Upside Down ((OPEN))

[oddny]

((Open for people and small-ish dragons, since Oddny's a bit afraid of Big Dragons. I'm new here, so be nice to Oddny!))

"I can't stand spinters!" Oddny shouted, to no-one in particular. It wasn't like there was anyone around, as far she new, to hear her. Hanging upside down on a branch in an old tree wasn't the best idea, in hind-sight. Oddny THOUGHT her leggings would prevent splinters from getting at her knees, but she was wrong. "Ug, get out, infernal wood!" And, also, picking said splinters out, without getting out of said tree first, might also have been a bad idea. Oddny didn't care, though. No idea was bad to her. Different maybe. Stupid? Probably. But bad? No.

Fortunatly for her, the Gods must have been smiling down on her that day. If it had been anyone else, swinging by their knees on a tree branch over-hanging the giant bowl-like canyon while simultaniously jerking splinters out of their knees probably would have fallen. Not Oddny, thankfully. She still has sketches to do!

"Listen, guys! We always see the world from right-side up!" she'd enthused at the Mead Hall to a group of her peers. "But do we REALLY know what the world looks like upside down?"

"Does anyone really CARE?" someone had blurted out, causing the rest of those dunder-heads to join in the group gafaw. Oddny had been laughed out of the hall, but she wasn't giving up! She was determined to get this sketch!

Ten minutes into her upside-down hang, the blood started to rush to her head, but that wasn't what really got her attention. A few twigs snapped behind her, alerting her to someone walking up. She didn't feel like swinging down to greet who-ever it was, and she didn't think that someone had come to wish her well (probably came just to laugh), so instead, she just shouted, never taking her eyes off the upside-down canyon.

"Who-over that is, laugh all you want!" she shouted. "I'm not getting down and you can't make me!"

[carodacat]

((Small dragons? Finally, a place where a viking with a Terror isn't sissy! ))
Madhawk walked slowly through the forest. It was a nice day, but he had left his flight fury at home, not wanting to fly. Fury was snoozing peacefully in his arms. The Terrible Terror was so small he had been sat on by Wolf's dragon accidentally the other night. Wolf and the massive Nightmare had looked very sorry, but Madhawk had wanted to get away from the village for a while.

They saw an old tree up ahead and decided to rest under it. Fury woke up and flapped onto one of the branches. Madhawk was walking after him when he heard the girl. He jumped. She was hanging upside down from the tree.

"I wasn't going to make you come down," Madhawk said, smiling a little. He slowly climbed up the tree until he was at the same level as the girl. He hadn't seen her before. He gingerly sat between two branches and took out his sketchbook. "What are you doing?" he asked, flipping through his book trying to find a space. Wolf, Fury, Gronckle, Wolf, Nayrol, Fury, Wolf... ah, a clean page. He began to sketch the upside-down girl, wondering who she was. Fury landed on the branch beside the girl and curled his tail around the wood before letting himself fall, so he was hanging upside-down like a bat next to the girl.

[oddny]

Oddny was surprised that who-ever had walked up was climbing the tree, but was more surprised by the little Terror, swinging by it's tail next to her. She wasn't really bothered by small dragons like Terrors, but still, it was just......well, surprising!

She didn't recognize the voice of who ever was now in the tree with her, and from the angle she was hanging at, his face was obscurred by the sketchbook he'd pulled out. Reaching up and grabbing the branch she was hanging from and pulled herself up, and was then face to face with this boy.

He was a thin-faced boy, with black hair, possibly longer than hers. Skinny as a bean-pole, Oddny then realized how this frail tree was able to support both their bodies! He couldn't have been older than 16, possible even 15, and was probably a Viking in Training.

"Oh, I thought you might have been.....well, anyone else besides you." Oddny said, half a smile on her face, but her eyes still scrupulous. "And as to what I'm doing," she poked his sketchbook and looked over his shoulder at his drawing. "I suspect I'm doing much the same thing you are...though, our subjects are different." she chuckled at the sketch of herself on the paper.

[carodacat]

"Why are you drawing upside-down?" Madhawk asked, confused. He quickly turned the page, and blushed even more when his picture of Wolf was on show. He added a little shading to the picture, trying to act normal.

Fury watched the girl carefully. He slowly approached her, standing on his hind legs in a begging position. He had only eaten one fish and he was starving. He sniffed the girl and begged cutely.

Madhawk rolled his eyes at his dragon. "Honestly, I don't know how you can think him cute. I wish I had a better dragon." he said, taking care not to speak Dragonese. Fury didn't even blink. "What's your name?" Madhawk asked, trying to act old for his age. This girl was years older than him. He had to act mature.

[oddny]

Oddny reluctantly showed the boy the picture she'd been drawing of the upside down canyon.

"Eh, I had this idea earlier, but now....I guess what everyone said was right..." Now that she really looked at her picture, she could see that, it was the exact same thing if she'd drawn the canyon right side up, and then flipped the page over. "Oh well. I thought, maybe, everything looked different upside down, you know? That if I drew it upside down, we'd be seeing something we'd never seen before! But, everyone at the Mead Hall laughed at me, saying it's the same, just upside down. And look," she held up her picture for him to see. "Looks like they were right."

Oddny was a bit dissapointed that those meat-heads had been right, but not bitter enough to scrap the sketch. It was still a good sketch! And Oddny was stubborn; she wasn't going to let the fact that she'd been completely wrong stop her from finishing this!

Oddny was torn out of her thoughts by the little Terror, sitting on it's hind legs and begging for food. She laughed at the boy's comment on his dragon and reached for her backpack (which wa somehow not on her back). "Any dragon that isn't one of those distructive brutes is cute to me!" she said, looking around curiously. "D'you see a brown backpack som- oh, there it is!" Looking up, she saw it hanging from a branch, just out of reach. "How it got there I'll never know but," Oddny pounded the truck of the tree with her fist, and the backpack fell into her arms.

"I know this isn't fish, but you must be hungry to beg like that!" she pulled out a hunk of bread she'd baked yesterday and offered it to the dragon. "Oh, and my name's Oddny. Oddny Svelardson." she said, adressing the boy. "Or Odd Oddny, as I'm sometimes known. And you are...?"

[carodacat]

"Madhawk. That's my dragon Fury." Madhawk replied. He looked at Oddny's sketch. "If you look at that tree upside-down, it looks like a bird. And that rock is like it's nest." The sketch looked odd upside-down. Why had the idiots laughed at her idea? They could use it to see hidden patterns, maybe even find out if anyone had been there.

Fury sniffed the Thing in the human's hand. It smelled sweet and fresh. He took a quite bite and swallowed it down. It was warm... and good. He took the loaf and cut it in half with his claws. Half he tucked under his foot, but the other he cut in half again. He then gave a quarter to Madhawk and a quarter to the girl human.

Madhawk chewed through his piece of bread. "It's good. You're a great baker." he said, a little muffled because of his full mouth. He flipped to his page that contained the clearing Toothless had crashed. He turned the page upside-down. I looked... odd. Chewing slowly, his eyes scanned the page.

[oddny]

"Oh, haha! He' so polite!" Oddny laughed, taking the hunk of bread Fury was offering her. "And thanks; I guess I learned to bake from my Mom. With considerable improvements." She didn't think it would be exactly polite to talk about the numerous house-fire her passed-on Mother had set in Oddny's childhood. But there were seven. "And you don't have to be so kind about the up-side down thing. Just a dreamer dreaming is all." she shrugged it off. "It's okay, I've gone through dozens of ideas like this one."

She watched as Madhawk look looked over the sketch of the canyon. "You've got quite the artist's eye, there. What's a kid like you doing in Viking training, anyway?" She was actually considerably impressed with his sketches, now that she looked back over her shoulder at his sketchbook and studied his drawings. At least as good as herself, she thought, maybe even better! Though, there did seem to be a re-occurring theme in the book, one girl in particular having several pages dedicated to her. She looked sort of familiar; Oddny wasn't a socialite, and wasn't good with names, but she wasn't toally clueless.

"Is that....what's her name....Wolfin-Something? Wolf?" she asked, reaching over Madhawk's shoulder and flipping afew pages. "Wow, it's like looking at the real girl."

[carodacat]

Madhawk smiled at Oddny. "What am I doing training? What do you mean?" he asked. He was in training because it was compulsory, wasn't it? He liked training because he liked scoring points off his teacher. And he liked seeing...

"Wolf, yeah." he replied. Oddny and Wolf had obviously met before. "She's a good friend. But sometimes... sometimes I wonder if she thinks of me as more than a friend." He clapped his hand over his mouth. Had he just said that out loud?

Fury purred as the girl praised him. He thought her name was Oddny. What weird names humans gave themselves! He wolfed down his bread and climbed onto Oddny's lap sleepily. His wings folded and his eyes closed. He shuffled into a comfortable position, feeling the warm sun on his scales.

[oddny]

"Aha!" Oddny said, stroking the little terror's scales, "So THAT'S why there's so many drawings of wolf in your sketch-book!" She had figured as much. She didn't know much about Wolf, nor Madhawk, for that matter, but she knew what it was like to be young and awkward.

"Oh, now I get it," she said, having yet another revalation. "You're in training because of Wolf!" It all made sense. "You have got to be one of the most awesome 15 year olds I have ever met! THAT, my friend, is absolute loyalty!"

((Sorry for such a lazy reply. Grounded for a week and then was swept away to crazy Gramma's for Thanksgiving, just got back today and I am exhausted!!))

[carodacat]

((ah, the family. so annoying )

Madhawk blushed deeply. "I'm not that awesome," he mumbled. He liked Oddny. She didn't make fun of him like some of the others. She was kind, if a little bold.

Madhawk finally plucked up the courage to say, "What about you? Have you got a boyfriend?" Fury opened one eye and purred. His master was being all shy, as usual. He liked being stroked. He wriggled onto his back and invited Oddny to stroke his tummy.

[oddny]

Oddny rubbed the little Terror's tummy, smiling to herself. 'Why couldn't I have bonded with a cute little dragon like this?' she thought, remembering her dysmal expirience with her Zippleback.

"Oh Gosh, you can't count how many times I've been asked that on your fingers and toes," she told Madhawk, waving a hand in the air. "I don't have a boyfriend; and I'm not really sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing." It was true, she would have loved a boyfriend, but not all the formal 'act like a lady' business that went with being attatched to some bad-mannered man. "Nobody wants to date a weirdo," she laughed, motioning to her sketchbook. "Develope ideas and an opinion on anything and guys turn right around!"

[carodacat]

Fury could tell what Oddny was thinking. He looked up at her with amber eyes, before licking her hand in a cute manner. He wriggled again and settled down to sleep.

Madhawk laughed. "Yeah, it's hard to know who's good and who's an Axe-wielding moron," he thought out loud. He smiled at Oddny. She was the only person he had met that wasn't obsessed with dragons and killing. "So what do you do?" he asked her, wondering what he should do when he graduated.

[oddny]

"I'm a dock-hand." Oddny answered honestly. There was no use hiding it anyway, it wasn't like it was a secret or anything; just slightly embarrassing. "I suppose it's better than being a housewife or a cook or something, but it's still sort of laughable." She could figure why Madhawk was asking; poor kid was probably worried about what he'd do after training.

"I wouldn't worry if I were you," she continued. "The only reason I didn't become a Viking is because I failed training. But you...you're exactly what a Viking is supposed to be."

[carodacat]

Madhawk was amazed. Oddny could climb up masts, listen to the adventures of all the returning vikings, smell the sea air... all in one day! It was his idea of heaven. If he failed training, that was the place for him.

"Well thanks, but I'm not really a good viking. I argue with the teachers and I don't get on well with the others. Plus my dragon is too small," Madhawk admitted. Then he thought for a while. "Maybe I could be an inventor. I made a flying machine so I could actually fly in lessons," He showed her his sketch of the Flight Fury.