Chapter Text
The breeze ruffles your hair, the salty sea air piercing your lungs as you take a deep breath in. Glancing down from where you’re perched in the crows nest, you lazily watch your dragon, gnawing away at some fish, his deep black skin glinting in the sun.
The day’s been pretty slow, but that’s not a problem for you. All the better, you think, maybe you can finally get a nap in. That’s only if Hecket doesn’t catch you of course, but it never hurts to try.
Just as you’re thinking this, of course, you see something dark dart by in the corner of your vision. You whip your head around, squinting up at the sky before lifting your spyglass. The cold metal against your eye makes you twitch, but you stay focused, searching the sky for- yep, that.
Gliding through the sky, obviously trying to use the cover of the thin clouds, is a gorgeously black dragon. As soon as you spot it you shove your spyglass back into your belt, yelling to the crew to get ready.
As the net is put into position, rolled to the right spot and then loaded, you lean back over the side of the crows nest, shaking your head at the sight below you.
“Loki!” You call down to your dragon, the Night Fury only ceasing his fish demolition for a moment to look up at you, bits of flesh still caught in his toothy smile. You chuckle a little. “You ready smiley?” You ask, gesturing to the beast in the sky. He looks up, only now seeming to notice. He rolls his eyes, his whole head lolling around with it as he shakes his limbs out, stretching his wings in the breeze.
Looking up into the sky again you can see the dragon has been hit with at least two arrows, struggling to keep afloat as your men ready the net.
You hop over the side of the tower, hooking your feet into the rope ladder and climbing down. Behind you, you can hear the net cannon go off, then after a moment, your men are groaning and yelling at each other to refill the cannon. You halt your decent for a minute to turn around, hanging off the rope ladder by your one hand to watch as they fire again, this time using the double net, a little trick you came up with that shoots two nets at the same time, so that when the dragon dodges the first net, they essentially fly right into the second one.
Your eyes stay trained on the dragon as the two nets travel through the air. It shakily dodges the first one and- yep. Flies right into the second. The dragon jerks around in the air, trying to fly but failing. It’s a sad sight, not one you like seeing, but it’s your job, and you don’t exactly have another option.
Then, Loki is taking off towards the dragon’s plummeting figure, swooping up to catch it by the net and flapping back over to the boat. He drops the thing gently down on the deck and you hop down from the ladder, taking a closer look at the thing so you can identify its species. It’s a little smaller than Loki, but you note that its skin is the same. You step around the thing a little, careful not to be loud, then, just as your mind is working it out, its tail shoots out in front of your foot.
You hop away a little, wondering if it’s trying to sting you, or attack in some way, then you notice the obviously man-made emulation of a tail. The first thing you notice is how well made it is, clean stitching and machinery with a sturdy build. The second thing is the emblem imprinted on the front.
You look back at the dragon and step around a little, crouching down so you can look between its wings. And it’s there that you finally spot the hunk of leather on the dragons back. A saddle.
Rising back up you gesture to Loki to come follow you, and he does, tugging the net along behind him as you stalk over to the companionway. Just as you’re opening the hatch, Arne comes limping up to you.
“What’d we catch boss?” He asks in that way of his. His gruffly voice doesn’t match at all with his scrawny sea-rat build, and his tone always holds just enough condescension to put an unamused look on your face, but his heavy accent always reminds you that you’re one in the same.
Nevertheless, you still reply, “Nothing special.” and disappear through the hatch, Loki close behind you. Ambling through the boat towards your room, the dragons cheerily welcoming you with their little screeches, you notice how your accent came out more again, it always seems to happen when you’re annoyed. You roll your eyes.
Snatching the keys from your desk you walk back around to the cages, unlocking two before crouching down and beginning to untie the net.