"Ouch!"

A thunderous flap and a whiff of fish greeted the small patch of land in front of the ruins as a figure stumbled on the ground. The booted foot tried to give way to the momentum but the peg leg, shiny and hook-shaped, slid through and let the teen fall on a pile of autumn leaves. The body barely made a sound but a nudge on its hips forced out an reflective grunt.

"I'm O-kay!"

Hiccup made the contraption on his left foot clink and tinkle until the hook was replaced with a slightly differently bent piece, then stood up in three paused breaths while learning the pain of all his sore spots.

"Now I can fly too, see?" He smiled at the dragon.

Toothless, disbelief settling in his eyes, turned his head and cocked a sneer before looking at Hiccup's sides almost with contempt in its face.

"Yeah, I know. I miscalculated the strap's length…"

Toothless' beady eyes were not soothed yet.

"…and my leather wing slipped away in mid flight…"

Not yet.

"…turning me into a human pinwheel and I would have died had I not rocked into your side and, Yes, You saved Me. Again. Thank You. Alright Now?"

Toothless blurted a grunt himself and fell on the leaves seemingly asleep but obviously annoyed.

Hiccup hesitated and slowly said "It will work, Bud, it just… needs perfecting, that's all. I'm sorry for the crash, okay?" as if Toothless even felt it! Hiccup on the other hand could barely touch his own shoulder… "Would you have preferred we stayed home and watched the Dragon Races?"

Toothless shot open an eye at him.

"Really?" Hiccup was fairly surprised. "Just watching or participating too?"

Toothless held the stare.

"Really? I don't see the point. I bet it's all pride with you."

Toothless closed the eye but not completely, just to give Hiccup a reason to assess his next words carefully, which he did.

"I mean, why would you care? We're faster than anyone. I'm not even being smug… how many times have the Twins or Astrid or those younger hooligans tried to follow us? They can't last to the nearest Horizon. We are faster even without trying. I think this whole thing with you is the same prideful stuff you do with the fish at dinner or with my leather wings."

Toothless was rather unresponsive today but as always gave the feeling of understanding every little meaning behind each comma.

"Alright, I know it's a close fight in those Dragon Races, they might beat us. When it comes to urban flight steep curves and small round runs are just made for smaller dragons, it's not like we can plow the town to the ground to win…"

Toothless' eye opened enough for Hiccup to add "…and I'm just saying, don't get any strange Ideas."

Hiccup seated himself at his side and said "Remember what we're doing this all for. We've bigger plans. We'll see Jörmungand and scratch its back and lurk past the edge of the World and stalk down the endless waterfalls and if we get to climb the branches of Yggdrasil… all the better. I bet one sky is too small for us."

Then he felt stupid because those few words were not worth sitting himself down for getting back up again a moment later. All the bruises ached and twinged loudly like an harp's cords under a hammer, so he stood on his feet as still as a statue, waiting for the strings to go quiet again.

The island they had landed on was one of many. In fact there was a whole freckled coast of it from the sky, small columns sprouting from the deep sea up to a small gulf of a bigger island like a comet and its tail. The bigger island was named Axeli, it had a couple of mountains and a known town on its other side, the small islands instead had no names except some on the borders that might bore the name of people and ships that died against their cliffy sides. These islets were covered in trees like big fungi and their edges drew too close to each other to allow any navigation whatsoever in between. Their cliffs steep enough to make the top uninhabitable or unreachable without flight and their fauna maid mostly of birds with some lonely squirrel having to live on a patch of a hundred trees if he was among the lucky ones.

Yet, somehow, on top of one Hiccup had found ruins, not even common ruins because they looked like a fortification cut short at its edge like the sea had swallowed the missing parts. To the best hypothesis he could develop the Nest wasn't the only place with dragons that Big and maybe in this place it had taken place a stamping match. Another theory involved Gods and Otherworldly Ire which, to Hiccup's knowledge, was better left unthought as the Gods might just find themselves obliged of thinking back at you.

The whole island was about two hundred feet across on its widest breadth, filled with a solid forest except for that small clearance where the ruins reached the Northern edge but trees were all along the border and grew even on top of the sloped roof of the ruins. The winds had dragged earth everywhere and trees of these islets liked to keep everything they got by chance from a storm.

A system of wooden drainpipes led the rainwater to a trough but Hiccup (who made them) still carried drinking water with him from home since the trough and the gutters had started developing miniature life forms of their own.

From the outside the covert chimney was not more distinguishable from any other weird extrusions of rotten wood and sculpted stone on the bed of grass that only Hiccup, Toothless and a rather reckless and curious squirrel had come to appreciate as a ceiling.

What was inside was Hiccup's secret hideout, a scrawny sickly place where rust would never starve, where leather would rot unseen in failed semblance of futuristic armor, where Toothless' 'Hall of Fame for Biggest Fish-Heads Caught Yet' was taking shape finely alongside a wall, where all things that Hiccup was not ready to say to his father nor anyone else on Berk were melted, forged and molded into creative things that could keep the secret Hiccup could not easily hold: he wanted to see the World.

Such a big desire planted in the heart of that tiny island, hoping to bud against the adversities, sometimes he felt like he was making his own roots when he could just fly away! For that ( and for the fact that the island was shaped like a big Goblet or a bowl on a spike of stone nailing it to the sea) Hiccup had named the island: Berth-Cup Island. Cup like a cup, berth like… well, he really had to go away, either being docked here or Berk, it hardly made any difference if he didn't plan seriously to leave it behind. Not forever, just for a few weeks. Right…

One day he'll start his journey, setting forth from a port like every viking that ever lived (before a dragon's wings became an option) and his Hideout island was port enough in his dreamful eyes.

Even when dragons' raids made warriors out of any of Berk's children, as they reached their teens the elders would still kick them on a boat and set them forth Adventure of one kind or another. There was a lot out there and tradition said one should be sent by the Spring before their 18th year birthday so they'd learn that tiny bit about the world required for boys to turn into men.

17 years old, Hiccup was a month away from that milestone and then… and then he'll just have to wait for the snow to melt and the fish to start filling the known shores, those were the signs in the olden days but he might even ignore them. On top of Toothless would it even matter if the icy ground or the fierce sea disagreed with him? From now on it would be the Sky and the Sky alone.

But those were just small thoughts harbored by a mind on edge, Hiccup's doubts had their own weight and their own scales and sometimes he felt his obligations as a Chief's son would never win the overwhelming winds of change. He had set the sails on for that change to happen and now he was going to be the first to be dragged along with the Storm… Dragons!

Dragons could now fit most of Berk's daily life quite well which, for Stoick the Vast, meant it was high time they should be introduced into Politics too. With a much larger slice of humanity at stake, things had rocked back and forth among the tribes, uniting the fearful, parting tides of people, mincing the old traditions, betraying the sacred values… a mess that started to pivot around the only certainty: the Hero of the Battle against the Red Death…

"What. A. Mess." Hiccup blabbered as he moved away from Toothless, his footing now secure and his mind finding the motivation he needed every single time he stepped on Berth-Cup Island. He could bring the greatest anticipation possible for some idea he was going to shape in the hot coals of the hearth but… one moment to think about the Journey ahead was spared every single time.

The ruins had collapsed more and more during the past months, Hiccup's fault of course, and they now slouched their remaining roof to the ground where a narrow arc of stone with wooden planks shoved below seemed to hold them in place. The planks were a door and a tricky one at that, it would remain closed for anyone who didn't know about the subtle iron hook on its frame. Hiccup moved it and entered the first big room, in the right corner he could gladly notice the summer had made him taller than the lowest side of the room although now he would be prone to head bumps. A great deal of work had gone into securing the roof in place, all around. Flimsy hands with tiny strength and lots of time had worked an engineering miracle to avoid being swallowed by the weight overhead and it showed in the many thin poles jointed and enclosed in iron belts to make each single pillar.

The ground was covered with flat stones and an assortment of rejects and failures of Hiccups' imagination. There were shields leaning on the wall and one on the ground, made by plating Toothless' scales, which had suffered heavily to playful bites of a sleepwalking dragon's jaw during his naps. Swords were piled on the lowest corner, some too old to be made in this novel forge but still bearing recent scars in missing pommels and cross-guards. Between the door and the swords, of course, a line of fish-heads-trophies getting too long for the room. Three axes with fine details shaped in them were the only things that had been hung for show, they were on a wall on the right and they gave a feeling of evolution, like each had been born from perfecting the previous one.

A box of twigs would reveal to anyone who came closer a great deal of wood cut in unseemly shapes to probably resemble pieces of bows, several horns of dragons cleaned and whetted by the sea and retrieved by Hiccup made a smaller pile on its side recording the unsuccessful time spent in trying to replicate a composite bow that had made its way to Berk through a great deal of trade and plunder.

Sands and powders in sacks, rare ores, bundles of leather and some more useless scraps made for another pile on the left corner away from the entrance, some covered with more care then others by ragged cloths or more planks of wood and leftovers of the second floor's collapsed roof.

The pile of junk in the first room would pale in comparison with the one in the room just ahead.

This was boarded with more wooden planks and some huffing and puffing echoed the effort of removing them with one hand, Hiccup's right side still being a bundle of pain. Where the previous room had almost a square frame this had the shape of a long slice of pie bitten at its pointy end and with a doorway on the side at its thickest point. A large opening that might be called a window was on the furthest edge of the slice immediately on the left of the entrance, the boards of wood closing it slid open by a single kick on a pulley and they showed a small patch of grass below. Another closed fissure opened to a window that took the whole opposite narrow wall where the room met the irregular cliff of the island, only waves rushing below. That side was shadowed by a big yew tree that clang to rocks above and whose roots made for a whole wall of the room and several improvised crossing beams now clouded with many hanging tools. Overall both windows offered almost East to West orientation to the place which made for an ever-changing but steady illumination. Some beeswax candles here and there gave more hope of a lived place but sometimes Hiccup was forced to go outside for any precision work if the sky was too cloudy or the fire had made it all too hot in that little stove of a place. A giant rock had been carved in to make the hearth and the forge and it lay in the middle of an opening between the two rooms. The only hinged panel of all the rooms was there and with a push it swung open giving Hiccup a complete view of his Hideout.

The little room had many bows on the little band of wall between entrance and the larger window, not even one of them would fire straight when stringed but they sure looked well-made. The long wall of yew roots was tapestried with blueprints and some suit of leather here and there nailed among the sketched paper, a sack of coal on the corner, bellows and tools here and there. The stone of the Hearth thinned and went as far as the door creating a large table to work on and leaving space for the legs to fit in, albeit still plenty uncomfortably. On top of it, on a corner, Hiccup had turned a flat mass of steel into his own anvil to hammer the metal into shape. Above the table, hanging on the wall were a lot of swords, his pride and glory, all prototypes and failures of a curious concept that almost had blown up the whole hideout: a Sword made of fire.

He put on black leather gloves, smiled proudly at the sight of his swords and unsheathed his best prototype yet from his side, put it in the hearth, threw some coals and then, hiding the rest of his body under the stone, he clicked the cross-guard with his left hand's thumb where it would release the Hideous Zippleback's oily saliva and waited for the returning click which would supposedly lit it.

A burst of heat engulfed the bowl of coals… and the ceiling… and, possibly, Hiccup imagined a tongue of fire licking the outer room and he hoped, really hoped, the natural dampness of the place would suffice to prevent a wide-spread fire. The sword was on fire, yes, but for Hiccup the whole Fire-Priming ordeal was still a tad bit too close to an Explosion to call it a Successful Working Prototype, there was still room for improvement and hopefully he wouldn't have to die to fill it.

The coals took a while but lighted up before the tang emptied out all the Hideous Zippleback's fuel in the hilt and Hiccup started pumping the bellows. He could ask Toothless for a breath of fire but… that would entail to some more gratitude he was not so ready to hand out, especially with Toothless still not on board with the leather wings and all.

Nonetheless, Hiccup sat down and smiled at Toothless, whose head was crawling in the tiny room. If he were to enter he'd occupy the place entirely so he just let his body find comfort in the outer room while his head rested in full view of Hiccup, trying to keep company in what always turned out to be a long and tiring day at the forge. Autumn's first chills made it at least more bearable than the long heated summer but, for Hiccup, the Hideout was at its very best when under deep snow and Winter wasn't too far away, another thing to look forward to…

With time the coals turned blazing hot with a hint of a white core, by then a couple of empty pages of paper had filled with parts and names for the next project, a black leather jacket got another pocket stitched to its arm, one of the most promising prototypes was broken beyond repair by Hiccup's attempt at fixing it and an annoying bird, a Sky Lark perhaps, had hopped down the big window onto Toothless' head to look intriguingly at a working figure dressed in a thick brown-burnt apron.

Hiccup had a furnace on the clearing outside he used for smelting and he went there a moment to throw away some stones just handpicked from a big sack. That was the last chore of the day as he felt his mental clock sounding the call of glowing metal in the hearth. For few paces he only felt the sweat trickling down his face from the heat of the forge and the wind cool on his skin, then all his concentration went into avoiding slipping again on the fallen leaves, the sound of sizzling fuel in the fire sent him back to his whistling ears as he had crushed into Toothless and so he remembered the bruises still acting up under the clothes. All that made him completely unaware of a small shadow taking shape in the sky above.

In the tiny room the curious Sky Lark had relocated on to the ledge, still more curious than scared. Toothless' ears started twitching but Hiccup regarded them as a simple reaction to his attempt at playing acrobat to enter without stamping on him. He went to the forge without a second thought but the dragon's ears and even the annoying bird had sensed a landing and a stealthy flutter of wings on the outside, the kind that makes a bird want to wait out the noise before flying away.

On the table a set of tools had been lined about, all had disappeared at some point from Gobber's workshop through Hiccup's newfound thieving skills and all had been blamed on wandering dragons and their talent to annoy people. 'They obviously like to play with shiny things' Gobber had said and for that he had taken to calling them magpies, all on account of his apprentice's thievery.

One hammer found a steady grip around itself tighten as it was loaded in the air with all the power of a mighty sore shoulder. Hiccup was just readying to land the swing when the sound of a clearing throat reached him from the outside. The hammer fell off and the handle hit him on his head felling him down on his buttocks, back to the old pains with a new one added for the company.

A mocking yell from outside lashed inside Hiccup's already ringing skull "Yoo~Eh! Yeh all Scotchy Pickle-Prunes in there! The Hairy Hooligans are here! Run for your lives because you're soo screeeewwwwd!"

The silence that followed sprang Hiccup up and into an indistinct whisper of curses, he led his legs right in front of Toothless and seeing him so unfazed almost brought forth the need to cannon-ball on the saddle but he knew better than that… he marched angrily, but cautiously, in the outer room looking for any free flagstones without a tail or a paw. When his eyes could trust his blind legs on the unencumbered pavement they fixated on the figure that barred the door.

"What in the name of Óðr!"

"Oh my! I'm so– sorry, Hiccup!" taunted again the voice "Am I not supposed to know about your secret base– on the kooky archipelago– of weird, creepy and loony?"

The sarcasm had no place in those words… all the effort Hiccup put into reaching the island without being followed… "No, You were not supposed to know, Astrid! No One was supposed to know!"

"Well, Lucky for you I'm the only one who found out!"

"But… how?"

"Color me clever but: I just followed you…" she said, throwing at Hiccup a brick of Obvious!.

"Color what? Hey! No you didn't, you couldn't… I mean, Stormfly can't keep up!"

"The mighty Night Fury…" she rolled her eyes, came in and petted the sleepy dragon feigning ignorance of all the clutter of stuff that was around her, even the fact that sound of dripping metal was coming from the forging station with a rising hiss of danger.

Hiccup ran on the side of the room that shared the hearth with his little lab and pocked the second sword out of the fire with a crumpled stick of bronze before throwing that too among the heaps of rusted blades and pacing back to Astrid. She had harnessed the chance and was taking the whole room in with few calculated glances.

"You couldn't." Said Hiccup matter-of-factly.

"I could if I planned to, Sir Shrewd. Like, say, observe in what direction you disappeared to every other day and then just fly until I met the first island and wait for you there. You went past Cloffliff Island one week ago, so it had to be the next one, Axeli Island, not many eligible shores on this route." She said pointing behind her with her thumb. "But three days ago I couldn't see which one of islet among all the pebbles you landed on and you must have left after twilight because I lost you. Today on the other hand…" she pointed at the coals.

Usually they didn't make much smoke and the wind dispersed it immediately but today the coals were dirty… and so were the swords he had melted… and maybe he had thrown some autumn leaves too many that had found their way in from windows or in the leather vest… and some paper sketches that disagreed with him… and a belt of his bracer ruined in the accident… and a piece of bread…now, Really! Did he need just some minor bruising to turn uncaring towards anything and forget all his well-honed workplace habits?

Whatever!

Hiccup often forgot just how astute Astrid was. All the precautions he had taken went far beyond the superficial: even the fact that the island of Axeli was often visited by the more ship-oriented Viking tribes was in those calculations, he never approached before giving a sweep from the sky and then he did get to the island by flying lower than the small archipelago, dodging and zigzagging like a lightening bolt through a path no ship could have followed and, as for the landing, Toothless would keep to the Ruins' side, his wings never getting higher than the trees around. Only a Dragon Rider in flight would see him land but he was wary of that and looked up often enough.

The smoke… that was something of a bother but even in the calmer days, between the yew three on top of the chimney and the wind, the smoke would be spotted only by people actively searching for it…

All his secrets behind a door jammed with one hundred locks and only needing one key to open them all: Astrid.

"Wait, you were waiting for me all day?" hadn't he been on Berth-Cup island for hours now? Did she wait until now on Axeli's island to spot the smoke or had she been in the small islet with him all day and he hadn't even noticed? But she did mention the smoke…

"No, pinhead, I just arrived. I was at the Dragon Races. Forgotten about them?"

"Ah. Ehm… but you won, right?"

"Yeah." She said, one eyebrow arching.

"You always do." He smiled uncertainly.

"Do I? Ruffnut is just one victory behind me, we were 9 to 9 this morning. The 'Showdown of the Century' according to bookmakers and bored people."

"Yeah, but, come on, all the others have no victories! and Ruffnut, well, does winning like that even count?" this time Hiccup could draw defenses and put a bit of spice in the answer… after all he had just lost a secret Hideout.

"Fishleg has 3 victories, Snoutlout 4 and Tuffnut 6. Of course those were before those two started the courting and these days Tuffnut just tries to steal Ruffnut's 'gifts', easier game plan than risk the umpteenth tangled-neck accident…"

She let the words fade to invite a response but all she got was a frigid look and a spoonful of silence.

"You're angry with me?" she asked smiling quizzically. For Hiccup to expect sincere apologies or even a wounded kitten look was to completely forget who Astrid was in her core, so he just pounded for at least some taint of shame.

"Shouldn't I be?"

"No. I could have followed you before. Two years I let you go on with your mysterious ways but last time I did so it only took a few months before you changed the village forever, I'd rather not wait until you tip the world upside-down, thank you very much." Hiccup would have smiled if the head hadn't started drumming at the beat of his heart where the hammer's handle hit it.

"See?" she said. "It's just history repeating itself. I follow you. You show me what kind of future is coming crashing onto our lives. Fairest deal I can offer you."

Hiccup turned his back to her and put away the apron, the sturdy gloves, the frail and shaky pride. Then turned back.

"Let's go outside."

"What? But I want to see what all this is about!" she gestured around "I bet there's something cool in there! Is Baldr hiding in there smoking mistletoe? I wouldn't be surprised, I swear I wouldn't!" she kept pointing to the inner room.

"Come on, the stuff is just junk. You can go in there but you won't find anything good." He lied. One thing was losing a secret base, another was to spill out all the reasons why he needed one in the first place. Although… this was Astrid, maybe she'd understand?

She ignored him and strode inside anyway only to see that really there were only weird swords of no functional appeal, a bit like the one Hiccup carried around these days, it just sprung out the outline of a badly designed sword that could probably be beaten apart with a broom. On the wall, sketches… she had been in Hiccup's home, no surprise there. Leather armor thingies? Right enough to hide that, marriageable age meant the woman would carry her knitting set in the house, not the other way around. Then, on her left side, a tiny piece of wall between the entrance and the great window opening… Bows!?

She turned around and then crawled on the ground laughing.

Hiccup totally expected that, he really did.

To explain the depth to which a bow might label a person in Berk one must know that bows, sticks and stones are the weapons children are allowed to use before the parents deem them worthy of a real weapon. Hiccup had been barely tolerated with a knife even when he reached his teens, in fact until his father sent him to Dragon Training with 'The Viking Axe' ( "When you carry this Axe, you carry all of us with you!", took him one week to lose it…) he had never been entrusted with any weapon at all and it was really an hard prejudice to question. Case in point, the night he grounded Toothless he had been held responsible for so much of the mayhem in the village that, by the time it came morning, people had forgotten dragons had any talons in it too.

As bows stood, Hiccup had his own suspicions that even Berk's vikings on hunting expeditions on other islands carried bows stashed in their ships or, at least, made due with crossbows because only idiots would negate the advantage of a projectile weapon while hunting on land.

That was another thing, bows were toys and crossbows were legitimate, Berk had been on the Dragon standard for about long enough. Not fighting people for centuries had made them forget what a bow could do… dragons can hardly be scratched by an arrow thrown by a bow, a good crossbow with steel arrows on the other hand might just find its way out the other side. But, in the end, that was what it all summed up to: Prejudices!

"There's no reason to laugh, You kill rabbits and gulls with bows, that's stuff you kill to eat. Not every weapon is there to chop heads or wings off." He said offended. He even meant it, though, he wasn't all that good with bows but he had captured dinner a dozen times alread. He'd heard the stories, not all lands could be sailed around by boat, some tribes came from coasts on the east and those coasts were 'Endless'. On a journey to the end of the world he might have to cross lands like those and then both him and Toothless would have to rely on his abilities to hunt and not on a dragon innate talent to fish. There was a thought that irked in the background: probably dragons could hunt boars as well as salmons since they had the ground advantage of initiating their attacks by simply cooking any prey alive… but that mattered not in Hiccup's mind, he could match Toothless at least on one aspect: Pride.

She stood up, still laughing a bit, her hands rubbing away tears and massaging her cheeks. He was already waiting outside but she just sat under the archway, it was a warmer day than usual and Astrid was wearing the furry clothes she used to ward off the high winds in flight. A good reason to hide from the sun.

Shadows… Hiccup sought them too although he'd been near hot coals for so long that even under the sun he felt his sweat cool away.

"What did you call this island?" she asked looking around.

"Berth-Cup." At that point Hiccup spotted Stormfly on top of a big Oak cradling in a huge natural bowl made by branches. Those trees could only be seen past Axeli's Island and certainly not on Berk. Cloffliff Island, closer to Berk, had none of these trees but big wide woodlands filled with unending meaty prey so this archipelago of dotted rocks covered in fuzzy trees was mostly unknown to anyone who knew Hiccup, another reason to loathe the loss of secrecy. But as for dragons… he certainly had not seen any Deadly Nadders in the region, Stormfly was probably intent on testing the novelty with a napping experience.

Astrid had let him wander away in thought for a minute, then she said "Weird name. For an island, I mean. It sounds like 'Berk'… but not really. You should have called it Turtle-Dragon Island or Spiky-Buckler Island if you wanted to stitch up two random words. I would have called it Manure Island because it just looks like it from above. I bet it was the Red Death's droppings that made the whole archipelago in the first place."

"It's made of stone…"

"You don't know everything about dragons, Hiccup! Especially That Dragon! For all we know…"

"Alright! Tell me why are you so surly and why are you here. That'll spare me the lecture when you'll say the door is low and the roof is crooked."

"Hiccup, the roof is crooked. You know that, right?"

"Yes. The second floor's roof came down on it, now it's a ceiling made of a bit of both but… it stands. That's what matters for me. And… It's not two years that I come here, a bit more than one, I think it was Autumn back then too."

She thought about it and then looked inside letting a large pause fall in the conversation. Hiccup lived of awkward pauses in conversations with everyone but Astrid (and possibly the twins) was the one that never seemed to notice them.

"Those axes on the wall, they look like mine. Like the one you gave me for my birthday."

"They were… failures. Yours is the fourth I made, those are not as good."

She looked back, somewhat mollified but her slight blush on the cheeks and her eyes made her look sulky, her tone of voice came out as she was on the brink of pouting like a child.

"Ruffnut is exasperating…"

"I'm sorry I didn't come to see you beat her in the races, okay?"

"What? No, not for that. You should come anyway though, you know how people see you."

"Yeah, like some mystic kind of guy from one of the ancient Sagas." He meant to put sarcasm in those words but since there were already people writing poems about his fight at the Nest he felt rather scared to be boasting about it.

"Sort of. And you always disappear and make it all the more easy for them to imagine mystical machinations afoot… but our friends, they're not that stupid, they think you're up to something, at least Fishleg thinks so–" she said defensively and then added "–and me too. The others, though, even the younger think you're just acting weird or reclusive like you were– before, you know. Then Ruffnut said…"

"I don't care."

"You don't care being called Nuts?"

"Oh come on, both twins are Nuts, their name's a curse in itself. Then Ruffnut… there were those two times… she was so… clingy."

"Yeah, because she had a crush on you."

Hiccup felt awkwardly proud but they had had that conversation already and he bounced back in retort "And I don't care about that either and you know it."

"Why can't you just tell us?" her hands gestured uncertainly like what was around her meant something she could not completely grasp "We are your friends, Hiccup!" and there was no jealousy Hiccup could sense in dropping Ruffnut from the conversation, he could have pushed her to see if she was jealous but Astrid could brandish shields and axes even in her own mind. He opted for trying to be cryptically honest.

"It's something… I'd have to tell my father first and that's not easy."

"Are you going to leave?"

That surprised Hiccup in a big way, for a moment he saw Astrid as completely aware of everything. He had to shake his head to snap out of the bewilderment. "I… maybe. How do you even…?"

She was now brazenly pouting.

"I'm not blind, you know! You're always away… and where would you even want to go? Berk is your home, Hiccup. It's Our Home." His heart clenched weirdly, like it had grown roots all around his chest and those had started thundering excitedly.

Right… She thinks I'm going, like, Forever… She doesn't know… But She cares… Our Home…

"You've the wrong idea, Astrid. I want to leave, yes, but on a journey like everyone did before the dragons, like they still do, with expeditions left and right. The whole Rite of Passage tradition."

"You're not… suited to go on a warring expedition, Hiccup. You'll die." She had sprung up on her feet and her eyes fell unashamed towards his peg leg.

"I'm not going to a warring expedition." But of course you would think of That! "Not a fishing expedition. Not a hunting expedition. Not a pirating expedition." He mentally wondered if he had listed them all, most were accomplished on other Tribes' ships because Berk had lost his warring and pirating way along centuries of Dragons' Nest Expeditions and, especially warring, had been forgotten as a practice usually done against other tribes and enemies made of flesh and bones. Nonetheless all the quests filled the minimum requirements for the traditional Rite of Passage to 'Manhood', it didn't matter what tribes you braved them with.

He must have named all the possible expeditions because Astrid perplexed asked:

"What remains, Hiccup? You're going on a 'Stitch and Decorate Expedition' ?" she said taking hold of the leather vest he was still wearing, for all chores he'd done, he had never cared to change into something different than his winged prototype, his eyes lurked at his own side to see if he had strapped the wings at his torso… if they opened now that would lead to a whole bucket of questions and certainly troubles… he planned to tell his father of his journey and that was it, he certainly didn't want him or anyone else to find out he might just spend some time flying solo with the air buoyancy of a chicken.

"I want to go on an Exploring Expedition. It's old, Viking Tribes around don't do it anymore but I know it's there in the books somewhere. Heroes in stories went exploring all the time…" He struggled out of the grip when Astrid unclenched her fingers shocked by his answer. "And I'm not going away forever, maybe a month or two, but then I'd come back. Of course I'd come back." He said again more placatingly, realizing he'd started to yell.

She was wide-eyed but then composed herself into a frown of anger. "Alone?"

"Yeah– Not! With Toothless, of course."

"Right!"

"Right!" He roared back.

"Your map! You've been charting the sea all around Berk anyway. Can't you make that be enough?!"

"I want to go farther!"

"Farther than Axeli's Island? What? The Endless Coasts? Nóregr? Or double back to Vinland maybe? Right! You'd die in a week, Hiccup!"

"Thank you for that! I'm not armless and I won't be unarmed and… I don't need you to look after me like a child."

"But you are a child! Just listen to yourself! And you…" this time there was a bit of embarrassment in blatantly pointing out the leg but her vexation was charging ahead "You are a Cripple, Hiccup. There are giant Monsters worse than dragons and the people are Murderer outside our land. I don't want you to go! Not alone!"

Now that did it! Cripple! With the peg leg of his making he could outrun practically any of the more 'Viking' beefy adults in town and certainly he outran Fishleg any chance he got and probably Snotlout too if they got on good ground like the former arena, he could put more than a fair fight and Astrid knew it better than anyone! She was the one that forced him to train with her three times a week (albeit just with wooden swords). He could hunt and she didn't know that, Armhazard Ticklish the poacher had taught him five ways to prepare the kill and now he almost never threw up right after… He could fly with wings of his own making and his sword was made of (totally uncontrollable) Fire!

"I Will Go And That's It, Astrid. As soon as next spring comes, with or without my father's consent, and I'll go with Toothless, Alone! I've decided and you won't change my mind!"

She put herself right in front of him, Hiccup had had a growth spur during the Summer but she hit it before and better. Their noses matched in a sparring fashion but she was arching slightly down at him with bulkier shoulders and fluffier clothes. Both pair of eyes angry and belligerent but only one figure looked really threatening while any bystander might expect the other to roll down and play death. In spite of that Hiccup would not step down.

A black snout appeared with a yawn behind Astrid, woken up by being called up in the conversation twice now. The two battling noses broke up (in more than one way, Hiccup feared) and Astrid went towards the Oak tree where her ride was snoring in sync with the waves below. A whistle and a kick thawed a drowsy Stormfly down from the tree.

She jumped on and gave Hiccup one last feisty look that gave her the aura of a disgruntled Valkyrie, he did not try to walk away and stood there, looking for minutes at her silhouette in the sky until it fell beyond the horizon.

Time might have stopped for a while until Toothless rubbed against his back and the tension broke off.

"I really screwed it up this time… She will not look at me for the whole Winter, I'd bet on that. She might even try to follow us… not that I worry about that." He smiled sadly at his friend and scratched his head in an half-felt hug. One of the many reasons why he would go alone was that for any other dragon it was a hard effort even to match the speed of a Night Fury sleepily gliding away and now he knew he might have to change direction a few times just to make it impossible to track him.

…And what if he did accept companions! He'd have to wait for anyone to catch up to him and worse of all… he'd have to ask if anyone wanted to come with him and half the village would agree in a blink, of course.

'Possibly Suicidal Journey to the End of the World?' Sign me in!

Deadly Quests had the same allure on Vikings that mermaids had on sailors, if Hiccup had been born in a different age he might have tried to instruct them on Darwinism or maybe just pointed out how willingly rising the stakes of natural selection wasn't all that clever. The Hunt for the Nest could have ended with the whole tribe wiped off charts and history books and what did they learn from it? Nothing, that's what! Not a single thing. If he told anyone where he was headed there would be a dark cloud of saddled dragons stretching in his wake. Of course there was no logic in making a patronizing lecture on the risk of the Journey if he didn't tell them in the first place, also the fact that he was first in line on that voyage might just make the words sound as empty as he heard them in his imagination, when he confronted his father with his real intentions. No, he'd handle that as he'd decided already.

Hiccup trudged in the forge and botched all the work that remained for the rest of the day among which, most annoyingly of all, were the changes he had thought up for the fire sword.

To begin with the sturdy fuller in 3 parts he made could not be added because he had miscalculated the lengths of the sections. He made a edged end for the sword quite like a bayonet many centuries ahead of its time although it could hardly be called revolutionary since it was at the end of a sword anyway. The tip used was from a thin sword and that fitted well enough but he could have used so many other swords' tips that were in the room and of far better iron and far sharper edges but his mind wasn't on the job.

The final result was unusual but to Hiccup looked beautiful. Any blacksmith would have fixated on the obvious lack of all the length of blade that should connect the dagger-end to the hilt. There, instead, were two skeletal lines of steel, three-times connected by even thinner steel and apparently this small frame could slide into the hilt…

'That's no sword, Hiccup!' Gobber would have said and that was a thought that always made Hiccup smile. 'Right! It's a sword like no other, that for sure!' he would answer.

With the modifications the sword would look just like a dagger until triggered into drawing itself out to its full length. The addition created the need for a sheathe of sort in which to put the short sword which since Hiccup still wanted to keep his usual knife strapped to his forearm's bracer. It would also take at least another day to make the devised fuller and to better carve the current tip so that the dragon saliva could drip to its end, forced by capillary action and by the gas pressure in the pommel. The bigger surface of spread of the saliva would hopefully work towards quelling the uncontrolled flame and once the fuller was added it might even give the sword enough strength to survive a single parry from a viking axe swung at him.

On a different day the work would have been judged barely acceptable, the sort Hiccup would rather put back in the hearth and do back from scrap but his row with Astrid had thoroughly unsettled his heart and mind. Above all, he wasn't ready to admit he was distressed at all for fear to back off the whole Journey idea so he nodded untruthfully to himself as he put the fire-sword dagger without a sheathe in his belt with the pointy end dangerously close to his thigh. For that he made a mental note to not incur in any sort of accident or weird flying maneuver for the next couple of days.

He went out in the patch of grass but just sit there in the twilight, admiring the stars appearing in the ensuing smears of blueness in the sky. He started counting them as they looked so few but for every ten tally marks he mentally drew on his eyelids, far more winks flocked in the cloudy blanket. He yawned and slowly fell asleep, a scaly hide finding his back almost instinctively as he slid away from his sitting stance.

With more than a mind full of doubts Hiccup slept for the first time horizons beyond Berk, not in his bed and away from Home. He had always come back Home even if just for a couple of hours before sunrise, he had maintained the tacit assurance that his father would always find his room lived in every single day so he wouldn't worry.

This night, though, the sleep was not going to yield to self-appointed duties, it would last 'till needed and then Hiccup would wake up forgetful of the promises he made to himself, for a short while, at least. More things were bound to happen that night for Hiccup, small things, sitting on a tree by the moon and following a slow clicking sound that came with the tide. Hiccup would get to see Berk many hours from now, as a speck of glass reflecting back the sun at him and Toothless' shadow would be so big that the dreamy eyes of the Adventurer riding him would see it as the needle of a giant compass made of all Miðgarðr itself. Even Toothless would cherish the day ahead and it didn't matter that on his back there was a second weight, kicking and struggling… some times you met new people in all kinds of original ways…

Far above the Night was riding out the Day.

Nótt soared the sky and smiled benignantly at her daughter, Jörð, cradle of life in Miðgarðr, and all Earth mirrored her Mother's pale darkness with a thousands tones of her own as they dried of the light of day. Among the hundreds shades of ruby! and jade! and azure! Nótt spotted the pair of souls sleeping under the stars: one was dyed of a darkness that made the Goddess blush in delight, the other one was tiny and snuggled in that puddle of scaly gloom with wings and the sight stole from Nótt a kind and twinkling smile. Then every detail of the boy winked back at her from afar, the Night's smile disappeared and the wind rose up, high above the trees, as Hrímfaxi, the horse she was riding, started taking up speed because a weight on his back had disappeared.

Hiccup and Toothless slept through the changes, clouds leaping like rabbits in snowy fields leaving behind big arched rainbows of grey vapor, the trees swinging and leaning curiously at them to search for comprehension, droplets of dew condensing on the leaves and falling back towards the skies like mischievous children when Nótt was not looking over them.

Defiance riddled the night in its smallest features but it was a rather quiet wake for anyone bigger than a gerbil. Hiccup snored unknowingly but a big day lay ahead, it only asked for him to wake up.