𝐊𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐒𝐈 ━ how to train your dragon²

12│ONE FOR THE MONEY, TWO FOR THE SHOW

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❛ ᴋʜᴀʟᴇᴇsɪ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐕𝐄 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ ᴏɴᴇ ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏɴᴇʏ,
ᴛᴡᴏ ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ sʜᴏᴡ ꒱


❝ I WILL CRUSH YOU ALL! ❞

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10 years ago

When Dany was just a little girl, before she was old enough to take to the skies, before she met Hiccup, before the Battle of the Red Death— but only a few years after her parents' flight from Berk, she took an interest in wood carving. Her father disappeared into the shed out back for many long hours, only to return smelling like birch and cedar and the sweetness of sap. He would have fine golden particles sticking to his clothes, some of it even coating his face as he wiped sweat off his brow with an already-dirty kerchief.

His hands, though long-fingered and fine— like his daughter's— were roughened by callouses due to many years of holding a saw or an axe or a carving knife. Some days they came back stained black, as if he'd put his entire hand in the cooling embers of a fire— he later explained that this was charcoal. Her mother forbade her from entering the shed due to Randolf's obliviousness; he tended to get lost in his craft, which could lead to five-year-old-girls getting up to no good around sharp objects. Because of this rule, Dany was even more curious to what her father did inside.

First, she simply watched him so her mother's observant gaze wouldn't become suspicious. With a cat-sized Drogon beside her, Daenerys took to tending their vegetable garden, which was in the space between their house and the shed. She preferred being outside, anyway, and it allowed her a first-row view of her father's comings and goings.

She watched as he stood out by the chopping block with his tools, cutting down tree trunks even bigger than her to something just large enough to pick up. On nice days, he would sit on the chopping block with his hewn-down wood and begin to smooth it with his rasp. Sometimes— when her mother wasn't looking— Randolf would gesture for her to come over. Dany approached him cautiously, glancing back at the house every so often to keep an eye on Ingrid.

He smiled at her wariness and when she was close enough, he drew her against him. The sensation made her squirm a little, since at that point, her father would be hot and sweaty from cutting the wood— an unpleasant feeling for her. She stilled, though, when he took her smaller hand in his and positioned the rasp into the correct holding position. Together, they would make long, smooth scrapes against the wood to even out the rough surface.

If he had been working with a piece for many days, he would invite her to feel how smooth it was. Dany would run her hand down the panel and marvel at how something that was once so rough could be worn down to a silken texture. She watched those smoothed pieces of wood go into the shed and vanish for long periods of time before they came out, transformed, into a table or chair or shelf. It was that part of the process that she wondered about: how did a tree become furniture?

Her chance to get the answer to that question came when her mother had gone out foraging for the day. As soon as Ingrid was out of sight, Dany slipped from the house— where she was supposed to be working on her mending skills— to the shed.

Randolf hardly noticed when the door opened wide enough to allow a small girl to slide through; it was only the awed gasp that she let out that alerted him of her presence. Since Daenerys had never been inside the shed, she was surprised by the dimly lit interior that was illuminated by the soft glow of flickering torches. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust after the brightness outside but when they did, her gaze fell on a haphazard collection of tools and materials scattered across the worn dirt floor. The uneven wooden shelves were burdened with mix of axes, chisels, saws, and leatherworking implements, their blades stained with the evidence of countless projects.