Deceptively Delicious

Chapter 2

The night hours were sheer misery. Snotlout shivered and groaned, holding his stomach and cursing the deceptively delicious berries. Hiccup had tried giving him water but Snotlout was unable to keep anything down. With much coaxing he would swallow a few sips of water, only to have it reappear minutes later. Hiccup decided to let Snotlout's stomach recover for a little while before trying again, although with the constant vomiting he was worried about his stubborn partner getting dehydrated, which would just make everything worse.

Snotlout fell into a fevered, restless sleep sometime in the early hours of the dawn, allowing Hiccup to get a break from watching over the sick viking. Eventually Hiccup felt alright leaving him for a few minutes, just to get some firewood and look for more water.

Hiccup was on his way back with an armload of firewood and a full skin of water when he heard a high-pitched scream from the camp. He dropped the firewood and raced into camp to find a wild nadder towering over Snotlout. The short viking had dragged himself back against a large rock and had an axe leveled at the dragon, which was looking at Snotlout with hungry eyes. Noticing that the fire was still going, Hiccup had an idea.

He shouted to Snotlout, "You must smell like berries still! I'm going to ward it off with the wood smoke!" Snotlout nodded, but Hiccup felt a flash of concern when he thought he saw- no, it couldn't be- tear tracks on Snotlout's cheeks. The normally boastful viking was deeply afraid, and Hiccup had a feeling that it wasn't just the dragon.

Pulling a smoldering branch from the flames, Hiccup waved it back and forth in front of the nadder- he kept enough distance so that the dragon wasn't hurt, but he was close enough for the smell to waft into the nadder's nostrils. It made a disappointed keening noise and flew away after it smelled the smoke, realizing that it's meal was unattainable.

Hiccup let out a sigh of relief, then turned back to Snotlout and helped him lay down beside the fire once more. "Um, I'm not trying to whine or anything, but I kinda have a problem." Snotlout mumbled, his cheeks turning red.

His companion just rolled his eyes, exasperated, and replied, "Snotlout, don't be afraid to tell me if something feels wrong. I've already told you a million times that it's better to worry about nothing than ignore it and have a bigger problem later. So what's the problem?"

Snotlout was still a vibrant shade of red, but he managed to explain, "I can't move my legs at all. I was trying to move them when the nadder came in, but I just can't... " Hiccup's face grew pale and he tried to hide his shock, but this was very bad. Snotlout had eaten quite a large amount of berries, but Hiccup had thought that he would escape the worst of the symptoms. But if this was happening, Hiccup wasn't sure that he could handle the situation until he could get Snotlout to Gothi.

Hiccup gently maneuvered Snotlout so that he lay on his stomach, then pushed up the shorter viking's shirt to reveal his spine. In rare cases certain proteins in the berries could attack the fluid in the spinal cord, which Hiccup feared to be the cause of Snotlout's paralysis. He carefully applied pressure, his hands moving down Snotlout's back, and his fears were confirmed by Snotlout's muffled scream.

Hiccup apologized, feeling awful as Snotlout gasped, frantically trying to fight off tears of pain. He knew that his cousin hated looking weak in any way and felt terrible- Hiccup hadn't realized that the pain inflicted would be this severe. "So, good news and bad news." Snotlout jerked his head up to look at Hiccup, hope and fear mingling in his gaze. "The good news is that this is entirely cureable." Snotlout let out a gusty sigh of relief. "But the bad news is that we have to wait until the other riders can get us to Gothi. I know how to manage your symptoms, but not how to cure you."

Snotlout made a noncommittal noise and let Hiccup guide him back to a more or less comfortable position. "The terror mail must be pretty close to Berk now, so at least it shouldn't be too long," Snotlout groaned, wiping sweat off his forehead. Hiccup offered him some water, but his cousin refused, shifting a hand to rest against his stomach. Hiccup turned away to stock up the fire, trying to reassure himself that help would come in time.