TAW Tales: How to Train Your Shifters (#1)

~ Chapter 43 ~

We walked along the beach, the brilliant blue waves lapping against the white sand.

I gazed out towards the setting sun. The sky was painted with oranges and reds, and I wondered vageuly where the Whispering Death (whom I later found out was called Groundsplitter) and her son had gone.

Despite our victory against them, a dark mood hung over our group, like storm clouds in winter. We'd defeated the Screaming Death, convinced a Whispering Death not to attack us and stopped a full-scale assult on Berk.

Not bad for an average day, but we were still literal worlds away from home.

"So this message of yours," Astrid said into the silence, "It didn't say anything about how you get back home?"

"No," Night replied moodily. "It only said that we had to 'experiance someone else's tale'."

"Been there, done that," Luna replied, pretending to tick them off her fingers. "So now we're stuck here in your world forever. Yay."

"What's wrong with that?" Fishlegs asked, somewhat reproachfully. "I mean, you did say you never had dragons there, right?"

"Yeah," I moaned, "But we had our families, and friends, and pets, and -"

"Phones," Night added wistfully. "I haven't been able to use mine for ages because you guys haven't invented technology!"

She got stared at pretty hard.

"Oh," Luna said, as if a thought had suddenly occured to her, "If we went back home, we wouldn't be able to take our dragons with us, would we?"

We exchanged glances.

"Well, most of the dragons you guys rode were technically ours anyway," Fishlegs pointed out. "They just let you ride them."

"Even Darkspine?" Luna asked, looking downcast.

Fishlegs hesitated. "Actually, I don't even know how you trained him. He wouldn't let any of us approach him."

"Yeah, not even me," Tuffnut added, pushing forward. "And I'm like the best dragon trainer there is."

"Uh, yeah, that Scouldren totally thought so too." Ruffnut rolled her eyes at her brother.

"I love these guys," Everest whispered to me, "They remind me of myself."

"Hey, he just liked the look of my pants," Tuffnut shot back loudly. "Can you blame him?"

"Uh, yeah, I think I can," Snotlout sneered as the twins began growling at eachother and ramming their heads together.

"Still though, I don't want to leave Darkspine," Luna said sadly.

"I don't want to leave Wavebreaker, either," I added, thinking of the Shockjaw who had come to be like a part of me.

A flash of sea-green in the surf caught my eye and as the others talked I veered away to investigate. I kneeled down and the little wavelets gently pushed something into my outstretched hand.

"Hey, what's Willow doing?"

At Moon's call, the others came tredding back to where I'd stopped. I straightened up, holding a sea-green bottle in my hand. It was corked and had small barnicles growing on one side. I could just make out something long and thin inside.

"It's like... a bottle," I said, examining it from different angles as they crowded around me.

"Ooh, maybe it's a treasure map," Fishlegs said excitedly as I pulled the cork out.

I tilted the bottle downwards and a crusty, yellow parchment fell out, tightly rolled. As I began to unfurl it slowly, trying not to break the fragile paper, I heard the twins arguing in the background.