fandomtownies | Serenity Cove, early Thursday morning

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Serenity Cove, early Thursday morning

Cloudy the day might be, but by Berk standards it was near-sweltering, and a busy day it had been already. The large pile of fish rapidly turning into a small pile of fish in front of the hungry dragon, who was becoming less hungry with each passing fish, was proof of that.

Hiccup sat on a log, enjoying the novelty of a beach and a warm day and a warm ocean and the lack of snow or hail. His leg was sore from running around in class yesterday, which, granted, hadn't been bright but had been fun, so he'd propped it up on another log. There was sand in the hinge. "That's going to be fun to get out."

Toothless flicked an ear at him in question.

"And I'm going to squeak," he added. "No sneaking up on people for me."

Toothless snorted and went back to his fish. Hiccup grinned and reached for his own breakfast. Cupcakes. Beautiful, sweet, amazing cupcakes, neither tough nor tasteless, a gift from his roomate.

He made short work of them, savouring every bite of the not-fish, not-sheep, not-salted not-dried not-smoked deliciousness.

Toothless burped a very small dragon burp and rolled onto his back, sides bulging. Hiccup leaned back, hands over his stomach and groaned a little. "Right there with you, buddy."

[Very open! But I'm only around for next 3-4 hours and then I am gooooone.]

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It was approaching summer, and that meant that the temperatures were getting tolerable enough for Ender to get started on his raft again. Except when he approached the beach where he'd last left the carefully-tied trunks, he found a pile of fish, a dragon, and a boy.

With thanks to Fandom, Ender only blinked once.

"Hi."

Toothless lifted his head, gave the new boy a long look, then dropped it back down to rest in the sand with a small groan.

"Don't mind him," Hiccup said, sitting up and deciding that, no, he would not be echoing the dragon's groan. Probably. "One too many fish for him this morning. I'm Hiccup, and yes, I know, but the name's a Viking tradition, and this is Toothless." He pointed at the dragon. "Welcome to the beach, our little piece of home away from home."

"Thanks. It's served as a lot of people's homes away from home," Ender said, a faint, wry smile marring his features. He came closer on the greeting, throwing a thoughtful, interested look in Toothless's general direction. "I'm pretty sure you're the first viking we've had."

"Ahh, being a Viking's not such a big deal. It comes with stubbornness issues, a hideous name and a silly hat. I left the hat at home," he added, dropping his voice as if in conspiracy. "It also comes with a dragon." Toothless opened an eye and stared at him. "That part is a big deal," Hiccup added hastily. "Really big deal. The best part of it, actually." The eye closed and Hiccup grinned.

Ender held up a hand as if to stop him before he started adding anything else. "You had me at the hat," he said, with another quirk of his mouth. "But I'd like to hear about the dragon, if I can grab a seat...?"

"Pull up a log." Hiccup gestured next to him. "Best seat in the house, guaranteed. What do you want to know?" He paused. "And what do I call you?"

Ender vaguely wondered if Hiccup had taken any of his raft's logs for the occasion, but he decided that was too inconsequential an issue to pay a lot of attention to. "I'm Ender," he volunteered, as he took the proferred seat. "It's just a nickname, so I'm afraid I can't join the Badly Named Students club."

He stretched his legs, and gave Hiccup a thoughtful look. "Are the dragons normal, where you come from?"

Oh yes, Hiccup. He had lots of questions.

"We could make an exception. It could be you, me and Dandelion, except she hates vikings, so it probably wouldn't work anyway." He leaned back again, getting comfortable, gaze resting on Toothless. "Depends on what you mean by normal. Are they common? Yeah, there's lots of dragons. Dragons and vikings get on like a house on fire." Literally, not so long ago. "Berk has about as many dragons as it has vikings."

"Vikings and people who hate vikings," Ender said, amused. "Two years at Fandom, and I'm still encountering completely new things."

He tilted his head away from Hiccup to glance at Toothless again, examining the dragon's physique. It was a new thing, for sure. "I don't see as much as a spark in the metaphorical pan between the two of you," he murmured, thoughtfully. "Groaning notwithstanding."

"We ate a lot of breakfast," he explained, a touch sheepishly, shrugging. "And Toothless is my best friend."

Toothless opened his eyes and lifted his head, then rose and padded over to settle back in the sand with his head near Hiccup's foot.

"Dragons and vikings, it wasn't always like this." He glanced at Ender. "We used to be enemies. Now, we're not."

Ender's gaze darted from the dragon past Hiccup's legs, but his expression didn't change. "Do you know what happened to change it?" he asked-- and then finally, something hesitated in his otherwise sure poise. "Can I touch him?"

One side and the other, once at war. Different species. It held a certain fascination.

"You can touch him." The dragon lifted his head, stretching it towards Ender, golden eyes fixed on the boy. Hiccup scratched his head, looking at the ground while he thought. "What happened...let's just say there was finally a viking that wouldn't kill a dragon. And that gave them a chance to figure out they weren't each other's enemy."

Ender reached forward - with a certainness, even if he was careful - and laid his hand to rest on top of Toothless's head. The skin had both a familiar and an unfamiliar quality to it. He pursed his lips. "It's a good thing your people got there before one exterminated the other," he said, thoughtfully. "It can't be easy."

Toothless held still under Ender's hand, calm and quiet and watchful. "It is now, it wasn't then. We went through a lot together." The glance at his missing leg, then at Toothless' missing tail fin, was entirely involuntarily. "Turned out we had a common enemy. Now dragons are more pets than pests, they're part of life in Berk."

Ender nodded, and his hand slid over the skin, finally. It was a petting motion, of a sort, as he acquainted himself with the creature, his eyes darting down at the dragon's face.

"So do you--" he started, and then flushed with a little embarrassment as he followed his train of thought to its inevitable conclusion. "Sorry," he said, "I completely forgot to ask if he talks - or if you talk to him." He glanced back at Toothless. "I didn't mean to talk like you're not here."

Toothless let out a low, rumbling noise that made his head shake.

"In case you were wondering? That's what a laughing dragon sounds like," Hiccup said. "He doesn't talk, and I'm not sure how much he knows, at least as far as words go, but we understand each other. He's a Night Fury, and they're the smartest dragons around."

Ender's smile was wry, but also still a little bit embarrassed. He chuckled, to let go of the feeling, and slid his hand down to rub at the side of the dragon's head.

"So you talk to him and he gets it," he said, a hint of a question in his voice, "But it's more the intent than the words that he gets." More like a dog or a horse in that respect, but Ender knew better than to pull any conclusions out of it.

Toothless tilted his head a little more so Ender could scratch The Spot, eyes half-closing.

"Something like that." It was more than that, deeper, but Hiccup had no idea how to say that without sounding like an idiot, and that happened enough as it was. "We fly together. His tail's broken, the fin's gone, so I made him another one, with a lever and a harness. I work it for him, so we have to understand each other or we couldn't fly."

"I think people used to be that way with their horses," Ender said, incapable of not making the comparison - at least to some extent. It was important that he understood it - it always was.

He could take cues well enough, and let his fingernails scrape over the area the dragon was manoeuvering him towards. "What does he need the fin for, exactly?"

And for that Ender was rewarded with what sounded for all the world like a purr, albeit a loud and reptilian one.

"He needs it to fly, to steer, without it he crashes," he explained, then added, maybe with a touch of pride. "It took a lot of figuring out, but we managed it."

"I take it you're not used to our tech levels," Ender said. His stance relaxed a little as the last of his embarrassment flooded away. "At least, by the looks of it. I don't mean any offense-- I just like to figure out how things work." Pause. "That's why I work at the local electronics store," he added.

Hiccup's eyes lit up. "Working out how things work, how to make them better, yes, I'm all about that. There was this thing on the back of the boat in class on Monday that sent it through the water without sails or oars, and there's hot water that comes out of the wall, and I want to know how." He paused to take a breath, possibly a victim of too much sugar plus too much enthusiasm. "What are electronics?"

"The stuff that makes the boats sail," Ender said, with a slight smile, "And the stuff that turns on the lights when you flip a switch. It's what you've done with the fin you made, plus about a thousand years of metalcraft and making things smaller."

He tapped his fingers against his knee. "I man the store on Mondays," he said, "If you're interested, you can stop by and I'll show you a few things."

"Oh, well, you know I might be interested," he said, feigning casual and failing miserably. Toothless rolled his eyes. "I've got a class on Monday, but I can come after that, or before that. Or I could skip class entirely, except then I'd probably get kicked out and my dad would feed me to something nasty. Where's the store and when should I come?"

"At the crossing of Black Swan Drive and Minotaur Lane," Ender said, "It's called Stark Industries. It won't be hard to miss."

He skimmed his fingers over That Spot again, partly in hopes of taking the eyerolling down a notch - in a friendly fashion. "I'm there all day, although I usually have a lunch date."

There was an amused inflection on the word 'date'.

Cara had been thinking of trying to catch breakfast in the preserve, but decided that fish made an equally tasty meal...and was slightly easier to cook.

She nodded at Hiccup. That was quite close to a warm greeting from her.

She got a big grin in return. "And he's still not eating me," he called, while Toothless cracked one eye. "For one thing he's way too full of fish."

That got a smirk, but one edging towards a genuine smile. "I imagine they'd be less gamey than you."

Hiccup was nodding. "Vikings taste terrible. Except for Gobber, apparently he was delicious, but he's strange, even for a viking," he said airily. "Have you found any other creatures to release your fearsome skills on?"

"Not yet, but someone the picnic said there are deer in the preserve," Cara replied. "Apparently they're green, should be a challenge to catch one."

She wasn't going to try talking one into the open, that would be cheating...and involve lots of words. Too many words.

"The deer are green?" He and Toothless exchanged a glance, and Toothless looked very interested at the idea of deer. "And you're sure this wasn't just a see how much the new girl will believe type situation?"

The thought had crossed Cara's mind, and she might be hunting something other than deer if it was.

"I mightn't be the Mother Confessor," just ignore the fleeting downcast expression that crossed her face when she said that, Hiccup. "But I can tell when a teenage boy is lying to me."

Hiccup noticed; Hiccup wsn't going to say anything. "I'd say that that sounds like a challenge, except that I'm a terrible liar. Awful. Can't convince anyone of anything. I think it might be the nervous laughter. Either that or the sweating. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence."

And the smirk-smile was back. "Can't imagine why that would be."

"Unless I'm lying about that," he said with a grin. He wasn't.

"Then I have ways of making you talk." That might have been a joke. It was probably best for Hiccup's peace of mind if he believed it was.

Sadly for Hiccup's peace of mind, he'd grown up in a village full of vikings and had a girlfriend who could quite easily wipe the floor with him. t didn't occur to him not to believe her. "No lying, not here," he said, hands up, but he was still smiling. "I give you my word as a Viking that I truly am a terrible liar."

"Then you have my word as a Mord'Sith that I believe you." It was the hair, no one who actually believed that cut worked possessed any form of guile.

There was Jane, considering it would be nice to get out and walk for once. She didn't have any particular destination on mind.

So imagine her surprise when she saw...well, something and a boy. Her right hand made the typical gesture to grab the gun she carried with her all the time, but she stopped herself mid way. Careful, now.

"Hey there", said as she closed the distance, paying a little more attention to the dragon than to the boy. "That is a very interesting pet."

Hiccup looked up and smiled. "He's not so much a pet, more a friend," he said. "When he's not being a pest." The last was added with a grin at Toothless, who simply huffed at him. "I'm Hiccup, yes, I know, silly name, and this is Toothless." Toothless sat up and looked at the new arrival out of golden eyes.

[OOC: I'm going to disappear for the day very shortly, but I'm all about the slowplay!]

Hiccup and Toothless. A...boy and his...dragon? Jane's brain was having yet another epic fight trying to make it fit into her perception of the world.

"I'm Jane Smith, nice to meet you Hiccup...and Toothless."

Hiccup gave a little wave by way of greeting, and Toothless flicked his ears. "So, nice beach isn't it? All the beaches back home are more cliff than sand, so this is a nice change."

"Yes, very nice. Your home doesn't sound like an idoneous spot for beach days though." But if dragons lived there, Jane had to guess the place wasn't precisely a summer resort. "You are a student, right?"

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Serenity Cove, early Thursday morning

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