The Truth:
All the injured were brought in the hall. Dragons had their wings bandaged up, healing broths were given to the injured riders, wet napkins were pressed against some burn scars.
Sigmund had suffered a burn to his arm and was applied powerful healing cream that made him wince in pain as it stung. Garsir had his arm bandaged. Their families stayed by them as they recovered. Hester, meanwhile, was taken to Gothi's hut. Toothless sat down by her side, watching over her protectively.
For about a few hours, Hester was just sleeping on her bed, with wet cloths pressed along her arms, along her legs and on her forehead. Her skin was returning back to its normal colour, but the golden dragon etches were still spread out on her skin.
Toothless's ears flapped up when he heard a door opening. He growled, looking towards it. Instead of Garsir or Sigmund, it was still Stoick.
"Easy boy," he soothed. "Please?" he begged. "Let me see my…Hester,"
Unwillingly, Toothless let him come closer, but he was still not on his good side. He wouldn't stop eying him for one second.
Stoick watched over Hester. "Please don't die," he begged. "I can't lose you too. Not like your mother. If you can hear me, I want you to know that I'm sorry. For everything. I wish I could take back everything I ever said, everything I ever did to you. All I wanted to do was protect you, but now I know that I was drifting us apart. Please wake up Hester. I wish I could tell you without you glaring at me that I take back everything I said that day, that I'm proud to call you my daughter, that…" he croaked. He felt a tear falling down his cheek. "That I love you,"
Right after he said that, Toothless stopped snarling. He was now seeing a completely different side of Stoick. It turned out he was not as cold or unfuzzy as he once was. Stoick noticed the new look in Toothless's eyes but didn't say a thing. He just turned and left.
What he didn't realise was that Hester had actually turned her head in his direction behind his back, her eyes opened slightly. Toothless stared at the departing chief as well. He turned his focus at Hester's line of vision. Was there really a chance for things to be fixed between the estranged father and daughter?
Stoick walked out the healer's hut. When he closed the door, and turned around, he was met with the faces of a cynical cold-glaring Sigmund and Garsir.
"Oh Thor! You two scared the light out of me!" he berated.
"Stoick! You are hiding something!" Sigmund accused, threatening the chief with a bony finger. "You know perfectly what happened back there and why! In fact, I bet you know the reason that Hester can understand dragons!"
Stoick tried to interject.
"Don't try to deny it!" Garsir interrupted. "We saw the way you looked at Hester as she told you that story about the crystal dragons back in the hall. You were looking at her in a way that meant you knew something,"
Stoick didn't know what to say. He struggled to say something. "I..I..."
"You what?!" Sigmund snapped.
Stoick stumbled back from the force of that outburst.
"You are not going anywhere until you tell us everything she needs to know," Garsir demanded.
"No boys! This is something that only Hester can know!" Stoick retorted. "Once she is healed and she has woken up, I will tell her. I promise,"
"How do you we know that you're going to keep your promise?" Sigmund challenged.
Stoick was pale. All he simply said was: "You don't,"
Hester finally woke up the next morning. She no longer felt hot and she didn't feel the etching of gold dragons on her skin. They had disappeared like before. She greeted Sigmund and Garsir who immediately embraced her before she earned a light nuzzling hug from their dragons. She was then greeted by everyone who was elated to see her alright. Hester had no time to dwell on the past at that moment. She was more worried about how wounded and injured a huge number of dragons and Vikings were. Even the Alpha of Tifespike's pack was too injured that he was more likely to pass away from his injuries. Tifespike was heartbroken. As was Sigmund. The whole pack was.
The Alpha weakly told Tifespike that if he would die, she would be the new leader of their pack. Above all the other members, he admired her the most. Tifespike felt like she couldn't accept it; with Sigmund's confidence in her and the Alpha's deep regard for her, she willingly agreed if it were to occur.
In the afternoon, Hester was called to the Haddock household by Stoick. She was to come alone and only with Toothless.
She went inside the house that she never thought she would have to come into again. It looked so much like what it once was the day, she left Berk behind. Inside, near the fire on his chair, Stoick was seated, waiting patiently for her. There was no conversation between them until Hester closed the door behind her.
"It's time you knew Hester," Stoick told her. "It's time you know about your gift,"
"You mean you know the reason I can understand dragons?" Hester questioned out, more shocked than riled to lash out at him for keeping whatever secrets he had from her. "Why all this is happening to me?!"
Stoick couldn't say anything. Instead he nodded. "I will tell you everything. Everything I should have told you a long time ago. Will you sit down and listen?"
Willingly for the first time in her life towards her father, Hester sat down on a seat. Toothless settled down wrapping his body protectively around her seat.
"Thousands of years ago, when it was the dawn of the Viking age, there were spirits that roamed this very earth. Dragon Spirits. When our gods came into this world, and humans came along with it, the Dragon Spirits wanted to grant humans a gift to establish how humans could live in harmony with these creatures. The Dragon Spirits combined their tears into one multi-coloured drop. This drop fell to the heavens onto a sacred island, very far from here. Once the drop fell to the earth of that island, it grew into this,"
Stoick unrolled the scroll.
What a beautiful breath-taking picture it was. Hester saw in in front of her eyes: a ravishing red flowering with fiery strikes running down the five petals whilst the anthers in the middle glowed as hot as fire.
"The Dragofleur. A flower believed to hold the magic of the Dragon Gods – or what we most commonly known as Dragon Spirits, according to our gods,"
"What has this got to do with me?" Hester asked curiously, raising her gaze up from the picture to the face of her father. Stoick looked pale. It seemed as if the answer was a memory that he had tried to forget for many years, but could not seem too as this memory was one, he had needed to tell his daughter for when the time was right.
He began with a stroke of hesitation. "You see - the night you were born – your mother was very, very sick. Somebody had poisoned her when she was pregnant with you,"
It was Hester's turn to turn pale.
"Months before you were born your mother turned sick and was taken into Gothi's care. For many months she tried to cure her to save her and you, but none of her remedies work. Even the most powerful herbs known to our kind couldn't save her. In the month that you were born, you mother had reached her limit. I was so desperate that I would have done anything to save her – and you. I wasn't ready to lose her. Or you,"
Hester seemed to be touched by her father's love for her and her mother. For years all she saw in Stoick was a bad-tempered chief – but now, at this very moment, she was looking into the eyes of a devoted father and husband who was determined to save his family, more than anything.
"I prayed many, many times to Odin, begging him to save you. It seemed as though he, nor his sons nor his subjects heard any of my desperate prayers. Until, one night, a few days before you were born, I was taken into the Void between worlds in my dreams. There he greeted me, and told me about the Dragofleur, which had magical healing powers. Immediately, I journeyed far and wide, searching for it, using a magical map that he had poured into my mind. But he warned me not to take it from its resting place. If I were to, a terrible curse would befall upon this world,"
He pulled out another scroll from the box and unravelled it again. Hester took another look. She was shocked. This was the island they had been too, the island where she had touched that crystal and where she and her boys were chased and nearly devoured by crystal creatures.
"I led a party and came to this island. And I found it, growing at the very end of the crystal cave,"
Hester felt her heart slowing its pace with every bit of information that he was giving to her. That spot, where she had touched that giant crystal, must have been exactly where Stoick had found this mystical flower of dragons, if it was at the end of the cave where she had walked to, following that mysterious voice.
"I intended to just take one petal to save you and your mother. But I wasn't the only one looking for it. A cloaked man, slender and who had grey hair, had followed me, along with a group of ugly-looking dragons with tusks sprouted out of their mouths and who could spray acid that lid on fire. I was attacked but I fought against this man for the flower Despite what Odin had warned me, I had to take to the flower so that the cloaked man couldn't get it for whatever evil reason he wanted it before. I managed to escape the island and my entire party gave their life's fighting this man and the dragons he could control in order to bring it back to save my family. Once I was back, Gothi used the flower to make a remedy and Valka was healed, and then you were born. But then – "
"Then what?"
Stoick didn't speak. He had revealed too much already.
"Answer her!" Toothless ordered. He didn't care who he was talking to. Stoick had every right to tell his daughter the truth.
"A day after you were born and your birth was celebrated, I decided to return the flower to its proper burial ground, hoping that it was not too late to stop this curse and to prevent the man from finding us so we would all be safe. But when I had reached the island, I heard a mysterious voice in my head,"
Hester wondered if that voice, he heard was the very same one that
"I followed it into the cave. A dragon spirit appeared in front of my eyes. He told me that because of my actions of taking the flower from its resting place and using it, whilst in doing so, transferring its powers – to you, I had unintentionally unleashed a darkness,"
"You mean those dragon daemons?" Hester gasped out. "The same ones that attacked our island?"
"Yes," Stoick nodded. "They are connected to you. As you are to them. The power of the Dragofleur has flowed in your veins, ever since the night you were born. When it was taken from its place, those crystals sprouted out of the ground, hording the magic that it once had. And any crystal creature created by that creature can only be killed the Dragofleur's fire power that runs in your veins, the very same power that you unleashed into the Red Death's Heir,"
Hester was petrified.
"Those creatures who were formed on that island where that flame came from and where you went to, they are connected to you because those crystals you discovered, the one you touched that somewhat boosted your power, are connected to the Dragofleur. You can feel them when they are nearby, and they can feel you. All of this, everything I've revealed to you, why I was so hard on you. I wanted to keep you safe. I feared of what would happen if any human or any dragon got a hand of you. I feared they would use you to harness the power of that dragon flower. I couldn't risk losing you. I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to you. I couldn't take it losing another woman I lost, like your mother,"
His daughter was spilling out tears from her eyes. She was angered, she was saddened. "Why didn't you tell me?" Hester demanded, standing up stiff on her feet again. "How could you keep this from me when I had a right to know?!"
"Hester I only wanted to protect you!" Stoick tried to explain that his motives were out of love, and not as a chief, but as a father.
"I don't care whether you wanted to protect me or not! I had a right to know! How could you keep this from me?! Why couldn't you have been honest with me?! Instead of keeping secrets from me and instead acting like I had be shut inside my home all the time just because I wasn't born like you or anyone!"
Before Stoick could answer, Hester fled the house, fleeing off into the forest. Everyone including Garsir and Sigmund watched her intently. They trailed after her with their dragons. Nobody else went after them. Whatever it was that had made Hester so shocked was something she needed to recover from by herself with only those closest to her. If they tried to work things out with her, she would lash out at them and order them to leave her alone.
Hester sprinted further into the forest. She dashed past trees, jumped over logs, ducked under branches. She wouldn't stop until she had reached the centre of the island where the cove was. The very cove where she had first met Toothless and trained him.
She lumped down on a rock, bending her neck over the face of the lake. She saw her reflecting showing itself back at her. She stared closer, becoming disillusioned by image. She swiped at him with a hand. She started sobbing. She didn't know what to do anymore.
"Hester?" Toothless nuzzled her hand. "Please tell me what's wrong,"
Hester couldn't speak.
"All this time I thought I was special for a reason. But now it's all because of some magical flower that my mother consumed when she was sick the night I was born," Hester felt that the flower was the source of her confidence and courage; everything she thought was unique about herself. "Everything which I thought I had for a reason is all because of that flower. I'm nothing,"
"Hester…" Toothless consoled. "Even before we found out about this ability, I saw something special in you – that day when you spared my life. On that day you freed me instead of killing me, I had the chance to kill you. But I didn't. Instead I spared your life because I saw something special in you. Something that makes you different from any other person I met. Even when you trained me you didn't need the power of the Dragofleur to do that. You did that because you were special,"
"I don't even who I am anymore" she screamed, her tone diversified of dander and dejection.
"I'm sorry bud," she apologised, not intending to take her furious confusion on him. She held his face's sides in her hands. She hugged it, letting out her fragile emotions. "I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know what to do,"
"Let me tell you who you are," a certain voice started.
Hester looked at saw Sigmund across from her along with his dragon, Garsir and Skullbones. Sigmund came closer to her, speaking every sentence he said with every step he took and every inch he came closer to her. "You are Hester Haddock. You are brave. You are smart. You are funny. You are the girl who trained the dragons, the first girl to rise above humanity's views of them. You've done many things nobody thought was possible. It is because of you that we've found new friends, that everyone on Berk has new friends, that our tribe is at peace with dragons,"
"No matter where you got that gift from…" Garsir started as well. "That doesn't make you who you are. Everything that defines who you are – is what choices you make, who you chose to be, how you choose to use these gifts,"
Hester couldn't hold back. She opened her arms and the boys embraced her into a tight warm hug of friendship. Then Toothless joined in wrapping his arms around them. Then Skullbones and Tifespike, who wrapped their bigger wings around all four of them.
They had come all this way together. And now they were here together forever. A family of three humans and three dragons who would fight together. Together they were going to stop Rafashfear and save their island. Hester no longer cared about how she got this gift. The only thing she cared about was that she would use it to stop Rafashfear and use for good, to help dragons, to support peace between two worlds.
Wow. What an answer to Hester's gifts. Please send ideas of what other gifts this Dragofleur could give her aside from understanding dragons as well as what she unintentionally did to Rafashfear.