Yes, yes, I know, it's been a while. But here's another chapter that I finally got around to posting. Enjoy!

~.~

43. Protective

When people said that Snotlout was overly fond of himself, Toothless couldn't help but think that the comment was a major understatement. Snotlout wasn't just fond of himself—his favorite thing in the world was most likely his reflection. He had an excessively large head and a constantly flourishing ego to feed his self-esteem.

It was a bit pathetic, to say the least. That was what Toothless thought, anyway.

However, if there was one thing that could be said for the boy, it was that he was incredibly protective of what was his, including his friends. For instance, if you openly insulted Hiccup in Snotlout's presence, chances were that you were going to lose most—if not all—of your teeth, considering Toothless didn't get you first. If Snotlout ever got wind that you had put in a bad word against Fishlegs, he wouldn't hesitate to deliver the deserved punishment, which often centered around potential loss of sight and/or walking abilities. Shame Tuffnut or Astrid when he was around and you were very lucky to crawl away with all four limbs, and if you even looked at Ruffnut the wrong way, your chances of living beyond the next thirty seconds became nearly nonexistent.

As for what happened when you insulted Snotlout himself (or his reflection), nobody really knew what the consequences were.

But only because nobody was brave enough to find out for themselves.

44. Stairs

For the first several weeks after the loss of his leg, Hiccup had hated stairs.

Luckily, Berk did not have a lot of them. There was only one large staircase that needed to be accessed by Hiccup on a regular basis, and that was the one that lead to the arena. It consisted of about forty individual steps—a distance that, two weeks ago, Hiccup could travel in about ten seconds. Now it took a good ten minutes. Times about three.

It was during one of Hiccup's harsh, painful excursions up this forty-step staircase that Ruffnut spotted him. This was, in fact, probably the third time that she had walked by since Hiccup started up the staircase, but the first that she had stopped by to talk.

"Hiccup, have you moved at all in the last twenty minutes?"

"About. . . ten steps. Why?" Hiccup asked defensively.

Ruffnut rolled her eyes and snorted in disgust. "For the love of Thor, other than the fact that you are completely crazy, I have no idea what Astrid sees in you."

"Yeah, well, let's chop off one of your legs and see how well you—"

He was stunned into silence when Ruffnut picked him up and flipped him casually over her shoulder as if he weighed absolutely nothing, jogged easily up the fifteen or so steps he had left to go, and deposited him lightly beside Toothless, who had been waiting (for a very long time) at the top of the staircase. "You're welcome," she snapped before turning and bounding off the way she had come, heading back to whatever it was she had been doing before she had taken pity on him.

Hiccup stood there, his mouth hanging open slightly as Toothless collapsed onto his side, shaking violently in silent hysterical laughter.

45. Stars

Feeling small is a somewhat alien experience to Toothless. Although one of the smaller of the dragon species, he is far bigger than any of the humans he spends so much time around, and thus he has become accustomed to towering over most of his friends.

Occasionally though, he feels very, very small. This feeling usually hits at night, when he looks up at the stars. Many of the Vikings don't know exactly what the stars are, but Toothless knows. He knows how he is nothing but a tiny speck of. . . something within a universe that is far bigger than anything his imagination could ever even try to comprehend.

And as much as he doesn't want to admit it, that knowledge scares him. It makes him feel insignificant, unimportant, when he thinks about how incredibly small he really is, as compared to how big he usually feels. It's just plain unsettling to think about—the sheer possibilities of how big everything is, and how tiny he feels when he gazes up at the stars and wonders what lies beyond those little twinkling pinpoints of light, and how far that black nothingness in the sky goes on.

Usually, Toothless feels big compared to his friends. But when he looks up at the stars, everything it thrown into a different perspective.

46. Gone

Toothless had once heard someone say that you never really knew what you had until it was gone. At the time it hadn't really struck him as significant, but now the wisdom of the statement had become clear.

Time had not treated his friends well. Not all that many years ago, the seven of them had been inseparable. Unfortunately, as they got older, their loyalties began to waver. And now. . . now they barely resembled the same group of people that they had been when they were younger.

Ruffnut and Tuffnut hadn't been on speaking terms for over a year, and, as of right now, weren't even acknowledging the existence of their twin. Astrid had left Hiccup for Snotlout, who, because of the drinking problem he had developed, was no longer friends with Tuffnut. Fishlegs, because of a brutal and entirely unexpected argument between Hiccup and himself, was being disagreeable with everybody. Astrid and Ruffnut hadn't spoken to each other in weeks, and Ruffnut herself had, by some odd manipulation of fate, become quite close to Hiccup.

Snotlout was a drinker, Ruffnut and Tuffnut were schemers, Fishlegs was anything but friendly, Astrid was overly fierce and ambitious, and Hiccup was. . . well, he was still Hiccup, just sadder than he had been. And Toothless, knocked spinning by the unexpected change in his friends, had no idea where any one of them stood with the other, or where he fit into all this. It was confusing. It was unexpected. It was painful. It was sad and overwhelming and it had happened so fast that Toothless couldn't even remember when it had begun.

But one thing was certain. The old ways—that unique friendship that they had all shared, and not all that long ago—was gone. And Toothless hadn't realized what he had had until it struck him that he was never going to get it back.

47. Return

As they walked through the village, the people were silenced. The citizens of Berk stopped, stared, watched as the duo trod the heavily worn cobble paths to the center of the town. One cloaked and limping, and the other dark, powerful, impressive.

It had been fifteen years too many. Fifteen years of worry, of speculation, as Berk fretted over what had become of the two warriors since the day they left. And now they walked through Berk as if they had never left, bedraggled and scarred—but alive—and infinitely wiser than they had been they left fifteen years ago.

In the center of the village, they stopped. Behind them, the crowd that had gathered milled to an expectant halt.

The big black dragon—a Night Fury, as the legend says—watched as his best friend knelt before the Viking chief.

"I'm back, Dad."

And Stoic reached out, wrapping his arms around his long-lost son.