Knight's Honor

One Problem Solved

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The next morning Astrid woke from a dream where she was flying through the clouds on Stormfly, and she wasn't too happy from waking up from it. Still, she had responsibilities to attend to and she wanted to know how the trainees faired during her absence.

Getting the youngsters to pay attention had proved to be challenging. All they wanted to do was talk about the dragons and the Knights that rode them.

"Were they tall?"

"Do they have their own horses?"

"Can dragons eat grass?"

"How many dragons are with them?"

"Can I learn to talk to dragons too?"

"Can we have our own dragons?"

"No, none of us can have dragons," Astrid said sternly, "because on Berk we kill them, not train them."

"But you'll change that when you become Chief, right?"

Astrid knew this was a dangerous topic to discuss, despite her personal feelings so she told them "not likely." Given the known hostility of the adult villagers to the idea would be the safest assumption. She mostly hated the idea of hiding it from her parents, and several times she wanted to tell them and she had only been home for less than a day. But she always stopped herself by remembering why she needs to keep it a secret.

The secret was distressing to her; thankfully she had other things to think about. The idea of flying again kept coming into her mind and began to distract her while she was teaching. Any mistakes practically were glanced over, and the training itself ended nearly half an hour early, something Astrid never did when she taught.

Something else that was distracting her was a rumor about Snotlout. As the rumor goes he somehow got more money from somewhere and started to pay people for an unknown reason but on the same day Spitelout lost a considerable amount of money and no one knows why.

Fishlegs and the Thorsten Twins have been investigating the matter, but their progress has been slow mainly due to the Twins using rather... interesting methods.

Astrid had hoped she can discuss the matter with Stoick but he was too busy directing ship repairs and attending to a list of complaints (mostly from Mildew) and wasn't available until the afternoon. So she went to her home for lunch, where she found her mother having a conversation with Ruffnut. She had come over to get spices for her own mother's cooking and had been invited to join Mrs. Hofferson for lunch.

"Hi Astrid," Ruffnut said with a slight wave, "How'd training go today?"

"Fine. Nothing really worth speaking of." Astrid shrugged though she wouldn't admit it, the reason for the absence of anything was to speak of what was due.

The three of them sat down at a table and began eating.

Ruffnut spoke up in between bites. "So this Black Knight... you never did answer my question if he's hot."

"I wouldn't know, Ruff. He always had a helmet on." She wondered what he really looked like after all those years. She remembered him saying he was horribly disfigured. If he was, how bad was it?

"Pity."

"Anyways Ruff, what does it matter if he's hot?" Asta chuckled upon hearing this.

"Because I'm still waiting for my knight to come and take me away from this place!" Ruffnut replied dreamily. Astrid snorted. "I'm serious! Alright, maybe not literally, but my mom brought up marriage today and when I consider the possibilities... they don't seem too bright now, do they?"