DISCLAIMER: I don't own How to Train Your Dragon.
Forbidden Friendship
I watched him dance.
It's the classic love triangle.
I am not Astrid.
But I am in love with Hiccup.
I found this place by accident. On one of my daily walks from the bustling village of Berk, I saw a swath of ground cut open and blackened by a furious force. Sheer curiosity drew me along that ebony path until a gateway of branches and leaves opened into a sunlit clearing dotted with open emerald grass and sparkling sapphire water. My breath would have been taken away by the sight - if not for the sight itself. For there sat my childhood friend, a boy who had probably forgotten my name. He rested peacefully on a rock beside an onyx monster, drawing calmly in the copper sand.
As I watched, mute with shock and horror, the great and terrible beauty beside him stirred and huffed over to an innocent sapling. Several sharp cracks later, the sapling itself yielded from the ground and then spun around, digging up the dirt in large, incomprehensible swirls. I bit my fist to keep from screaming as the dragon circled Hiccup, winging the sapling around as though it was a drawing-pencil, aware that at any second the boy's frail little head could go flying.
It didn't. Only a few seconds later, the behemoth with black wings dropped the sapling to the side and purred at the drawing on the ground. Purred. I had seen many a dragon flying over Berk, always roaring and screaming, diving for the sheep and dodging the furious catapults fired by Chief Stoick the Vast. But this creature didn't do any of that. He sat down on his hind legs, looked at the abstract turns he had made in the sand, and purred.
Hiccup stood, spinning around in surprise for a few seconds. He didn't say anything, but instead began to walk towards the grooves cut into the earth. When his foot touched one, the dragon growled. I gasped, covering my mouth, my head spinning from lack of air, (I was forgetting to breathe).
But Hiccup was brave as always. He simply lifted his foot, looking steadily at the dragon. And the dragon purred.
He put his foot back down and the dragon growled again. He picked it up and the dragon purred.
A small squeak spit out of my mouth as I realized he was playing with the dragon. Hiccup. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, son of Stoick the Vast, a reedy whelp working in a blacksmith shop in hopes of cultivating muscles that seemingly didn't exist, was playing with a Night Fury.
And then he wasn't playing anymore.
He was dancing.
As the dragon watched, its golden-green eyes wide, and as I watched, my throat catching in sudden emotion, Hiccup lifted his arms and began to twirl and step, dodging in and out of the lines drawn on the ground. Like a dragon whirling through the air, or a bird navigating clouds, his body responded to the input from his focused green eyes warning him of each new obstacle. His red brown hair lifted off his neck and his fur-covered vest flew out behind him.
He danced closer and closer to the dragon, seemingly unaware of the proximity. The world shrank down around my eyes. Nothing moved except him - not me, not the dragon, no wind, no birds.
Hiccup stopped two feet from the dragon and looked up.
The dragon looked down.
Hiccup reached up his hand and a sob escaped my throat. I closed my eyes at first overwhelmed by fear, and then opened them again, overwhelmed by beauty, and the need to see this bonding between man and beast, boy and dragon. We were supposed to kill the creatures. We weren't supposed to have our hands extended towards them, our heads turned away as though too terrified to even look at the things that are supposed to kill us in return.
The dragon hesitated, started to move his head, stopped...
...closed its eyes...
...and touched Hiccup.
I let out another sob, muffled by my hands. The image before me blurred, but I saw Hiccup shrink away, convinced he would be bitten. I heard a shuddering sigh, a mixture of terror and relief. I saw his head slowly lift to look the dragon in the eyes.
And then the dragon pulled his head back, turned, and fled to an overcropping rock.
Hiccup slowly walked away in the other direction.