How to View Your Dragons Chapter 15

The dragons kept their eyes glued to the flat panel long after the actual events of their recent past had ended. They didn't understand the concept of "end credits," and they didn't recognize the names of the hundreds of humans who had helped to create the images they had just watched. They just wanted to see the hand-drawn pictures of the dragons, listen to the unfamiliar music, and give themselves time to process what they'd seen.

At last, the images stopped. The flat panel went dark and quiet. The dragons blinked, almost in unison, then stepped back and looked at each other. Each of them waited for someone else to speak first.

Stormfly finally broke the ice. "It wasn't all about my rider, but I think I understand her better now."

"Do you understand why she kept hitting Hiccup?" Meatlug asked pointedly.

"No, I don't," the Nadder admitted, "but I can see why she got frustrated with Hiccup in the beginning. She changed a lot - maybe not as much as Hiccup did, but enough that I don't feel like I should tail-smack her for being insensitive."

"Even for when she hit him at the end of the pictures and said, 'That's for scaring me?' " the Gronckle pressed her.

"Okay, that was uncalled for," Stormfly said, "but it happened months ago. If I tail-smack her for that now, she won't have any idea why I did it."

"That's probably true," Toothless nodded. "When you're training humans, I think you have to catch them in the act or they'll never learn."

"Do you think she really likes Hiccup now?" Belch wondered.

"Oh, there's no question of that," Stormfly nodded vigorously. "She just had to work on some better ways to show it, and I think she's making good progress."

"I understand my rider better, too," Hookfang nodded. "I still think he's a thoughtless hornhead with delusions of alpha-hood, but he's brave and he cares about people a little, even though he won't admit it."

"You didn't know that about him already?" Toothless wondered.

"I knew about the 'brave' part," the Nightmare said, "and I definitely knew about the 'thoughtless hornhead' part. That mess he caused by stealing the Changewing eggs... that proved it, if anyone had any doubts. Still, it's good to know that, underneath his tough Viking exterior, there's a human heart. That means that, maybe, someday, he might learn what I'm trying to tell him when I do the opposite of what he tells me."

"I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen, if I were you," Barf muttered. "Remember those stubbornness issues? He should get a merit badge for Stubbornness."

"Well, what about you two?" Hookfang demanded. "Do you understand Ruffnut and Tuffnut any better now?"

The two heads of the Zippleback looked at each other blankly for a few seconds. Then they both said, "Nope."

"We thought they were crazy before," Barf continued, "and now we know we were completely right."

"What they are on the outside is what they are on the inside," Belch nodded. "They don't hide any secrets. They drive each other crazy sometimes -"

"Just like they drive us crazy sometimes!" Barf cut in.

"...but they're inseparable and they look out for each other," his other head finished. "No surprises there. Still, it's good to know that we were right about them all along. If we'd been guessing wrong about them, that really would make us look foolish."

"How about you, Meatlug?" Stormfly asked.

"Oh, I learned a few things about Fishlegs that I didn't know," she answered airily, "but I think you're all asking the wrong question. These pictures weren't about us and our riders. They were about Hiccup and Toothless. I think we all knew Toothless pretty well, and it's a safe bet that we know him even better now. The question we should be asking is, 'What did we learn about Hiccup?' "

"She's right," Hookfang said, which surprised Stormfly considerably. "But I don't know if I want to go first. I'm still putting my thoughts together. Do you want to go first, Toothless?"

"I think I've got a lot more thoughts to put together than you do," the Night Fury said. "How about if we go around and take turns saying the thing that impressed us the most about Hiccup, based on what we just saw?" All the dragons nodded.

"But who goes first?" Meatlug asked.

Barf, Belch, and Hookfang all glared down at Sizzle.

"Why me?" he asked plaintively.

"Somebody has to do it," Hookfang said, "and the rest of us chose you."

"Fine," the little dragon snapped. "What impressed me most about Hiccup? I think it was the parts of that 'Forbidden Friendship' scene when he walked right up to a Night Fury and wasn't afraid. The two of you wound up trusting each other, but he acted like he trusted you long before you returned the favor. You could have killed him sixty different ways, and he knew it, but he acted friendly anyway."

"Sixty? You flatter me," Toothless nodded, "but it was pretty amazing that he acted so fearless toward me. I remember how he screamed and ran away from that Nightmare at the very beginning -"

"Or the way he screamed and ran away from me, that first time in the training ring!" Meatlug threw in.

"Yeah, he did a lot of screaming and running when he started," the black dragon said. "Some of it made sense; I think any human would scream and run if he was locked into the training ring with an angry Nightmare like Hookfang -"

"You're darned right they would!" Hookfang interjected.

"But still, Hiccup had courage inside," Toothless went on. "He just had to find the right place to let it show. He picked a cove where a hungry, frustrated Night Fury was imprisoned... and, when you think about it, that's not so different from being locked into the training ring with an angry Nightmare. Somehow, he just knew that I wasn't killing anyone that day. How he knew that, I still don't know."

"Maybe he didn't know for sure," Stormfly suggested. "Maybe he just figured out that you're intelligent, and he assumed, or hoped, that an intelligent being won't kill without a good reason. Maybe he thought that would keep him safe."

"He had no idea how intelligent I am when that scene started," Toothless objected.

"Those Vikings claim to be intelligent, and they killed a lot of us for no good reason," Belch disagreed.

"And there were some dragons who killed humans for the fun of it, too," Barf nodded.

"Wait a second," Toothless exclaimed. "Are you saying that, if Hiccup had gone into the cove with any dragon except a Night Fury, you think he'd be dead?"

"That sounds like a fair conclusion," Hookfang agreed. "I probably would have killed him if I'd been there instead of you. I had no idea he was special. And then I would have eaten his fish and not shared it with anyone."

"You were willing to be peaceful with him in the training ring," Meatlug noted.

"Hiccup initiated that," the Nightmare said firmly. "I came out flaming, if you recall. I expected a fight to the death, and I was ready to give them one. It was Hiccup who acted peaceful; that's the only reason I acted peaceful in return. He hadn't learned how to be peaceful with dragons when that scene in the cove happened. In fact, that was the beginning of his education in how to get along with dragons. Toothless was a much more patient, tolerant teacher than I ever would have been. Would you have killed him, Stormfly?"

"I'm... not sure," she admitted. "If he'd pulled his knife on me, the way he drew it on Toothless, I probably would have thrown my spines first and asked questions later. If he'd held the fish out to me with one hand, I think I would have snapped at it, spat his hand out, and then swallowed the fish. No matter how he worked it, he probably would have suffered for it. That's how it was with dragons and humans at the time. How about you, Meatlug? Would you have flamed him?"

Meatlug pondered. "I probably wouldn't have flamed him, but that's only because there weren't many rocks in that cove for me to eat. Like you said, I probably would have taken his hand off if he gave me the chance. The idea of a peaceful human had never occurred to me at that time."

"We would have chased him all over that cove with explosions," Barf decided, "and if he got blown up or blackened around the edges, who cares? It would have been nothing but a bit of fun."

"Even if we killed him, so what?" Belch added. "He was just another human, as far as we could tell. There were plenty more where he came from. We couldn't think of any reason to show him mercy, even if he did feed us a fish."

Barf nodded. "If he tried to feed both of us with just one fish, I think that would have made us mad."

Belch shook his head. "He's not stupid. If he knew he was going to meet a two-headed dragon in the cove, he would have brought two fish, one for each of us."

"He might have assumed that we needed only one fish between us," Barf argued, "seeing how we share the same stomach."

"Eventually, he did offer us one fish between us," Belch said with distaste, "and that was an eel! No, thank you!" Barf shivered at the memory; the shiver went down his neck to their shared body and back up Belch's neck, so they both shivered.

"That's all guesswork," Toothless cut them off. "The fact is that he met me there, and I chose not to kill him. At first, it was because I was curious about him. The bond between us was forming so gradually that I wasn't aware of it until it had fully formed, and after that, there was no question of me killing him. But until that point, he showed extraordinary courage by walking up to me without a weapon and trying to touch me. Barf, Belch, while you're talking, what did you get out of the moving pictures, as far as Hiccup is concerned?"

"Well, just speaking for me," Barf began, "I was kind of stunned by all the places where our future hung in the balance because of one decision that Hiccup made, or one thing that he did. If any one of those events had turned out differently, then we'd still be slaves of the Queen, waging a useless war against the humans."

"Yeah, there were a lot of turning points like those," Belch nodded. "It's as if some kind of unavoidable destiny was playing out in his life, because some of those events were really improbable. That Nightmare that chased Hiccup when the moving pictures started should have killed him; Meatlug and Stormfly both had good, clean shots at him in the training ring, and so did we, for a few seconds at least... and yet, not one of us ever laid a claw on him. The Queen couldn't hurt him, either, until after she was dead. He might be the luckiest Viking who ever lived."

"Huh?" Sizzle asked. "He lost half of his leg, he got kicked out of his own tribe, he never won a single fight against a dragon, and you call him 'lucky?' How do you figure that?"

Meatlug spoke before the Zippleback could answer. "It's because he walked away from all of those disasters, and quite a few others, but he was never defeated by any of them. That's what impressed me the most about Hiccup - his inner strength. Maybe it was stubbornness issues; maybe he just never knew when he was beaten; but he never gave up and he never gave in, no matter who was against him. Basically, he stood up against his own father, his friends, his tribe, his culture and traditions, and every one of us dragons, and he said, 'You're all wrong.' And then he proved it, one step at a time, until we all agreed with him. Except for the Queen, and she paid the price for trying to stop an irresistable force like Hiccup."

"I never thought about it that way," Stormfly mused, "but I can see your point. Out of all those enemies, who came around first?"

"Obviously, Toothless did," the Gronckle said. "Toothless, when did you realize that Hiccup was unstoppable?"

"Well," the Night Fury began, "I always sensed that he was different."

"So did his father, and a lot of good that did him!" Belch said snidely.

Toothless ignored him. "At first, he was a curiosity; then he became my sole source of food; then he became my best hope for getting into the air again. It was at the end of that wild flight through the rocks that he became someone whom I could trust with my life. When did I think he was unstoppable? I'm not sure. But I must have come to that conclusion somewhere, because when I dragged Stoick out of the water, my first thought was to attack and kill the Queen. I'd never even dreamed of doing anything like that before; I was as afraid of her as the rest of you. But with Hiccup riding me, that made me feel unstoppable, so I guess I thought of him as unstoppable, too. What about the rest of you?"

"I think I can speak for all of us," Meatlug said, "when I say we figured it out in the training ring, when he let us all out without carrying any weapons. We were all accustomed to fighting humans whenever we saw one, but in a few short minutes, he had all of us eating out of his hand, figuratively speaking. He stopped the fighting and got all of us to accept a human rider, just because he said so, and we couldn't even understand what he said! I didn't think it consciously, but somewhere in my head, there was something along the lines of, 'This human can do anything.' I was even willing to go up against the Queen if he said it was a good idea. Would you agree?" The other dragons nodded.

"Toothless, do you really think Hiccup is unstoppable?" Hookfang asked him.

"Not literally, no," the black dragon admitted, "but whenever something is really important to him, he refuses to take 'no' for an answer. Sometimes that's just as good."

"Like when you tried to tell him it was a bad idea to keep a baby Typhoomerang?" Barf smirked.

"Okay, that's the downside of his determination," Toothless shrugged. "I never said he was perfect, just amazing and awesome."

"You might be a little bit biased," Meatlug smiled.

"A little," he admitted. "But I don't hear any of you disagreeing with me, so it doesn't matter if I'm biased toward him, as long as I'm right. Hookfang? How about you?"

"I'm never biased," the Nightmare said flatly. "I always tell it like it is."

"No! I mean what did you learn about Hiccup?" Toothless sputtered.

"Oh, him? Well, he did a lot of screaming and running away at the beginning, but he turned out to be really brave. I have to respect that."

"You mean, by him facing you in the ring and laying his weapons down?" Stormfly asked.

"Yeah, that, but that wasn't even the bravest thing he ever did. The way I see it, his bravest deed was flying on a dragon's back for the first time. Other Vikings had fought dragons one-on-one before, so he had plenty of role models for that mess in the ring. But riding Toothless in the sky? No human ever did anything like that before! He had no idea what to do, or what it would feel like, or if he'd be afraid of heights, or anything! For us, the sky's the limit, but for him, it was totally uncharted territory. That took guts."

"He probably tried it because he trusted Toothless to keep him safe," Meatlug suggested.

"Maybe," Hookfang nodded, "but it still took courage to try something completely new and potentially dangerous like that. Kind of the way it took courage for me to trust him in the ring the first time, when I thought fighting was all that humans were good for. That was uncharted territory, too."

"Are you comparing yourself to Hiccup?" Stormfly asked pointedly.

"No, I'm just saying I kind of knew how he felt," Hookfang said. "I've been flying all my life, I've dove in the water lots of times, and I always rest on land and in caves. I've been to every kind of place there is; I can't imagine a place where I've never gone before. That's what Hiccup did when he flew with Toothless the first time. He was brave in lots of other ways, too. Fighting the Queen... wow. I hated her like every dragon hated her, but the idea of taking a shot at her never crossed my mind - she was just too big! Hiccup wasn't afraid of her, though."

"It probably helped that he could ride a Night Fury," Belch threw in. "Just him, on foot, against the Queen... I bet he wouldn't have been so brave."

"I'll bet you're wrong," the Nightmare shot back. "You saw how determined he can be! Maybe he wouldn't have run right at her, waving his little dagger and shouting, 'Death to tyrants!' but he would have thought of some way of taking her down. Maybe he would have built a new mild-calibration-error machine or something. Who knows? The fact is, he did it."

Sizzle waved his wings for attention. "Would you have let Hiccup ride you against the Queen, Hookfang?"

"Hmmm. Good question." Hookfang thought about it. "If I knew then what I know now, then maybe. I'm seeing Hiccup in a different light now. At the time, he was just a nice human who let me out of my cell and didn't bonk me on the head. I had no idea what he was really capable of doing. So, if Toothless hadn't been there and Hiccup had tried to ride me instead, I probably would have high-tailed it out of there with him and let the other Vikings fend for themselves. I would have tried to keep the nice human safe... and keep myself safe at the same time. Fight the Queen with him? No way! I think the rest of you would have done the same thing. Am I right?" The other dragons nodded.

Stormfly nodded. "So, once again, it comes down to that one-in-a-million combination of Hiccup and Toothless who made the difference. No one else could have done it, either on the dragons' side or on the humans' side."

After a brief silence, Meatlug reminded her, "It's your turn, Stormfly."

"Oh, yes. What impresses me the most about Hiccup, now that I know the whole story? It's how flexible he could be in his thinking. He could be as stubborn as any Viking, but he didn't let that get in his way when he needed a new idea. Just the idea of making friends with a dragon was something that probably never occurred to any other Viking. Making a new tail for him, and going through all those different ways to control it until he found something that worked... that took some wild thinking, too. That entire adventure mostly consisted of stuff happening, and Hiccup making up solutions as he went along. His battle plan against the Queen was his masterpiece. He came up with it on the fly -"

"Literally!" Toothless chuckled.

"Yes, thank you," the Nadder groaned. "Anyway, he had no time to think things over; the action was happening too fast. He made it up, and then he made it happen, and it worked just like he thought it would."

"Wasn't he always making up new stuff?" Hookfang asked.

"Yes, but he got no respect for it," Stormfly replied. "Sometimes, his ideas didn't work; sometimes they would have worked if he'd had the chance to make a few improvements, but the other Vikings wouldn't give him a chance. Toothless, you talked about how he almost drowned you a few times while your flight rig was in the 'experimental' phase. You could say your tail had some mild calibration errors when you started. But you gave him the time and the chances to make it better, and now... here you are. Why didn't you stop the experiments when they failed the first time, like the Vikings would have done?"

"It's because I was so desperate to fly again," Toothless responded readily. "I was willing to try just about anything, even entrust myself to a human who couldn't fly! And there was such a confidence about him. He somehow knew that he'd succeed at getting us off the ground if he kept on trying and didn't give up. Some of those failures were pretty disheartening, but neither of us was willing to quit. I needed to fly more than anything else, and he..." His voice trailed off.

"That raises a really good question, which no one else has asked yet." Meatlug said. "It might be the most important question we can ask, because it goes to the heart of everything else that happened. Why did Hiccup work so hard to get you flying again, knowing that you were his tribe's worst enemy?"

Toothless didn't have a ready answer.