Fearless Fables

Talons and Toddlers Part 1

"Umm... Umm... Guys this is really heavy—" Hiccup huffed under the weight of the massive crate he had just heaved from the upper level. Toothless made a strangely strained noise as he tried to support his human who was beginning to topple sideways down the stairs. "I could really use some help..." He lost his footing momentarily as he shot a desperate expression to his guffawing family. "ASTRID!"

Astrid was too busy laughing at that moment to respond, so Adrianna took pity on her exhausted father who was now leaning, panting, on the railing, with the box perched precariously on the stair immediately beneath him. She ran up the stairs, squeezed past Toothless, and tried to grab the box from beneath. She strained to help lift it. Hiccup did not waste much time in watching her.

"Thank you, Addie, but I don't think—" she was now climbing onto the top to get up to where her father was, unknowingly shifting its center of gravity. It began to slowly tip beneath her weight—"you're going to—ADDIE!" He grabbed the little girl around the waist a second before the box tipped and tumbled down the stairs. Toothless narrowly missed its careening adventure by leaping with a frustrated squawk onto one of the rafters. At the base of the stairs, Astrid regained her poise long enough to dodge the crate as it broke open and spilled its contents across the floor.

Adrianna took one look at the mess now covering the floor and slowly looked up at her father with a sheepish expression. "Sorry daddy."

"No, no. It's okay. You actually made my job a lot easier. And we didn't need that crate anyway."

"Dad, what is that?" Finn asked, probing a massive metal coated object which had landed atop the majority of the baby paraphernalia they were donating to Gustav's soon to be firstborn.

"Oh. That." Hiccup replied slowly, scratching the back of his head as he descended the stairs, Adrianna still in tow. He hoisted her to the floor on the other side of the mess before jumping gingerly over it himself. "That is... well..."

"That's your old playpen." Astrid interjected. "I'd forgotten how much like a prison it looked." She began to set it up aright so they could see it more clearly. The playpen stood almost three feet high, and its crowning glory was a metal infused door and locking mechanism.

Adrianna tried to push up the latch at the top of the gate. As soon as it wiggled free, she grabbed the handle and tried to swing it open, only to be surprised when it would not budge. "It's stuck." She said, pulling hard on it.

"No, no, it's supposed to do that." Astrid replied.

"Though if it were stuck we'd never notice," Hiccup added.

"Let me try, you're just weak." Finn said, pushing his sister's hand from the gate. He braced his feet on either side of the gate and heaved backwards with his full weight.

"If your grandfather couldn't get that open, I doubt you will." Astrid dryly remarked while taking a seat by the table to watch.

Finn let go and glowered at the mechanism. "What was this again?"

"Your playpen. We never opened it either; we just sort of... hoisted you over." Hiccup said. "Actually, I think Gobber was the only person who ever did know how that lock worked."

"He tried to show you once." Astrid piped up.

"Yeah, and it took four hands and three feet to do it. Not to mention the strength of a dragon."

"Not like we have any of those here, or anything." Astrid deadpanned. Stormfly, who was stretched out by the hearth made a soft noise of approval while Toothless leapt from the rafters down onto the stairs, eager to lend his assistance to the task.