fic: Take Flight (Hyeri + Sojin, PG)
Take Flight
Girl's Day, Hyeri + Sojin, PG, 2000 words
Written for the ambitiousgirls New Year's exchange.
The summer begins the same in Loen for every young Viking- a full month of dragon training camp. Hyeri had been anticipating the arrival of summer since the spring harvest was planted, unable to sleep for an entire week before camp started. How could she sleep knowing that the start of her dragon training was approaching? ("You'll need sleep to train dragons," her mother had said from the bottom of the staircase, giving Hyeri a pointed look that said don't make me come up there.)
Hyeri is fidgety with excitement when the morning finally arrives, barely waiting for her father to finish fastening her armor and her mother to hand her a knapsack of clothes before she bursts out the door like a typhoomerang is on her tail.
Dragon training camp is located on the outskirts of their small village, a sharp cliff face that overlooks the sea that serves as the training grounds for the older campers. Hyeri has heard from some of her neighbors that first time campers like her only get to practice in the indoor arena, but it doesn't stop her from dreaming of a day where she can soar out over the sea on the back of a dragon.
She arrives at the gates of Camp Níðhöggr to find several other kids already gathered around. "I heard it's pronounced like nae-hogger," says one of the boys, so short he has to push himself off his taller friend to see anything.
Another girl looks up from where she's primping her hair in the reflection of her perfectly shining armor. "Nobody knows how to say it, not even the counselors. That's the first thing you learn about this camp." She pauses, smoothing a hand over her bangs. "That, and be careful where you step around in the barns."
Inside the compound, hundreds of campers gather around one of the head counselors, Hyojin. She's wearing a nametag pinned over her breastplate and a baseball cap with spikes on the brim, as casual as a Viking can get.
"Welcome to another exciting summer at Camp-" Hyojin's dragon roars loudly over Hyojin's words as the campers strain to hear her- "We'll be starting off today with some fun icebreakers. Who's excited?"
"I love icebreakers," the girl next to Hyeri says. Hyeri, as enthusiastic as she is about camp, draws the line of excitement at icebreakers.
Luckily, the first game doesn't seem quite that bad. They'll be paired off into partners and sent out through a maze carved into the forest. The twist is that they'll each have a baby dragon tied to their ankles, turning the maze into more of a seven-legged race. Hyeri checks out the other campers. The vain girl from earlier has attached herself to the side of the enthusiastic one, but Hyeri thinks they're too cheerful to be strong competitors. One boy is more muscular than even some of the older campers, but with any luck, the bored-looking kid he's linked arms with will bring him down.
Fierce competitiveness is the only way that Vikings have fun.
The campers without a partner already selected (almost all of the first year campers, waiting for someone else to make the first move) are assigned one. Hyeri is last in her row and when Hyojin gets to her, she frowns down at her parchment. "It looks like we have an odd number of campers," she says, making a humming noise. "I'll just assign you one of the counselors."
The counselor that Hyeri is assigned to is the leader of cabin four. The leader of cabin four, as it turns out, is Park Sojin. Hyeri has to control herself from collapsing right there on the ground. Six years ago, dragons were seen as enemies in Loen. They were considered pests, and angry ones at that. The villagers fought the dragons and the dragons fought back. Hyeri remembers the scorch marks on her parents' faces when they'd return home at nigh after a brutal attack. For the first part of her life, Hyeri was raised thinking that she would one day go on to fight dragons herself. It was just the way of life.
Or so it seemed until Sojin, sweet and kind Sojin who was unable to hurt an injured dragon, changed everything. She used her knowledge as a saddler to build a replacement leg for the dragon and as she helped the dragon heal, they developed a relationship that no one knew a dragon could have with anyone. The dragon wasn't a pet; they were best friends. It was Sojin who figured out that the dragons were only trying to feed the huge dragon that she called Red Death, or else they would be eaten themselves. Sojin fought against the parents who believed dragons couldn't be trained and in the end, she saved their lives, along with the lives of everyone else in the village. Well, her and her dragon, Lady.
As per her counselor duties, Sojin first has to make sure that everyone else is secure in their bindings before she joins Hyeri at the starting line. "Don't worry, we've got this," she tells Hyeri as she bends down to tighten the thick twine wrapped around their ankles. The smile she aims up at Hyeri is big and infectious.
The game begins with blare of a horn and immediately the campers are off. Hyeri hadn't anticipated the struggle of trying to maneuver while attached to something with a life of its own. Hyeri and Sojin try to walk forward, while the dragon fights to go the other way. Other campers are struggling as well, some of them being spun around in circles by their finicky dragon.
Sojin, however, has a plan. They round the corner with a few other pairs of students, but Sojin pulls Hyeri into a dead-end row between the trees. "It's not cheating," she says, a twinkle in her eye as she bends down on the dragon's level. She whispers to the dragon, a quiet hello while she smooths a hand over the dragon's scaly head. Hyeri doesn't recognize the breed, but it's the size of a dog with skeletal ridges along its back, shimmering blue scales underneath. Its yellow, antenna eyes regard Sojin with a look of suspicion, but as Sojin continues to pet it, the look softens.
It's a surprise to Hyeri. She knew that dragons were smart, much smarter than the Vikings gave them credit for, but she hadn't expected them to look so positively human. "Changewings respond to touch," Sojin explains, scratching the dragon lightly behind the ear. His nose twitched like a cat's. "Baby dragons are like little kids, especially Changewings. They like to be reminded of their mothers."
The dragon lets out a quiet roar of satisfaction.
With their dragon calmed, the walking part is a breeze. What's harder is figuring out the maze. They end up retracing one path at least three times before Hyeri recognizes a piece of discolored bark on the tree. Still, Sojin is far smarter than any of the other campers, so they're the first to emerge from the woods. Hyeri understands why Hyojin says they're disqualified for the first prize, but it doesn't mean that she's not disappointed.
The wait for the other campers to finish is long, though it might just be Hyeri's short attention span that thinks that. She tugs on the sleeve of Sojin's tunic. "Sojin unnie, will you braid my hair like yours?"
Sojin finds a patch of grass underneath the shade of a tree for them to sit under. Her hands are warm on Hyeri's neck when she pulls her hair back, calloused and rough in a way that reminds Hyeri of her mother. She thinks back to what Sojin said about baby dragons and has to stifle her reaction. She won't be one of those kids that cry on their first day away from home, though Sojin's hands do make her heart ache.
To distract herself, Hyeri tilts her head back to face Sojin. She looks pretty and mature even upside down. Hyeri wants to look like her when she's older. "Can you tell me about Lady?"
"What do you want to know?"
Everything, Hyeri thinks. Everything there is to know about the person who tamed dragons. Instead, she asks, "Why did you decide to save her?"
"That's simple," Sojin says. "I couldn't kill something that had so much expression in her eyes, so much fear. I wasn't brave, not then at least. I was scared too and I'm glad that I was."
It seems hard to imagine Sojin as frightened, not with the way the villagers talk about her as though she's a legend, but Hyeri feels a sense of comfort knowing that even someone like Sojin gets scared. "How did you know you could train her?"
"I didn't. Not at first. I built the wing so that she could leave before anyone else found her. I didn't want her to get hurt.
"One more. What does it feel like to ride a dragon?" she asks.
"It feels like-" Sojin pauses, her hand stilling on Hyeri's back. "It feels like freedom. Like the whole world is yours to explore, like you're not confined by anything. It's hard to explain." She makes a frustrated noise as she resumes her braiding. "I guess there's just no other feeling like it."
"Is it amazing?" Hyeri asks, breathless.
Sojin tosses Hyeri's braids over her shoulders. They're held together at the end with two strips of the twine that had been used to bind their feet. She grins. "It's the most amazing thing you'll ever experience. And one day, very soon," she says, climbing to her feet. She brushes the dirt off her knees, and then extends her hand to Hyeri. "You'll get to feel it."
A week into camp, Sojin pulls Hyeri away from finishing her paper mache dragon egg during morning craft class. "I just want you to know, I don't do this with every camper," Sojin tells her. Her voice is a low whisper and Hyeri feels like they're sharing a secret.
Sojin leads her around the cabins and past the barn where the dragons that the younger campers practice with are kept. There's a slight sloping of the ground and then a larger barn. A larger barn for larger dragons, Hyeri sees when she steps inside and sees a huge a timberjack leaning his head out of his stall, eyeing Sojin with familiarity.
Hyeri is wide-eyed as she observes the other dragons in the barn. A skullion, a hideous zippleback, a giant bee-eater. Sojin laughs at her when she stops in front of a monstrous nightmare, staring in awe at its beautiful scales. "Come on, this isn't the good part," Sojin tells her, dragging her away.
"This is the good part."
The last stall in the barn belongs to a dragon that's not quite as large as the others, but when he uncurls his wings, he's as formidable as any of them. "It's Lady," says Hyeri, gasping.
Sojin unlocks the latch and Lady bursts out of the stall, pouncing on Sojin like she hasn't seen her in ages, though Hyeri knows they went riding together only yesterday. Lady gives Sojin a wet lick across one cheek and Hyeri giggles.
"This is Hyeri," Sojin says to Lady, smiling. "She's a friend. And this, this is Lady."
Sojin takes Hyeri's hand in her own, guiding it up to Lady's face so that she can see that Hyeri means no harm. And then, when Lady lowers her head, Sojin lets Hyeri run her hand gently over the smooth black scales. Lady makes a noise of appreciation, not quite a growl- more of a purr. She keeps her hand as light as possible as she moves around to pet Lady behind her ears, thinking back to Sojin's advice.
"She's beautiful," Hyeri says, voice faint with awe. Sojin nods proudly.
"You're going to make an excellent dragon trainer someday," Sojin says. Lady is responding to her petting with a low, consistent purr that vibrates underneath Hyeri's fingertips. "You've got a gift with them, I can tell."
Hyeri beams up at her. "Do you think so, unnie?"
"I know so."
----
This wouldn't exist without Manchester Airport or avirjin.
Girl's Day, Hyeri + Sojin, PG, 2000 words
Written for the ambitiousgirls New Year's exchange.
The summer begins the same in Loen for every young Viking- a full month of dragon training camp. Hyeri had been anticipating the arrival of summer since the spring harvest was planted, unable to sleep for an entire week before camp started. How could she sleep knowing that the start of her dragon training was approaching? ("You'll need sleep to train dragons," her mother had said from the bottom of the staircase, giving Hyeri a pointed look that said don't make me come up there.)
Hyeri is fidgety with excitement when the morning finally arrives, barely waiting for her father to finish fastening her armor and her mother to hand her a knapsack of clothes before she bursts out the door like a typhoomerang is on her tail.
Dragon training camp is located on the outskirts of their small village, a sharp cliff face that overlooks the sea that serves as the training grounds for the older campers. Hyeri has heard from some of her neighbors that first time campers like her only get to practice in the indoor arena, but it doesn't stop her from dreaming of a day where she can soar out over the sea on the back of a dragon.
She arrives at the gates of Camp Níðhöggr to find several other kids already gathered around. "I heard it's pronounced like nae-hogger," says one of the boys, so short he has to push himself off his taller friend to see anything.
Another girl looks up from where she's primping her hair in the reflection of her perfectly shining armor. "Nobody knows how to say it, not even the counselors. That's the first thing you learn about this camp." She pauses, smoothing a hand over her bangs. "That, and be careful where you step around in the barns."
Inside the compound, hundreds of campers gather around one of the head counselors, Hyojin. She's wearing a nametag pinned over her breastplate and a baseball cap with spikes on the brim, as casual as a Viking can get.
"Welcome to another exciting summer at Camp-" Hyojin's dragon roars loudly over Hyojin's words as the campers strain to hear her- "We'll be starting off today with some fun icebreakers. Who's excited?"
"I love icebreakers," the girl next to Hyeri says. Hyeri, as enthusiastic as she is about camp, draws the line of excitement at icebreakers.
Luckily, the first game doesn't seem quite that bad. They'll be paired off into partners and sent out through a maze carved into the forest. The twist is that they'll each have a baby dragon tied to their ankles, turning the maze into more of a seven-legged race. Hyeri checks out the other campers. The vain girl from earlier has attached herself to the side of the enthusiastic one, but Hyeri thinks they're too cheerful to be strong competitors. One boy is more muscular than even some of the older campers, but with any luck, the bored-looking kid he's linked arms with will bring him down.
Fierce competitiveness is the only way that Vikings have fun.
The campers without a partner already selected (almost all of the first year campers, waiting for someone else to make the first move) are assigned one. Hyeri is last in her row and when Hyojin gets to her, she frowns down at her parchment. "It looks like we have an odd number of campers," she says, making a humming noise. "I'll just assign you one of the counselors."
The counselor that Hyeri is assigned to is the leader of cabin four. The leader of cabin four, as it turns out, is Park Sojin. Hyeri has to control herself from collapsing right there on the ground. Six years ago, dragons were seen as enemies in Loen. They were considered pests, and angry ones at that. The villagers fought the dragons and the dragons fought back. Hyeri remembers the scorch marks on her parents' faces when they'd return home at nigh after a brutal attack. For the first part of her life, Hyeri was raised thinking that she would one day go on to fight dragons herself. It was just the way of life.
Or so it seemed until Sojin, sweet and kind Sojin who was unable to hurt an injured dragon, changed everything. She used her knowledge as a saddler to build a replacement leg for the dragon and as she helped the dragon heal, they developed a relationship that no one knew a dragon could have with anyone. The dragon wasn't a pet; they were best friends. It was Sojin who figured out that the dragons were only trying to feed the huge dragon that she called Red Death, or else they would be eaten themselves. Sojin fought against the parents who believed dragons couldn't be trained and in the end, she saved their lives, along with the lives of everyone else in the village. Well, her and her dragon, Lady.
As per her counselor duties, Sojin first has to make sure that everyone else is secure in their bindings before she joins Hyeri at the starting line. "Don't worry, we've got this," she tells Hyeri as she bends down to tighten the thick twine wrapped around their ankles. The smile she aims up at Hyeri is big and infectious.
The game begins with blare of a horn and immediately the campers are off. Hyeri hadn't anticipated the struggle of trying to maneuver while attached to something with a life of its own. Hyeri and Sojin try to walk forward, while the dragon fights to go the other way. Other campers are struggling as well, some of them being spun around in circles by their finicky dragon.
Sojin, however, has a plan. They round the corner with a few other pairs of students, but Sojin pulls Hyeri into a dead-end row between the trees. "It's not cheating," she says, a twinkle in her eye as she bends down on the dragon's level. She whispers to the dragon, a quiet hello while she smooths a hand over the dragon's scaly head. Hyeri doesn't recognize the breed, but it's the size of a dog with skeletal ridges along its back, shimmering blue scales underneath. Its yellow, antenna eyes regard Sojin with a look of suspicion, but as Sojin continues to pet it, the look softens.
It's a surprise to Hyeri. She knew that dragons were smart, much smarter than the Vikings gave them credit for, but she hadn't expected them to look so positively human. "Changewings respond to touch," Sojin explains, scratching the dragon lightly behind the ear. His nose twitched like a cat's. "Baby dragons are like little kids, especially Changewings. They like to be reminded of their mothers."
The dragon lets out a quiet roar of satisfaction.
With their dragon calmed, the walking part is a breeze. What's harder is figuring out the maze. They end up retracing one path at least three times before Hyeri recognizes a piece of discolored bark on the tree. Still, Sojin is far smarter than any of the other campers, so they're the first to emerge from the woods. Hyeri understands why Hyojin says they're disqualified for the first prize, but it doesn't mean that she's not disappointed.
The wait for the other campers to finish is long, though it might just be Hyeri's short attention span that thinks that. She tugs on the sleeve of Sojin's tunic. "Sojin unnie, will you braid my hair like yours?"
Sojin finds a patch of grass underneath the shade of a tree for them to sit under. Her hands are warm on Hyeri's neck when she pulls her hair back, calloused and rough in a way that reminds Hyeri of her mother. She thinks back to what Sojin said about baby dragons and has to stifle her reaction. She won't be one of those kids that cry on their first day away from home, though Sojin's hands do make her heart ache.
To distract herself, Hyeri tilts her head back to face Sojin. She looks pretty and mature even upside down. Hyeri wants to look like her when she's older. "Can you tell me about Lady?"
"What do you want to know?"
Everything, Hyeri thinks. Everything there is to know about the person who tamed dragons. Instead, she asks, "Why did you decide to save her?"
"That's simple," Sojin says. "I couldn't kill something that had so much expression in her eyes, so much fear. I wasn't brave, not then at least. I was scared too and I'm glad that I was."
It seems hard to imagine Sojin as frightened, not with the way the villagers talk about her as though she's a legend, but Hyeri feels a sense of comfort knowing that even someone like Sojin gets scared. "How did you know you could train her?"
"I didn't. Not at first. I built the wing so that she could leave before anyone else found her. I didn't want her to get hurt.
"One more. What does it feel like to ride a dragon?" she asks.
"It feels like-" Sojin pauses, her hand stilling on Hyeri's back. "It feels like freedom. Like the whole world is yours to explore, like you're not confined by anything. It's hard to explain." She makes a frustrated noise as she resumes her braiding. "I guess there's just no other feeling like it."
"Is it amazing?" Hyeri asks, breathless.
Sojin tosses Hyeri's braids over her shoulders. They're held together at the end with two strips of the twine that had been used to bind their feet. She grins. "It's the most amazing thing you'll ever experience. And one day, very soon," she says, climbing to her feet. She brushes the dirt off her knees, and then extends her hand to Hyeri. "You'll get to feel it."
A week into camp, Sojin pulls Hyeri away from finishing her paper mache dragon egg during morning craft class. "I just want you to know, I don't do this with every camper," Sojin tells her. Her voice is a low whisper and Hyeri feels like they're sharing a secret.
Sojin leads her around the cabins and past the barn where the dragons that the younger campers practice with are kept. There's a slight sloping of the ground and then a larger barn. A larger barn for larger dragons, Hyeri sees when she steps inside and sees a huge a timberjack leaning his head out of his stall, eyeing Sojin with familiarity.
Hyeri is wide-eyed as she observes the other dragons in the barn. A skullion, a hideous zippleback, a giant bee-eater. Sojin laughs at her when she stops in front of a monstrous nightmare, staring in awe at its beautiful scales. "Come on, this isn't the good part," Sojin tells her, dragging her away.
"This is the good part."
The last stall in the barn belongs to a dragon that's not quite as large as the others, but when he uncurls his wings, he's as formidable as any of them. "It's Lady," says Hyeri, gasping.
Sojin unlocks the latch and Lady bursts out of the stall, pouncing on Sojin like she hasn't seen her in ages, though Hyeri knows they went riding together only yesterday. Lady gives Sojin a wet lick across one cheek and Hyeri giggles.
"This is Hyeri," Sojin says to Lady, smiling. "She's a friend. And this, this is Lady."
Sojin takes Hyeri's hand in her own, guiding it up to Lady's face so that she can see that Hyeri means no harm. And then, when Lady lowers her head, Sojin lets Hyeri run her hand gently over the smooth black scales. Lady makes a noise of appreciation, not quite a growl- more of a purr. She keeps her hand as light as possible as she moves around to pet Lady behind her ears, thinking back to Sojin's advice.
"She's beautiful," Hyeri says, voice faint with awe. Sojin nods proudly.
"You're going to make an excellent dragon trainer someday," Sojin says. Lady is responding to her petting with a low, consistent purr that vibrates underneath Hyeri's fingertips. "You've got a gift with them, I can tell."
Hyeri beams up at her. "Do you think so, unnie?"
"I know so."
----
This wouldn't exist without Manchester Airport or avirjin.