The first to know

Fun we almost died

     I gotta say, we were stupidly good at getting into trouble.
Vikings in general had a knack for it but we seemed to have honed the skill to perfection. 

    By we I meant me and my twin brother, Hiccup. 

     As per the usual the raid horn sounded, signaling  that our village's weekly walk through hell was about to begin.  We were up, dressed and running out of our respective rooms in a matter of seconds, we weren't allowed to be out helping per say, but we had duties at the forges and it was inevitable that we were going to cause a little accidental havoc on the way there. Hiccup opened the door and prepared to leave, I slammed into him to get it closed as a monstrous nightmare came and began spitting its hell fire at the house. 

    We opened it slowly this time, hoping the overstimulated beast was gone. It thankfully was. We sprinted out into the chaos, stirring the pot as we went. Hopping over and under different obstacles until one we couldn't pass picked us both up by the scruff of the neck, just as a fire breathing menace passed in front of us. 

  My father Stoik the Vast held us aloft, switching his angry glare between the two of us.
There were many legends about the tall, stoat man, I couldn't help but believe all of them, Hiccup and I had seen him at his most vulnerable and even then he was nothing to be trifled with. 

"WHAT ARE THEY DOING OUT? What are you doing out? He asked loudly over the sounds of pandemonium that swirled around us.

  I opened my mouth to answer his obviously rhetorical question.

"NEVER MIND! Idonea Hiccup GET INSIDE!."  He slung us the last few steps into the forge. I stumbled and fell flat on my face. I rose giggling when Gobbers' uproar of laughter at my antics  filled the space. I breathed in the familiar pleasant scent of wood smoke, iron, leather and musk. Gobber made a good natured jab at us being late and being eaten by the lizards prowling our streets. Hiccup made his usual sarcastic banter with the man as the two of us set to work. I sharpened and repaired leather work and handles while Hiccup toiled over bent blades, and collected the broken items from different villagers. We traded places distributing weapons and keeping the forges lit, while Gobber worked with the actual raw materials. Even though we were both 15 the man seemed to be under the impression that I specifically was too clumsy for the task, I mean what on earth could give him that idea. 

   Slowly the battle leaned towards the dragons victory as the night went on. Eventually the fire crew came out to play. The fire crew was a group of our peers that were unfairly allowed to be out during these tumultuous times. I watched as they stepped away from an exploding house bravely  not looking back at the carnage like they were being watched by awed spectators, of course if Hiccups star struck expression at Astrid and my jealous but bemused scowl counted then, technically they were.

  Like I said previously, the war was slipping through our fingers and into the dragon's open jaws, so Gobber went out to join the fight just as I finished teasing Hiccup about his girl crush. 

  "You two stay put... Right there." He gestured to the two of us right where we were distractedly, and left to aid in the fray. Of course we didn't listen to him. Hiccup and I dragged his contraption that he had tucked away in the corner and I grabbed as many extra bolas as the battle could spare. We clambered out of the space and up a nearby hill as a high whistle, sounding deeper than normal, rocked the landscape followed closely by a purple-blue flash and the deafening boom of a wooden structure collapsing. 

   "Come on come on, give me something to shoot at." Hiccup mumbled under his breath I could practically hear his internal monologue meshing with mine in the silence. I bent to lay out the additional bolas on the ground and crouched to arrange them just in case we were in need of a quick reload. 

Then before I could blink a quick whistle and a blast sounded again I jumped to my feet as Hiccup shot and I heard a roar of a downed dragon as it careened toward the earth. My mouth fell open as my big brother jumped into the air. 

"I DID IT!!! did anybody see that?" He yelled at anyone it seemed.

"I- I- I can't BELIEVE it. you- YOU DID IT!" I screamed back perhaps too loudly because a monstrous nightmare scaled the cliffs right behind me and prepared to send me on a one way trip to the afterlife. Thankfully Hiccup tackled me out of the way and we both rolled down the hill with the fire breather in hot pursuit. I was up on my feet when we reached the bottom and dragged him with me as I ran. We were both screaming at the top of our lungs as Hiccup finally managed to rise to his feet and run with me down into the village. My lanky older brother flung me behind a large post and stepped in front attempting to sway the creature's attention. It was sweet and he really did have the heart of an older brother even though I was only ten minutes younger. 

I turned around and grabbed that back of his tunic, using all of my might to rip him away from the beasts jaws and behind the pole with me.

  "You need to stop trying to be so damned heroic all of the time." I scolded loudly as he tried to shield my annoyingly stout short body with his tall skinny one.

"Like I could contain all of this raw, untamed vikingness without being a hero every once in a while" He replied dryly, still attempting to keep the flames from licking the both of us. It didn't work much seeing as my shoulders were almost as wide as the pole. See, Hiccup had managed to get the height from our father and mother but all of her lankiness was imparted in the package. I don't know what sort of troll cursed me as a babe but I got stuck with the wide shoulders and rib cage of the average viking young adult man, this was only pronounced by my being not much taller than a gnome. So in short I got a few burns.

The fire let up as our father came to the rescue... Like always. He literally manhandled the beast and scared it off.

I thought the battle was won but of course as luck would have it the pole we had been sheltering behind crumpled sending the large flamey torch bit at the top to roll off the nearby cliff and released a couple Deadly Nadders from a net down below. We both cringed awkwardly at every bump the metal made against the ground before it crashed into the harbor.

We, as if practiced, turned and looked up through our lashes at our now livid father. 

"Sorry dad." We said in unison.

"Ok but I shot a Nightfury." Hiccup said loudly trying to garner a bit of praise and soften the blow, sadly we had been in similar situations that turned up nothing.

"Stop Hiccup just stop, you too Idonea you both are getting into too much trouble. Can't you see I have enough on my plate, well really the rest of the village has far too little on theirs." A couple men and women clutch their stomach in agreement, my own rumbled quietly.  

"I can't help it I- I see a dragon and I just have to kill it you know. It- it's who I am dad." Hiccup said with just a hint of sarcasm that really only I could detect. I cringed internally at how pathetic it sounded, even to my ears. 

 I got a sense of de-javu as we were once again picked up by the scruffs of our coats and carried over to the middle of the village and placed down again.

"I'll deal with you two later. Go home." He said to us looking not only angry but disappointed, I hated disappointing him but it couldn't be helped. Then he turned to Gobber. 

"Make sure they get there." He commanded shortly and Gobber took up the mantle of grabbing the necks of our tunics and dragging us away. 

As we passed our peers they made snide remarks about his  "Success". Snotlout was the loudest and most obnoxious about it, he even turned to insult my hand in the chaos. I had the acute pleasure of threatening to scrape his eyeballs out with a spoon and then Gobber following up my threat with a big wack to his noggin. 

We were shoved up the stairs by the old smith and instructed to be better about listening to orders and not getting in trouble. 

"We just want to be like you guys." I defended dejectedly as we turned into the house and made our way inside. 

Our morose expressions melted off as we listened to Gobbers footsteps fade down the path. As soon as we heard no more, we bolted for the back door and flung it open heading into the woods to find our fallen foe.