The ever-present fog over the nest shone with reflected light, dim as of yet but steadily growing stronger as the day broke overhead. Astrid snuck closer to her target, knowing she had a short while, at most, to do what she needed to do. The pieces were all in place, and she was pretty sure what she had worked out was going to work as it was supposed to, but she was only going to get one shot at this. Ever.

~O~o~O~

"I don't see why that wouldn't work," the Zippleback said hesitantly. "I am ashamed I did not think of it at the time, though it was extremely rare that a crippled Flicker, or any kind of flame, lived long enough under Inferna's ever-hungry gaze to consider their options. I see no reason a Flicker changing another Flicker to rid them of some physical injury could not serve as a solution. Maybe some changes in appearance, depending on who is doing the flaming and what they want, but it would be superficial and so long as they specifically desired the other whole that desire would override any conflicting general hopes. So yes, it would work."

Astrid tapped her tail on the stone of the sea stack she had found him on. "And another thing. Would it need to be the whole Flicker?"

"That depends on something I have never gotten around to testing," the Zippleback remarked, both heads speaking together. "You saw the burns between changed and unchanged flesh on Inferna?"

Astrid nodded. The border between new and old was cauterized, presumably all the way down the interface. It was why blood loss had not factored into their attack on Inferna.

"Those may or may not occur if the new flesh matches the old," the Zippleback said gravely. "I don't know. It was never a priority to test. Far safer to remake it all, and no less efficient. It doesn't matter how much of your Solar flame you use, if you don't use it all the rest just fades away."

The conversation continued, but Astrid had already heard what she needed to know to proceed. The Zippleback had put into words the stumbling block of her fledgling idea. She just needed to test it.

~O~o~O~

Her target, Toothless, was asleep on his rock, as always. It was bitterly cold outside, but he chose to suffer. Maybe he couldn't stand to sleep in the volcano. Maybe him sleeping out here was part of his attempts to avoid her, stupid and ineffective as it would be. Or maybe he just liked the relative isolation.

It certainly wasn't because he thought he was safer out here. Anyone could come up and do something to him while he slept, if they were of a mind to. If they were smart, he wouldn't even notice until it was too late to stop whatever was happening.

She was smart.

~O~o~O~

A quick trip down into the sulfurous yellow fog of the volcano had yielded absolutely nothing new. Astrid circled as close to the boiling molten rock as she could tolerate, looking for and failing to find anything else. Inferna's mangled body had long since sunk beneath, or simply burned to ash and dissipated. She had hoped to find a place where two changed portions of the body connected so as to examine the intersection. But it looked like she was going to have to go with her backup plan instead.

~O~o~O~

He was asleep, but not dead to the world. She had to be careful. She crept forward, placing every step deliberately to make as little sound as possible. This did not take long – she was nimble, and he was not so far from where she had landed. In a few moments, she was there.

She approached his back and poked at the place she recalled having been poked right before losing all feeling in her tail. The only visible sign of her success was the already limp limb falling even limper, something she had not thought possible. Just to be sure, she kicked at it with her paw. No reaction.

That was good. This was probably going to hurt a lot more than a kick, but only if he could feel it.

~O~o~O~

"You want me to do what with my Solar fire?" the yellow and orange Nightmare asked incredulously. "I know I don't need it, what with having a mate already, but really? Would that even work?"

"That's why I'm asking, I have to know if it would," Astrid explained quietly. "And if it does, that's a big deal. I need a Blaze because the test subject is a Blaze. The leader Blaze has already agreed to try it."

"If he's in, I'm in, but I think this will not work like you want it to." The Nightmare followed her over to Mentor. It was dark outside, and most of the volcano was asleep. The dragons all left for the hatching island the next morning, so everyone needed their rest. But Astrid could wait no longer to see whether this would work. She was cutting it close already.

"I am ready." Mentor stuck his head out at chest height, tilting it so that his short, broken horn was easily accessible. "I am intrigued to see whether this works."

Astrid didn't doubt it would work to some extent. The horns on Nightmares were all pretty much identical, and she was having a Nightmare cover his stub with Solar fire. The real question was what would happen to the border.

"All this for a single horn," the Nightmare she had recruited muttered. He stood there for a few moments, presumably convincing himself that this was really what he wanted to do with his irreplaceable Solar fire…

"Whether or not this works, you will have helped all flames by finding out," Astrid suggested. "There is nothing more worthy of praise." He had to want to do this, to think that it was worth what he was giving up. He didn't consider his Solar fire of much use to begin with, so he must not value it that highly–

The Nightmare exhaled, and the light of Solar fire illuminated the small ledge they were occupying. It was such a small area to cover that he had to cut himself off almost immediately. They all watched and waited as the entire horn burst into brown flames, and then resolved into… something.

Here, Astrid knew what she dreaded. A deep burn around the place where new met old, like in the human turned Gronckle. That would mean this was all for nothing, though Mentor might well be able to keep the horn if it did not immediately fall off again, as there was no feeling to it. The burn wouldn't actually hurt him in any case, which was why she had chosen his small imperfection as the test for this.

But when the fires receded, much faster than she remembered, the horn was perfect, down to the little spirals matching up on either side of the former break point. No seam, no burn, no reason such a process would not work on flesh and bone and muscle.

~O~o~O~

She had numbed the tail. She knew where to burn and how to do it. To need it. There was no reason to stall, and every reason not to. If Toothless woke before or during the process, he might mess it up.

Or object. He might tell her to save her Solar fire, to leave and find someone else who wanted to be a Night Fury, to be happy. To forget about him. He probably wouldn't think he deserved this.

All of that would still be said, albeit with an undertone of dismay instead of insistence. She'd still deal with his disapproval. But she was going to do it after the deed was done, not before.

Astrid stepped over to the other side of his tail, the injured side, and crouched, her head directly over it.

Then it shifted, sliding a little. The tail itself was numb, but that did not mean his shifting hindquarters could not move it by unintentionally dragging it. She waited until he had settled back down, then pinned the tail with her paw at the midpoint between fin and hip.

She stared at the good fin, and then at the place where another fin should be. This was what she wanted to do.

She didn't need to do this. She could leave, do something else, abandon him to his fate. Or she could change that fate and give him back his freedom. True freedom, the freedom everyone else had, the freedom they had all taken for themselves when Inferna died. He was the only one who did not yet have it, and this was the answer.

This was one of many answers she needed, and the only one she had at the moment, but it felt right.

She felt the Solar fire in her chest shift, sliding up into her throat. It hesitated there, a strange burning that was not uncomfortable so much as foreign.

This was a good answer. She couldn't think of any better, more fitting way to spend the fire she would never have been able to use, were it not for the dragon under her.

The Solar fire continued to move up in her throat, and she had to open her mouth to let it out. It came in a steady stream, one she could feel depleting even as she ran it over the tail. The flames were mostly concentrated on the place where the other fin should emerge from the base of the whip-like tail, but she could not stop some of it from splashing further down the length of the tail, covering more area than necessary. Some of his good tailfin was affected too, but only near the base.

And... that was it. She let the fire die away, feeling it leave her forever. It was done, and she would never again feel it in her chest, or know without proof that another held it. The heat was gone.

But the fire she had released was not gone, just gone from her. Astrid stared at it as it settled into scale and flesh, willing it to work. She wanted Toothless to have his tailfin back, the fin she had never seen but still knew well, a replica of what he had on the other side, or what she had on both sides of her tail. Freedom, a way off of this island, a way to keep living.

The end of Toothless' tail burst into flames, a small bonfire raging in the empty night. Nobody would see it; all the other dragons had left the day before, off to the hatching island, whether or not they were expecting or even old enough to have eggs. She and Toothless were totally alone here.

The fires began to solidify, individual flames curling up and around each other, stretching out from the tail, extending into the empty space where there should be a fin. Astrid had never before been in the right state of mind to see just how beautiful they were, like liquid fire and stained glass, slowly becoming tinted with darker colors, with blue and brown–

Blue and brown. Not black.

Astrid watched, wide-eyed and confused, as the fires solidified, flattened, and flickered away, leaving something she had not intended or expected, something different.

There was a tailfin there, whole and good. She could see the membrane, the tiny muscles, the scales, all that should be present. It would work; she had no doubts about that. It was too perfect not to work.

But it was not black. That was what was throwing her off. Everywhere her fire had touched, from the new tailfin to a few patches on the old, was a mottled, swirling duo of colors. Blue, the cobalt blue of her eyes, and brown, a deep and rich brown she was sure would be nearly red in the sunlight.

This was a reflection of her unconscious mind, what she truly thought should be there. Said subconscious had decided, without consulting her, that his tail would be blue and brown.

Silver, too. She noticed a small line of silver scales running back down the tail, following the area that had splashed, going about a tailfin-length up from the bottom of the tailfin, like a rod or a wire.

That was it. The silver was the wire, the strangely-colored tail the prosthetic. She had only ever seen Toothless fly in the contraption Hiccup had made, the array of wires and brown canvas. Her subconscious had decided that was how he would look, even now, with a real fin.

But the meaning of the blue was different. She ran her paw over the tailfin she had made. Hers. Her favorite color had been light blue, and that was the color she would have claimed as hers if someone asked, but now it was probably the cobalt blue of her eyes. She had made this, and a part of her laid claim to it. A claim that mixed with Hiccup's prior claim, not conflicting, coexisting, because they were two different kinds of claim.

Friendship or perhaps brotherhood for Hiccup, and something different for her. Something that might eventually, with time and effort, be more. She knew it was a possibility, regardless of whether she intended to pursue it, and her subconscious had depicted what she knew.

All of this, functional and symbolic in equal terms, was now part of Toothless. It wasn't intentional; she had meant for the new fin to be indistinguishable from the old. But she had also laid a claim to him, one that would never go away.

She had marked him just as thoroughly as he had her, in making her a Night Fury to begin with. She wasn't sure how she felt about that, and she knew no more about how he would see it.

She looked over at the rest of him, half expecting him to be watching her, staring accusingly. In reality, he was still fast asleep, totally unaware of what had just happened, and still shivering.

Ironic, given she had just burned his tail. He was still cold.

She could wake him now, but there was no reason for her to rush things. He would wake of his own accord soon enough. Then, they would talk, or perhaps argue, and she would see if some more answers could be shaken loose from what was said. Right now...

Right now, she was cold, both inside and out. The Solar fire had been a warmth in her chest, one she missed. Now the tailfin under her paw was warm, as if only now cooling from the fire she had built it with.

He was warm, and she was tired of second-guessing herself. These last two weeks had been Hel, first trying to decide what to do about Toothless, and then trying to be sure she wasn't going to fail in the crazy thing she had decided to do. She deserved a little certainty.

Here, now, her certainty was that Toothless was asleep, and thus would not mind if she curled up with her back to his side, still remaining fairly separate while sharing in and giving him some warmth of his own. This was what friends did in his culture; he could not complain, and she would not feel awkward about it.

She did not, however, let herself sleep. She wanted to be awake and watching when he woke and noticed his tail. That was something she would not miss.

~O~o~O~

It began with a snort of air, a cough of sorts. Astrid knew that kind of cough; it was a product of the cold, something one could only be rid of with water to ease the throat and loosen up the chest.

She also knew that to ignore the cough would be pointless. He was going to get up, because there would be no sleeping until he had water. Water she would usually be bringing soon.

This time around, he figured out she was there before he saw her. His reaction was slower, but just as frantic. He stood and took a few wobbly steps away from her, turning to stare at her with guilty, confused eyes.

"I cannot... please, don't. Please leave. It's not safe here." He was shaking, cringing away from her. She could guess at why, but that made it no less of an overreaction.

He still didn't know. That couldn't be allowed to continue; there were so many unknowns now, and she wanted to answer a few, but first he had to know what she had done. "We are even."

"What?" he asked, seemingly befuddled. He could definitely feel the new fin; she could see it moving on its own, stretching out just like the other. But it had not really occurred to him yet that something was wrong, not when in reality something was finally right. Back to how it should be.

"You used your Solar flame on me without my consent. Now I have done the same to you." She looked down at the rock in front of her, stood, and grabbed the conch shell used to compensate for him not being able to fly out and get water.

She smashed it against the rock, adeptly flipping it and crushing it under her paw. "We do not need this any longer," she said firmly.

Toothless stared at her as if he was sure he had lost his own mind, and was hallucinating. "But... I still need that!"

"Look at your tail," Astrid commanded. "I don't think you do. I used my Solar fire for something… new." Really she was not sure if what she had done was new at all. It seemed more likely that dragons, or at least those stuck under Inferna's rule, had forgotten this was possible. It certainly wouldn't surprise her to learn that it had been forbidden, or even something they were all ordered to not think about. How many generations would it have taken to eradicate this knowledge? Only two, really. The parents told not to teach it, and the children never to learn it was possible at all.

He whipped his tail around to the side and awkwardly turned to stare at his fins. His ear shot up and his breathing quickened.

Astrid was relieved to see the new tailfin abruptly flash through an increasingly complex series of motions and twists, tested to the full range of its mobility and not found wanting at any point. She knew in her mind that it had worked, but seeing proof was much more convincing.

Toothless stared at the tailfin, and then her, and then back at the tailfin. His pupils were so wide she could barely see the green of his irises.

Then he was gone, leaping and swiping at the air with all the force his lithe body could muster, physically hurling himself forward and up. She followed, just to be sure he wasn't going to try and run away from her. They still had a lot to discuss.

Also, she wanted to see him flying. He was fast and agile, just like her, but with years of experience flying instead of a month and some gifted instincts.

He went up, into the clouds, repeatedly clawing at the air with an unrestrained need. She had to work her wings hard to keep to his frenzied pace, and they were out in the sunlight before she knew it.

Not that they stayed for long; he looked up, howled joyously, and tucked his wings in to fall right back into the fog. Down and down, pulling out just above the shallows around the nest, all of his speed turning him into a black blur as he bolted into the sea stack maze, a death-defying course that Astrid knew well.

He knew it too, judging by his confidence. Every move of his body was perfectly placed and timed, a single flick of the tail dragging him to the side to avoid one rock outcropping, then a tilt of the wings to angle up over an oncoming wave, and on and on in a deadly dance of perfection that Astrid just could not match, not when she was trying to follow him instead of choosing her own path.

She burst out of the maze and back into the sunlight well after having lost sight of him, but she hadn't lost him for good. He was there, still pounding at the air with his wings, soaring over the sunlit waves.

He flew, flipped, and dove at random, never once slowing down. His thirst was forgotten amidst the joy of flight. Astrid followed along below him, no longer tracking him move for move. As long as he planned to set down somewhere sooner or later, she could follow. He certainly didn't seem to be trying to escape her. To escape the nest, the fog, his groundbound existence, but not her.

Eventually, long after she herself would have tired of stunts in the sky, he slowed down and began to glide, high above the ocean. She went up to him, curious as to what she would find.

He was keening softly, a sound she knew to be mourning. She flew beside him, silent, and waited for him to speak. They both knew it was coming.

His keening died away. "I fly," he rasped. "And he is not here. I had, for a brief time, thought he would always be here. On my back, or flying alongside me. It was a good dream, a good future. And now I am here, flying, but he is gone."

"We all lost someone," Astrid said quietly. "It hurts, but it is not the end."

"Not the end. He would want me to live on. But I had not minded the thought of dying so much, knowing he would not be there anyway." Toothless looked over at her. "You did this."

"I did." She was not proud, not entirely. "Against your will, or at least without permission." That had been intentional. She was going to take the chance to put that guilt of his away for good. Fair was fair.

"I would not have believed it possible," he admitted. "This is not something that is done. How did you know it would work?"

"I thought of it, and then had it tested first, with Mentor's horn. It worked there, so I knew it would work here." She knew they were avoiding the real issues. "We must talk. For real, not dancing around things and fleeing from them."

"No more running from you," he mused. "I will not promise that. I do not know what you mean by any of this." He looked back at his fins, one black and the other dark blue and deep brown in the sun. "Any of it."

If he was hoping for a simple explanation he was out of luck. She didn't really know either. But if there was ever a chance to set the tone between them, to start over, this was it. "This is a new beginning," she said. "And an apology. And revenge."

"Revenge?" he asked, turning into a wide arc.

She kept pace with him and flicked her ears dismissively. "You did it to me, I did it to you. You changed more than I did, but I took your ear." She sometimes forgot that she had done that, but there was a reason he was missing an ear and that reason was her. "We are even. Do not dare think otherwise. And since we are even, we can both just forgive." Not forget. Never that. It wasn't possible to forget all that had happened, and she had no desire to pretend otherwise.

"There is nothing for me to forgive, and I do not think I deserve–" he began.

She swerved to the side and cut him off by knocking into him. He recovered with ease, of course, and so did she, but the sudden impact and momentary distraction of needing to recover his place in the sky effectively silenced him.

"No," she growled. "We are even. I forgive you, and you are going to accept my forgiveness. Or I will knock you around until you do."

"Okay, fine," he said hurriedly. "I accept your forgiveness."

"Good," she huffed. That was one thing out of the way. One big thing. They were even, she wasn't going to let him think otherwise.

They flew in silence for a moment. The wind was cold, but it was invigorating too, and Astrid had yet to grow tired of basking in the sun and her success. She could stay up all day, and she was sure he felt the same.

"What now?" he asked quietly. She barely heard him over the wind in her ears, and when she looked over his eyes were closed. "I have not given any thought to my future. I didn't have one. The world is open to me now, and I don't know what I could possibly want to do with it."

"Now you go where you want, do what you want…" Her words were hollow, and she knew it. The problem was that he didn't have anywhere he wanted to go, not that he didn't understand that it was up to him. Nothing he wanted to do, whether or not he could do it. She had been dealing with the same lack of options for weeks.

"I have lived in three places over the course of my life," he sighed. "Where I was hatched is a cursed place laden with bad memories and bad feelings, and I will never return. The cove was a good place, but what is a good place when the reason it was good is dead and gone? The fog-shrouded volcano was a trap, and I would not stay here if I had anywhere better to be."

She couldn't go back to Berk either, and she didn't want to stay at the nest forever… Especially as nobody else seemed to be planning to do so. She hadn't traveled, she didn't know what other islands or lands there might be. The unknown was not a plan, it was a last resort. She was no explorer.

"I have the exact same problem," she said aloud. "I do not want to go back to being Flightless, even if I could."

Toothless let out a surprised grunt. "Really?" he asked.

"Really. The biggest reasons to go back are dead or just gone." Her parents. Her perceived place in the world. The enemy she expected to spend her life fighting. Maybe even the will to spend her life fighting something at all. "But if I cannot go back, then what am I? What will I do? At least with trying to change myself back, I'd have a quest to pursue. Something to do beyond wandering aimlessly."

"At least you can let your past slip away without it dogging your tail," Toothless said somewhat bitterly. The mood between them had grown morose, and a touch despondent. The sun and wind on Astrid's body could only do so much to lift her spirits. She had done something good, solved one of her problems, but now she was back where she had begun, beset by questions she couldn't answer.

"At least you have something to do," she retorted with a low growl. "And an easy way to do it. Stay here, wait, and then kill him when he comes."

"Maybe, but I would be back where I started once it was done," Toothless said noncommittally. "Though… You should leave. As soon as possible. I appreciate this, I really do, but now…"

"No," Astrid said, a bit of anger rising through her downtrodden thoughts. She opened her eyes and glared at him, noticing that he had drifted away and ahead. "I'm not running in fear of a creep who definitely needs dealing with. If you don't stay, I will just to make sure he never terrorizes anyone else."

That managed to get Toothless to look back at her, his eyes wide. "He has no more Solar fire," he objected. "He cannot hurt anyone else."

"Please, you think that would stop him?" she scoffed. "All he needs to do is find another male Bolt who still has his fire and the right hopes, and get him to use it. Or to find a female Bolt, natural or not, and claim her. Not having his own fire just makes it a little harder. He might not even come looking, if he has done as much already."

"He must be stopped," Toothless growled, apparently swayed by her words. "You are right. Even if he does not come here. I need to find him."

"Now we're getting somewhere," Astrid said, grimly pleased by the spine she had provoked him into showing. She pumped her wings a few times and caught up to him, flying by his side once more. "That's something to do. I'll help."

"I would…" He trailed off, looking into her eye. "I think I would appreciate the help," he finished.

She got the impression he hadn't meant to say that when he started speaking, but she would take it, even if he only said it because he suspected she would do it regardless of whether he wanted her to. "Good. We'll wait here and see if he shows."

"If he doesn't, we'll go looking," Toothless said firmly.

"We will," she agreed. There were plenty of worse causes than ridding the world of one foul Night Fury. She certainly didn't have anything else to vie for her time and attention.

"What does this make us?" Toothless asked suddenly, ducking his head and breaking eye contact. "I am not… I want to be sure."

"Us?" She bit back an immediate denial, mindful of the form she was wearing and the conversation she'd had with the former Flickers. "Right now? Friends. Nothing more, and don't you forget it."

"You said right now…" He murmured. "Not that I think it would be right–"

"I said right now because I am done letting Inferna dictate what I do, even from beyond the grave," Astrid snarled. "Right now I find you as attractive as a rock."

"A shapely rock, at least?" he asked, sounding vaguely offended and more than a little embarrassed.

She let out an involuntary snort. "No, one of the ugly ones," she huffed. "But that is now. If I start to feel differently later, I am not going to let what Inferna wanted get in the way of what I want."

"But I… I do not know how to feel about that," he admitted. He looked up again, and she made a point of meeting his gaze once more.

"I'm beautiful, I get it," she deadpanned. "I'm attractive. Trust me, that is not new. I am fully capable of being around you without returning your feelings. Behave yourself, and I will not judge you for it." Though she was less sure of her ability to be friends with somebody who was lusting after her… She'd not been friends with any of her peers, back on Berk.

But that was them, and her lack of friendship hadn't been solely based on attraction, else she'd have been friends with Ruffnut. Toothless was her friend, and she'd known from the start that he was attracted to her. He had to be, for her to have been given this body in the first place. They could make it work.

"Never has a rejection been so relieving," he said with a flick of his good ear. "Okay. Just… So long as it does not bother you."

"Again, this is not new for me," she said, flicking her ears right back at him. He was relaxing, it was obvious from the way he flew… She wondered if humans said so much with their bodies, and whether she had been oblivious to it prior to being forced into a form that did so much talking without words. He was so easy to understand, a far cry from somebody like Ruffnut, whose thoughts and reactions always seemed to come out of nowhere without the slightest chance of being predicted.

"But does it bother you?" he pressed.

"No." Not from him. "It is just something I am aware of. It would bother me if you never stopped trying to woo me."

"It sounds like you say that from experience," Toothless said tentatively. "I was under the impression my human knew you… It smelled like he liked you."

"Sure, but he was not pushy," Astrid said casually. "I didn't care about him at all. He was more tolerable than, say, Snotlout after his father told him the Thorstons were starting to talk about marriage for the twins."

"The who?" Toothless asked, dropping down into a wide, sweeping turn. "And what is marriage?"

"Figures you wouldn't know that word," Astrid said to herself. "The Thorstons were a family. Marriage is… taking a mate, I think you would say. The Thorstons were talking to Snotlout's father about maybe setting up something between him and Ruffnut." This was a relatively recent development, coming only a month or so before she'd been pulled from her life, but the change in Snotlout had been noticeable. "Snotlout would rather have me, but I was not interested in the slightest. No matter how many times I hurt him, he kept coming back and pretending he had a chance. Over and over again."

"Hurt him as in rejected him?" Toothless asked.

"Hurt him as in bruised and sprained whatever limb he tried to touch me with," she clarified. "I was going to start breaking things the moment dragon training was over." She would have done it sooner, if not for the inevitable accusations of foul-play that would come if she seriously hurt a competitor on the eve of their final test.

"Flightless courting sounds violent," Toothless murmured.

"No, but courting a Flightless who has made her complete distaste for you clear can be perilous," Astrid chuffed. "I would do the same to you… If you were pushy about it beyond all reason, and if I was not interested."

"I understand," Toothless said vehemently. "I will not do anything of the sort."

"I don't doubt it," she said with a low purr. "Don't worry about it. Worry about us hurting people who deserve it… together."

"That's a pretty good distraction," he admitted. "If we are going after my father… Give me a chance to talk to him first? He might have changed."

Astrid doubted that so thoroughly that she would be willing to shoot first and ask questions later… But he was Toothless' father, not hers, and it wasn't impossible. "I'm not promising anything, but I'll keep it in mind," she offered. "We have some time before he comes, unless you think he'll come investigating in the cold-season."

"There is absolutely no way he'll risk it," Toothless said confidently. "And if he is coming to look for my mother, he knows she could not leave during the cold-season anyway. Her flying was never the greatest…"

Astrid refused to let either of them go back to moping. "Then we have time to get you back into shape," she said brightly. "After not flying for so long, you must be out of practice."

"Not by much," Toothless huffed. "But I'm definitely going to see how long I can fly before I'm forced to land…"

Both because he wanted to know how out of shape he actually was, and because he didn't want to land. "Why don't you start by showing me how you fish," she suggested. "Mentor couldn't teach me how Bolts do it, so I've just been firing into the water."

"There's more to it than that," Toothless said. "You've got to account for the angle and shoot under them…"

Astrid listened fondly as Toothless explained how Bolts were meant to fish. They both angled down toward the water, him flying as if he'd never lost his tailfin, and her like she'd been born with wings.

She wasn't nearly as worried about her future now.

Author's Note: In case anyone is wondering, Toothless' tail is permanently that color scheme, in both scale and skin. Given Night Furies are built on the 'black with colored eyes' color scheme in this world, blue, brown, and silver scales from a Night Fury might very well be the rarest scales in existence.

Also, I think this wins the award for 'most predicted development' of any story I've ever written. Everybody called it, pretty much. I guess that's what I get for obviously foreshadowing an event that solves an otherwise depressingly unsolvable problem. Ah well, this wasn't meant to be some big twist. A big moment, yes, but not a twist.