How To Train Your Dragon One-Shots

Dear Oswald

Hope you're doing well! Here's my Dagur the Deranged story! Spent a decent two hours writing this. It was a spur of the moment decision. Was not expecting to have the energy to write anything tonight after a long week of law school, but here we are! As always, please excuse any sloppiness as it is hard finding the time to write but I've been having so much fun doing it that I've been making time for it. Dagur is a great character, and I'm hoping this captures just a little of his deranged-ness. This takes place before Heather reconnects with the Dragon Riders.

***

Perhaps it was the darkness of the sky or the relentlessness of the snow, but it was on nights like this that Heather read the note.

She and Windshear had been flying when the storm barreled in. One moment the sky had been clear, and the next she had to pull her hood over her head to avoid the onslaught of snow from getting in her eyes and mouth. She was used to bad weather, but this...this was unusual, even by Viking standards. Her vision almost useless and she had felt Windshear begin to lean as up and down began to lose all meaning. With a yell she had lunged forward, grabbing her dragon's neck so that she wouldn't fall off. Windshear's scales were shiny and cold and Heather's hands were in pain just holding them. They were going to die out there in the snow, so far away...

But she hadn't died. Windshear had flown through the storm and somehow managed to find an old shipwreck. Well, not an old one. It was a ship she and Windshear had incapacitated about a year ago. There wasn't much damage - Windshear had only sliced the mast and forced the ship ashore. The sailors could have repaired it given time, but they had decided not to stick around. They had abandoned their home, and Heather and Windshear had adopted it. They sealed up the hull, changed some of the décor, and made it at least habitable. There was plenty of space to sleep in, to cook, and even to train. Supplies were stored below in the hold, allowing them to stay there for a number of weeks if they ever need somewhere to hide. 

It wasn't home, but nothing was.

Heather gathered some logs from the pile she stored in one of the rooms of the ship and brought it to the main room. There was even a chimney built into the deck above her, angled in such a way as to keep out the water and snow. When the logs were arranged neatly in the center of the room, Windshear set them on fire. Heather sat nearby the fire and began to feel herself warm up. The muscles throughout her body began to relax, and the water droplets hanging onto her silver armor began to evaporate. 

"Thanks, Windshear," she said, patting her dragon. Windshear blinked her acid green eyes and purred. 

The wind still howled outside the boat, but sitting there next to the fire and Windshear, Heather felt comfortable. It was peaceful in a way. Heather wasn't very familiar with peace, so when it did show itself she did her best to capture it for as long as possible. Away from the raids on pirates and the reminders of her isolation, she could let herself relax.

Windshear was snoring. Not wanting to disturb her, Heather slowly got to her feet and creeped towards one side of the room. There was a closet with some different outfits full of various rips and tears from dragons and axes. At the bottom of the closet was a pile of old boots. Heather scrounged through the boots and then found one that felt a little harder then the rest. She reached into it and pulled out a glass bottle with a yellowing piece of parchment. Taking the bottle, Heather made her way back to the fire and sat back down next to her still sleeping dragon.

Uncorking the bottle, she tipped it over and she teased the parchment out from inside it. It was rough in her hands but seemed to be in good shape. There were no tears or crumbling corners. It was as if it had just been written on yesterday. She knew it hadn't been. She had found it back when she was a kid. One day while she was out playing, she had seen the bottle sticking out from the sand. When she noticed it had a letter inside of it, she couldn't help but pull it out and read it. Since then, she returned to the letter whenever she had a quiet moment like this. It was comforting, and Thor knew she could use some comfort in her life. Windshear was fantastic, but it wasn't the same as having another human being around to relate to.