The Viking and Princess (A Httyd Fanfiction)

Chapter 2: The search begins

A/N: Wednesday is a tricky day for me to update because after I get home from work the previous day, I'm still exhausted, and have other responsibilities to fulfill, but thankfully I'm able to get this chapter in tonight. The next update will be Womanizer, so keep an eye out for that. Moving on to this story, however, from here, things are going to pick up, storywise, just a heads up. With all that said, let's get to it.

(Normal normal pov— Unknown location)

If doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity, then Rapunzel was genuinely insane.

Every day she would do the same routine: clean the tower, read, paint/sketch, play guitar, knit, cooking/bake, ballet, chess, pottery, candle-making, and many other means of passing time.

Though Rapunzel was used to her daily routine, there was a deep, hollow feeling inside her, she had felt it even as a little girl. She was cut off from the rest of the world, thanks to her overprotective mother, Gothel. She had been told countless times that the outside world is a dangerous place, filled with horrible, selfish people. But truly the world and human beings weren't as dangerous as Gothel made it sound, right?

Rapunzel wanted to find this out herself, but so long as Gothel kept her in this tower, she would never know.

Currently, Rapunzel was reading a book about Viking raiders and how they're nothing but bloodthirsty barbarians who slaughter, plunder and wage war. Undoubtedly, there may be truth to what Rapunzel was reading, however, she was a very open-minded person, surely not all Vikings are warmongering savages, they're people who set out and try to find a better land for their people to settle. Aside from fictional books, one of Rapunzel's favorite books was The saga of Ragnar Lothbrok, it told of how the man not only risked his life to venture outside of Norway and sail to England so that the Viking people would be able to escape from vile soil of Norway and call a fertile soil a home. That home was to be England.

The smell of cookies suddenly filled Rapunzel's nostrils and she quickly placed a bookmark on the chapter she was reading before making her way out of her room and down to the kitchen. "Oh, hopefully, they aren't burnt!" She groaned to herself. Pascal, her pet chameleon clung tightly to Rapunzel leaped off of the last four stairs, slid along the floor to reach for the wooden tray and pulled it out of the fire, and sighed in relief to find that the cookies were baked to that perfect, golden hue. The pieces of chocolate she added to the cookies oozed and looked so inviting, making Rapunzel's mouth water, but she would let the cookies cool before having one.

While waiting for her baked treats to cool, Rapunzel couldn't help but contemplate the strange, yet realistic visions she was having recently. She had been seeing a golden flower looming over her and she saw two people she had never seen before in her life looming while gazing down at her with love and warmth. Unsure of what these visions meant, Rapunzel had a sinking feeling in her gut telling her that she wasn't meant to be in this tower, regardless of what Gothel told her.

Pascal suddenly nuzzled against the girl's neck, looking up at her with worried eyes, sensing her melancholy. "I really want to get out of this tower, Pascal," she then smiled. "I want to take risks, explore the world, and venture into the unknown, like Ragnar Lothbrok! He was nothing but a lowly farmer who took a risk and ultimately became a legend among the Vikings. And even though I'm not a Viking or a warrior, I still want to take a chance and see what else is out there besides this tower and this cove." Wrapping her arms around herself, Rapunzel shook her head as tears of frustration began to swell in her eyes. "For all of Gothel's talk of "loving me," she's only using me for my hair." Despite Gothel's attempts of squashing Rapunzel's self-confidence and treating her as nothing more than a naive child, the blond beauty was no fool, she had seen Gothel's beauty degrade rapidly, especially when she was away for long periods of time.