Taming Hearts

Chapter Seven: The Dye Job

Adrianna didn't think she was very artistic. When she drew pictures, they never looked like whatever it was she was trying to draw. When she tried to paint, her pictures just looked like multicolored blobs on the page. She had given up on anything visually artistic long ago. But mixing the right plants for dyes made her think that it was very possible that she might have a gift after all. After carefully considering her plan, she knew exactly what she was going to need. So that evening at dinnertime, she was concealing a small container of something the dye book said would remove all color from anything (and advised that it be kept away from hair or skin) called bleach and a few small balls of wax filled with green dye. She considered executing her plan as soon as she was finished but she decided to be even more sneaky and show up for dinner so that no one would suspect that she'd done it at all. It was nice to be unpopular once in a while.

"Where weren't you at training?" Erick asked as she walked in, completely missing the mischievous glimmer in her eyes.

"Don't worry about it." Adrianna tried her best to stifle the smile that threatened to give away her whole plan. She mentally chastised herself for being such a bad actress. "How was it?"

Erick shrugged. "Let's just say I'm not the biggest Tarry fan out there." he shook his head. "She did tell you to come to training tomorrow because she was going to go over some techniques for dealing with wild dragons. I guess that'll be part of Thawfest."

Adrianna shrugged, looking at Tarry out of the corner of her eye and hoping the large woman noticed her sitting there. It was imperative that Tarry know she was there.

"How's Charger?" Adrianna asked, keeping her head turned in such a way that she could look at Erick and keep an eye on Tarry at the same time. "Did you and daddy find him a mate?"

Erick sighed. "No. We've looked. We were talking about going to Dragon Island but we don't want to take the egg. But... Fishlegs says it's a girl."

"The baby?" Adrianna gasped excitedly. "Aww! How can he tell?"

"Something about the egg's color and the baby's position in it when held up to the light. I don't know. I'm just trusting him and trying to think of girl names." Erick laughed. "I was going to name her Spiker. I probably should have considered that she might be a girl."

"Can I see her? I mean... not today, just some other time." Adrianna smiled a little when Tarry finally looked up at her.

"Sure. But he's a little protective of her." Erick placed his chin on his palm. "But he knows you so I don't know how he'll react. He barely lets me come near her."

"Well we'll see what happens I guess." Adrianna waited for Tarry to turn away from her before looking directly at her friend. "I'm going to the outhouse. Save my seat, okay?"

"When our giant crowd of admirers begs to sit here, I'll fight them all off." Erick winked at his friend, who giggled.

Adrianna hurried out of the Hall and down the stairs. A typical trip to the outhouse usually only took a few minutes so she would have to act fast. She overheard Snotlout complaining about having to share a room with his sons because Tarry was sleeping in their bedroom so her destination was the Jorgenson residence.

The door creaked open, which might have been a problem if she wasn't sure no one was home. She'd only been there a few times to watch the boys for a few minutes while Heather was out. She hadn't been in their washroom because there was no need to take a bath in those few minutes so it took a couple of seconds to locate it. She tiptoed in and looked around. On the table was a small bottle of something that smelled rather potent. She picked it up and was overwhelmed by the smell,which she now recognized as what she thought was Tarry's perfume.