How To Win The Soul of A Dragon

Chapter 4 (F)

"Hey, bud!" 

I greeted my dragon when I arrived to the cove. It was nighttime, but I could see perfectly well, and so could him.

One of the perks of living alone was that I could leave the house whenever I felt like it; I didn't have any adults telling me 'It's late, stay here' or 'Go out and do something; you've been in here all day!' I could eat what I wanted, sleep when I wanted to and wake up when I felt like it.

No one would check my house looking for me except, perhaps, Hiccup, but he knew what I did at night so there wouldn't be any problem.

When Thunderlight saw me, he growled happily and licked my face "Aw, c'mon!" I complained, but he didn't stop; I hated it when he did that "You saw me four hours ago!" but he didn't care, as usual "Okay, okay, that's enough" I said jumping to one side, dodging his 'kisses' "What do you think, bud? Ready for the usual night flight?" he growled happily and I hopped on his saddle "Let's go!" with that, we took off.

That had become a usual activity since Hiccup made the saddles for both of our dragons. I was already thinking about having one way before I met him, but I had no idea how to build it. And then he came along. 

Making them was easy, or at least it seemed like it from outside. I never touched the materials or tools Hiccup was using because I would have probably ended up setting something on fire; I was just there for moral support and to bring food. 

I know, I know, I'm a lovely person. 

Most of the time we stayed in the workshop all through the night working on the saddles, and when I say all through the night I mean that we literally left at six AM everyday.  We even fell asleep there once, and the next morning we had a lot of explaining to do to Gobber who found us.

Getting the dragons to use the saddles was the hard part; they ran from one place to another with us following behind for like fifteen minutes before we finally managed to place them on their bodies. I've always wondered if they did it on purpose. Knowing them, they probably did.

We trained for quite a long time until we finally became moderately good, and we always raced during daylight against each other. Our dragons took it very seriously, they were very competitive, while Hiccup and I did it just for the fun of it (Although sometimes I could get carried away)

At night, I always went out with Thunderlight on a flight. It was kind of our thing. You are probably wondering how I could see anything in broad nighttime, or how Thunderlight could see. Let me explain:

The first time we tried this was a couple of days after our first race, and the night was beautiful. Not a single cloud could be seen in the sky. The moon and stars were shining brightly, and there was no wind blowing in the air. Everything was perfect, so I thought it would be pretty cool to ride on a night like that one; nighttime had always been my favorite time of the day, I was a night owl.

But Thunderlight wasn't very keen on it. When I arrived to the cove, he was sleeping and I felt really bad for waking him up; he grunted several times before finally accepting I wasn't going to leave, and allowing me to sit on his saddle. 

I would like to say that everything went smoothly and we had no problems at all, but, in reality, it was a complete mess. 

We couldn't see anything, and we crashed with several rocks several times, but I wasn't going to give up so easily.

I came back the next day. Although Thunderlight still didn't like the idea, he didn't complain as much as he had the previous night, and this time went a little bit better. I mean, we crashed with several more rocks, but, at least, we arrived to our destination, bruised and tired, but we arrived.