Ch.4

`Hiccup wandered the island which by now he'd nicknamed "Lost Hope" in a hopeless attempt to find Toothless. Without realizing it, he'd searched the same area twice and was headed in a totally random direction. Several times Hiccup thought he heard what might have been a dragon but every time he reached where he thought the sound came from, it'd vanished. Hiccup feared he was starting to go crazy. It had been over a week with not even a trace of Toothless, and it worried him. "TOOTHLESS! Bud where are you?" He had thought he heard rustling but wasn't sure, after a long few minutes he moved on to look elsewhere in hopes he wasn't going nuts.

Hiccup stopped searching early that day, tired of searching, and tired of staying a step ahead of his fears about Toothless's fate. Checking his clothes and prosthetic for anything wrong he settled in for the evening, unsure what do next. For a long while, Hiccup stared up at the clouds, thinking about what could've happened to his beloved dragon. Once it was dark, Hiccup stared at whatever stars were out, depression was closing in fast. He couldn't sleep as his worries refused to let his mind rest, so he reattached his prosthetic and began to walk—in the dark, on an island he didn't really know. Hiccup hadn't been walking for very long when the ground under his feet gave way, and he found himself an unwilling participant of a landslide. He was relatively unharmed by the landslide, save being knocked unconscious. In the morning, when Hiccup awoke, he looked around and to his surprise found himself half buried in clumps of dirt and roots. It took him a few seconds to gather his bearings and remember the night before.

Climbing out from under the debris, Hiccup looked around and found himself on a small beach, an area he had yet to search. Walking on the beach was more difficult than Hiccup had initially thought, as his Prosthetic kept sinking into the sand. The small strip of beach had no end in sight and there was no way to climb back up he observed. After going around a bend a little later, the sandy strip widened, and Hiccup noticed something. A patch of sand that was untouched by the waves showed evidence of blood. Hiccup couldn't be sure if this was blood from Toothless or not, it was after all, just bloodied sand but it still panicked him. Hiccup searched and searched, but if anything had once been there to indicate whose blood it was, the waves had long since erased it. He did his best to push thoughts of Toothless being dead out of his mind and searched for a path up. He did eventually find one, it was actually the remains of a different landslide, and it took Hiccup some time to work his way to back up, so when he finally made it, his breathing was ragged and whole body ached.

On Berk, Vikings were starting to wonder where Hiccup and Toothless had disappeared to, Valka had told everyone that Hiccup was investigating a possible places the defeated Bewilderbeast might be, only the Vikings close to Hiccup knew this to be a complete lie; Astrid in particular. Valka had, with Astrid's help, sent out tracking dragons in hopes of finding Hiccup and Toothless but there was no success. Valka herself was becoming more and more worried about what'd happened to Hiccup and his dragon. She knew searching for Hiccup herself would undoubtedly confirm and suspicions villagers had about Hiccup's real whereabouts. Astrid had searched with Stormfly as well, but they too, found nothing.