Power Shifts:

Hiccup loved sailing.

They'd been skipping over the gentle waves prompted by a strong breeze for maybe five minutes and he already knew that sailing was going to be one of his favourite pastimes.

He stood as far forward on the longship as he could, climbing onto the rail of the boat and clinging to the neck of the dragon figurehead with an exultant laugh as the wind whipped through his hair and clothes. It almost felt like he was flying.

Theoretically, he should resent his father for denying him this amazing experience for so long, but Hiccup couldn't get past how happy he was lately to even dredge up any negative feelings.

The first hour of Hiccup's first trip off the island had been less thrilling but nearly just as fascinating.

Watching his father and fellow tribe members sit at the oars and fall into an easy rhythm of rowing to clear them of the harbor had brought a new appreciation of a Viking's ability to actually work together when properly inspired. He'd taken a turn at the oars and had lasted for about five minutes before the unfamiliar muscle workout had literally had said muscles screaming. Fortunately for his ego, Astrid hadn't done much better, since she'd only been off the island a few times in her entire life to visit her grandparents. Rowing was obviously something one had to practice at constantly. (And it explained why Vikings ended up with such huge muscles.)

They'd ended up on a fairly calm ocean that had suddenly looked even more endless than Hiccup had ever thought possible, despite looking at it for his entire life. It was both intimidating and awe inspiring, making him feel like a tiny flea upon a giant yak. The sails had been lowered, again with easy teamwork, but the lack of wind had prompted Stoick to encourage his people to keep rowing. (The idea of sitting idle on the ocean when there was business to be about abhorrent to him.)

But then the wind had finally picked up and the sails had filled with a snap, and just like that, their momentum increased to twice what rowing alone had achieved. The Vikings had cheered and put away the oars, happy to let the elements do the work.

Now Hiccup found himself grinning like a fool and closing his eyes to better imagine that he actually was soaring through the sky like a dragon. His blood was thrumming through his veins like never before. (Okay, maybe in a similar fashion to when he was kissing Astrid, but certainly not during any other normal activity.)

He felt like he could stay like this forever.

"Whatcha doin'?"

Hiccup turned his upper body around so fast at the sound of Astrid's voice that he almost slipped off the rail, catching himself just in time with a second hand on the dragon neck. He grinned down at the curious girl who had her hands on her hips and an eyebrow raised just so. "I'm flying, or pretending it anyway. You should try it; it's the best feeling ever."

Her pale eyebrow rose higher. "Oh, really?" Her tone clearly said she wasn't impressed.

Hiccup took a couple seconds to think about why that would be since she was usually even more adventurous than himself, and then he felt himself flush in mortification. "I mean, the best feeling that wasn't inspired by you, of course, M'lady. You win in The Ability To Wreck Havoc With My Senses category, hands down."

Astrid hummmmphed, mollified, and smirking, she said, "As it should be, Hiccup Haddock." Then she vaulted up onto the railing and rose easily onto her feet on the other side of the dragon figurehead. Her arms wrapped around the neck nearly over his, and he put one hand on her forearm so that it was almost like they were holding each other.

She leaned backwards to look at him. "Now what?"

"Now you just close your eyes and feel the wind."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

So she did.

It wasn't long before Astrid was laughing like a bell and holding out her far arm to catch even more wind, feeling it whip her bangs back and her skirt tight to her legs.

Thor, Hiccup was right. It does feel like I'm flying.

"This. Is. Amazing!"

"I know." He'd never been so pleased to show HER something new for a change.

She leaned back again to catch his eye, and then flicked hers upwards to the top of the enormous dragon head. "I bet this would be even better from up there."

"Uhhhh. But what if we fall?"

"We won't," she said confidently. "The top is flat and big enough for both of us, we can rest our feet in its mouth, and you can hang on to the horn on its nose, and I can hang on to you."

Well, when you put it like that… All of Hiccup's doubts about safety flew away on the wind and he nodded eagerly. "All right. Let's do it."

She pointed her chin upwards when he hadn't moved after a couple of seconds. "You first, genius."

"Oh. Right." You can do this. It's just like climbing a tree. And with that incredibly non-reassuring pep talk, Hiccup started climbing up the neck of the dragon. Fortunately, it was quite ornate and had lots of places to use as handholds. Only seconds later, he was all the way to the top with a foot in the tooth-filled mouth , hanging on tight as the ship slid down into a trough between waves. He sidled past the horns at the back of the head that Astrid would probably be able to rest back against if she wanted and then swung a leg over so he was sitting on the dragon's snout.

He'd never felt so daring in his entire life and he loved it.

A couple seconds later, Astrid slid in behind him and his breath caught as her arms wrapped around his waist from behind. Thank you, Thor.

"See, perfectly safe," the tiny warrior girl said in his ear.

Still clutching the horn in front of him tightly, Hiccup turned his head just enough so he could see her. "Sure." He faced forwards again and closed his eyes, losing himself to the wind again. Astrid was right; it is even better up here.

"Astrid."

"What?"

"Thank you."

She hugged him tighter, her chest and the skulls holding on her spiky shoulder guards pressed against his back (but he was choosing not to concentrate on the metal objects), and tucked her chin into his shoulder, nuzzling his jaw briefly with her nose. "You're welcome."

They spent a couple of minutes just feeling, hearts thumping with the excitement, when something quite astounding occurred to Hiccup.

"Astrid."

"Yeah?"

"Guess what."

"I have no idea what's going on in your mind, Hiccup, just tell me."

He chuckled. "I suppose we're equal on that point," he admitted. "But what I was going to say was… Guess what... We're riding a dragon."

She blinked a couple of times, eyes going wide, and then she threw her head back and laughed joyfully for a few seconds before resting her head back on his shoulder. "Oh, Thor, Hiccup. Only you would think that."

He shrugged in her arms. "Well, it's true."

She snorted. "In a fashion, I guess. It IS fun, though. I'll admit that. But technically, we're riding a boat."

He rolled his eyes over his shoulder at her as best as he could. "Dream crusher."

She smirked.

"But what if it was possible, to, you know, ride real dragons?" he asked all of a sudden. "Kind of like riding horses like people do elsewhere in the world."

Astrid thought about that for a whole half second. "Yeah, right. Now THAT is never going to happen. Dragons are vicious killers, Hiccup. They will never be tamable like a horse or a yak or even one of those hump backed things they ride in the deserts of Arabia."

"Camel."

"Right."

He sighed, eyes staring blankly at the horizon. "But what if…"

"No."

"But..."

"No. You'd have a better chance of catching that Night Fury than ever taming even the least deadly of the dragon breeds."

He huffed. "You are definitely a dream smasher."

"But you still love me."

"Always." He smiled over his shoulder at her, daring to take a hand off the horn and squeeze one of her hands. She squeezed back and the comfortable silence resumed for a while.

But his eyes were on the horizon again and a thought had gotten stuck in his mind that he wasn't sure he would ever be able to shake.

What if it WERE possible to tame a dragon? Our world would never be the same again.

Curled up against his beautiful almost-mate, Toothless yawned widely, basking in the fall sunshine that shone nearly directly down on his shimmering black scales. Feeling content and well rested after a long night of hunting and flying, he slowly blinked his eyes open. Their little oasis of tranquility at the far end of the island was as beautiful as ever, if not more so, with the few leafy trees changing colours to a rainbow of fire colours.

Over the course of the summer and fall, they had been gradually testing the boundaries of how far the Queen would let them go before she summoned them back with a mental burst of agony. It was never far enough to get anywhere near Toothless' home island or Luna's curious home under the ocean, but it did give them plenty of opportunities to explore more islands and meet (or sometimes avoid at all costs) more dragons. Some of the islands in the acceptable radius from the Queen's island contained humans, but not many, fortunately, and they were easy enough to sense, with their noisy and smelly ways, before they flew into danger.

There was one particularly rocky island, though, that they had found which they couldn't seem to fly onto. It was like there was some sort of instinct that screamed at them to stay away. So they heeded it. It was a human inhabited island anyway, so it didn't bother them to skip it in their explorations.

Lately, they'd taken to stealing fuzzy animals from other human settlements for the Queen's dinner, as opposed to their shared island with the intriguing young human couple. It was a strange thing, and they hadn't really discussed the change of hunting grounds, but the night that they flew over a herd of sheep belonging to a different tribe of humans and Luna thought, 'Let's take one of these sheep for the Queen tonight,' it had somehow just felt like the right thing to do to repeat that from then on.

Uncurling, Toothless rolled over onto his back and stretched out as he scratched against the sand by the lake, grunting quietly with pleasure. Coming to a stop after a minute of delightful wriggling, he panted up at the blue sky, focusing away from the bright sun on a lone cloud that determinedly defied the otherwise monotonous expanse of azure. Why do we avoid hunting here now, anyway? Nothing's changed except for our telepathic connections to the young humans.

Rolling back over, and sitting up on his haunches, he nudged the side of Luna's head with his nose, prompting a low growl of displeasure at being disturbed from her slumber.

He ignored the warning and nudged her again, mentally calling, "Luna. Wake up!" at the same time.

Growling slightly louder, she uncurled her head from under her wing and shot him a venomous look from her slitted eyes that essentially matched but usually outdid the blue of the sky above them. "What?"

Undeterred, Toothless smiled at her widely. "I was thinking."

"And you had to wake me up to tell me that?"

"Of course!"

"I was dreaming about home. My parents. My siblings."

Toothless' expression immediately sobered, and he slumped a little. "I'm sorry. I'll just leave you alone. You can go back to sleep and resume your dream."

"That's not how it works," she snapped. "Dreams don't just come back on command like that."

"I'm sorry. I won't wake you up for inconsequential things ever again."

Luna sighed quietly to herself as he started to slink off dejectedly, wingtips dragging in the sand. She sat up with a quick flutter of her wings to stretch them out. "Toothless."

He ignored her, depressed from having displeased her.

"Toothless." She added a touch of command to her tone.

He stopped, but didn't turn around. "What, Luna?"

"Come back."

He seriously thought about not doing so.

Usually, he didn't mind that she was the dominant one in their relationship, since she was slightly older, and it was generally wise to please the female if one wanted to have a long and lasting partnership. But he was suddenly feeling like their power balance was way too one-sided. Toothless drew himself up as big as he could, raising his wings above his back a bit to make a shield between them, turned, and studiously looked out over the lake. "Why should I? You can tell me whatever it is you want to say just as well when we're apart as when we're together."

Luna stared at the top of his ears in astonishment. (The only part of his head she could see.)

For the first time ever, he wasn't trying to be as close to her as possible. He wasn't immediately catering to her wishes. He was actually shutting her out in a fashion.

She didn't like it. But at the same time, she respected it.

From one moment to the next, Toothless had suddenly decided on a little independence.

Toothless is growing up.

Taking a deep breath to calm the little surge of excitement that thought sent through her, Luna tried again. "Come back, please. I like to look at your gorgeous eyes when you talk to me. I want to know what you were thinking about that had you so eager for me to hear about it as well."

Oh, he liked that. He liked that she thought his eyes were pretty. He liked that she was almost apologizing for snapping at him. But he still wasn't budging.

A need had been awoken in him with his defiance that he wasn't entirely conscious of, but he knew he liked being on the other side of the power play and he wanted to feel more of it.

Lowering his wings back to their normal resting place, Toothless turned his head and glanced back at her. "How about you come here? The lake is beautiful with the sun shining on it and the fish are dancing under the surface, making silver flashes. I would like it if you would sit with me and we can look at it together."

Luna couldn't fault his reasoning and found herself walking to him. "All right." A few more steps and she settled on her haunches beside the suddenly way more intriguing Night Fury.

He looked at her with pleased eyes and settled a wing over her, encouraging her to lean her head on his shoulder.

She purred in contentment and relaxed into him, looking out at the lake that was just as beautiful as he'd described. She hadn't noticed until that moment, but he was now somewhat bigger than her and that caught the attention of her hormones as well. "This is nice."

A deep rumbling purr echoed from his chest in harmony with hers. "Yes, it is."

In that moment, their dynamic forever changed and a true partnership was formed.

And the black ended up ever so slightly more dominant than the white, as it should be, considering Toothless was an Alpha, but just didn't know it yet.

"What were you going to tell me earlier?" Luna asked suddenly after a few minutes of soul-soothing silence.

Toothless looked at her, startled. He'd actually completely forgotten his earlier train of thought and it took him a moment to dredge it back to the front of his mind. "Oh… Um, I had been thinking about how our hunting patterns have changed since we started eavesdropping on the little humans. I'm sure it's been many nights since we took an animal from this island; have you noticed?"

Luna tilted her head slightly as she thought about that. "You're right. We haven't. Why not?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Clearly it has something to do with our telepathic connections to Hiccup and Astrid."

"Clearly. What if… What if by connecting to them, for some reason, we are becoming more sympathetic to the village as a whole? What if our instincts are starting to think of them like our family?"

"Which would make taking their animals feel almost like we are stealing animals from our own family?"

"Exactly."

Toothless stared at his almost-mate in something resembling shock. "That's just weird."

She grinned back. "I know, right?"

He started to chuckle, which soon morphed into deep belly laughs. "By the Great Dragon, that's the most ridiculous thing ever!"

Luna joined him, her laughter sweeter and softer, but no less amused. "Can you imagine? Dragons and humans merging into a cooperative family unit?"

He laughed even harder. "Never going to happen. Humans are too stupid to ever get past their preconceived notions about us."

Luna snorted elegantly. "Maybe not stupid exactly, Astrid is smart enough, I suppose. But definitely too stubborn to change a deep-set point of view."

"I suppose that's more accurate. Hiccup is quite intelligent, I believe," Toothless said almost proudly. "He likes to draw… like me. And he makes clever things."

"Well, Astrid likes to defend her own, like a proper dragoness," Luna stated just as proudly, not to be outdone.

"My human's learning to fight," he said defensively, somehow feeling like Hiccup had been insulted.

"I didn't say your human wasn't fierce enough, but since you started it…" she said, flicking her tail against him, her eyes glinting teasingly.

He growled playfully, crouching down and swishing his tail in warning. "Oh, now you're just asking for it."

She backed up with a comic widening of the eyes. "Oh, no! The great Toothless Night Fury is going to pounce on me. Whatever shall I do?"

Toothless chortled and growled at the same time, his entire backend now wriggling in preparation for the aforementioned pounce. "You could attempt to run," he supplied helpfully.

Giggling, she backed up faster, deliberately aiming for further down the beach were the lake had an abrupt drop off against the rock wall. "Oooooo, I'm so scared."

And with that, he leapt at her.

But she was ready for it and deftly dodged and then spun. In the next bound, she was leaping into the deep water of the lake, diving effortlessly underneath, wings tucked tight to her lithe body.

Toothless recovered from his miss and bounded after her, plunging into the water and swimming after the streak of white that was arrowing through the water. "No fair! You know I can't beat you in the water!"

She merely laughed in his mind and then swept around in a circle, now aiming straight for him.

Eyes widening in alarm, he started swimming as fast as he could back for the shore.

He didn't make it.

Luna crashed into him from above, sending them tumbling though the water in peals of mental laughter. He kept up his determined direction towards the beach whenever he could, but she kept leaping on him from above and pushing him back underwater. "You're not getting away from me that easy."

With one last determined lunge, he did just that, finally making it back to the sand. "Ha! And you said I wouldn't…" He gulped as she flew right of the water and crashed into him again.

They rolled end over end on the beach for a bit until coming to a stop all the way up on the grass.

Toothless grinned, panting happily with his tongue half hanging out the side, as he found himself on top. "I win."

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Hardly. I clearly won, my deluded dearheart."

"Whatever you say, my love." He nuzzled his nose against hers teasingly before rolling off her body and lying on his back beside her.

They spent a few moments in quiet contentment, just catching their breaths.

Eventually, she rolled over and rested her head on chest, looking up at him. "Hey. Do you think, going back to what we were talking about before, that we should continue to hunt elsewhere for the Queen?"

Toothless looked down his nose at her, sighing quietly. "I don't know. It seems weird, to be considerate of a human village, but I AM feeling rather sympathetic towards them right now."

"So am I," she admitted.

"I guess it's not too much trouble to get fuzzy animals elsewhere. An extra hour of flying, maybe. And it's not like we have anything else important to do."

"True. But what about the other dragons that hunt here? Do we let them continue doing so?"

"What other option do we have? I'm not going to start fighting my own kind just for the sake of some weird sense of affinity towards a human boy. And even if I felt like it, we'd be staggeringly outnumbered."

Luna sighed softly and closed her eyes. "No. You're right. We let the other dragons hunt as usual. It's probably also best if we never mention what exactly we're doing with our little humans, too."

"I had no intentions of doing so. They probably wouldn't understand."

She slitted an eye open for a second, seeing him still looking down at her with soft eyes despite their serious conversation. His adoration made her feel all warm and bubbly, as it always had. Purring in her chest, she snuggled into his side a little more and draped a wing over his torso. "No, they definitely would not," she said sleepily as she fell back into a light doze.

The young Night Fury wrapped his free wing around her in return, eyes slitting nearly closed as he watched her nap. Despite the fact that he'd lost his family and was subservient to a tyrannical Queen, Toothless felt like the luckiest young dragon in the world to have won the heart of such a beautiful and unique (to him at least) dragoness.

After a few minutes, his eyes slid all the way closed, but instead of falling asleep like Luna, Toothless went mentally searching for the young mind that he found such amusement in listening to, since the boy spent much of his time thinking about the golden Astrid, and Toothless could usually relate to most of his thoughts.

It took maybe a couple seconds longer than normal to make the connection, but once he was in the boy's mind, Toothless immediately saw through Hiccup's eyes and heard his thoughts.

Thor, this is brilliant! I want to go sailing every day! "Astrid! We have got to talk the parents into letting us go on at least some of the fishing trips!"

The boy's ears were filled with soft laughter, and a sense of slender arms wrapped around his waist brought satisfaction to Hiccup. "Whatever you say, babe," the girl said with clear amusement.

Toothless then saw Astrid's smiling face as Hiccup beamed at her, and then he saw the ocean passing beneath Hiccup in a speeding and bouncing blur, something he was quite used to seeing on his own, but never from the human's eyes. It was rather disconcerting.

And alarming, as Toothless figured out what exactly was happening.

Pulling away from Hiccup's mind for the moment, Toothless delved into Luna's, body now vibrating with a strange sense of anxiety. "Luna! Wake up!"

The dragoness grumbled, slitting her eyes open. Not again. Didn't we just have this discussion? "What is it this time?"

Toothless rolled out from under her, too energized to lie down any longer.

Luna gasped as her pillow suddenly left and she flopped indignantly forwards.

Toothless barely noticed. He started pacing around the sputtering Light Fury. "Hiccup and Astrid have left the island! They're on one of those dragon boat things!"

That got her attention in a hurry and she sat up onto her haunches, eyes wide. "They did what?!"

Stoick climbed up from the hold, still smiling from the memory of Hiccup turning redder than a tomato when Hector had noticed dried pine needles stuck in his son's hair. They'd all been rowing at the time, Hiccup making a valiant if rather pathetic attempt on the long oar that probably outweighed him, Stoick on the oar in front, and Hector on the oar behind.

"Eh, Hiccup. You know your hair's full of needles, right?" Hector said, curiosity rampantly apparent in his tone.

Stoick turned around on his bench a bit, keeping up the natural rhythm of the oars along with the fifteen other rowers, sending his personal ship shooting forward with each of their powerful (mostly) digs into the water. He raised a brow in curiosity. His son immediately flushed and started stuttering in the most telling fashion as a hand came up to feel the back of his head, which made the spinning oar almost smack him in the face before he managed to catch it again. "I… I…Um…Fell. In the forest."

Hector hadn't bought it, if his skeptical expression was anything to go by. "You fell."

Hiccup nodded almost frantically, eyes refusing to meet Stoick's now laughing ones. "Yeah. Tripped on a root."

"Which made you fall backwards?" Hector still wasn't buying it.

The other rowers near them were now tittering with suppressed mirth. Including Astrid, who was on the oar opposite of Hiccup. (And doing a better job of it, despite her slight stature.)

"Yes. It was a slippery root."

"Un hunh."

Stoick and Hector locked eyes for a moment before they both looked over at Astrid, who was silently cracking up. "Methinks the 'root' was a female one," Stoick said, laughing hard enough to make his vast shoulders shake. He wondered if the 'trip' was a fighting maneuver or something else entirely. Glancing back at Hiccup again, Stoick decided on the latter; that kind of mortified blush could not belong to anything less than a full on make out session on the ground, with the girl on top, apparently. Stoick decided it was probably a good thing Hector couldn't see Hiccup's face right now, or his son might be soaring over the rail and into the sea to take an assisted 'swim'.

He was grateful he had a son and not a daughter. As a protective father, one's outlook on such things was vastly different for the two genders.

The first thing Stoick saw when he walked on deck was Hector wearing his 'that boy is much too close to my daughter' glower again. And then came the peal of delighted laughter, which drew Stoick's eyes to follow Hector's gaze towards the prow of the ship.

Hiccup! Thor, what is he doing? How did he even get up there? He nearly had a heart attack when he saw Hiccup and Astrid seated on top of the dragon figurehead. They were being splashed by the seawater as the ship cut through the waves and Hiccup's arms were thrown wide as Astrid clung to his waist.

Stoick caught his breath and drew in a giant lungful of air to yell at Hiccup to get his scrawny arse down before he fell into the ocean and got himself eaten by a passing Scauldron. "Hic…"

His words were cut off by a hard punch to the arm.

Stoick turned his head and glared at the culprit.

"Leave him be," Alga said firmly, not afraid of his glare in the slightest.

"But he's going to get himself killed!"

"You have to let him take risks sometime, Stoick. You have to let him grow up and be his own man. You can't protect him forever."

"But…" he got out, gesturing rather frantically at the precarious situation at the front of the ship.

"No. Can't you see that he's perfectly fine and having the time of his life?"

Stoick reluctantly looked at the situation with new eyes and saw that Astrid's mother was right. And the woman clearly wasn't worried about her daughter, who was in the same position atop a wet, wooden dragon head. Hiccup and Astrid were still laughing, and pretending they were flying, if he had to guess.

A slow, if small, smile crossed his face. That actually looks kind of fun, he had to admit, and it made him wonder why no one else had ever tried it as far as he knew. "I suppose we can leave them there for now. But if the waves get any higher, they'll have to come down."

Alga smiled at him approvingly, which sent a rare feeling of warmth through his chest. "That's fine. And I agree." She patted him on the arm. "It's nice to see you acting with a little sense these days, Stoick. Valka would be proud."

Thor, why did she have to mention Valka? Stoick smiled tightly and walked away, closer to the prow, dodging bodies and crisscrossing ropes, before he said something he'd regret, even though he knew she was right.

Stoick sat on a bench as close to his delighted son as he could get, just in case, and watched him have actual fun like a kid should for the first time in years. Hiccup had been apprenticing with Gobber since he was six years old, which left little time for playing. All of the children of Berk were expected to help out and do their share of the chores, but not all day, every day. In fact, except for playing with Astrid in the evenings, Stoick couldn't remember ever seeing Hiccup run around the village with a flock of other children, laughing and just being silly.

Hiccup had always been different; smarter, more efficiency oriented, unfazed by being alone, but he should have had more friends than just Astrid. He should have been just as carefree as the rest of them.

But he wasn't. Hiccup was more like a tiny little adult than many of the actual adults.

It only drove home how bad of a father he had been without even realizing it.

Valka would have known how to encourage him to play more and study or work less. Valka would have noticed that the tribe as a whole thought little of him. Valka would have taken him sailing years ago and not been so stupidly overprotective of him that he didn't get to experience all that life had to offer.

Valka loved to sail too.

She was so beautiful, standing in the prow, the wind whipping her long hair back like a banner, as she soaked in everything the sea had to give her.

Just like he's… doing now.

Oh Thor, they're so alike, it hurts. Thor, it hurts.

Stoick cast his misty eyes skyward, swallowing back the lump in his throat. My darling, I hope you can see him from up there in Valhalla. He's so much more your son than mine. I'm sorry I messed up the first part of his life, but I swear I'm trying harder now.

I miss you, Valka. I'll always miss you until we're reunited again.

The supposedly undefeatable Chief of Vikings muffled a sniff in his sleeve and then turned his focus back down to Hiccup, who was riding a wooden dragon as it bounced over the sea. The wisp of a boy turned his head as if sensing his gaze and saw his father sitting just behind and below him. A flash of alarm passed across his features until he realized that Stoick wasn't going to yell at him for doing something dangerous, nearly making Stoick flinch at how wrong that was. Then, as Stoick smiled up at him reassuringly, Hiccup returned his smile, which grew and grew until it nearly went from ear to ear and the boy's green eyes sparkled like gems.

"Look, Dad, I'm flying!" he called, throwing his arms wide again, his hair whipping back and merging with Astrid's blonde locks. (Her braid had come out in the wind.) Her smile was nearly as wide as Hiccup's from where her chin was perched on his narrow shoulder as she let go of his waist to put her arms out too, interlocking their fingers in the most heartbreakingly beautiful sight Stoick had ever seen. They were flying together, as they always had, above and beyond the rest of the world.

Stoick knew in that moment that together they would somehow accomplish things greater than any Viking had ever dreamed of.

"Yes, Son. Yes, you are."

Stoick finally felt like he was doing something right.