So. I didn't know I was going to write another one.
Again, I meant the first chapter as a stand alone, but it really was my favorite of all the stories I've written for HTTYD so I guess I'm gonna call this a collection of One Shots?
The title of this one comes from a Florence + the Machine song.
Swimming
Rama was very comfortable in the darkness. She'd long lost track of the days she spent riding through the dark night on Snares' back, gliding through under the light of the moon hanging above them. It all began to flow into one long blur with no definite transition of the sun replacing the moon and repeat.
The pair had recently left on a month long rest, giving her the much needed relaxation of flying to the neighboring islands, away from the world of buildings and vikings. It had been a long awaited vacation of sorts, after the long months helping her brother and his people clean away the debris of ice and rock. Even the stables, where she spent most of her time when not in the wilderness of Berk's woods, needed rebuilding to accommodate the sudden new influx of dragons that came to live with them.
The interaction, the noise, the talking, all the trivial things she needed to remind herself of as to not cause problems. It made her teeth grind together and a red hot rage build in her she knew would boil over if she did not take some precautions.
It was astonishing how quickly the madness faded from her as Berk faded behind her, and she was left over an open ocean. The wind in her face and her hair blowing away the troubles on her mind and hanging down on her shoulders.
She and Snares island hopped for the weeks following, her mind sleeping away the worries as her body did as it was meant to. She hunted boar, wolves, fished with sharp spears in the flowing rivers. She free hand climbed the mountain peeks, feeling bliss at the sharp pain from the rocks on her hands after hours of work.
Pushing her body to the brink, it helped her relax. It cleared away everything in her mind. Made her feel the freedom she had before- -
She could breath again.
Snares kept her body close on these nights, cocooning his wings around her as they watched their small campfire burn out and reveal the sea of stars over them. They always slept together, touch starved in their own ways. Being apart from each other, from the days they were needed in the rebuilding effort, the time the Silkspinner dragons had captured him along with all the other dragons on their expedition, to the day her viking father was killed, all of them left her feeling empty and cold. The feeling of bugs crawling under her skin, antsy, stressed, searching so desperately for something. Jittery and frustrated.
But the month long rest they took, it was a long awaited respite.
It was obvious, to those looking for it.
Maybe even for those who weren't.
Anyone who looked to her, they could see the tense coiled knot inside. Twisting farther and farther every day she stayed, and fending off all but those closest to her family.
Her mother saw it coming a mile off.
"You're planning on leaving soon," It wasn't a question, hearing her mother's voice behind her.
Rama didn't turn from her place, chopping the logs brought in by the vikings earlier that day. It was obvious. There were many dragons who could do this job instead, swifter, cleaner even. Rama knew this better than anyone.
Physical, strenuous activity. That was what kept her going. Anything to distract from the feelings developing on her insides.
She lifted the axe up higher and brought it down straight through the wood.
"Rama."
The daughter shifted again, turning to her mother at the noise. The axe loosened in her grip, but the tense feeling in her shoulders never fell.
"You don't need to carry all the weight," Her mother's calming voice said. "You can't jump into a world like this headfirst and expect to swim. It's natural for you to need a break."
Rama was silent.
"A rest," Valka clarified.
The daughter's eyes narrowed, and she turned back to her work. Her teeth were bared though her back was turned, "You did."
For the first time in her life, she felt weak. Powerless. Stupid. She had never once questioned her life before that day. She had always accepted in her heart of hearts that she belonged there, in a nest of dragons. In the sky, letting her hands brush through the clouds on the back of her lifelong companion.
Everything was wrong now, and she so desperately wanted to fix it. To return to how she felt before.
For the first time in her life, she was an intruder who didn't belong. She hated it.
The axe fell down again. An unfamiliar motion, but exhilarating and burning in her muscles nevertheless.
The most she could do to be useful. Her jaw clenched.
But however close the mother and daughter were, Valka couldn't read her mind.
"I did what?"
"You jumped headfirst into a new world."
- - Chop - -
"You learned to swim."
"That was different."
- - Chop - -
"How?" Rama turned on her mother, facing her fully and rising to her full height. "You were plucked from your home the same age as me, and thrust into a nest of dragons. You were alone and you learned and you flew. I came here of my own free will, with my mother and my brothers to help me, and I still feel like a baby who hasn't even opened their eyes."
There was whine behind her, shrill and echoing. And so familiar. Her eyes closed and the axe dropped from her hand, hitting the earth with a thud. She immediately reaching out to the comfort of her brother's smooth scales.
Her mother did not speak for a moment.
"Vikings are not the kind and gentle creatures you are used to." Her voice was quiet in the empty forest. "Dragons do not lie or cheat and they do not kill needlessly. They do not care who you were and where you came from. They only see you as you are now."
Rama tilted her head at her mother. Even now, an act showing the nurturing familial beasts she had been raised alongside. Her mother closed the few steps separating them, reaching out one hand to brush her daughter's cheek gently.
She repeated again, "You don't have to jump headfirst. I'll tell Hiccup you needed your break."
Rama's eyes drifted from their place glued to the front of Valka's shirt, before trailing up to meet her pale blue eyes. The anger was gone, the rage left. The emotions being replaced with a tired grief.
She wouldn't feel better until she had her moment to break away.
One hand rose to grip her mothers, holding it close and bringing it to the front of her face to brush her lips. Her eyes closed for a short moment, breathing in her mother's scent and letting the memory of the old times wash over her.
Then her eyes opened.
The tired, angry, look was replaced with the familiar face of stubborn determination. The acceptance of what it was she really needed. Their hands fell apart, fingers brushing one last final time before Rama let out a growling purr of goodbye. The sound of which she hadn't had the chance to use in months.
Refreshing feelings brushed over at the rumble in her throat, and she felt like howling it from the skies above.
Not yet.
She could already see the smile resting on her mother's face as the young woman shook out her shoulders, leaving behind the forced straightened gait. Once again she embraced the prowling stalk she'd been stifling for so long.
Her head turned, staring deep into the golden eyes of her brother. His dilated pupils began to thin as he anticipated her next action, his tail beginning to twitch at his urge to fly in the clouds at his highest speeds. His pearly white teeth touched the air as his mouth opened slightly in something that might resemble a grin.
Both of them ready and waiting and excited to sleep beneath the stars in the unknown wilderness on their own.
And they had.
The moon cycling through the entire month.
Wandering aimlessly, working out all of their stress in the ways only they knew how to.
This was inevitable.
It was refreshing.
The entire world before her with clean, crisp air she could breathe.
But they weren't finished.
Always, in the back of her minds. In her dreams since that smoke-filled day. The cries of her reptilian family echoing between her ears, the familiar teal crystals of ice passing in and out of her vision with the snow. She remembered it vividly.
Even now she could smell the air, the burning of wood and bodies and the flammable gases being released.
The seconds when everything went silent, and the pure snowy heaving form of her alpha slammed to the ground and shook the earth.
The short minutes after when she saw her viking father fall still in a cloud of dark smoke.
Rama never wanted to return. Deep inside she didn't think she could handle it.
She mourned the great Bewilderbeast who kept her and her family safe all her life. They had paid their respects since then, the night her nestmates accepted their new dragon alpha and chose to follow him.
Rama cried silently, beside her mother. Sitting quietly as they watched the display of fire in the sky and listened to the howls and songs the dragons sang in his honor. Hiccup had been with them during this, as well as all of his people.
Silently as she had when they set off her viking father's body for his funeral. She remembered, staring long at the vikings as they shed tears. They all did, save the tall one with black hair (she later knew to be Eret son of Eret, a former trapper) and her mother.
It didn't feel fair for her to. Did she even have a right to? He might have been her father, but they didn't know each other. What was there to mourn?
Rama pushed the hurt from her mind, the vision of the kind and gentle alpha she grew up with, and she set her sights on the lanky form of her brother, listening as his voice vowed to protect his tribe and take up the mantle his father had left.
She and Hiccup didn't share many words. He was often busy taking care of his new duties as a chief, and neither of them were very good at social interaction. But she thought often of this moment as they each mourned the loss of the great leaders.
They would sit quietly together, go on long flights sometimes. Then on occasion he would request some help with some debris or with the new influx of dragons. Rama would do as he asked, when he asked.
He deserved her help.
Hiccup had lost his father. A man he held in so high regard. But that did not take away from the sorrow he felt at the death of the alpha.
Rama didn't know how to mourn someone she didn't know.
It hit her on the inside, watching her brother step into his father's role as the chief. She watched as her mother walked the paths in the viking village, eyes lingering on the places she held hands with her late husband, and the first night after they'd returned when Hiccup offered her Stoick's old room in the house. They missed him terribly. The loss was worse on them than her. Surely.
She listened silently to any mention of the great Stoick the Vast. Drank in every story, every artifact he left behind.
But it never changed.
She didn't grow from her grief, like Hiccup and her mother. They both were able to move past it as they embraced their new roles in the tribe. This feeling didn't fade as it did with the Bewilderbeast, shifting form into something bittersweet, learning so smile as she thought of his majestic being.
It was just hard, a weight, a cloud, hanging over her wherever she darkened with her shadow.
And she didn't know, or didn't want to know, what to do about it.
Snares knew her well in this, and she hardly noticed before he turned his sights on the wind path to their old home.
And she didn't say anything when she saw the clear image in front of her.
The ever frozen spines silhouetted against the pale sky. The colorless beach, debris still sprinkled along even after half of the year had passed.
Even the air smelled the same. Salt and sea and still-melting ice. Reminding her of the past, just as her mother's scent could bring her back to a time when she was young.
But it wasn't her home anymore.
Snares weaved through the caverns inside, leading them to the central cave she spent her best years. She never strayed from her brother's side, keeping one hand reached out.
For comfort, for warmth.
For the gentle reminder that she wasn't alone.
He had lost his alpha as well, and they had healed from it together.
He could see through her, knew what it was she needed.
It wasn't all just learning to swim in new waters. Different waters with different fish and different tides.
Their old nest was still there. The smooth shelter of the stones she would sleep in with her brother, curled against his belly. The heated springs of the Nightmares sleeping under them kept her warm and comfortable even in the harshest of winters.
Not that she ever felt the chill when resting against the wings of her life-long partner.
Watching the eyes of her brother, nearly glowing yellow in the dark, it was no work at all to fade back into the lost days. She kept going back, in her head, disbelieving.
Even after all these months, it was hard to grasp.
Expecting each morning to wake up to find it a dream.
But it was true.
And this, no matter how much she wanted it to be, was not her home anymore.
Her old alpha was dead. Everyone had left. The caverns that used to carry the echos of her family were now silent and bare. Leaving a hollow feeling in the nest that it had never seen before, breathing in the stale scent that had been left behind.
One more week they stayed there, exploring every last crack and corner. She left no stone unturned. She climbed the highest of the ledges, bare handed, calling out the different calls of the former residents. Listening to their echoes as she went.
One last time hearing the sounds of purring as they bounced off the stones and ice, locking it into the deepest parts of her brain to keep it safe.
She spent her whole life in this nest. Climbed its icy walls, explored its hidden caves, swam its smooth pools. She's traveled every inch.
But she never thought she'd see it like this.
Empty, echoing, lifeless. A gaping hole where the alpha used to rest.
The bright colors of the plants seemed dimmer now. The life had left them when the last of the dragons had flown away those many months ago.
She breathed in and looked to the ceiling where the light from the outside still shone through.
It would be many centuries before all the ice melted away.
She looked to Snares, as he stayed by her side, and she knew they had to leave. After they had logged every last leaf and pebble into her mind's eye, they moved their attention outwards, onto the beach.
To the battlefield where the two great leader's fell.
His body was still there.
It seemed smaller somehow. The snowy scales hadn't caved in with rot, but seemed to grey and turn to stone. The bleeding wounds from his exposed underside had stained the beach, leaving it black after so long.
Snares and Rama both paid their respects, eyes filling over as they returned to his grave. She could imagine, centuries in the future, humans finding his skeleton and standing in awe at his size and will.
She bowed to him again, resting on the beach, eyes averting from the hardened injuries to his belly. She and Snares stayed by his tusks, the former resting her palm against the bone.
It felt cold. Like stone.
The two young ones rested against their former alpha, eyes closed, facing the sea. Remembering him.
How he cared for them, fed them, kept them safe.
Her eyes opened again, drifting closer to the waves as they gently passed over the stones before her. She looked out into the sea, into the black depths where she knew her father's ship had sunk.
The palm of her hand, the tips of her fingers, brushed over Snare's smooth neck, behind his head and his horns. This was why they had come. Why her brother had brought her here.
It put things in perspective for her, gave her the time she needed to come to terms with it on her own.
She wouldn't have been able to on Berk, surrounded by the noise and the vikings.
But here, with the fresh breath of air and winds, and the soothing sounds of waves against the shore, the scents and sights she had grown up with.
Her alpha and father were both dead.
But Rama was here. She was going to live.
She looked back in her brother's eyes, wiping the stray streaks of water from her cheeks as she gave him the first smile in a long time. She'd learned now, the one final lesson her alpha could teach her now that they were on their own. She knew how to deal with death.
The weight had shifted now. It wasn't gone completely. That would take much longer. But now she knew how to dislodge it, to pick away at the heaviness on her back until she would one day be free of it.
Free enough to swim on her own.
She leaned forward and rested her head on her brother, feeling his hot breath engulf her neck as he nuzzled her back.
It was going to be fine.
They were going home.
I do have another idea for this story, which is probably going to show up next, but I'm pretty open to suggestions if any kind reviewers have any.