The inside of the sweet shoppe on a street corner of the currently frostbitten village of Berk was a cozy venue. The shoppe as about the size of Gobber's small smithy that alone could hardly contain the amount of iron and other metals that the practiced blacksmith used on a daily basis for the Hoooligans' weaponry or dragon-armor. The shoppe was lit in a dim, orange-yellow hue and had wooden fixings that held stalks of gnarled and tall lardwax candles that were misshapen from melting for hours in bunches of three near the ceiling rafters. Half of the sweet shoppe was stocked with cookware, such as an open fireplace for melting ingredients to be mixed into batters. There were other contraptions around, including iron cleavers and bowls of smoothed wood for kneading, and a messy, flour sprinkled table stocked with rolling pins or bowls with straight ladles to mash plants, seeds, berries, or herbs into pastes.
There were four tables in the second half of the shoppe that were made of light-colored wood and had carvings along its edges in various shapes of fruits and herbs. In their perimeter were fantastical displays. The finished products form the shoppe's kitchen were stocked in exhibits to show extravagant, multicolored sweets. On tall, wooden mounts were fruitcakes, creme-frosted statuettes of religious figures, sheepheads, caricatures, or well-known buildings. In other places there were stacked cylinders made of flour that all were placed well out of reach from the height of villagechildren who, in the past, had pried their sneaky, tiny fingers in the display items to delight in the flavor of treats their parents did not request. The shoppe's owners had since become smart about the mysterious fingerprints left behind in their creations and replaced lower compartments along the shoppe's walls with artistic shelves with playful shelling on its borders. In them were hordes of flavorsome sour, or syrupy elixirs which had hardened to form coins of candy with dizzying swirls or stripes in all shades of a rainbow. They were refilled reguarly at the delight of the younger customers to the shoppe, and at the convenience of teen Vikings and those older who wanted to suck on something sweet as they decided what they wanted to request from the bakers inside of the shoppe. No corner of the shoppe went untouched by the dreamy scent of deserts, and the oils from peppermint or from other pungent plants like citrus, accented the shoppe's fragrance.
When the group, fronted by Hiccup and Helda, entered the premises, the cooking station was inhabited by a number of members of a clan in the Hooligan tribe who specialized in the culinary arts for many generations. The family also had coalitions with other shops in the village, but that shoppe was dedicated to the trade and selling of all things sugary and cavity-making. Pies, cakes, tarts, mashes, jellies, fillings, spreads, and liquersticks were the family's main profession and it was appreciated to the upmost by the sweet-toothed Hooligans on Berk. As it was the case with multiple other shops in the village, any person who entered the candy shop knew the owner and her children who were small in years but culinarily gifted all due to their upbringing, by name. It would happen easily for customers to strike up conversations with the store's family while they were working to speak about anything that came to mind from their experiences of normal days on Berk, like taking livestock to the eastern markets, or, for the sake of any children the customers had, the conversation shared experiences or new lessons that happened in schoolhouses.
Chief Hiccup greeted the connoisseurs, and they were all overjoyed to see him in their presence after his rousing address to the village. The rest of Hiccup's band voiced polite greetings behind him and were served graciously. Tuffnut, Astrid, Fishlegs, Hiccup, Helda, Ruffnut and Snoutlout sat at a group table in the the shop next to an open window that had been boarded with wood planks for the winter. The white morning light shined through regardless and caused a heavenly appearance in the presently empty dining area.
The group spent a moment comparing their fudge to see which flavor indeed was the best. The conversation shifted towards Fishlegs to ask how his portion tasted to him and if it was as good as it was in previous years that they had come to the shop on the morning of Snoggletog.
"I dunno." Fishlegs began, speaking for all six of his rumroot fudgebars.
The day was very lazy and freely roaming thoughts of indecision were treated fairly by everyone in the group, including Hiccup's guest from the Oar's Rest Isle, while they slowly feasted on their treats. It wasn't like they had to make any quick decisions for the day as they usually did against any perpetrator of Berk or of their personal camp, Dragon's Edge. The Snoggletog morning was a simple day on a vacation for everyone of them. They didn't get such days often together because of all the hours they spent with their own family's chores and errands, their duties at Dragon's Edge, or because of Hiccup's studies with his council and most especially with Gothi.
Fishlegs concluded, "they taste the same, not better or worse. How about yours, Hiccup?"
Hiccup agreed with Fishleg's indecision too. He bit calmly into his fudge, flavored fireflower, that he preferred since he was a boy. Fireflower was incredibly tangy, like fresh grass in a meadow, but it was also sugary and uncured, and it had a nice, bitter taste that offset its sweetness on his tongue. It tasted like normal, and its flavor hadn't differed from his memories. "It tastes fine, but there's something I just can't figure out," Hiccup said. He swallowed and made a somber fact known to everyone. "We forgot to ask for sugar drizzle."
"I knew something was missing," Ruffnut said suspiciously at her own light-yellow bar, flavored gooseegg. Nevertheless, she shoved it in her mouth.
"It's not a big deal," Astrid said. Her fudge stick was as bitter as Ruffnut had claimed, yet it had its own unique taste that Astrid agreed was good to try for a change, to herself. She had heard many gripes about the huckleberry flavor of fudge since her youth, and there were running limericks among her friends and classmates that placed the word huckleberry to describe anything distasteful. Like her new pairing with Tuffnut, she realized that things weren't as they seemed if she opened herself up to experience them. Astrid looked to Tuffnut who was eating his own huckleberry bar beside her at the table and she wondered if he was thinking the same thing while Snoutlout gave lazy commentary on his food.
Tuffnut's blue eyes met Astrid's curiously and softly, and Astrid quickly turned her eyes to rest on the chatting group around them as her ribcage slightly rattled from her racing heartbeat. Even at the slightest fixation of Tuffnut's eyes on hers, Astrid noticed, she felt vulnerable.
Tuffnut chewed and he thought about the taste of the first bite of huckleberry fudge he ever had in his life. It was different, and he enjoyed it. He thought it was good that it was untainted by any sweetener that the Hooligans had on Berk. He thought of requesting for more of it before he ran out, for the bars weren't extremely sizeable and he was a third of the way finished with his serving. Tuffnut then had suddenly felt Astrid's eyes on him as the group continued to chat on their own morning-deserts, and he had turned to Astrid in intrigue. Astrid had gently flitted away from his attention like a once-still bird who had come into contact with him on his early morning walks he would take in the forest, and who had decided to speed away into the sky because of his unknown intentions.
Astrid was being terribly shy around him, he thought. Tuffnut had once admitted aloud to Astrid that it was disconcerting, but, more so, it was unfamiliar and left him feeling unsure how to deal with it. He was used to Astrid being the one to make him quaver because she had such command whenever she had reason to be around him, if at all, when they were busy with tasks on Dragon's Edge. Tuffnut wondered to himself about Astrid's determination to hide her thoughts hostage from him. Tuffnut was aware Astrid didn't know or was oblivious to the fact that Loki worshippers, like he and Ruffnut and many in the Thorston clan, did not miss much at all. They were always prepared for unsuspecting moments of foolery they or others committed on a regular basis. Because he knew how long Astrid had been friends with Ruffnut, he was taken aback that Astrid couldn't remember that it was nearly impossible for any action she showed with him to go unnoticed, most especially a stolen glance like the one she had just given him.
"What?" Tuffnut spoke to Astrid privately when the focus of everyone else was not on them. Tuffnut was tickled to know what her look had been all about.
Astrid's knees fell faint when Tuffnut's hand finally touched hers and held it underneath the table. "Nothing," Astrid said back to him in a whisper that she could barely muster.
She interlaced his hand, like an apology for leaving it empty before, and she felt her pulse intensify when he fully accepted it. His skin was warm from the heat of the candles and firepit in the shoppe. Astrid felt the firmness of his metal rings squeeze against her palm. The cold silver ring encasing his thumb grazed back and forth across Astrid's knuckles. She could feel the emboss of them and could nearly predict what design it looked like. It had raised areas for multiple symbols, perhaps for a clan seal. Astrid let him caress her fingers, again and again, and touch her like she was a small prayerpiece. The way that he felt her was precious, and Astrid worried she would poison his innocent embrace with all of the dark feelings of abandonment that were still locked away in her heart and surely seeping through her skin onto his fingers.
Tuffnut silently waited for the chance to reenter the table's conversation so that his session of prodding Astrid's emotions would continue to be missed by everyone completely, even by Hiccup, who he knew would be secretly nosing his way into any exchange they had with each other.
Snoutlout, who usually ended lags in the group's aimless chats, interjected on another note. "So...Astrid and Tuffnut," Snoutlout said humourously with a disbelieving shake of his head.
Astrid's heart plummeted. Just when she thought there would be no mention of the obvious new pairings in the group, Snoutlout had spoken.
The table shared light chuckles in response to the sound of the pairing that could have not been less than an insane stretch of anyone's imagination before the winter months arrived on Berk. Hiccup smiled weakly.
Astrid felt angry to be talked about in the third person when Hiccup clarified she was his former fiancée at Helda's question of what had caused everyone to laugh. A month ago her name wouldn't sound like another woman's name in Hiccup's mouth, but it would be a melody that would come from him that would never fail to make her smile or feel goosebumps. Her name had been a faint whisper on Hiccup's lips when they kissed on their time alone together, or it had been an impassioned cry at any time he had called for her in mid-air to bolt to her aid on the back of Toothless and rescue her from the hands of dragon catchers that all had tried to invade Dragon's Edge during their group's patrol. Astrid's own name sounded foreign to her ears when Hiccup said it then, as if her name was hard to pronounce for Hiccup without an edge of bitterness and plain indifference. The sound of his voice could have been reluctant on his part, she wished to believe, because he missed her as well.
"Do you like Tuffnut?" Helda asked Astrid next with a twinkle in her eye. She didn't think Tuffnut could ever find a girl like Astrid, who from first appearances to Helda looked quaint and pleasant compared to Tuffnut's uproarious personality she knew extremely well.
Ruffnut perked in Astrid's direction and wondered how Astrid was going to reply. Astrid felt Hiccup's eyes studying her intensely as she began to answer the question.
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