Author's Note:

Aight, so this is the first chapter of a new story, the sequel to my previous work Stranded, as you may know. I think it'd be just as well served (in some ways) if I folded this into the already existing Stranded, but I'm not going to for a couple of reasons.

Stranded already has an identity in the community which is markedly different from this one. It's a survival story and more action and prose-focused than character focused.

I also want to make it so you don't have to read through 150 thousand words just to get to the new stuff.

However, I do recommend reading through Stranded if you haven't, which you can find on my profile, or checking out the reviews there if you want to get up to speed quick. If you want to be surprised, however, read on.

I don't know what I think of the present-tense format… However, with all this blathering out of the way, I present to you the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the beginning. It's all very confusing to me.

P.S.

Ideas for the title are very much appreciated! I can't think of anything good right now, which is a shame.

Finally, finally (after six weeks of procrastination) posted on June 7th, 2020.

And, of course, the review box is right down below.

"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790.

He hadn't asked to be a peon. He certainly hadn't asked to be born into bondage to a tyrannical dragon who manipulated him more by the day. All he asked was the life of his mother, his freedom, and his sanity. Was that so much to want?

"She yet lives," said the Queen. Her voice bellowed in the glowing cavern, echoed and washed over his ears. The Night Fury grit his teeth and shook his head.

"But how do I know!"

"Everything I have given you, the time I have invested in you, the pedestal you stand upon which makes you great, that is mine. Don't doubt me."

She leaned forward, and teeth the length of his tail suddenly hovered a head-length away from his face. The threat was self-evident.

There had been a Nadder once, a mother of dragonets who fed her children first and the Queen second, and now the Nadder was gone.

A terror surged forward, flourishing the even, mirrorlike scale in his teeth. The Night Fury picked it up, took in the scent; strong of his mother, and recent. The sulfurous odor of the pit had yet to sour the leaf, and scent could not be imitated, could it? Always the doubts floated in his mind, and always he dispelled them with a slight nod of his head.

He bowed, and his mouth moved and said one thing and his thoughts said another.

"I was wrong to doubt you, my Queen."

Dragons who pushed the limits had a habit of getting in unfortunate accidents, disappearing one day and never coming back. There was something he'd noticed: people who just started doing something different, going where they hadn't gone before, even if it was allowed, perfectly legal, they disappeared too.

The rumbling words of the tyrant came to him as if spoken through a mist.

"You will fly east, a flight of Nadders accompanying you. There are dissidents and malcontents in the far reaches of the world who refuse to acknowledge my reign. Bring them into the fold. If you succeed, I will look upon you as more than a toothless lizard."

"Immediately."

So the waves hove and the breakers crashed beneath him. The east-bound wind skimmed from the whitecaps and was deflected upwards, bearing him on the cool draft. He beat his wings, and they crackled like men's sails from the rime of salt building at their tips.

At his side flew six Nadders, the only dragons both quick and hardy enough to keep up with him on a long journey. He could fly away if he wanted to, leave and never come back. Any attempt at capturing him would be an exercise in futility. Always, though, the safety of his dam held him in check.

The albatross and sea swallows bobbed on the surface of the ocean, free to go wherever they wished, and mussels clung to the rocks of a high-cliffed island shaped rather like a sword.

He landed there, took in the scent of the beach and the forest. The odor of human clung here, but it was old. More interesting was the musty smell of dragon, and the blue scale lying under a coat of ash from a manmade fireplace. He scraped away the soot with his talon, and held the opulent chitin to the light. In this moist and dark place it would soon rot, but still it captured the beautiful pallor of the dragon from which it had come.

If he had a pouch – but he was not the sort of dragon who was deft with his talons, nor was he the kind to be sentimental about such things. He filed away the scent, in case he ever met the dragon who'd shed it, flicked the scale away and took off, circling the island, checking for caves in the cliffs where dissidents could hide. There were none, or if there were they were so well concealed that it was not worth his time after this six hour search.

While the diurnal soldiers settled down to sleep away the long dark, the night fury stirred restlessly. He was nocturnal: this was his element, and the stars in the east beckoned him while those in the west seemed lackluster and dim.

He didn't know what to believe, or even what he wanted to believe: he was stuck in an eternal state of indecision between his head and his heart-strings. Why should he serve the tyrant who had called him a toothless lizard? He was complicit, no, worse than complicit in bringing new dragons into oppression, and that was not right, yet at the same time he wanted to do right by the one who had laid him.

If she was alive.

His moral compass spun this way and that, and by the crack of dawn he decided he could do both, though his inbuilt convictions told him he would eventually slip in service to one or the other.

It took another three days to reach Ireland, days of nothing-doing. He fidgeted in flight, ate sparingly at mealtimes, though he was famished. He was wasting away.

The seven dragons rounded up a cavalcade of gregarious Gronckles by the green coast, and gave them a good scaring. He was a dragon they had never seen before, and it frightened them. They were like sheep before the shepherd: though they numbered a dozen and himself one, they would not attack and throw off their newly forged shackles.

"Two of you, take the subjects back to the nest," he said. His throat was raw, unused, and it croaked.

The two Nadders looked askance at him, turned, and departed. That left four to one odds if he decided to kill the others if he defected. If. The word implied uncertainty. The Tyrant had an unyielding grip on his throat, and She was confident he would not leave her. Every mission she entrusted him with told him that.

His sharp eyes spotted movement in the distance: two, maybe three dragons hiding in a stand of cedar about five hundred wing-lengths away. Their scales shone in the sunlight and cast a telltale glint, one the four guys with him would pick up in an instant if he didn't do something about it. Here was his chance to act on his convictions of right and wrong, for what the Tyrant didn't know couldn't hurt her.

He pointed his wingtip in the other direction, at a faraway pond to the north where an elk grazed. Again his voice crackled.

"Something in the brush there," he said. "Go check it out."

Three started off; the fourth stayed with him.

"Go on. I'll be back."

And he would, and that was infuriating. The fourth Nadder left, too, and he waited for a minute, then turned and hurried south without looking like he was hurrying. The three dragons in the trees – he was sure of that now – flew out of the copse and revealed themselves. Where the Gronckles had despair in their drooping eyes, these dragons' were hard as flint.

They were Nadders, all of them, perhaps friends. The yellow-blue male of the group stuck close to the blue dragoness, while the yellow and green dragoness paced warily off to the side, measuring her chances.

He knew the blue dragoness's scent.

"I'm not here to hurt you," he said.

Their raised wings and upright spines said they didn't trust him. They had good reason for that distrust.

"Here to round us up, more like, and take us back," said the green.

Back. They had a history with the nest, or some other place like it.

He swore he heard a dragonet's chirping. He looked to the trees. There. A hatchling. More than one.

Fire glowed at the mouth of the male, and in turn he loosed a minuscule jet of purple flame.

"Da!"

A tiny hatchling fluttered fiercely from the trees and plopped down next to the father, wings outstretched. It was so unexpected that the night fury smiled, while the green flew over and scooped up the little dragonet in her teeth.

"But auntie, I wanna fight!"

"I have friends," said he, ignoring the dragonet's escapade. "I sent them on a false trail, but they'll be back, and soon. I would roll around in some dirt if I were you."

"You still work for Her," said the blue, the mother of the dragonet.

"I have my reasons," he said. "What's your name?"

The dragoness narrowed her eyes but gave it anyway. "Ocean."

He gave a wry, thoughtful look. "They call me a toothless lizard. Toothless."

Then he looked north and saw the soldiers rising from the pond, probably convinced the hunt was a wild goose chase. "I have to go."

A rabbit flushed in front of him and he killed it, smeared his face with the blood so the others would smell that on him and not the polished-scale scent of the Nadders. Scarcely had he approached them than his heart sank.

"Good call, boss," said the lead. "We caught one."

The horn blows in Berk at the speck on the horizon, the white concealed by the blue haze rising above the sea on that lukewarm clear spring afternoon, the water glittering at the surface, translucent beneath the clear waves beneath which rise the sheer rocks of Berk's foundation. The sea looks nothing so much as a rippling blue gel, tangible in the hand, yet draining through the cracks as quickly as morning fog evaporates beneath the dispelling rays of the sun.

The ship grows larger, heels its sail and rows into the docks, bobbing gracefully while the Vikings at the oars sing a song of gratitude and cheer. Then the ropes are thrown and secured and tied, and the men of the Dragon's Bane are home.

Hiccup is silent as the sailors step down the gangway and onto the wharf, he is silent when the people of the village flood the pier at the sight of their brethren, safe and sound and alive after their voyage to a far-off place many of them have never been. He is the last to set foot on the quay, him and Astrid. They blink their eyes and rub them, and blink owlishly again; they are standing in a place they only imagined they'd see in their dreams.

He is taller than he was last year, wiry as ever, and yet the indelible mark of muscle swells his arms and a smattering of hair sprouts from his chin, so fine it appears as a smudge of dirt. His father stands proud behind him, proud of him for the first time since he was born, chest puffed with happiness.

Stoick is the only family Hiccup has.

The Hoffersons appear at the front of the crowd, a clan of them, many of whom he does not recognize. They surround Astrid and bombard her.

"We thought you were dead!"

"It's you?"

"You weren't hurt?"

"Did he touch you?"

"What it must've been like I can't imagine -"

"Good to see you back sis."

That last comes from a boy almost a man, trying to be stern yet wiping his face with his shirt-cuff, his eyes glistening all the same. His hair is golden; his irises are blue, cutting the air like blades from behind a wide, raw nose bridge eaten away by the icy flecks of winter and restored by the healing properties of spring, and he wears a brown vest with a red stripe.

This is Torenn. This is Astrid's older brother.

He clasps Hiccup's shoulder in one fluid motion, and his grip is strong, practiced in its strength and steady, even pressure. They are eye-to-eye, Hiccup and he.

"You don't lay a hand on my sister."

"I won't," says Hiccup, "and I haven't."

"That's your word?"

He shakes Hiccup gently, yet both know he means business.

"My word and truth."

"Better be," says Torenn, looking over the younger boy. "You're the chief's son, but don't expect that to protect you. I think you're alright so far, and you'll stay alright, but - around here are people who mean worse than I."

Torenn leaves Hiccup with those words and jams in with the rest of his clan, and Hiccup is alone for a few seconds before Snotlout comes along, older in body and greater in stature, yet no more mature in spirit than he was so many months ago.

Snotlout Jorgenson is a bully, and perhaps he and his clan are what Torenn meant by those words.

"Hello, cousin," says Snotlout, trying to be stern, and holds out his hand. "It's uh, good to see you again."

He's lying and he knows it, and Hiccup knows it, and everyone who is watching them knows it.

"You too," says Hiccup, as if the torment Snotlout has inflicted on his younger relative never happened, can be forgotten like so many other specks of inconvenient history. He takes Snotlout's hand and he shakes with a firm grip, and Snotlout seems on the verge of crushing Hiccup's fingers, only he doesn't, because he can't. His skin drains white and his teeth grit and he pumps up and down with an exaggerated motion, but Hiccup is in control from the first moment, saying 'I could beat you, but I won't', where Snotlout would say 'I can beat you, so I am.'

But Snotlout isn't in control, cannot beat Hiccup, for mayhap the first time in his life, and that makes him quail inside because he is a coward at heart and cowards flee from people that are as strong as they are, people that they cannot bully into the ground.

They keep shaking hands for a moment, and Snotlout's teeth are grinding and Hiccup's look like they're trying their best not to be grinding, and the blood is forced out of their limbs from the pressure they keep up – when the sky falls, when Niflheim melts, when yaks soar – that is when Snotlout will let go, if only because he wants to prove that Hiccup is still the weaker.

"Move out of tha' way," says Gobber, separating the two. "More people than you want to see the lucky boy, Snotlout."

And neither wins, but that does not mean Snotlout has not lost, because all Hiccup had to do to win was not lose.

They took him to the Great Hall, a gothic structure embedded in the rock as if carved and built by giants, unlit braziers and nordic statues as imposing as when he'd left here, and he and Astrid step inside and she is welcome and he is invisible, though he stands in the middle of the floor instead of standing in the corner like he used to. The crowd flows around him as if he is a pebble in a stream, and when each brushes past they acknowledge him, shake his hand and move on. It is not that they do not wish to pay attention to him – he is the boy of the hour – but as if Astrid must be met first, and himself afterwards, except by the time they were supposed to get to that they're tipsy and not in the mood to remember things.

Tuffnut pulls him over. "How'd you do it? How'd you make it on that cold winter when you should've died of frostbite?"

And Hiccup shrugs. The face before him bobs and fades in and out of focus. It's been so long since he's talked to anyone other than Astrid. "I had luck, a knife, and myself."
He had Astrid at first, and then he had the dragons – but both of them know better than to say anything about that.

"Tell me something!" says Tuffnut. "Wolves, dragons, killer weather?"

"There were wolves," says Hiccup. If he says one thing to account for how the dragon saved them and Astrid says another, someone might notice. He plays his cards close to his chest.

"Did you fight them?"

For the first time Hiccup notices that Tuffnut is speaking to him less as an inferior and more as an equal.

"There were wolves," he says again. "Uh, how did things go here?"

And his voice lacks that insecure stutter.

"I didn't miss you, but Ruffnut did, and Fishlegs, and the whole rest of the gang," says Tuffnut. "I wasn't soft enough to miss you."

And Hiccup misses the boasting in the words, misses another sentence before he tunes in again.

" - neat little project they had, glad to be a part of it. Stoick disavowed you as heir, you know. We all invited ourselves up to his house trying to see who'd be heir after you was gone and he said you weren't ready, which I was not completely in agreement with, since you look plenty able to me, better than you were last year anyhow – what was it, charisma – you hadn't any and I don't know if you have any now, but you have more than you did – are you listening to me?"

Hiccup wets his lips, tries to speak, clears his throat and tries again.

"That's news."

"I bet Stoick would like to appoint you, but I don't know if he has the clout. Torenn's up to be chief, and Snot."

"My cousin?"

"Course he's your cousin you big ninny, did you think he was your grandma? Well Snot's in the run, and Torenn, and if he made you the heir apparent the Hoffersons and Jorgensons would throw up a big fuss and that would divide the whole village. It's got to be fair."

So there is a chance he will not be chief. Weirdly, Hiccup is okay with that. The chieftainship has always been his birthright – and so has a terrible childhood. Then he looks at his father, sees the paternal pride glowing through the cracks in the facade and knows that pride will diminish if he does not become chief now that he is fit. The future if he stays his course is difficult, yet knowable; the days ahead if he breaks with tradition are chaotic.

Tuffnut wanders off and the celebration roars on, rowdy and nearing raucous, and Hiccup sits on a wooden bench and tries to ignore the buzzing conversation saturating the air. It bothers him less because he is afraid to talk to people and reveal his inadequacies and more because it's been too long since he's been in the thick of such noise, too long since he'd seen the way people would scoot up nearby and look-without-looking. He is an object of interest for the first time in years, and a surge of anger wells from his chest. Why don't they bother someone else!?

He rests his chin on his hand and imagines the sky pushing him from his seat, and the wind ruffling his hair, and then the flapping dissipates and is replaced by idle chatter.

A few days more and his grace period will end, and he must choose whether he wants to be chief. He tries to find a second with Astrid. She would have a word to say about it, and a simple solution to his overthinking. The Hoffersons look askance at him as he threads his way through their ranks, bumping shoulders.

She is biting her lip, uncomfortable from the chaos. A tall man blocks the way, broad in stature, his features commensurate with Astrid's, if Astrid had a much older brother with a narrower, longer nose and squarer jaw and thin scurf of dirt on his chin from where he'd leaned on a fence.

He measures Hiccup with his expression only, then offers his hand. An awkward moment passes until Hiccup remembers his manners and shakes, his wiry hand enveloped in calluses, all while he plows the memories of their conversations on Sword Island when they'd had nothing better to do, raking them for a name.

"Linde, right?" he asks, and the man smiles.

"Haldric, Astrid's father," says Haldric in a perfectly pleasant voice, discordant with the way his eyes bored into Hiccup and the force he put into his grip.

"Ah," says Hiccup. "I've seen you around before."

"Talking with your father most like. He is an honorable man, and on that I vouch for your virtue. Do right by my daughter."

He steps aside and allows Hiccup to pass, cold gaze drilling holes in Hiccup's back until it flicks away and becomes contemplative. Astrid is there, and they smile wistfully at each other. For a moment Hiccup forgets for what he has come, and when he remembers the words stop at his lips. Here they are watched every moment they are in the same room, much less close to each other, and the sidelong eyes and eavesdropping ears make him wary.

"What do you take yourself to be, a blackguard?" asks Astrid at his silence.

Snotlout is there in the corner of his eye, raven hair and barrel features reminding Hiccup of an unsuccessful knave. The boy grins, as if expecting Hiccup to stammer, and that puts heat in his veins.

"I forgot what I was going to say."

"Out with it then," says Astrid. "You're worried about something."

"I was wondering – should I – arg. I'm not heir anymore and I'm asking you if I should try to be."

This is news to her. Then her eyes set.

"Stoick disavowed you?"

"Yes."

"But you still want to do what he wants you to do."

"Maybe?"

"You and your father need to have a long talk. He's got an eyepatch when it comes to his faults," says Astrid. "Whose expectations will you follow?"

"Torenn would be chief, if I or Snotlout would not," says Hiccup, dodging the heavy dialogue he'd come for, and Astrid's face gets a funny look.

"Who put him up to that?"

"Your clan, had to be. Perhaps your father. There's an empty place in the power of this island and they're rushing to fill it, all of them," said Hiccup.

Does Haldric intend to live through his progeny? Or does he merely intend a good future for his children? There is a considerable difference between the first and last possibilities, and which it is he must soon discern, if only to gain the measure of the man who so easily weighed him.

As for the rest… the Jorgensons are the next closest competitors, and have the advantage of linkage to Hiccup by blood. Theirs is the most virile constitution, and from them comes the greatest threat of a duel. The Ingermans will probably not compete, but they have a hunger for power alright: their facade of timidity hides the fact that every chief needs a right-hand Viking, and the Ingermans intend to supply him. The Thorstons are too small of a clan to make much difference, questing for a solid family line since dragons collapsed their clan hall and wiped out more than half their numbers. It will be a while before they graduate to the big time, if ever.

This and more is what his father has taught him when he was teaching Hiccup to be chief. How much has changed in the months since he was gone and how much has stayed the same is what he needs to know, if he's serious about this.

"I'll do it," he says.

Astrid gives him a deep glance with brows knit over blue eyes. "How much of that is you, and how much is your father?"

"I've always wanted to live up to at least some of his expectations, and now I have a chance. Why not strive?"

"He can't make all your decisions for you. You're the only one who knows where you're at, and you have to choose your path."

She sighs.

"And because of that the only advice I can give you is vague."

She makes a sign with her hand behind her back, a kind of pointing to herself with her pinkie and then holding that up and her ring finger. It's puzzling, and he turns it about in his mind trying to comprehend it.

"Alright young man. You've had time enough," says Haldric, hand firmly on Hiccup's back.

It steers him away from Astrid and she is lost to the crowd. He sits on a bench and produces the signal, again and again, knowing she is communicating something she would rather leave unsaid.

"Sorry to interrupt," says a boy next to him, a boy with a stature Hiccup heretofore marked as 'man'. "Is that charades?"

"Hello, hmm, Fishlegs?"

It takes a moment for him to realize who it is. He's been away too long, and easily judged features take ages to register, though the boy at his side has changed less than the others; he is broad, and yet he is the initiator of the conversation here. Nervousness yet clings to Fishlegs like it clings to a rabbit sitting in the open, relying on its inconspicuous nature to remain unseen, but it is less pronounced.

"Oh, I would – yes," says Hiccup, making again the sign.

Confidence coaching?

"What?" asks Fishlegs.

"It is a sort of charades," says Hiccup.

"You're pointing to yourself, and then pinkie and ring. Your shirt, uh, no, why would I ever think that, ummm. You're making a two."

"Me too," says Hiccup, smiling.

He thinks back to the moment she did it, remembered the conversation and the context. So Astrid wants his advice.

"You what?"

"I felt like it," he says, eyes still lit.

Fishlegs grins.

"Spending time on a deserted island means getting good at charades. I'll remember that if I ever lose to Ruffnut."

"You wouldn't," says Hiccup.

"She's smarter than you know," says Fishlegs. "Especially with light cider in her. I wrote down the effects."

"We could play a game."

"Alright, here's mine…"

They while away the time for a few minutes and a minute more, though Hiccup's heart is distracted by other things. What's she thinking in that head of hers, and what does she need help for? Torenn? Her father?

What they said to each other there, it still applied. She would remember; she had been through too much with him to forget. The adults between them trod on their love, and while they were around it was all it could do to show itself in hints and phrases.

She trusts him.

"Hiccup, I think I got it," says Fishlegs. "You were staring right through Haldric there. Nadder?"

"Yeah," says Hiccup. "I'm done."

He gets up, waves goodbye and slips through the gap in the door of the great hall. The dagger, the dagger that got them through the whole winter at Sword Island, is crooked from where it was stomped by Stormfly. Astrid did a bang-up job fixing it, but there was only so much she could do without the proper tools.

The smithy.

He treads the multifarious steps and sets off into the village. It takes him a while to find Gobber's place, longer than it should, and when he finds it the differences are undeniable. He should know: he lived here a fifth of his life. The pedal-grinder is set aside in the corner, the insides stored in a cubby; a rude imitation replaces it in the center of the shop, Gobber unable to replace it. His old inventions, though, those are undisturbed, hidden away behind a wooden wall. His desk is there, covered in parchment hastily scrawled in his fifteen year-old hand, drawings of dragons, single-edged daggers that fold into knives so small they could fit in his pocket.

Then there is the invention into which he poured his life and soul. The Mangler lay with a thin coating of dust on its wooden stock, charcoal measurements stitching the wood at regular intervals. He would have used it, too: last summer the Night Fury called, and he had had a perfect shot.

The spring broke. Of all the stupid times for it to tear its mounting. Then he'd had to run from a Nightmare and… what a disaster. It was as if fate had wished him not to take that shot. Would he have hit his mark? What would have happened afterward?

That, he could never know.

A heavy clomp breaks his thought current, the boots of a man trying to be discreet giving him away in a most indiscreet manner. It lacks the characteristic limp of Gobber, and it is too heavy to be anyone other than the Viking he thinks it is, unless someone's put on weight during the six months he was gone.

"Hi Dad," he says. The forge fire still casts enough light to see by, and the shadow it casts is large enough for only one man to fill.

Stoick claps his son on the back and the son withstands. The two speak at once.

"So. Astrid."

"It's Astrid, right?"

Of Hiccup's face there is no hint of fear, or of bravado which is the flipside of fear on the same coin. His green eyes make contact with that of the father's from a head three inches higher than it'd been when he'd left.

"She hated me," says Hiccup. Past tense. A tiny grin swells on his face with the obtrusiveness of a white cloud silently melting into existence.

"Did you do anything… untoward?"

"No," says Hiccup, "though there's no point in asking me since they're going to assume I did anyway."

A pause.

"Thanks for asking."

"There are some things I need to change," says Stoick.

"Yeah," says Hiccup. Stoick is at fault for his childhood, they both know that – but why revive a chapter of his history best left forgiven? It's time for him to turn over a new leaf.

He chuckles, then goes on.

"Snotlout hates me now, which means I'm worth hating. He hates me because I've done something and I'll be somebody, if I want to."

Stoick leans in.

"Son?"

"I don't know if I want to be chief."

Stoick bites down the retort as it's leaving his lips. He can tell Hiccup to become chief, and Hiccup might do it to keep up the Haddock heritage, but it will hurt the boy in the long run. Here is a problem he cannot bully down.

"Blacksmithing, then," he says. "Work, then you will succeed."

Hiccup nods. So true. He glances at his feet, then his arms, then back up at Dad.

"Now I have the muscles to do it," he says. "I don't know if you saw, but Snotlout tried to wrestle-shake me and we were even. It's not so much that I got stronger but more I think he's gotten weaker."

Stoick laughs, a great, booming chuckle.

"He didn't have to work at keeping warm all winter."

"We did build a big shelter, after the wolves," said Hiccup.

"Wolves?" asks his father. He finds a stool and sits down, the better to listen. There's a glint in his eyes telling Hiccup his father is giving him the most attention he's had since he was three. "Tell me everything."

"Everything?" asks Hiccup.

"I have time enough to listen to my only son."

And Hiccup puts his hand to his chin as the memories flash before his eyes and he's shipped back to the days before he grew years in a matter of months.

"I can't remember the name of the ship – Ice Proud, that was what it was."
And his father nods.

"We were heading home when the storm struck, a sudden gale that started with rain and then turned to sleet. We reefed the sail and then it had its way with us for a couple of hours. It got bad enough we couldn't see from one end of the ship to the other. Astrid was on deck, but I was in the hold at the time, that's why I didn't lash myself to the mast. I thought I could stay down there until the squall let up, but fate had other plans. Remember how you skirted the spur of the island when you came to rescue us?"

Stoick remembers. The water was shallow for almost a league north of the island, and dangerous.

"We glanced one of the rocks, and all of a sudden water came into the hold and I had to get on the deck or drown. We started bailing, and Gobber prayed and the storm let up all of a sudden. We floated on for a bit, the deck dipping into the sea and the water coming over the side, and when Astrid spotted the cliffs we ran aground and I got thrown against the rail. They told me there was a wave but I wasn't ready for it. The railing broke, but that didn't matter to me, because I went up twenty feet and went overboard because, of course, I'd forgotten my lash. I thought I was dead – I would've been dead. Then Astrid jumps over, too, which I don't think was the brightest, but it worked out in the end."

He notices he's rambling and pauses, and Dad waves him on.

"She got me out of the water and if she hadn't I would've froze. I woke up first somehow, got us up to a boulder that sheltered us from the wind, started making a shelter while Astrid took stock. That was the only time I ever saw her not knowing what to do. She didn't like me knowing she didn't know what to do, at least, I think that's what – oh, I'm rambling again, aren't I. We didn't like each other much. Was it then that we named the place Sword? No – that was later."

He went on, holding his hands before him as he imagined the island again.

"We built a shelter, killed a few rabbits and hares, made a fire, that sort of thing. Astrid knew how to make a fire, but she was rusty, so I did it. Eventually I made a bow, and she learned to shoot it, keeping her strength up. At that point I didn't have much muscle to begin with, and I wasn't getting enough food in the first few weeks, what with splitting what we had between her and myself. Eventually we shot enough we had to start storing it, and that was what nearly got us killed."

He pauses, thinking of whether to mention the dragon Astrid met in the glade. It's so tempting to say everything, to tell his father what had really happened, but he can't. He'll be branded a dragon sympathizer. He knows what Dad will say.

It's so frustrating, to know something and be kept away from the girl who knows his knowledge. He sighs.

"There was a black wolf, he led the pack. They came up to camp one day and they wanted some and I didn't want to let them have it, though if it came to it I might've let them, to save our lives. Astrid was a hothead, and she shot the leader and a couple others. Then they were really out for our guts. We ran, and found a cave and hid in that and blocked up the entrance for a few days."

It was the Nadder's cave, the dragon they fought and lost to and were spared by.

"What happened next?" asks Dad.

"We got hungry," says Hiccup. It's half truth, half fiction. Astrid wanted to get away from what she called a beast and what he already had deemed a friend. The Nadder went hunting one morning and they slipped out before it came back.

"Astrid's rib was fractured and she was getting a cold, and my arm wasn't feeling well, so we were a sorry lot, but we got far enough away to make a second camp. I set up a trapline and took care of Astrid while she was sick, and she was finally getting better when the camp was trashed by something."
A dragon-shaped something. His father doesn't need to know that, but oh, how Hiccup wishes Dad did.

"We'd rebuilt it, hardly, and I shot a fox – we made the pelt into something, Astrid might still have that – when the wolves came back. I don't think most wolves are like that pack. These were out for our blood. But we won, and after we did we went back to our old camp. We wanted to be out of the woods and by the shore in case a ship came by, and a couple months passed before you did."

That there was a second Nadder, and a third, and that Astrid grew acquainted with them and even gave the first one a name – this he leaves out of the story.

"It's barebones, I know, but there's so much that happened I shan't say all of it, since it'd take me longer than the stay on the island itself and, well, it's already getting late."

"Are you feeling home?" asks Dad.

Hiccup's eyes wander over the forge, taking in the small things he'd forgotten he missed.

"Yes."