Found again (HTTYD FF)

★42★

Hiccup took his friends on a tour of the nest's surroundings - since they'll be spending most of their visit inside anyway. He showed them the places where dragons usually go to hunt on their own - the Bewilderbeast didn't prepare a workless feast for them every day. He showed them whole expanses of icebergs and the occasional rock sticking out of the water, a nearby green island about which dragons said it had once been full of birds, but all that remained now were abandoned nests and broken shells. He showed them the wreck of a small boat wedged in the space between two icebergs - it had been there for as long as he could remember. He also showed them the nest from all sides. He couldn't hold back a laugh at the sight of their dropped chins when they discovered that the ice structure was much larger than it first appeared - and they haven't been deep into the underground tunnels the ground beneath the nest offered yet.

He showed them various places and guided them around for hours with one purpose in mind. He watched Astrid. Or rather, Toothless watched her like a hawk; it was his idea, after all, and he insisted that Hiccup attend as well, but he only made his occasional glances in her direction out of a desperate desire to speak to her again - and to apologize.

The Night Fury did not yet fully trust her, and after the morning incident his progressive trust in her had fallen to zero. He insisted on checking them all out again, not just Astrid, and making sure they were still harmless and friendly.

Hiccup understood that. He was just trying to protect everything that mattered to him - Hiccup and the nest. But he could at least show a little of the other, lazier, half of his nature.

They ended their tour of the nest's surroundings at the opening to the cave that the dragon riders had borrowed for the duration of their stay, and where they were now dismounting from their saddles. Astrid dropped to the ground with as much ease as if she had spent a lifetime on a dragon's back, while the others were still precariously trying to keep their faces off the hard ground. Even Snotlout's distant gaze didn't escape Hiccup's attention, as if something was bothering him.

"So, what do you usually do all day? Do you just fly around?"

"Isn't it a bit boring? It would drive me crazy after a while."

"Isn't it better to set fire to as many things as you can get your hands on?"

"Or letting things explode!"

"Or you could..." The twins took turns continuing their own conversation, convinced that Hiccup had nothing to do besides aimlessly fly around. They went into increasingly bizarre and detailed descriptions of what could be done with fire if Hiccup tried to experiment with it.

"...You'd fill the hole halfway with Gronckle lava, put a layer of dirt on top and flood it with water-" Tuffnut was explaining his latest idea when Snotlout interrupted. The twins' chirping seemed to bring him out of his deep thoughts.

"Can you two stop it already!? It's driving me crazy! 'Could this and could that', who cares? No one asked for your stupid ideas - especially when none of it will work! You can try your 'scientific' experiments yourself! Away from me!" Hookfang nodded, and Snotlout added: "And far away from Hookfang!"

This interrupted the twins and allowed everyone else to stop staring in confusion. And it also allowed Hiccup to answer Ruffnut's original question.

"I usually sleep during the day. Depends on when I need to be awake. If we have a-" He paused, just in time. It was getting tiresome how he inadvertently almost gave away the one thing he shouldn't every time. "If I don't have anything to do at night and I'm sleeping, then I'm usually working on... a lot of things during the day." That was true, but before he started spending his days training his new abilities. "Or Toothless and I go for a flight." True.

"And what do you usually work on?" asked Astrid. She eyed him suspiciously, as if she wanted to burn a giant hole in his soul and dig out everything he'd been keeping from her. Behind her, Stormfly bristled uncomfortably.

Hiccup was ahamed. He was unique among dragons, and that was why they didn't say anything to him about it. They just took it as his way of passing time - especially since they could then see and examine it and sometimes borrow it all - forever. But he himself knew that the things he was dealing with were not common even among Vikings - hence the shame.

"From time to time I get to human creations... shields, weapons, pieces of maps, papers... and so on. When it gets to me, it's usually all unusable and broken, so I create... new things out of it," he admitted. For a tiny moment, he thought of showing them his greatest achievement - his own working prosthetic - but dismissed the thought before it could settle in his head and bother him there for the rest of the day. Instead, he told them about Threelegs, a dragon who had lost part of his leg to an iron trap. Hiccup decided to help him one day, and within a few days he designed and created a prosthetic that helped him walk on all fours again. He no longer had to fly every little distance unnecessarily - he could walk properly again.

"That's amazing!" Fishlegs quipped. "I never thought something like that could be done! Stupid Fishlegs, stupid! After all, there are so many Vikings with artificial limbs, why couldn't there be dragons?"

Hiccup would have preferred no dragons with artificial limbs - he wanted his tail back!

"What else can you do? Anyone can carve something as simple as an artificial leg out of wood!"

It's not just made of wood, we're in a dragon's nest - wood wouldn't last very long here, Hiccup noted to himself.

"Yeah, what else can you do? I want to see the coolest thing you've got!"

Both twins looked expectantly at Hiccup. Of course, he couldn't show them his most amazing invention. But he could show them his shield, which he had been working on for months. He didn't need it for anything, but he didn't despise a good way to entertain himself for long hours. He'd created the circular object out of curiosity - he wanted to see how many hidden weapons he could cram into such a small, almost flat thing, besides a folding crossbow (most of the weapons were harmless, he didn't want to hurt the dragons watching his work).

It was clear to him that once he was done with it and no longer enjoyed it, the metal shield would lie forgotten somewhere in a corner of his cave, where it would eventually be usurped by some other dragon - and Hiccup wouldn't even remember his invention anyway.

"Follow me, I'll show you," he urged them.

I do realize he already showed them the shield. Let's just pretend they forgot about it... because I have, and I don't want to rewrite it all again.