Tuff Love (A How To Train Your Dragon Fanfiction | Astrid x Tuffnut)

"Do you like Tuffnut?"

The inside of the sweet shoppe on a street corner of the currently frostbitten village of Berk was a cozy venue. The shoppe as about the size of Gobber's small smithy that alone could hardly contain the amount of iron and other metals that the practiced blacksmith used on a daily basis for the Hoooligans' weaponry or dragon-armor. The shoppe was lit in a dim, orange-yellow hue and had wooden fixings that held stalks of gnarled and tall lardwax candles that were misshapen from melting for hours in bunches of three near the ceiling rafters. Half of the sweet shoppe was stocked with cookware, such as an open fireplace for melting ingredients to be mixed into batters. There were other contraptions around, including iron cleavers and bowls of smoothed wood for kneading, and a messy, flour sprinkled table stocked with rolling pins or bowls with straight ladles to mash plants, seeds, berries, or herbs into pastes.

There were four tables in the second half of the shoppe that were made of light-colored wood and had carvings along its edges in various shapes of fruits and herbs. In their perimeter were fantastical displays. The finished products form the shoppe's kitchen were stocked in exhibits to show extravagant, multicolored sweets. On tall, wooden mounts were fruitcakes, creme-frosted statuettes of religious figures, sheepheads, caricatures, or well-known buildings. In other places there were stacked cylinders made of flour that all were placed well out of reach from the height of villagechildren who, in the past, had pried their sneaky, tiny fingers in the display items to delight in the flavor of treats their parents did not request. The shoppe's owners had since become smart about the mysterious fingerprints left behind in their creations and replaced lower compartments along the shoppe's walls with artistic shelves with playful shelling on its borders. In them were hordes of flavorsome sour, or syrupy elixirs which had hardened to form coins of candy with dizzying swirls or stripes in all shades of a rainbow. They were refilled reguarly at the delight of the younger customers to the shoppe, and at the convenience of teen Vikings and those older who wanted to suck on something sweet as they decided what they wanted to request from the bakers inside of the shoppe. No corner of the shoppe went untouched by the dreamy scent of deserts, and the oils from peppermint or from other pungent plants like citrus, accented the shoppe's fragrance.

When the group, fronted by Hiccup and Helda, entered the premises, the cooking station was inhabited by a number of members of a clan in the Hooligan tribe who specialized in the culinary arts for many generations. The family also had coalitions with other shops in the village, but that shoppe was dedicated to the trade and selling of all things sugary and cavity-making. Pies, cakes, tarts, mashes, jellies, fillings, spreads, and liquersticks were the family's main profession and it was appreciated to the upmost by the sweet-toothed Hooligans on Berk. As it was the case with multiple other shops in the village, any person who entered the candy shop knew the owner and her children who were small in years but culinarily gifted all due to their upbringing, by name. It would happen easily for customers to strike up conversations with the store's family while they were working to speak about anything that came to mind from their experiences of normal days on Berk, like taking livestock to the eastern markets, or, for the sake of any children the customers had, the conversation shared experiences or new lessons that happened in schoolhouses.

Chief Hiccup greeted the connoisseurs, and they were all overjoyed to see him in their presence after his rousing address to the village. The rest of Hiccup's band voiced polite greetings behind him and were served graciously. Tuffnut, Astrid, Fishlegs, Hiccup, Helda, Ruffnut and Snoutlout sat at a group table in the the shop next to an open window that had been boarded with wood planks for the winter. The white morning light shined through regardless and caused a heavenly appearance in the presently empty dining area.

The group spent a moment comparing their fudge to see which flavor indeed was the best. The conversation shifted towards Fishlegs to ask how his portion tasted to him and if it was as good as it was in previous years that they had come to the shop on the morning of Snoggletog.