Valka had never really seemed to fit right, not in her clothes, and not in her village. She was lanky, like a baby yak, all legs and arms and no coordination, and she was always growing. She often towered over her peers, but she was a beanpole of a girl with no muscle to speak of. She relied only on her fiery attitude to hold her own against the other village kids who called her strange and insulted her daily.

In all honesty, though, strange wasn't far from the truth. Since she was young, she had liked to run off and explore in the door, taking an interesting in dragons. Not in killing them, as was the standard for Viking children, but in observing them quietly, unobtrusively. She didn't fear them. She enjoyed them, and knew that if she didn't bother them, they wouldn't bother her.

Her mother, the portly mead hall cook, had been appalled upon hearing about her daughter's taboo interest, and asked Gobber, the village blacksmith, to watch her. Valka really did like Gobber, but she was also aware that he wasn't very bright, and therefore, easy to fool. She would always pull the wool over his eyes, again and again. Sometimes Gobber would secretly feign ignorance and allow her to escape. She would then go to watch the dragons again, and took care to be home by dinner so her mother wouldn't suspect anything.

Even though she was a misfit, Valka was content with her life. Her father was gone, but she loved her mother. She had plenty of adventures with Gobber. The terrible terrors would allow her to pet them and became her friends. Things were perfect, that is until she turned fifteen. Her mother had signed her up for dragon training, and Valka couldn't be any less excited.

Despite her protests, she still ended up walking in to the arena that day, only to find that Chief Stoick was the teacher. Really, he looked like she wanted to be there even less than she did. Nobody could blame him. Recently, Alvin, Chief Stoick's most trusted friend, with whom he was practically inseparable since they were children, had grievously betrayed him, forcing Stoick to outcast Alvin from the tribe. Needless to say, that hadn't put him in a very good mood.

And that mood was not helped in the slightest by Valka's presence in the class. Despite her klutzy disposition, Valka was a pretty good fighter when she put her mind to it, but all that counted for nothing when she was faced with a dragon. It's not that she was physically incapable of fighting dragons, she was just really bad at it for some reason. Most said it was fear that caused her hesitation, but Valka knew that wasn't the case at all. She didn't fear the dragons, in fact she never had, and she didn't want to hurt them, and no matter how hard she tried to do what she needed to for the class, it continued to get in the way. It began to dawn on her that maybe she was just too different, and that she wasn't cut out to be a Viking in the first place.

To avoid the daily humiliation at dragon training, Valka sluffed more often than not, running off secretly into the forest for her usual dragon watching routine. They tried to look for her, but she was too quick, too good at hiding in the shadows and slipping past, unless of course her foot caught on a route and she was sent noisily falling flat on her face. As a result of lack of attendance, lack of skill, and lack of participation, she failed dragon training, the first person in almost a decade, much to the disappointment of what seemed to be every single person in the entire village. It wasn't a good feeling, and served only to magnify the feeling of dissonance she felt between herself and her village. Maybe she was born in the wrong place, and this life wasn't for her at all. The next year, Stoick forced her to attend dragon training once more, in hopes that she would improve and pass, but Valka didn't even try. She hardly showed up, much less participated. Her lack of caring for the class was more than enough to draw Stoick's wrath right to her.

"Valka!" He boomed one day, causing all the other kids stand back from the sheer force of his anger as he strode up to a defiant looking Valka.

"Yes, Chief Stoick?" She asked, covering up her nerves with sheer unrelenting stubbornness as she looked up at the imposing man. His face was beet red, carrying his signature disappointed frown. She could hardly recall a time where she'd seen him smile.

"You have failed again!" He shouted gruffly. "In fact, you have clearly shown me that you have no respect for our traditions, and you don't seem to care about doing what it takes be a Viking and part of this tribe at all. In fact, you seem to care more about the dragons than your own village. I may go as far to say that you're a threat to the safety and order of this village."

Valka's eyes widened, shocked at his accusation. "Well, it's not that, I just–"

"Save the excuses Valka." Chided Stoick, not in the mood to listen to her. "I'm going to give you the mercy of one for chance, Valka. After that, there will be no more shots at redemption. If you fail one more time, I will personally exile you from the village."

She looked at him in surprise, for the sentence of exile seemed incredibly steep. Even the other members of the class were appalled, and they didn't even like her. She straightened, and looked him fight in the eye, her seafoam eyes full of unmovable defiance. "Fine." She huffed. "I'll do as you please, but don't expect me to like it, or to make it easy for you." With that, she turned and walked off, leaving Stoick strangely intrigued, as the grim idea of exile started not to sound so bad anymore.