Homecoming (A "How To Train Your Dragon" Story)

Chapter 10:

Great Hall- Evening

Zephyr tip-toes down the hallway of the Great Hall.  She is holding an oil lamp.  She presses her ear to a door that says "Chief" and then opens it.  It is Hiccup's office.  Zephyr shines the light on the nearby bookshelf.

ZEPHYR: (quietly reads the book titles) Book of Documents 1, Book of Documents 2, Book of Documents 3, Book of Documents 4....  Dad sure has a lot of documents.

Zephyr moves down the shelf.

ZEPHYR: (continues to read the book titles) History of Berk Volume 13, History of Berk Volume 14.... (shakes head) No, no, no, dad wouldn't put information about dragons in plain sight.

Zephyr looks around the room.

ZEPHYR: It'd have to be somewhere... secret.

Zephyr walks around the room.  She looks through Hiccup's desk.  As she shuffles through the papers, she knocks down a pencil.  The pencil falls off the desk and rolls underneath it.  Zephyr gets down on her hands and knees and grabs the pencil.  Her hand scrapes against a loose nail in the floorboard.

ZEPHYR: Ouch! (she pulls back her hand)

After a moment, Zephyr looks more closely at the floorboard.  She notices that three of the nails on the floorboard are loose and the other is missing.  She knocks on the board and the sound is hollow.  Curious, Zephyr (with some difficulty) pries off the board and finds a hidden compartment underneath.  Inside are several notebooks.

ZEPHYR: Oh wow!  This is where he keeps the stuff.

Zephyr flips through several of the notebooks.  Most of them are drawings or sketches.  Zephyr finds an old, small, leather notebook.  She flips through the pages and finds Hiccup's first sketch of Toothless.

ZEPHYR: So this must be a Night Fury.

Zephyr studies the sketch more closely.

ZEPHYR: But if this is a Night Fury, then what I saw in the forest must be....