DRF figured out the last riddle by great effort and machinations of the mind. The pair were indeed a pear. Enjoy your victory cookie. It's Christmas themed, so try to imagine red and green sprinkles in place of actual Fanfiction color support.

(::)

Cheers!

This is a riddle I composed and hopefully makes sense.

"Through wastes it cruises, shining its light,

Ethereal it floats, in valleys darker than nights,

A fisherman in name, a predator dimmer rather than sane,

It reels in its prey, then does it, again."


It wasn't a tap on the door this time; these days it never was. Devastating Winter had come and gone and now it was merely Winter, moving to a healthy helping of Spring, and now that the weather had warmed Stoick was out and about, splitting firewood with Destic clan Hofferson here, helping put up a fence with a Jorgenson there, and that was what he was doing now; keeping in touch with his people. He had to say the right things to them to keep them from drifting apart, had to bolster a village nearly empty of meaning.

It had been when Gobber had arrived, hadn't it? When he had realized he was the last of his line, the only relic of a clan once rich in men and monies. And here was the smith again, the taps of his pegleg upon the half-frozen ground reflected in the light rattle of the metal jingling in his false arm, coming to cheer him up, deliver some piece of inconsequential news to distract Stoick's mind from mulling over

the meaning of life as it was wont to do.

How easily it settled on that topic, and how hard it was to remove himself from that well-worn path of thought!

He asked no question of Gobber now, knowing his friend would speak of it sooner or later. For now the smith grasped at a stone from the wheelbarrow and helped his chief stack fence; backbreaking work even in the cool early afternoon air, the rock cold and gritty against their palms and fingers, their backs objecting the weight, yet they were Vikings and self-respecting men; they would not quit until the job was done. This barrier would outlast the home around which it was being built, as had the one before, till an icy windstorm had cracked its foundations and claimed it at last.

It was so similar to how he felt; a great rock, an anchor holding back the gale until it could hold back no longer, until it eroded his will down to the nubbins. He had been a husband, and now he was a widower whose wife was long passed. He had been a father, and now he was a man with no family left, none at all. Who held up the rock? Who stood behind it and let it stand?

Two-season ago he had said to Gobber that Vikings could tame seas, level mountains. Did he hold that faith now in his heart of hearts? May it be that he would remain steady, yet it was hard, so hard to maintain his belief.

"Tha' ford has melted," said the smith, said Gobber. So the port was free of ice.

"What longships do we have?" asked Stoick, wedging the last stone into the last gap. Now then; the job was done, the fence repaired, his hands callused and raw from this day's work and the hard work of many days before it, yet the discomfort reached his brain and failed to register.

"Dragon's Bane. Of the fleet we possessed yesteryear, nothing. Warships take iron, Stoick."

"And I won't ask you to build another one."

A pause as they left and headed back towards the village. Was Gobber so surprised that his chief had called off the spring construction? Had he believed that Stoick was fixed in his path of vengeance on the nest, even as Stoick had hinted that he would not do it during the winter? And as a leader destitute of hope for his line looked around him, he realized that that was exactly what everyone thought.

The two walked at a distance from the Jorgenson, trudging through the slush and stepping carefully over the ice that yet remained, yet Stoick did not offer his friend help and Gobber did not, would not ask, even if he should fall.

"Tha' journey for rescue I planned of in tha' winter," said Gobber, "which Phlegma leads."

Will you still try? - that was his question. Will you still try when you seem to have given up the hunt for the nest?

Valka lay in the past, even as the helmet which he had had Gobber forge from her armor weighed heavily on his head. Hiccup – Hiccup seemed to lie in the past too, but… he had given his wife years of benefit of the doubt when she had been taken. He would give his son the benefit of the doubt now.

Even if life refused to give him a chance, he'd make himself a chance.

"We'll do it," said Stoick. "I will do it."

Now he felt Gobber's hand upon his shoulder pauldron, and he looked to his side and he saw the flat expression on his friend's face, the smith's eyes looking down as if he were resigned to Stoick's decision. He would argue the point despite that.

"Yeh tell me I couldn't go look for me apprentice because it was too dangerous for a man as valuable as me, and then you insist on going yerself. You're the last of the Haddock line. You've still got years ahead of yeh. Think of the risk!"

Now Stoick ran his hand over his helmet. "I have no family to lose from it, only a son to gain."

"And if you died and left the village without an heir? It'd be chaos!"

"If I don't come back it'll be you."

"And then?"

"I don't know," he said, saying those words out loud for the first time in a long time.

Gobber hung his shoulders.

"So tha's how it is, Chief. So tha's how it is."

Down the slope they went, and the Jorgenson went to his home to eat his mid-day meal, but these were two men who had no one to prepare for them, and so they went down into the village and back up again, climbing the flight of stairs past the statues that stood on either side of the great door of the great hall, above which swung a simple lantern which granted feeble light to the ground a long way below; a distance so great it was unreal to his senses, only able to gauge the vast scale of the place by metaphor.

Stoick strode through the open entrance, seated himself on a wooden bench, the very same bench where he had said Hiccup could sail on that voyage which had proved to be his doom.

Notwithstanding, he asked for some variation of some food that wasn't fisk. Gobber sat beside him and had the same.

"No drink?"

Stoick wiggled his fingertips. "Nay. I'll be sober."

It didn't do a man any good to get himself drunk. He would not become a mad chief.

"I can't help thinking," began Gobber, "that whoever loses this competition for the heirship of yours should be my new apprentice. Consolation prize, eh? Goodness knows I need some help. You and I, we're not so different in a respect. If I perish now, the village's forging skill perishes with me."

All the more reason for the smith to remain here, even if – especially because he was right.

"There's Wulf," said Gobber, "and Torenn with him."

Stoick turned his judging eye on the two. Torenn would tell a joke and Wulf would laugh, and then the fisherman's son would give a rejoinder, yet Wulf was the guest in a stranger's house, and his face turned anxious right after he said something for a brief moment, for he was worried that Torenn wouldn't like it or that the Hofferson would be able to one-up him. Torenn was the leader of the two boys, and that made him better for the job if not for Snotlout being Spitelout's son.

As for the test? Both boys had been given temporary charge of a granary; not a glorious place for a man questing after the appointment of chief, but that was on purpose. Perhaps it was because of the lack of that glory that Snotlout complained so much; still, the place ran alright under his management, and perhaps that was because of the tutoring he received from his father and family, and there was little even a chief could do to stop that, even if it was supposed to be against the rules.

What was Torenn's weakness? If anything it was overconfidence when the boy had spoken to him, youthful assumption that since nothing bad had ever happened in that young life, nothing ever would – yet already he had lost his sister, and that memory was worth nursing along into a steadying impulse for when he would assume chief.

Stoick looked down, saw he was twisting his beard and not satiating his appetite, and finished off the goat meat that had been steaming on a tough slice of old bread.

So much to do, so little time in which to do it.

He rose from his seat, strode to Torenn and Wulf. They sat up in their seats when they saw him, eyes ever flickering to him even as they pretended not to be looking at him. Wulf mustered the courage to speak to Stoick, a man who towered over him even when both were standing. Now he was an insect and the chief a giant.

"My father is casting off in seven days," said he, "or as soon as the ice is gone in the bay."

"Berk will give him an escort," said Stoick. "Spring brings the dragons out."

Ravenous, they'd pillage his island looking for food, and Stoick was sending away good men. Wulf pursed his lips, for he understood that and the magnanimity of what the chief was doing for him and his father.

"A longship?" he asked.

"Aye," said Stoick, and then, to Gobber: "We'd best get down to the docks and begin preparing her for the journey."

"Can do," says Gobber, and the two leave, stepping back out into the winter cold, ever-so-often punctuated by sudden bursts of warm air bloomed into existence by the awakening of the spring sun, shining its rays into the bay far beneath and the sea off to their side and nearly a thousand feet below. Once again the crash of the breakers rings out on the brightened island.

Men recognize him in the village, flash a quick hello as they go about their daily business.

"Meet me at the docks," he says, and Berk is so small and news travels so fast he scarce makes it out of the town proper before he leads a small army of carpenters, fishermen, herdsmen, potterers and poulterers, warriors all, and workers besides.

The ship's sails have been furled for the winter; her mast is stowed away and her oars are neatly bundled up in a cave nearby, out of reach of the ocean and its salt and its corrosion. Her wooden hull bobs up and down in the waves by the jetty, the boards of its construction overlapping one another like the scales of a heavy-built dragon, sealed with splitting caulk of oakum and pitch, wool fiber and tar.

"This'll be a long job," says Gobber, and it will be, but the work gives purpose to Stoick; something to be done, and when it is finished he will feel the satisfaction of a job completed again, if only for a fleeting moment.

"Bring firewood," says the chief, and it is done. "Bring pots," says he, and it is done, and while the Jorgensons and the Hoffersons and the Thorstons all make haste to impress him the Ingermans set up pine logs and scrape away the tar for caulk, and Stoick helps them.

"Smells bad," says a Hofferson boy, and a woman shushes him, for in her mind any complaint, any sign of weakness reflects on the clan and reflects on the running.

Torenn is not the only boy of theirs whom wishes to become chief.

Stoick throws his muscle into hoisting the mast up. It's a small mast, by seagoing standards, but even a small mast can be heavy. It takes five strong men to lift the base and four to lift the tip, and a man in the middle to make sure it doesn't split in twain because of its weight. Even a crack may fell it in time.

"Almost into the boat," says Screech, "but we can't raise it. Tie a rigging to the top of the spar and run it back up to the cliffs!"

For in its current state it cannot be hoisted over the bows without damaging the rail.

"Cord," says Stoick, and Screech tosses him a sea rope the size of his finger. Tying the knot is quick work, and already there are women at the top of the cliff gripping the other end.

"Heave!" cries Screech.

"Heave!" cry the men, and with one great motion the main-mast rises, falls and is caught by the rigging even as Vikings swarm it and pull the base of it up into the boat along the gangplank, the water lapping ever higher upon the suddenly weighted hull.

"Into the slot!" says Screech, and together they lower it into the groove. Stoick stays at the bottom and keeps it upright while guy ropes are affixed, and in the end the mast stands with a spar attached crosswise for the sail to hang, steadied by a hundred ropes knotted to the eyelets fore and aft.

There is more work to be done, more provisions to be brought, more men to be found for the voyage, more more more more, but for now Stoick stands on the deck and gazes at what the timber standing where once it had not been, and in his heart there is a tiny welling of pride.

Two days more of work pass like it, alongside Melec and his son as they prepare their boat on the wharf, the sea spray crusting salt on their boots, an offshore wind rippling the waters with its pleasant breeze, two days and then they are ready. There will be fair weather – so says the Gothi – and with that news they embark upon their ships and set sail in the early morning; one ship short and sturdy, one long and proud, both Viking to the last plank. It takes an hour for Berk to recede into the beyond, and it will be a long time before those aboard the Bane catch sight of it again.

Some carry axes, the handles carved by their loved ones, and those that read oft bring letters to remind them of home, but of such things Stoick has nothing, and he spends that first night as if bound to the tiller, north as the course, yet his eyes peer east, to the rising sun and the symbol of the days to come.


The day had dawned cloudy. There were more of these days now it was spring, and the musty smell of rain menaced the land with threats of precipitation as yet unfulfilled; yes, it was just another drab day, one more step forward in the hall that led to her eventual mortality, a long, long time in the future, and that inevitability encouraged her to make the best of what she had; two young humans doing whatever they did, a rock and a beach upon which they rested some significance, for oft and again she would come upon one or the other gazing acrosst the sea wistfully, gazing as she gazed upon the sky. Did they wish to spy the white, billowing sails atop their ships?

It was at a time like this that Ocean joined the one with golden hair in standing upon the soft sand, tidewater lapping at the tips of her talons, a fire crackling in the hearth-stones behind the boulder at her tail. A soft paw reached up and touched her flank. Would that she could speak to these creatures, these sapient beings with so much depth in their eyes and actions!

Sometimes she liked to imagine she could see things in the clouds; most often her friends, sometimes waterspouts; anything to make watching a gray blanket more exciting and alleviate the inevitable boredom which came from it. It seemed pondering was most of what she did these days.

"'Scuse me," said a voice from behind her, and the girl leaped away as if powered by an uncoiled spring. "You're looking the wrong way. I found you first, so does that mean I – oof!"

For Ocean had wing-tackled her chirpy young friend.

"Took you long enough to hear me you ol' sap. Let up, let up! You're gonna squeeze all the air outta me!"

"You're back," said Ocean.

"Was I gone too long?"

"I think I can forgive that," said Ocean, the light of humor dancing in her eyes. Then it went out. "I've had so little company."

For the first time Nayla took a look around the camp, saw its fire and its habitation, noted the lack of any tracks larger than Ocean's.

"You mean?" she asked, her heart thumping in her chest even as her body had become perfectly still. Was he dead? How had it happened? He had been supposed to be here, supposed to be taking care of her friend, supposed to be around so things would be like they'd been when they were young dragonets, but now he wasn't, and things couldn't, and the warmth of spring retreated and the air became as frigid as that icy night spent sheltered on an island surrounded by frozen sea.

"A storm came, forced me down. He wanted to keep flying instead of waiting it out…" said Ocean, pausing and then closing her eyes and tensing her muscles, her tail curling round her legs while she reopened a recently healed wound. "He was so hard-headed – he is so hard-headed and stubborn."

"And that's why you hold out hope," said Nayla. "You know?"

"It got me first. I don't know if he's dead or alive or dying somewhere out there, but he tried to come back, or he's trying, I know he would."

"And you've been here ever since. Poor you," said Nayla. "I could tell you how my time went back home in a horrible volcanic island, I, the brave Nayla, surrounded by mine enemies, but, I don't know if you want to hear it."

"Oh Nayla, of course I can listen," said Ocean. "Maybe a happy ending will help me keep up faith."

Later.

"So there I was, bravely standing at the peak of the mountain and looking out at the horizon which held my fate! To do or not to do, that was the question. You know what I decided. I came all the way out here and nearly froze to death on an island before the weather warmed up. I found scales there, in your color. I liked to imagine that you'd stopped there, that I was on the right track."

"You certainly were," said Ocean, ignoring the golden-haired little human peering out at them from behind the boulder; perhaps unsure what to make of the new arrival. And just when she'd been getting acclimated with them, too.

"But then I went south because I was in danger of becoming an icicle," continued Nayla. "Not that I would ever have frozen."

Ocean laughed and shook her head; as much as Nayla had grown, Ocean was still the bigger of the two. "Oh, you. And here I thought you'd learn some humility."

"I have!" said Nayla again. "I think I know what it means."

"Not boasting."
"Well, I got here all by myself," said Nayla. "In the dead of winter. But I survived! Isn't that something to be proud of?"

"I suppose so," said Ocean.

"And the floor was hard -"

"The floor is always hard."

"And it wasn't clean -"

"It never is, not enough," said Ocean.

"And all there was was fish -"

"But isn't that what you usually eat?"

"It was horrid! I couldn't get to sleep sometimes."

"Speaking of which," said Ocean. "Are you going to be rudely waking me up again?"

"For old times sake," said Nayla, and she grinned.

"For old times sake."

A long pause, Nayla taking a look around the camp again. She'd seen the makings of men; the fire burning in the hearth-stones, the lean-to supported by the boulder with tiny ruffled coverings underneath, the clay dish lying on an even rock with branches pulled up around it like footstools or chairs.

"So, what else's happened up till now? Besides crash-landing into an island," she said, refraining from the deprecatory remarks of old, because even if she was going to wake up Ocean at a decent time in the morning for nostalgia's sake she figured she might as well act maturely at the moment.

But her friend. Here! Alive!

Ocean's eyes got that faraway look, her mind set to remembering adventures from a year before and two seasons behind.

"And what's with the human giving me the dirty look?"

"That's the best part," said Ocean, and then she spoke, spoke of her first encounter with the little person in the glade, spoke of the den she had made and the vicious battle in it, of the humming, of the sudden disappearance of the humans one snowy morning, of their second fight with wolves and her rescue of them.

Ocean studied the brown-haired one, probably the man of the two, and he studied her right back, his mouth turned up at one corner and his hand at his chin.

"Why did you do it?" asked Nayla. "Why'd you save them?"

They were kinda adorable.

"Because I didn't want them to be gone," said Ocean. "They're company."

Nayla fluffed her wings like a bird.

"Pets?"

"No. More than that," said Ocean. "It's as if… almost as if they belong to me, but they don't, not at all. Instead of them being my humans I might be their dragon, or somewhere between those two. They're smart, as smart as I am I feel, and they make things."

"No kidding," said Nayla.

A snowball sailed out from behind the large boulder and exploded on the stones of the fireplace, the icy splatter hissing away into steam when it met hot flame, and the gloved hand that had thrown it retreated out of sight above, though thin yellow strands still flickered about in the wind about where the paw had gotten to.

"Watch the one with golden hair," said Ocean. "I think she's got a temper."

"So do you," said Nayla, "Or at least you used to, kicking things over when you were frustrated."

Ocean's face tightened at Nayla's words, and half-puckered, as if she were thinking back to a guilty memory of doing just that when she was in a particularly bad mood living in this place, unable to fly and fuming because of it. Then she smiled and duffed her head on her shoulder, perhaps seeing the light of Nayla's recollections.

"Got me there," she said.

"Do you want to take a flight?" asked Nayla.

"I wouldn't mind stretching my wings, and you wouldn't mind me showing you around, would you?" said Ocean. The question was rhetorical. She beat hard up, up into the sky, and Nayla followed at a quick clip.

Far beneath the breakers broke on the shore and the spray roared as it rose and splattered when it fell to the salt-encrusted rocks, and the birds cried and the animals prowled and above it all two dragons flew, gently bobbing next to each other like two corks rippled by a sea. Here they were, coming into the primes of their lives. Were they also drawing near a tipping point? - perhaps a nexus where all choices led to outcomes vast in their differences?

Nayla's arrival was a tipping point.

The choices that faced Ocean now were a nexus.

"There's a ridge here," said she, "a split in the island that runs along the midline, and halfway between the east point and the west end is a plain. See that brake of pines there?"

Nayla nodded mid-flight.

"That's where I first met the golden-haired one."

"And the other guy?" asked Nayla.

"That's what I wanted to show you," said Ocean, dropped down till she was at the edge of a wood, landed, and strode into it, a wilderness of tight spaces and choking branches and uncomfortable spinneys made of brambles, yet through that wilderness ran a path beaten out by Ocean in the days when she had had to walk everywhere she went. Now she glided where she could and ambled where she couldn't, and Nayla followed behind her and eyed the trees. Seeing a forest from above was one thing; living and breathing under its boughs and canopies was another.

"It's a nice looking place," began Ocean, "but I suppose I can dress up the thickets, give the glade a more polished look. Goodness knows I'd lived in an ugly hollow for months, even though I haven't slept in this place for a week. I don't like it very much now, not when I can sleep in the shelter of that big rock by the humans' little place."

"I think the woods look dandy," said Nayla. They did look beautiful, with lush moss springing green from the rocks and mushroom caps pushing their little crowns through the bark of fallen boughs, the climbing creepers twining 'round the stout columns of oaks and beeches, trees bare of leaves – for now – yet still possessing an austere majesty.

"Thank you," said Ocean, and: "Here we are."

There they were, standing in a glade before what seemed to be an ordinary heap of rocks before her friend ducked into a dark hole she hadn't seen before and disappeared into it, head, wings, tail and all.

"So this is where you fought," said Nayla, peering into the den, and in her voice was a tone that asked 'you lived here'? She had slept in places like this, cold and hard, yet always in the hope and comfort that tomorrow she would be somewhere else, hopefully sleeping on an island with better accommodations.

"She attacked me first," said Ocean, turning on her feet till she faced her friend and the way out. She grinned, but the grin halved itself until it was flat, and then the corners dipped and she frowned. "It's big enough for two, but all that does is make it feel empty."


If the past days had held even a tinge of order and sanity, now circumstances had taken a turn for the lunatic.

"I'll say," said Hiccup, peeping over the rock with me, "I never expected them to stand around as if they were chatting."

So he was less concerned about there being two dragons and more keen about whether they were exchanging the names of mutual love interests. Then he noticed me packing a snowball.

"Battling two dangerous giants who can breathe fire with some frozen water," he said. "That always struck me as a great idea."

"Danger never stopped me," I said. Even when I'd leaped into the cold ocean on a prayer those words had been true. And this wasn't danger.

Out the snowball sailed, missed and exploded into the little bits of which it was made, and though my defiance paled at the muffled thud the Nadders paid little heed.

Hiccup's cheek was pressed against the cold rock, but still he spoke. "Think they're talking?"

Of course not – but then, how many times had I said just that, and how many times had I been proven wrong on this island of strange things where events countered my intuition.

"Keep listening," I said. "Shh."

The sounds were similar to Norse: guttural at times, then rising to a near-human pitch when the speaker encountered something that might be an inflection, like the way Hiccup would stress 'not' when he'd say 'of course I'm not being sarcastic'. And if they talked… that lent weight to Hiccup's idea that they were intelligent.

There was a difference between how the wolves had sounded and how the dragons sounded, and that was good, for it meant that dragons might be a special breed, that animals weren't smart. No. The notion that the yak you were about to have for laugardagur dinner was conversing with the hens in the next stall over an hour ago…

A rush of wings, and off flew the dragons, and now we came back into camp, stood and looked at the tracks in the snow, pressed our palms into them to make sure they were there and not some fancy of our imaginations. Hiccup summed it up nicely.

"There comes a point," he said, "when it's hard to be shocked anymore."

So that day blended into the next, and it was a different person than I who woke up in the morning and laughed at Hiccup's wry wit, who walked around camp to strengthen her muscles, who went hunting before the sun had reached its apex, pausing and listening for the bark of wolves even when she knew the pack was dead and gone, saw the frenzied little squirrel prints in the soft snow and felt that spring was coming, came home and let that day too fall away into tomorrow like the one before it.

Then came the third dragon.


A/N:

Hey guys; it's Black here. Christmas break has come and gone... and gone... and gone, and I've written as much as I can, and so the results of those hours spent are pretty dear to me. I hope you guys enjoy what I came up with. Remember, the review box is right down below, and I always appreciate your opinions and criticism. It does help and has helped a lot, both with this story and with others. The worst case scenario is that you tell me what bugs you most about the story and I can fix it. I don't like worst-case scenarios but that's the one.

I thank you for reading my story up to this point.

Cheers! From Blackberry Avar.

Written Thursday, December 19thSaturday, February 22nd.

Published on Sunday 23rd February, 2020.

Changelog:

Late February: realized that this was lacking a publish date. Fixed.