[HTTYD] TPIIP: The Queen Falls, chapter 3

To Put It In Perspective: The Queen Falls, a DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon fanfic by Raberba girl

Chapter 3 (rough draft)

 

I don't know how long I slept, but I do know that it's morning again.  The dragon is licking industriously at my knees, cleaning the blood and dirt off them from our horrible trek down the hillside, because my leggings naturally got torn along the way.  "Good morning," I say dully.

 

The dragon's head pops up, he coughs flame to clean his mouth, makes this happy-sounding chirp, then swarms up my body and nuzzles my face, purring loudly.

 

"Yeah, yeah, good to see you, too...."

 

He catches some fish for my breakfast, and after a lot of trial and error, I finally manage to convince him to bring me a decent pile of wood and start a fire.  He watches, seeming a little incredulous, as I cook my fish and then bite into it.  "Soooooooo...goooooood...ohhhhhhh I'm so hungry, I'm so hungry I'm so - hungry...!"

 

It would be a beautiful morning if everything else wasn't so horrible.  I lie there vaguely enjoying it as best I can, while the dragon - I really ought to name him - putters around, taking care of me.  Why in the world is a dragon waiting hand and foot on an injured human??  Is there something wrong with this dragon, that he wouldn't recognize me as his enemy?  But...he'd been afraid of me at first, he knows I could hurt him, yet for some insane reason he's decided to just OVERLOOK that and be my friend and caretaker instead....

 

The dragon suddenly goes rigid, staring up with wide, dismayed eyes.

 

"What?!  What is it?!"  I can't see or sense any danger, but the dragon suddenly dives into a flurry of activity.  He races back and forth, bringing me extra firewood and then all the arrows he could find scattered on the hillside, then he lunges at me and licks practically my entire body, also rubbing his own body against mine in a frantic way.  As soon as he's done with that, he makes a sort of boundary around me with flame and urine and claw marks scored into the ground.

 

Finally he stops, stares at me for a minute with a helpless look, then jumps into the air and flies away.

 

O-kay.  That was weird.

 

I don't have anything else to do except lie here and be in pain, so I close my eyes and try to doze off.

 

Throughout the day, animals sometimes wander over to the stream.  The ones who come closest to me occasionally peer at me, but they inevitably turn away after sniffing at the dragon's boundary line.

 

The thing really is like a charmed circle, it even turns away a boar.  The creature bristles upon seeing me, growling, and I grip my knife.  But when she gets closer, she pauses at the scent line, sniffing at it and then growling again in an undecided sort of way.

 

"That's right - that's right, sow.  If you try to hurt me, my big scary dragon guardian will swoop down and chomp off your head and fry your carcass to a crisp!  A CRISP, you hear me?!"

 

She growls one last time, then turns away and heads downriver.  Relieved and amazed, I release the breath I'd been holding and slacken my grip on my weapon.  "Thanks, little dragon...I seriously have to name you now...."  I decide on the name 'Hiccup,' because he's a runt but also because he's such a bizarre dragon.  A little hiccup in the proper order of things that nevertheless has made all the difference to me.

 

o.o.o.o.o

 

The young dragon flew as swiftly as he could, for he had been called back to the nest and he did not want any of his flockmates to come looking for him and discover his new secret.  He did have to spend a few precious seconds rolling in stripmud, to disguise the scents of the human clinging to his scales.  The dragon came to a landing by the pits, where he was briefly scolded for taking so long to respond to the summons.

 

The alpha had gone with his strongest flocklings on yet another search for the humans' home.  The beta had been left behind to train the group of fledglings in fighting humans.  For that purpose, several humans had been captured alive from the most recent raid and preserved, thrown into pits too deep for them to escape, kept alive by the fish and water gourds thrown down to them.

 

The fledglings' first opponent was to be the stocky, more powerful female.  As the beta paused beside her pit to check on her, two of the other fledglings bit the runt, the yellow male playfully, the brown more forcefully in a show of dominance.  The runt didn't bother to resist, though his tail twitched with resentment as he lay sprawled under the brown's paws, and an almost soundless growl vibrated in his throat.  The large tan male paced apprehensively at the prospect of facing a human in battle; the golden female was sharpening her claws.

 

The beta barked at the fledglings to follow, and they descended.

 

The warrior woman, whose name was Meatlug, was a gentle soul who loved both human children and baby animals.  Unfortunately, years of war and cruelty had worn her down, and the distress and indignity of this new captivity were an added burden.  As soon as she saw the dragons, she seized her bludgeon and shield (the dragons allowed their captives to keep their weapons and defenses, for the fledglings must learn how to deal with both), and let out a fearsome war cry.

 

Nearly all the fledglings yipped in alarm and scattered.  Only the golden female charged ahead with an answering battle cry of her own.  Meatlug dodged aside and swiped with her weapon; the gold gracefully dodged aside as well.  She aimed for a bite on the woman's thigh, but had to veer sharply upward at the last moment in order to avoid colliding with the shield as it swung.

 

Meatlug was a powerful fighter quite capable of handling six inexperienced and mostly unmotivated fledglings, especially when their adult teacher hovered almost complacently in the background.

 

She first tried to go after the largest fledgling, the one she assumed to be the most serious threat, but the tan dragon turned out to be the most cowardly of the lot.  He fled full tilt before her.  His high-pitched shrieks, like those of a frightened newborn hatchling, moved her despite herself, so she cursed herself for a soft-hearted fool and turned away to the pair who seemed to work most closely in tandem.

 

The yellow clutchmates were fighting each other, madly snapping and scratching and screeching as if determined to rip out each other's throats.  Obviously no threat at all.  Meatlug shook her head in incredulous disgust and whirled to look for a more threatening - any threatening - target.  Her weapon, whipping in an arc with the speed of her turn, narrowly missed the tentatively approaching runt, who squealed and darted back into hiding.  Meatlug hadn't even noticed him.

 

The beta finally barked out some instructions, and the gold instantly began to make a noise almost inaudible to human hearing.  By instinct, she got it perfectly on the first try, the exact pitch to buzz in Meatlug's ears and disorient her.  The woman cried out in dismay and nearly dropped her weapon, frantically rubbing at her ear with her arm in a vain attempt to stop the literally headache-inducing noise.  The other fledglings, encouraged by the gold's success, started making the noise as well, though it took them more than one try to get it right.

 

Meatlug fled into a corner of the pit, wailing in horror and fear and frustration.  "Stop it!  STOP IT!  We raid and steal but we don't torture you!"  She recovered as the fledglings stopped, listening to more instructions from their teacher.  Quietly, Meatlug tried to sneak around the back of the group, correctly anticipating that the beta would not give her away and spoil the lesson.  Then she charged at the brown fledgling with her bludgeon raised.

 

The brown didn't even see her coming.  He was trying to flirt with the extremely disinterested gold, crooning and unsuccessfully attempting to twine his tail with hers.  The gold abruptly dodged away, incidentally kicking him aside in the process, which was what saved him from the heavy blow of the human weapon.  He shrieked and fled completely out of the pit.

 

The gold happen to land near the hiding place of the runt, who cautiously crept out and warbled at her.  Despite both the hazardous setting and the gold's clear disinterest in courtship, she was an extremely attractive female, and the young males couldn't help themselves from trying to court her anyway.  The runt was no exception, though he at least had the intelligence and self control to avoid a counterproductive attempt at a tail-twine.

 

The gold dodged again.  The runt was too preoccupied to notice Meatlug until the last second.  He darted away in a panic, and she growled absent-mindedly at her missed shot but couldn't help fixating on him.  He was so tiny, and...cute.  She'd rarely ever seen dragon hatchlings because they were so well-hidden, but she was still pretty sure that she found them as adorable as she couldn't help finding all baby creatures.  This dragon wasn't a baby, but he might as well have been, as far as size went.  Her heart fluttered in excited admiration even as her hand tightened on her weapon.

 

'I don't have to kill the poor thing....  He's not nasty like that gold, I just have to feint a bit and he'll scurry off, aaaahhhh he's so cute....'  He'd fled into a corner, crouched and staring up at her advance with terrified green eyes.  She raised her weapon, and he immediately compacted into a self-defensive ball with his head tucked.  He wasn't going to flee after all, she didn't know if she could divert her swing in time--

 

The beta seized her from behind and threw her to the ground.  Meatlug gasped and scrabbled for her fallen weapon, but by the time she'd leaped to her feet with her shield and bludgeon raised, all six remaining dragons were flying away out of the pit.  She stared after them, then dropped her weapons and miserably curled up by the wall.

 

Above, the beta grumbled at the group of weary fledglings, then nosed at the runt to make sure that the alpha's only offspring was all right.  The little dragon's wings were drooping, but he was uninjured.  As soon as the beta trundled off to take care of some other dragon business, the runt watched the yellow clutchmates fighting and the large tan peering interestedly into one of the dragon pits and the gold hissing at the brown as he attempted to court her again.  The runt left while they were all preoccupied, thinking hard.

 

His human, whom he had named Survivor, was a fearsome fighter as well.  His human was tough enough to survive horrible injuries and intelligent enough to treat those injuries with so little help, but also kind enough to spare the life of an enemy who had lain helpless under his paw.  Survivor was not a monster.  He could be scary, but he wasn't a monster.  In any case, the little dragon's own flockmates could be quite scary to their enemies as well, and of course they weren't monsters.  The little dragon was sure that something was wrong somewhere.

 

But right now he didn't have time to think about that, right now poor Survivor was alone and hurting and unsafe and probably hungry.  It was all the dragon's fault that this interesting not-monster human had gotten hurt, so now it was the dragon's responsibility to take care of Survivor until Survivor could take care of himself again.  It never occurred to the dragon that a healed Survivor might return to his human pack and go right back to hurting and stealing from the dragons.

 

o.o.o.o.o

 

I'm happier than I expected to see Hiccup again, especially because he zooms up to me looking frantic, as if he was worried about me.  He licks me for a while as if trying to reassure himself that I'm all right.  "I'm okay, little guy," I croon at him.  "Were you worried about me~?  I'm okay, I'm okay~"  I caress his head and then scratch between his wings, smiling when he shivers a little in pleasure.  "You like that, huh?"

 

He catches some more fish for me, and helps me scoot over to a rock big enough for me to sit up and lean on.  After lunch, he starts scratching in the dirt, long squiggles as if he's doodling.  After watching him for a while, I pick up a stick and start scratching in the dirt, too.  "Hiccup the dragon," I write.  He stares, his wings flared high and his tail waving back and forth in curiosity.  "See?  That's your name, Hiccup."

 

He starts sniffing at the words, and as he walks, his tail swipes over the 'R' in 'dragon.'

 

"Oi!"

 

He yelps and stares at me, cringing a little as if I'm scolding him.  Which I kind of am.

 

"Don't scuff out the letters, silly!"

 

Cautiously, he takes a few more steps, and his tail smears the 'A.'

 

"OI."

 

I swear, the way he takes another step and deliberately smudges the 'G' is experimental.

 

"Do not scuff the letters, the whole point of me writing them is so that you can read them!!"

 

This time, when he takes another experimental step, he holds his tail high enough that it doesn't touch the ground anymore.

 

"There!  There, you got it.  No scuffing the letters of super-important messages, all right?"

 

He chirps at me and then goes back to sniffing all around the words, careful hold his tail high and step delicately with his paws.  I don't think he notices that he's working his way closer toward me, because he jerks back when he bumps into me and stares up at me with wide eyes.  I guess I am still a human warrior, and he is still a tiny dragon.  Despite how amazingly well we've been getting along so far, he still has cause to be nerv--

 

He slowly lies down and lifts his paws out of the way, leaving his belly completely exposed to me.

 

...I'm pretty sure this is a huge show of trust.  Even after how well we've been getting along, he's still been understandably nervous and hesitant at times.  But now it's like he's saying that he fully surrenders, that he's so deep into this that there's no point in looking back, he is trusting himself to my mercy....

 

I lay my palm against his soft, warm underside, and stroke gently.  I will not abuse his trust.  For so long my soul has died inside me and I've longed for a different life, and now this is different and I want this and yes, Hiccup, yes, you marvelous creature, I will take this road with you and see where it leads.

 

A slight tremor runs through him at my initial touch, but he doesn't pull away, and after a moment he curves his neck so he can lick my hand as I pet him.

 

"You're sooooo cute.  I think I'm in love with you," I croon playfully.

 

He croons back at me in response.

 

The rest of the afternoon passes by slowly but fairly enjoyably.  I discover that dragons are ticklish while I'm scratching between Hiccup's wings and then search for other sweet spots - my fingers dribbling across his stomach make him squawk and jerk away, then cringe sheepishly as if he hadn't anticipated his own reaction.  A little while later, I manage to catch him and tickle him deliberately.  He shrieks and squirms and manages to escape, then gives me an injured look as I laugh at him.

 

A little later, I giggle impulsively at the sensation of him scrabbling over my stomach.  "Don't do that!"  He gives me this horribly thoughtful look, and I realize that he's just recognized his chance to retaliate.  "No, no, don't even think about it--  AAAAAHHHHHHAHAHAHA, NO, EVIL LITTLE, HAH, STOOOOPPP, HAHAHAHAHA...!"

 

To be continued....