the rope that would, if cut, release the net. She pulled out her carving knife and slowly cut the rope. When the rope snapped, the white dragon fell to the ground with a thud. She then slowly and carefully walked over to the white dragon and cut the net until the dragon was able to get out. Once it was free, it looked at her, letting her have a good look at the dragon. The dragon, which she thought was a female youngling, was feline-like with a very pale blue underbelly with four powerful-looking legs. The creature had a fin that ran along the sides of her tail which ended with a smooth heart-shaped tail flap.
The two looked at each other for a moment, one which felt like eternity. Both of their moon-blue eyes watched each other, unsure what to do. However, a squirrel caused a nearby bush to move, scaring the white dragon. The dragon took off, firing a plasma blast before going through it and disappearing into the blue sky.
Starla watched the sky for a few minutes before heading home. When she did, her father had yet to return from his daily routine around the village. She walked into her room, which was on the left while her father's was on the right. She quietly closed the door and fell onto her bed. She had only realized what she had done on the way home. She had freed a dragon. A dragon. The only thing worse than that was helping a Berkian, but still.
She had cried herself to sleep before she woke up to her father's large hand. She didn't look at him, she couldn't.
"What's wrong, my little star?" Her father asked. She still couldn't bring herself to look at him. "I finished my routine early today. I guess people didn't have that many problems… so I went to see if the trap caught anything or if you were still there. I found the trap empty and cut. I'm not mad, if that's what you're worried about, I honestly didn't think that you would have just left a hurt animal in trouble, your heart's too big for that. I probably shouldn't have shown you how to set a trap by actually setting one up. Anyway, I just want to know what was in the trap."
"A white dragon…" she whispered, so quietly that her father just barely heard her.
"Must have been youngling, right? Or a Terror?"
"It was a youngling."
"Nadder? Nightmare?"
"I don't know. It didn't look like any dragon I have ever seen or read about."
"Then its flock must just be migrating. We shouldn't have to worry about it causing too much trouble."
"Okay…"
"Get some sleep. I wanna hear what happened tomorrow morning, okay?"
"Yes, Da. Goodnight"
