A New World, Complicated

Chapter 6: Alvin and the Outcasts (Hiccup)

        There's an old Viking saying: when friends are roasting on the spit, you're the one who feels the fire. Mildew has made the entire island believe that dragons are too wild, that we all can't live together in peace. He's wrong, and I'm going to prove it.

Snotlout groaned in frustration as he halted searching along the sand.

"We've been here for hours, and we haven't found anything!"

"We've been here for ten minutes," I protested, "and you've done nothing but build... that." I gestured to whatever they were making out of rocks and twigs.

"This is Snotlout Manor. And all I need now is a queen." He slid closer to Astrid, who grunted in disgust. Tuffnut suddenly screamed and began stomping on the exact thing they had been working on since we had gotten here. "What are you doing?"

"Storming the castle."

"Come on, guys! I'm telling you, Mildew framed our dragons. I saw dragon feet in Mildew's house, and I watched him throw them into the ocean."

"I don't mean to be Norbert the Negative, but the ocean is really, really vast," Fishlegs pointed out. "And our chances of finding those dragon feet are about as good as Snotlout and Reign-"

"Don't go there," the redhead snapped.

"Going nowhere." She got closer to me and softened her expression.

"Look, Fishlegs is right. I certainly wouldn't put anything like this past him, but even if Mildew did throw them in the ocean, they're not just gonna wash up on shore here."

"I found it!" Snotlout cried

"Great!" I stopped myself in my tracks for a moment. "What were you saying?" She rolled her eyes at me, fiddling with her necklace absentmindedly. Snotlout held up a tiny club triumphantly.

"I haven't seen this since I was a baby." He hit his helmet a couple of times with it. "You never forget your first bludgeon." I sighed in defeat and turned around.

"Just keep looking." Reign's cocky smirk did nothing to help.

"Oh, I'm sorry, what were you saying?" she laughed.

"You should be looking."

"I did a circle of the island. Found nothing."

"Something could have changed."

"In the past ten seconds? I don't think so." She sighed. "They could have sunk to the bottom. If that happened, we're never getting them back." She flicked the shining silver up and down as got closer and sighed.

"I wish you'd tell me what you were thinking about."

"I told you, I still have to sort some things out for myself."

"You're still doing that?" I was impatient to help her.

"I promise that I'll come to you when I'm ready," she stated firmly and coolly, refusing to give up her stance.

"I'm telling you- I saw a pair of Zippleback feet in Mildew's house!" I insisted. "He must've used them to make the footprints of the dragon that supposedly stole the boots."

"Well then let's go have a look at them," my father suggested, though it was more of a way of saying he didn't believe me.

"Yeah, uh, there's gonna be a problem with that... I... um... threw them into the ocean."