Hello, dear readers,

It has been a hectic and terrible year for most of us and my heart goes out to all the strangers that might find this, read it, and gain something from it.

If you have read my last story, you know my feelings of the final HTTYD and its many shortcomings. If you haven't read my other story, no worries — just know that I was supremely disappointed. I will declare that I still am and will always be, most likely. So as not to waste time, I wont reiterate all my issues with the work, but they are many and in-depth. So, long story short, I turned to fanfiction to help gain a little control during an upheaval in my life after I saw someone post about how Merida from Brave and Hiccup would be such a perfect couple.

And, now, having survived a worldwide pandemic in a foreign country, dealt with the unknown and constantly shifting rules and regulations, feared for my own wellbeing and that of my family, I have returned to one of the few things that always helped me put my thoughts and feelings together in a semblance of order.

My last story, To the End and Back Again, was about adventure — that siren call of the wild, the wide open world, about forsaking everything for the thrill of the unknown. It was about finding your footing in the wake of uncertainty, about establishing trust in oneself and others, about being fearless when you should be scared out of your mind. It was about witches and magic and dragons and fate and freedom. It was exciting, thrilling, and had a happy ending.

It was about all the feelings I had before I picked up and traveled across the world to have the adventure of a lifetime. It was an extension of myself and my own emotional state, expressed through characters I loved. This is probably familiar to many writers on here, as we are all just trying to make sense of ourselves and our environment the best we can.

This story is about being forced into situations that make you uncomfortable and growing because you have no other choice. This story is about fear and loss of self and reestablishing that same sense of self in new ways. It's about reconfiguration, transformation, movement, and courage. It's about struggling to speak when you don't know the language, missing pieces of yourself that you had to put down somewhere and forgot to reclaim, about trying to be more in the present while relinquishing the past. It's about never knowing where to put your feet because the rug has been ripped out from underneath you one too many times for you to trust it. It's about finding a new side of yourself that you had no idea existed, but it can withstand anything and everything. It's about learning to move forward always because that's the only direction we can move in.

This story poured out of me and is incredibly personal. For a long time, I debated even publishing it on this, or any, platform. But I thought someone might need it like I did. It was hard to write. It was hard to reread and edit. It was hard to begin and it was hard to finish. But it had to be done; it ate at me until I did it, it wouldn't let me sleep, it haunted me.

And it is massive.

Much larger than my last story, which was over three-hundred pages in the end of it.

And, much like my last, it is already complete.

So, even if you get to the end of this note and couldn't care less about the implications of my writing the story, do know that I won't be able to upload it all in one evening like I had before. I am in the process of writing my MA Thesis at the moment, so my time is painfully limited and I will probably be uploading three or four chapters once a week just to start putting them up.

And, along with that, it means my editing is poor and my proofreading is even worse and there are plenty of improvements that could have been made but didn't happen. There were concessions to make to conflate the time periods, the films, the actual history and mythology, the languages. There are things that are just well and truly wrong to refer back to the movies, which definitely took artistic liberties, and to further the plot. My specialty isn't either Medieval Scandinavian Viking culture or the royal period of the Highland Scottish Clans.

And, also, as forewarning: there are plenty of things that can trigger someone in this story. Thoughts of suicide, mention of physical torture and death, torment of animals (mythical and real), sexual situations, violence, cursing, and plenty of other serious issues. This is an adult story and that's why it's rated as Mature.

Please read at your own risk.

I hope this is entertaining to those that find it, at the very least. I enjoyed getting the reviews last time (all thirteen of them!) and would be happy to receive more if anyone is particularly inclined to leave one.

I also hope that, wherever you are in the world, dear reader, all is well. As scary as this time is, know that we're all a lot tougher than we think ourselves to be.

Stay safe, stay strong.

Ciao for now, kids.

-Yukiona.