Yay, chapter 14! The first three are something of an angst-fest (I'm sorry! I don't know what's gotten into me!) but the last two are cute. And for #66, the ages of the characters were never really said, so I got to have some fun there. If anybody really knows about their ages, tell me, and I'll change it. Enjoy!

~.~

62. Tomorrow

They stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the brink of the cliff, the chilly sea wind ruffling their hair and clothing as they watch the masses of giant, crudely-made warships gather on the horizon, sweeping across the open expanse of blue water like a pack of predators, a focused swarm of piranhas.

With Fishlegs on one side and Hiccup on the other, Toothless gazes out over the ocean, watching as his enemies close in on Berk, slowly but steadily. Silence hangs heavy between them—Berk may have dragon, but by the sheer amount of ships that have already coasted into sight and the many more that continue to spill over the horizon, it looks like their enemies are going to have the advantage of numbers.

Astrid turns and pins Gobber with her fierce gaze. "How long 'till they attack?" By the sound of her voice, she's already preparing herself for battle.

The blacksmith exchanges a glance with Stoick, who runs an experienced eye over the approaching ships. "Dawn tomorrow."

Toothless stares at the horizon.

The sun is setting.

63. Burn

Hiccup almost never gets angry. Frustrated and upset, now those do happen occasionally, but very rarely does Toothless find his best friend to be angry.

But when he does, it's scary. It isn't a loud, violent, yelling-and-screaming kind of angry, but a kind of silent fury that makes people realize that if the boy hadn't been cursed with a low pain tolerance and an inability to put on weight, Hiccup would be a spectacular warrior. In fact, it seems to be one of the very few things that he had in common with her father—only Stoick's anger could rival that of Hiccup's, as far as Toothless was concerned. Even Astrid's Death Glares couldn't compete.

The dragon couldn't really fathom why it was that Hiccup's anger was so much more intense than that of most other Vikings. Maybe it was how his poise changed; subtle tweaks in the way he held himself gave the boy more of a feral look, like a raging cat ready to spring, that made it clear that he wasn't in a mood to be messed with.

Or perhaps it was the attitude. Hiccup had never had much of an attitude other than a streak of witty sarcasm and an ability to partake in well-meaning arguments. But when he got snippy and disagreeable and prowled by with that telltale stalk, even Snotlout (who could not for the life of him take a subtle hint) knew to get out of the way.

But Toothless has a sneaking suspicion that it was the eyes. The quiet fury that echoed inside of him escaped through the boy's eyes in a dark, smoldering burn. And now, as Toothless watched his beloved Berk as it was engulfed by a roaring storm of electric yellow flames and waves of popping, snarling sparks, even that powerful fire couldn't match the shadowy, forbidding burn that raged in Hiccup's eyes as he watched his village fall.

64. Innocence

Vikings, Toothless has realized, are never given much of a chance to be children.

Right from the beginning they're taught to be competitive and ruthless, and from the moment they can walk they're trained to carry a weapon. Instead of playing and following around their parents and being children, they're being trained to fight and kill.

In a way, the dragon figures that it's somewhat of an achievement for Berk, managing to raise children for war without turning them into murders and serial killers. But at the same time there's no doubt that it's a questionable way to raise one's child, teaching them battle strategies and war cries instead of nursery rhymes and the alphabet. Even Toothless can remember having more of a childhood than that—at least he hadn't been forced to memorize the thirty-two soft spots on a human body that were guaranteed to produce instant death and/or paralysis upon being hit with enough force.

And when war does break out, Berk doesn't teach it's children to be safe, as perhaps it should, but instead teaches them to want to be part of it. To want to draw their weapons and race to the front lines and put their lives in danger. Toothless might not know too much about raising kids, but he figures that at the very least, any sensible parent would teach their child to run away from the bloodshed—certainly not into it.

And then there's the killing. Before Toothless and his kind had been welcome in the Viking village, Berk had been no stranger to kelling the dragons along wither Viking enemies. Maybe that doesn't happen anymore, but sometimes, when Toothless looks at his friends and thinks about how the first thing they ever killed—and at such a young age—was a dragon, he feels slightly sick. He doesn't hold it against them, however, because they are his friends and those days are behind them all, but somewhere in the back of his mind he feels a twinge of resentment against their parents, who raised them to be that way.

Because even though they taught their children strength and loyalty and bravery that defines them as warriors, they also taught them savagery, right from the beginning.

And when a child is taught to kill, when they lose that special innocence that defines them as children, they are not a child anymore.

65. Two

"You know, you should really get out of here more often. I think all the fumes from that forge are going to your head."

Toothless grinned—he had understood Hiccup's last sentence perfectly well. It wasn't the boy's fault that Astrid had a very limited vocabulary in comparison to his, and therefore translated a good half of what he said as pure gibberish.

Hiccup sighed and stopped hammering on the piece of metal he was working on so that he could inspect it. "You wouldn't believe how often I get that."

Astrid shrugged and hopped up on the table, leaning back on her hands and kicking her legs restlessly. "Well then, maybe it's true. And considering how much Gobber complains about you, yes, I can believe how often you must get that."

Ah, but everybody knew that Gobber was full of hot air, Toothless reasoned.

"Gobber complains about everybody," Hiccup said, thinking along the same lines as the dragon. "Besides, if he was really worried about me, he'd tell my father, and they'd attempt to beat some sense into me."

"It wouldn't work though, would it?" Astrid pointed out slyly.

"Well, no, probably not," Hiccup admitted, and went back to his project.

Astrid watched him for several minutes before growing bored. "C'mon," she said, sliding off the tabletop on an impulse and grabbing Hiccup's wrist.

"What?"

"The heat in here is killing your brain cells," the girl said, dragging him toward the door.

"But—"

"Shut up," Astrid advised him.

Toothless watched her drag his best friend out the door and into the sunshine, but he did not follow, instead curling up to take a nap. Something told him that this was only a walk for two, and that he was not invited.

66. Elders

Age was not something that crossed the minds of Toothless or his friends very often. The dragon himself had never really thought about it, and considering how Hiccup and the rest were having difficulty remembering who was oldest (although how one could forget, Toothless didn't know), apparently age didn't matter much to them either.

When it had been determined, Snotlout punched the air in a celebratory fashion. "I'm oldest!"

"Only by three weeks," Astrid, who had been deemed the next eldest, pointed out.

"I still think I'm older than him," Ruffnut complained, pointing to her brother. The twins were the two youngest in the group, although the true holder of that title couldn't really be proven, since nobody could remember if it had been Tuffnut who had been born ten seconds before his sister, or the other way around.

Fishlegs, who was third oldest—three months younger than Astrid and four weeks older than Hiccup—considered Toothless. "How old is he?"

Hiccup thought for a moment, trying to gauge exactly how old the dragon would be. "Um. . . fifty. . . no, say sixty something. Sixty-five, probably, at the very least.

The dragon smirked triumphantly, and Snotlout pouted.

"Dang."