Title: Body of Water

Summary: A Tale as old as time, and true as it can be. Both a little scared, neither one prepared… You know where this is going. Beauty and the Beast with a twist. Toothless/Hiccup.

Warning: Eventual slash, mature themes, I guess.

Disclaimer: What part of FAN FICTION is hard to understand? I don't own Beauty and the Beast, and I don't own How to Train Your Dragon. They belong to whoever they do. I'm not here to make money; I'm just here to entertain.

This chapter is dedicatedto Eliasdarklight. Did you know that Elias is the name of my favorite character from Noli me Tangere?

When Hiccup came to, it was well after noon. After 'Odin, why is it so cold?' and 'Thor almighty, please don't let the dragon come back.' His first thought was

'Dad is going to kill me.'

As Hiccup stood up, he shook his head to clear the fog from his brain. He must have been more tired than he thought, to have remained unconscious for so long. He looked around, gathering his wits about him as well as making sure that the dragon was indeed gone. To be honest, he was more than a bit embarrassed by the entire ordeal. Imagine, fainting, just because a dragon got a wee bit too close for comfort. And he'd actually begged the thing not to eat him.

Ugh, thank Odin no one saw that.

After brushing snow off himself (snow must have fallen heavily while he was out, because he looked like a snowman), Hiccup blew on his hands to warm them before making his way up the steep incline. He muttered thanks to Gefion, the goddess of luck, when he saw that his pack was untouched. Given that this was the middle of winter and a forest probably had at least a few hungry animals prowling about, it was a stroke of luck indeed.

He shouldered his packs and looked around. Raven's peak was over there, the sun was going to set in that direction, vaguely… He started walking towards the general direction of the inland lake.

As he walked, he tried to think about what he would tell his father. Would Stoick believe him if Hiccup told his father about the unknown dragon? But Hiccup was a bit wary about that. What if his father didn't believe him? The broken tree and the large trench in the soil would be moot. If he told his father, and his father didn't believe him…

The walk to the inland lake (or was it a large pond?) west of Raven's Peak seemed to take an incredibly short time, and before Hiccup knew it, he was there. The inland lake, well, Hiccup guessed all lakes were inland or else they wouldn't be lakes, but this one used to be underground, or so his father said.

One day, a star had fallen, obliterating the roof of the cave and revealing the lake. His father had kept the star, used up and looking like an ordinary rock though it did, more for novelty than anything (no one else had one). Stoick had given it to Hiccup's mother, Valhallarama, when he was still wooing her.

Anyway, point was, this lake was no ordinary lake. It was at the bottom of a large hole that used to be a cave, in other words, deep. Fortunately, Hiccup had found it by himself when he was younger, and knew about this narrow path through the rocks that would get him to the bottom without any rock-climbing involved. So he didn't bother peeking over the lip of the used-to-be-a-cave's precipice before starting down the aforementioned path, which started a bit away from the lake…pond…body of water.

Down the path he went, and he must not have gone there for longer than he thought, because he had to take his pack off several times, and the thing nearly got stuck right at the exit. But eventually, there he was. He was at the lake and…his father was not.

Hiccup blinked.

He walked to the middle of used-to-be cave and looked around. He turned in a complete circle to be sure, but there was no getting around the fact that Stoick wasn't there.

'There are only two possibilities,' Hiccup thought.

The first one was that his father was late and any second now he'd shout to his son from the lip of the crater and start climbing down. It wasn't very likely and he didn't expect it. The other one was that his father had gotten bored and irritated waiting for him and had left to go hunting and would be back later. This is what Hiccup expected, so he didn't make room for any other possibility.

He then proceeded to make a small tent to the lee of a convenient rock formation, which took longer than he'd like to admit. When he finished, he sat down in it and produced a notebook from a pocket he had sewn inside his fur vest.

To be completely honest, the small notebook in his hand had a lot more accurate information on dragons than The Dragon Manual he'd borrowed from Fishlegs. In it were all the things he had observed from dragons: the different types and the variations therein, their eating and sleeping habits, he even had this point system thing going to determine how dangerous a particular dragon was.

Hiccup began to draw what he remembered. And ended up with a blank page. Beyond the color and general size of the thing, he hadn't really gotten a good look at it. He began writing, and ended up with a blank page for that as well. He didn't even know what to name it, considering he didn't know anything about it.

He replayed the experience in his head, trying to remember any details, but stopped almost as soon as he began. It was still too close to the almost-sudden-death to think about it for any extended period of time. Just thinking about it made his heart beat a bit faster, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. As if someone was watching him.

'You're being silly,' he told himself, but couldn't shake the feeling. He put away his dragon notebook and brought out another. He began sketching some ideas he had for a sword, to calm himself down. Two long, smooth strokes became the blade, two short ones for the handle. Hiccup drew, and drew, and drew. Outside the tent, the sun sank.

A/N: Short, I know, and after such a long absence too, but not only am I busy with my other story (the one for the HtTYD Big Bang), this is my first year in college, so please bear with the slow updates.

To skyinthenightslove: As usual, you get some things so right it's uncanny. Tell me the truth, did you hack my computer and check out my chapter guideline?

Anyway, a lot of people reviewed chapter nine, and I wish to thank you all!

Oh, and special mention goes to Chibigirl, who was the hundredth reviewer! Wow, I have a story with over a hundred reviews! Pinch me, I'm dreaming!

Just for that, I'm announcing that I'll be dedicating fanart to the 125th reviewer. And for every succeeding 25th increment after that until 200.

As usual, I'm incredibly grateful to those of you who didn't give up on me and are still reading this story.

Thanks! And feedback would be useful. Should I follow the Beauty and the Beast storyline more? I seem to be wandering a bit…