learning to fly, how to train your dragon

learning to fly

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i'm learning to fly
but i ain't got wings

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summary
a note from the translator

    SOME PEOPLE say there are no such thing as dragons. Legend says they are nothing more than a mere fable▬told to frighten children in their beds and grant superstition upon a sailor's boat in the vast oceans. You wouldn't believe me if I were to tell you that a legend was far from the truth; because what were legends and fables, if not grown from the soil of truth? What if I were to tell you there were once dragons; great grim sky dragons that nested on the cliff tops like gigantic scary birds. Little brown, scuttly dragons that hunted down the mice and rats in well-organised packs. Preposterously huge Sea Dragons that were twenty times as big as the great Blue Whale...

     Well, perhaps all you can ever do is take my word for it. For these days, dragons are extinct. They crawled back into the depths of the ocean leaving not a tooth, nor a fang, for men to remember them by. My, the Dark Ages were very dark ... what do we truly know of days centuries gone? Who am I to tell you that there were once dragons and men who rode on their backs▬those historians will tell you what they will tell you, but dear me ... were they ever there, standing amongst the years where Vikings ruled not only the ocean, but also the skies ... to hereby tell me I am wrong?

     For I discovered▬on a lonely trek upon a beach now deserted▬the treasure of an old, wooden box buried deep below the sand. Hidden behind the lock I picked, were papers and papers ... books and books, journals and journals from the hand of Freya Haddock, or for quite a lot of it, known to be Freya Balderofferson. The long ago▬once young▬Chieftess of a tribe that holds a tremendous secret ... the secret to a tale you and I now know to very well be true.

     Believe me, or do not believe me▬but I write to you, translated from Old Norse, the memoirs from the hand of a fourteen-year-old Viking right up until she became one of the last true Viking Heroes. From her broken beginning, to her youthful adventures, to the responsibility she realised she must hold▬and all the tales in between. She will tell you the story to the end; she will tell you where the dragons went.

    Because I lied.

    The dragons▬they are very, very far from ever being extinct.

                  【 braekerofchains •*⁀➷ 2023  】

about the author:
learning to fly is the first volume of freya haddock's
(née balderofferson) memoirs. she is better known
for her work in dragon racing: a viking's guide to cheating (and getting away with it) and the midgard's world records. she also has collaborated with her husband's credited title: the book of dragons, which lists every dragon known to man. 

*ೃ༄ ❀ུ۪ ❁ུ۪ ━━

•*⁀➷ a summary from freya balderofferson
translated from old norse by braekerofchains

I WAS SMALL, when I was a young girl.

So small, I could crawl into the small cracks within caves, hide away in the roofs and keep away from the monsters that plagued the mornings. I'm still rather small, now, though I do hope I've grown quite a few centimetres in the time since.

This story starts when I was small. Small-limbed, small-bodied, small-minded and short-sighted. I wanted one thing and one thing only▬I wanted it more than anything else at that ripe young age. I wanted a freedom of the sort I had never once tasted. One I was not permitted or blessed to have. A freedom of responsibility, to be able to fit in to a place where I didn't quite blend.

I never started off as a hero. I could never train dragons or ride them, let alone live to tell the tale of how I helped save them. These memoirs begin a story in the days where we cared little for the creatures roaming the skies; where once upon a time, I wanted to kill a dragon.

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a/n: *sighs*

this is the calm before the storm we all fuking know it.

oh, gemma, why did you lose your mind?
oh, it was nothing, just FOUR HTTYD FANFICS-

someone needs to take away my laptop, the httyd movies, the httyd books and Pinterest away from me they are all equally to blame for this creation.

lets make a bet and see which httyd fic I'll end up burning out on because I am so fukin adhd it is not funny-

so yeah here's the book I've had an idea for for a while now. I wanted to explore the way cressida cowell had written (and illustrated) her books and sorta wanted to incorporate that same feeling/layout in one of my own httyd fanfics with my drawings. valkyrie's rtte book has a bit of it, but i sorta rly wanna explore it a bit more in this one. Yeah so here we are, hope u guys enjoy it :)

I am publishing this when I should be going to bed because I have work tomorrow.