A batch of drabbles for my story "We are the Differences" but can sort of stand alone. Some will be sad, happy, touching (although I have little idea of how to write something touching), etc. Featuring mostly Sweyn since we are already reading from Tempest's point of view in WatD. Other characters also. Third person point of view. Please read this and wait for my brain to supply me with new ideas for said story.

Enjoy!

1. Stuck

Sweyn wasn't famous for getting into any sort of sticky situation that he couldn't get out of, with great amount of pain or no. He has this…special gift to take off and run away from any problem, literally or figuratively.

And now he was snagged. With no way out – or more accurately, down. Not to mention that he has to go to the bathroom.

It didn't help that his savior was ignoring his needs.

"Come on, Tempest!" Sweyn called from the second highest branch of the Left Oak. He was hanging there from his belt. He'd fallen from a disastrous fall and now here he was. His life was saved but not his dignity. He'd tried to undo it, but he knew if he did, he wouldn't come out unscathed. There was a very big, very hard rock to race and meet him after a seven-foot fall.

Said dragoness was regarding him with interest. She was sitting right before him, curled up except for her neck, her sky-blue eyes regarding him with amusement. To call Tempest stupid was a mistake as well as inaccurate even if Sweyn could bring himself to do it. Intelligence had shown in those eyes every time he looked at her, and he had the idea that she must be as old as a century and as intelligent as any human – or even more so.

No, Tempest wasn't stupid, he decided. She was just exceedingly infuriating.

"Tempest, will you get me down?" Sweyn tried again, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice and be polite. He let the urgency show, though. "I'll give you extra meat if you do," he coaxed.

Tempest looked at him, unimpressed. Bribing wasn't going to get this anywhere.

Sweyn huffed out a long sigh and hung there for a bit longer. Several more minutes passed in silence while Tempest continued to gaze at her companion as she seemed to wait for something. Oh, yes, she was waiting for something alright.

Finally, Sweyn gave in, the need to relieve his bladder apparently overthrowing his Viking-born and Viking-raised stubbornness. "Tempest, could you please get me down?" the young hunter begged.

Within five seconds, he was lowered gently to the ground and he took off running to the nearest bush.

Tempest looked after the back of her rider and thought about how close a win that had been. Had he waited only some more seconds and she would have caved in. She frankly couldn't keep her heart from having a major breakdown whenever Sweyn went around asking for something sincerely. Whether it was a short run on her back through the forest or a trip to the eastern isles for a week, she would give it to him. She was well aware that she was spoiling the child, but what does it matter? He has never even been treated nicely before, as far as she knew.

But when it came down to the end, Tempest won this one.

Triumphant, the Timberjack dragoness picked herself up and went to relieve her business as well.

2. Death

Of all the things Vikings were permitted to fear, it wasn't death.

Death had become almost a normal thing around Death Rock and any other Viking village for that matter. Saxons, attacking Viking tribes, dragon raids – they could all mean possible death. So the Vikings hardened up not only their body but their hearts as well, preparing for the grief that would come when they would be informed that their kids, wife or husband didn't make it.

Sweyn Hocksson was different. He feared death more than anything.

He feared the very idea of it, that one day he wouldn't be able to see his family again. He feared that one day he would go out in the forest and meet his gruesome end at the claw of a dragon or bear or wolf.

But peculiarly enough, he became a hunter. He camped in the forest at night and trained himself relentlessly in the art of knife-fighting, knife-throwing and agility. Sweyn wanted to overcome the things that might bring him death, because he realized that if he kept skirting them, they will come to find him and end his life, and he wouldn't know what to do then. So he did his best to see the threats in his life that he had no control over.

It was fear of death that drove him on, even though it made others in his village looked on him with disgust and spite. He wasn't a proper Viking, they said. And Sweyn did not strive to please them.

There was a time the boy hated what he feared. He had tried to go face a dragon in a raid, but then when it came close, his flight mechanic had always won out with "fight", and he'd taken off to save himself. He wanted to see the sun rise again. He didn't want to be buried in the ground or sent to float on the sea. He wanted to climb, to move around, to feel alive – to be alive.

Six years after Sweyn gave up trying to conquer the fear itself, at the age of thirteen, that very fear and the determination to live born from it won him ultimate respect from a certain dragoness.

3. Pity

Alfdis Archadsson wasn't discontented with her lot in life. She was the chieftain's youngest daughter and her talents lied in the art of sewing and tailoring, which she was outdoing her own mother's day by day. Nobody expected her to fight. Her big brother and big sister made sure she was comfortable and happy. In return, she made sure to keep their shields and weapons shined, their clothes nicely washed and reminded them to take a bath every week.

Thus, Alfdis could not quite understand what Sweyn Hocksson, that mysterious kid with the pure black hair and darkened grey eyes was really thinking. And that meant she would try.

Her first attempt was answered with a single blunt statement, "I don't need any pity." And he'd taken off running into the forest, jumping over boulders without need of a boost aside from his own springing force.

The next two weeks, Sweyn avoided her. But Alfdis wasn't going to give up. She was prying, and unlike this kid, she didn't care to make it discreet.

On the third week, Alfdis somehow managed to corner Sweyn near the forest when he was roasting some deer on his own. She'd seated herself across from him, and she'd said clearly, "I don't make friends with you because I pity you."

Alfdis hadn't needed to explain herself after that. Sweyn had looked at her with those piercing grey eyes for a few moments before a small smile curled his lips. "So, how good is your aim?" he'd asked casually.

They were eight years old at the time.

4. Push

Keg Gesson liked to bully Sweyn. The kid was the most inviting target to ever walk Death Rock, for real – he wasn't Viking-like at all, he was a coward, he was frowned on by so many people…It was like Sweyn was born to be serve as a bully's punching bag.

Too bad that wouldn't happen too often. Sweyn could fight, underhanded methods or no. And his kicks were rather well-placed when he was enraged. Not to mention the pointy knives. Oh, yes, the knives. Sweyn hardly ever missed with them. Keg supposed that was what you get after you practice throwing for eight years in a row.

But suddenly Sweyn came down with a fever. And Keg caught him sitting at the edge of a cliff, talking to himself. Despite his sickness, the slim boy had refused to be contained in the house and snuck out nonetheless, bringing with him nothing except for two knives.

So Keg had taken the once-every-five-years chance: he'd walked straight to the turned back that would've usually shot up and thrown a knife at him when he was several feet from it and gave it a hard kick at the shoulder with his booted foot, sending Sweyn flying over the edge. Then Keg had taken off running, grinning all the way. Just wait until that wimp showed up again.

Big mistake: Sweyn was not talking to himself, but to a sleepy Tempest who was curled up right beneath the very short cliff (nine feet). Imagine the dragoness when her friend suddenly went over the cliff. She could not catch him in time, however, and although Sweyn would've most likely landed on his feet, he was ill. That meant he landed on his side in the snow-covered ground that'd hardened to ice.

The result? Sweyn sprained an ankle banging it against a rock. Keg's sheep suddenly went missing – every single one of them. And there was that vengeful-looking white-striped-black Timberjack dragoness launching a fireball through Keg's bedroom window one night. Keg lost his eyebrows on that incident.

Up a tree close by, Sweyn grinned like an idiot that he tried very hard not to look like. Extra scratching for Tempest that week.

5. Momentary Bliss

The dragon didn't seem to care as he landed on its back. It took flight upward, away from the crumbling rocks, and for a moment, Sweyn felt the air and the bliss of flying in open sky. His feet weren't touching the ground. He was actually floating. It wasn't the short rush of winds as he jumped from a tree. It was all-out flying.

Sweyn grinned and closed his eyes, momentarily forgetting that he was on top of a beast that might end his life or chuck him off anytime. He just enjoyed the air, because he knew it would be the last time he felt something like this, no matter if he got out of this dead or alive.

But then the dragon gave him a look, and Sweyn challenged it with his gaze.

His momentary bliss was shattered as his ride started the death dance.

Do tell me what you think in a review. I'll love to hear from you.

~the Apprentice.