(no subject)

[axestrid]

Characters: Hiccup and Astrid


"Hiccup, I think we're lost."

Astrid banked Stormfly hard to the left and sort of circled Hiccup and Toothless, shading her eyes to scan through the smazy fog that clung to the air above the water.

"None of these rock formations look familiar," she said, a little worried. "Are any of them on your maps?"

She enjoyed these flights of fancy, as it were, with Hiccup, but she didn't so much like getting lost, especially when the sun wouldn't be up but a few more hours. She was confident the dragons would be able to get back to Berk--they had a pretty reliable sense of direction, it seemed--but she wasn't too keen on the idea of being somewhere unfamiliar and so far from home after dark.

Comments

[gestured]

Hiccup shot Astrid a mild look of exasperation. "I would not. I'd be-- telling Toothless to roast them. While I stayed, uh, out of range of any... freaky spider poison! That's exactly what I'd be doing."

Probably.

"Well, we should probably make sure there's nothing in here before we go calling it home." He hated saying that, but it was true. They were probably going to be stuck here until the late night, unless they wanted to fly by cover of darkness. Which was fine, but the dragons needed rest, too. Hiccup could navigate by stars just fine. However, that was useless when there were clouds about.

Showing none of the hesitation with his balance that he did a year ago, Hiccup started forward, torch in hand. Toothless shuffled along behind them, protective and watching. He could certainly see better in the dark than Hiccup could, so Hiccup depended on him for any kind of early warning.

As they trotted deeper into the cave, there were various stalagmites and limestone formations. Some of them had an opalescent sheen that kicked the light around and made it seem wondrous and frightening all the same. There weren't any giant spiders, though. "Just how far back does this cave go?" Whatever had lived in here was certainly big enough to smooth the ground, though there was no sign of it anymore. There was a thick layer of dust and dirt beneath their boots, and nothing had been disturbed for a while.

Hiccup caught something with the edge of his harness as he investigated a particularly big stalagmite. "Man, seriously? I work hard to make sure I can fit into small spaces, it's one of my few good traits, and now I'm getting stuck on rocks?" He struggled to pull free, casting the light this way and that. Toothless purred questioningly, stepping forward as if to help.

It wasn't needed. Hiccup yanked himself free, only to be greeted with a skeleton dropping from above. He cried out and cartwheeled backwards, dropping the torch as he fell back against Toothless, who was also a bit freaked out by the yelling. Toothless couldn't breathe fire with Hiccup clinging to his face, though, so he thrashed uselessly as he tried to figure out what had just happened.