Disclaimer: Dream Works and Cressida Cowell own the How to Train Your Dragon franchise.

My best friend turned to me, his face locked into a disappointed looking grimace. "You are crazy."

"Sorry!" I gave him a nervous smile, knowing full well why he was upset at me. So, as it turns out, I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. I had this idea in my head, but no matter how much I tried, I cannot seem to get it to work at all. I had no yaks, no shiny bits, no sheep, and no bundles of grass that I needed for some inexplicable reason. About the only thing I had was few fish and even then I had no idea what it was all about. I wanted to make a new tailfin for my bestest friend ever, why was that so hard?

The other Night Fury ended up making a depressed sounding noise and laid himself down a few paces where he stood, looking like the wind got knocked out of him. To be fair, most of our incidents did end up with him crashing somehow.

I frowned as well. All morning was spent tinkering on ways to get my friend airborne, to no avail. I looked at my paws, a strong feeling inside me blamed them. I sighed. What I would give to be able to get him to be able to fly with him. I laid down as well. "No more experiments?" I said depressedly.

The Night Fury rolled onto his side and examined his underbelly, noticing the new additions to his ever growing collection of recent injuries. I would have perfectly understood if those convinced him to not accept any of my help. He grunted. "Not today. Do not want broken bones."

I smiled awkwardly, barely able to contain my enthusiasm. Okay, so, I was still in his good graces. That was good. "Okay. Not today."

"Good." The other Night Fury looked satisfied with my answer. He gave a deep sigh of relief.

I laid my head down . Well, maybe this was the time I needed to think things through, get a good answer before trying more bad ones. So far, the image of what I wanted to create for my friend was getting easier to picture, in as much detail as possible. I wanted to make this tailfin that used hardened sheep and yak skins to make the membranes, while little shiny bit were used to make the spines. Lastly, the dried grasses would have bundled the whole thing together to let him control it, using the other side of his tailfin to coordinate. It was a perfect replacement, granting him near unprecidented freedom and all of the capabilities he once had. Though I seriously hoped my best friend would never try destroying it.

I turned back to my best friend.

The Night Fury scrunched his body tightly, drawing his tail closer to his own head. A Night Fury's tail was his pride, for without it, he was unable to fly. He looked at the remainder, his gaze lost in apparent times gone by.

"Toothless..."

My best friend looked at me, immediately extending his teeth out. "I am not without teeth!" he declared and sheathed his sharpened jaws. "Quit calling me that! That is demeaning!"

"Sorry!" It was an odd habit I developed, saying that my friend lacked teeth for some reason. I had no idea why I keep bringing it up, it just felt like what I needed to say to get his attention. I did not mean to insult him or something when I ever I called him that, I just wanted him to know how important he was.

My best friend sighed. "Never call me that."

"Promise!" I said. The other Night Fury went back to looking at his tail, seemingly appeased. "Friend. What are you thinking about?"

The other Night Fury looked at me with an almost bored expression. "Nothing much. Just missing my old friend."

"Your human friend." I was not asking; I already knew who he was talking about.

The other Night Fury bowed his head. "Yes. Him."

"He was important." I knew what I was asking was also true just by saying it. My best friend would not still be focused on the human if he was not at least reasonably important to him and I just knew that this youth's importance was very significant to him. "What do he do? Aside from destroy your tail?"

The Night Fury looked at his own stub of a tail. "He gave me a tail. Like you, yet not. He better at it."

I tilted my head in interest. Better at making replacement tails than me. Hm, I wonder if I could fly out there and get my best friend's friend to help us. Maybe I could even go to him and learn a thing or two. He did not sound bad, although I think he probably was a little bit of a fool. Then again, trying to make replacement tailfins while I had no idea how to do so nor the right materials was probably even more foolish. "I do not doubt it! What happened to the tailfin?"

The Night Fury frowned, clearly displeased. "It broke. No replacement. "

I gave him a sympathetic look. Yeah, not having a replacement ready for a missing limb was painful, I should remember that if I ever meet that human… assuming I could ever tell him. I know he and I would very much like to have replacement legs ready incase I ended up losing it due to a prank or something…

I yawned, suddenly feeling tired. The morning sun just barely shone through the icy shere of the Alpha's Sanctuary. A Night Fury like me should not be up this late, I was nocturnal after all. I stretched my body out and laid low onto the ground. "Why you only have one?"

He frowned turning to me. "I broke the others."

"You broke your extra tailfins?" I looked at my best friend inquisitively.

Now it was his turn to give me an awkward grin. "Yes." He sounded somewhat embarrassed to admit it. "One got burned. I was fighting."

My head moved up and down automatically. I stopped trying to hold it in at this point. "That makes sense." The tailfin probably was not fire proofed well enough to survive a fight against a dragon. Dried skins and grasses did tend to burn very easily when set given a hot enough flame.

"Several were used up."

"Nothing lasts forever." Strangely that was easy to accept. I mean, things broke all the time. I knew a replacement limb was nowhere near as durable or as long lasting as a living one. Just using something enough that it breaks did not count as breaking it intentionally. "What of the last one?"

My best friend looked at my funnily again. "How did you know?"

I stopped what I was doing immediately, realizing that he had a point. I'll admit, it was strange I knew there was a final tailfin. I sighed. It was just going to be another of those odd thing about me, was it not? "I do not know. I thought there were more."

My best friend frowned, not satisfied. "I had another tailfin. It was different." He lifted up his tail to show it to me and bend the remaining fin a few times to make a point. "It moved as I wanted. Always mimicked the other fin. Easy to control."

"Others were not similar?" I asked. Given the description, if I had to guess, this last tail fin was just like the one I wanted to build. Easy to control, and only needed that my best friend controlled his tail right to get it working.

My best friend gave a somewhat proud looking smile. "Yes. Others needed the human. They did not follow me. He had to ride on me."

I tilted my head. "Why would your human do that? Why not fly alone?" Well, other than the first ones being built out of ignorance out of all of the flying mechanics and thus needed a human to work only as a stopgap solution. Of course, that's the only reason I could think of that would make any sense.

"That tailfin let me fly alone." My friend set his tail down. and looked at the sky above us almost wistfully. "Good being free."

"It sounds perfect." It was certainly an ideal I hoped to give my best friend, a way that he could join me in the clouds without needing someone else to control the flow… or hold him back. "What happened to it?"

My best friend scratched at the dirt a few times, setting his tail behind him. He gave me an awkward grin and I knew that if his face was not covered in black scale, it would have been lit up with a very bright red. "I broke it."

I frowned. He already said that he broke his extra tailfins."How?"

The other Night Fury's eyes darted around the a few times and I got the feeling he was really looking for places to escape to. But at the last second, he stopped trying to evade me and looked right at me, his posture definitely conveyed a sort of greater level of submission. "I bashed it against the ground. It shattered."

That raised several questions going on it my mind. "Why do that!? It let you be free!" A given how good that that new tailfin sounded, it pretty much meant that all future designs should have been put up against it as the standard. But no, instead my best friend settles for a complicated and limiting control scheme!

The other Night Fury looked at the ground before raising his gaze to meet me. "New tailfin gave me freedom. Old tailfins gave me friend."

I looked at the other Night Fury, for the first time I really… felt like I understood his reasoning. "Humans cannot fly. You did not like that."

The Night Fury turned his gaze skyward. "I wanted company. Tailfin left him out."

I felt my heart simultaneously fill with both relief… and sorrow. The human was so important to him if the Night Fury was willing to give up such a prize. The sacrifice was not down casually; that was devotion if I ever heard of it. I suddenly felt... unworthy to actually consider him my friend. I should have not doubted. Although, I did manage to find something to hold on to that did not result in me feeling worse. I smiled at the Night Fury. "He must have hated that! You destroyed his gift!"

The other Night Fury's smile. "Of course. Waking him became harder. I know he was pretending!"

I let out a chuckle. I knew this game, I think I played it once or twice with a friend or a sibling or something. In short, the human was making things slightly harder as a sort of payback; not to be mean or anything, just compensate for the fact that he spent countless hours working on that object only for it to end up destroyed. Besides, it's not like that ploy lasted more than a week! It also helped that in response, cold water started getting splashed on him to wake him. "You sounded close."

The Night Fury raised his neck upward to the sky. I imagine he was thinking up of what it would be like to fly in the open air above us. "Like a family."

I looked at my best friend, resolving to one day be worth that distinction. He sacrificed much to keep a friend, I had to let him know he did not need to do that. If I ever made one of those fancy tailfins that needed no human riding atop a dragon to work, I was not going to allow him to break it again!

"Hey. Do you see that?"

"See what?"

"Look up!"

At that, I turned my head upwards to gaze at what my best friend was informing me about. I was actually quite us, there was a veritable swarm of dragons. Like a cloud of insects they flew, heading towards the lake and funneling down near its shores. "Where are they going?" I wondered out loud.

My best friend got up from where he laid. "Mobilizing for battle." He then turned to me. "Do know anything about it?"

I blinked for a second, remembering something. Oh, that's right. The dragons in the Sanctuary were fighting these humans and my old Alpha before I got taken. Maybe they were still fighting them over territory or some sort of prize or something. I told my best friend about what little I knew.

My best friend leveled me a look a hard look. "My human might be there."

My head bobbed up and down again, due my sympathies. I know I had… important humans there as well; at least that's what I have been told. I know they were all so important somehow, especially that young blonde female. Yet at the same time, I knew something important. "He is not there."

My best friend gave me a skeptical look. "How do you know? You never met him!"

I shrugged. "I know." Somehow. "He is elsewhere."

The other dragon's eyes squinted at me hard, even more skepticism filled his face. "Then where is he?"

"I do not know." I turned my head towards the gathering mass of dragons in the distance, wondering if they might have seen the human. I mean, it was weird how I knew with certainty where my best friend's friend was not, but that gave me no insights to where he really was.

The other dragon's eyes rolled in his head. "Forget it. You do not know."

"Sorry…" I frowned. Maybe if I really tried to recall more, I could find this human out. Then again though, I had this gut feeling the human was close to where we were; close enough that we just needed to look in the right places to find him. Except that was impossible! For one, if he was in the Sanctuary, why haven't we heard of him until now? My best friend would think I was even crazier if I brought this up.

"Do not worry." My best friend rolled onto his side, yawning. "We will find him. Another time."

I laid down as well. Tiredness and weariness slowly overtook us both. We could only ignore mornings for so long after all. "RIght. Another time."

I looked out at the distance one last time. I hoped that if the dragons were mobilizing to go against the humans again, they would not harm those important humans I recalled. They were important to me somehow… I just knew I could not remember the full reasons why.

The last thing I saw before my eyes closed due to weariness was the Stormcutter with his human atop of him. A single word and thought echoed in my head. Mother… And then I went to sleep.