Oh look more short time. Please don't bug me about doing these in any particular order these are meant to be low stress for me to do when I have the time.

"Valka in the woods, she encounters an owl."

-HTTYD-

She couldn't sleep. Again.

Valka was too used to the air, the weightlessness. The ground made her feel heavy, clunky, ill-adjusted. Hiccup was struggling sometimes too, she saw, but he had Astrid, he had the village, he had something to strive for. And Valka... she had her son, of course, but he was grown and busy and didn't have time for Valka waking in the night, sobbing and clutching the hole in her chest where Cloudjumper belonged.

It was why she'd chosen not to share a home with her son on the new island. She'd not burden him with her pain.

So Valka walked. For hours and hours, climbing every new rock formation she found with all the carelessness of someone who still had a dragon to catch her. She found discarded scales up there, shed by the dragons when they'd flown overhead. There were burn patches left from Grimmel, the Deathgrippers flammable venom that left Valka's shield in tatters back on Berk. Not that anyone could have found it in that rubble.

Dragging herself up another rock, she slumped against the trees, staring up at the sky and aching for the freedom of flight again.

"Oh, Cloudjumper..."

It had been an act of love, she knew, to let them go, but gods how she missed him. Valka couldn't even carry her staff anymore. The rattles reminded her, remembering how her nest had learned each sound and what it meant. Cool night air made her realise a few tears had slid down her face, hastily wiped away though there was nobody to see them. Straightening up, Valka climbed higher, legs burning in protest.

Rambling through the forests was all that helped her, because they were the only thing she remembered that wasn't Cloudjumper. It was dragons still, but gentler, to remember when she was a girl and how she crept through the woods with her mothers dagger stashed away, sabotaging dragon traps and peering up through the trees to see them zip overhead. What she wouldn't give to see just one now...

"Whooo-ooooo."

The noise tore her from her thoughts, body whipping around on instinct with a gasp. An indignant rustle of feathers, another low hooting, and the owl took flight as though Valka had disturbed it.

"It was an owl. Just an owl..."

She murmured, as though reminding herself. Oh. Oh... she'd never hear Cloudjumper snore again, those funny little noises he made as he hung down from above. Never watch his big eyes open, or see him stretch his four wings out before warbling happily at her in greeting. The hole in her chest felt like it had been torn anew as the memories assaulted her, falling against a tree and sobbing openly. Clutching her knees to her chest, Valka tried to hold herself together, fingers scrabbling uselessly at the leather of her leggings and wishing for dragon scales.

"Cloudjumper..."

-HTTYD-

DID SOMEONE SAY MORE SAD FEELS?