"The past is another land, and we cannot go to visit.
So, if I say there were dragons, and men who rode upon their backs, who alive has been there and can tell me that I'm wrong?"
In Which Hiccup Has a Good Look at Winter
The first blizzard was an early one, even for Berk. Hiccup and Toothless had their fun in the forgiving precursor, but were allowed only a brief respite before the winter became serious.
Snow no longer melted between storms, but piled up in massive windblown drifts that coiled at the bases of cliffs and rippled in the wake of even small obstructions like boulders or tree trunks. The temperature dropped until the air crackled with cold, even in the afternoon. Ice appeared along the coast almost overnight. All but the most boisterous lengths of the streams froze over, but even the rapids burbled beneath frozen shells.
Hiccup set up snares and stored food for himself, but Toothless preferred fresh fish and often disappeared for a few hours before nightfall. Presumably he went fishing beyond the pack ice, and his stomach was most always rounded when he returned. In the silent hours he was absent, Hiccup took to hiking the cliff faces and crags where the wind kept the snow swept away. It made for easy walking. There he wandered, watched avalanches on uncomfortably close mountain slopes, listened the creak of the frozen air and the chatter of the brave overwintering birds who's language was so different from the snippets of dragon he'd come to know.
To be alive in the clutches of winter so far from home, warm and well- not only that, but in perfect health. He'd not had so much as a sniffle of a cold. The immensity of it struck home every once and awhile as he stood on those cliffs. Never had he been so far from his village and, with Toothless gone, never had he felt so distant. He could eat, sleep and stay warm- outwit the winter and the winds and the wild, the storms that rolled fresh from the northern oceans and blasted his side of the island. He was capable, and he was proud.
In the evenings he ate, lit his little oil lamp, and talked to Toothless as he worked on his newest creation- an oblong leather saddle specially fitted to the Night Fury. It was fine work and took much longer to complete than it would have with the resources and ease of Gobber's forge. He filled pages with blueprints, measurements, and notes.
Toothless regarded the contraption with healthy skepticism, even though Hiccup had coaxed him into trying it on multiple times to check the fit. The wiry Viking all but wrestled him into the final design- a sleek thing, lightweight and made as two separate pieces so as not to restrict movement. The back piece was really the saddle- it sat just in front of Toothless's shoulders, as far back as it could be while still secured around his neck. The forward section of was much smaller. Secured by its own neck strap, it was essentially just a handhold.
Simple, but Hiccup was happy with it. Toothless less so, though the dragon warmed when he realized what it was for. If Hiccup thought he was the only one looking forward to tandem flights, he was sorely mistaken. The Fury was eager.
Their first attempts were miles ahead of where they'd begun only a few weeks previous. Toothless was stronger from his long fishing flights and knew what to expect, Hiccup was far more familiar with sitting on dragonback. They started on a higher prominence, one caked with blasted ice on the windward side. Though the air was calm and the sky a clear, crystalline blue, the silent duo picked their way up with undue care.
The first glide carried them out over the sea ice. The Viking barely dared breathe, gaze fixed on where his mittens locked around the leather band that was his only handhold. He could feel Toothless shift and tip as he checked and rechecked his balance, adjusted the angle of a fin here and the curve of a wing there to compensate for his rider's extra weight, before he turned broadside to the breeze and swept them back to the frozen shore.
When Hiccup slid off his back and onto the solid, windswept sand, his legs barely took his weight. He checked the saddle straps, which had not slipped or loosened. He sighted their starting point, which was now a fair distance away even though Toothless hadn't flapped his wings. Finally, he took note of the smooth landing. How he was definitely on his feet, not at the bottom of a snowbank, or dashed against the sea ice, or ground raw on the abrasive frozen sand.
It took a moment for success to dawn on Toothless as well. They glanced at one another, equal parts surprised and thrilled. A smile slowly stretched into a grin on Hiccup's face. Toothless's eyes widened and he wriggled with barely contained excitement. On a silent cue, the two bolted and raced back to the prominence, all laughs and bouncing steps.
Their second climb up the prominence halved the time of the first.
Their second launch was fearless.
The Nightfury slammed into the sky with a deep downstroke as soon as Hiccup was in the saddle. It wrenched the Viking backward, threatened to dislodge him when he'd scarcely left the ground, but he closed his eyes against the sudden rush of wind and clung to his handhold. Toothless smoothed into a glide almost immediately and cast a darting glance over his shoulder.
"Oh ho ho, I know that look." Hiccup groused as he righted himself, then leaned forward to escape some of the wind. "You did that on purpose."
The dragon had the decency to look sheepish, and his responding blurble could only be described as placating.
"Yeah yeah, well, whaddya say we try to keep it under control for n-"
Hiccup trailed off and sat up in spite of himself when the view finally registered.
The coast lay unraveled below him, the mountains still towered above. Snowdrifts glared a blinding white in the sun, their shadows stretched long and pale. Towering trees, now bare and iced, seemed insubstantial. Old growth forests huddled wherever their roots could take hold on the rocks. Winter had pulled the moisture form the air, frozen the haze from the sky. To the left, even the most remote snow crowned mountain cliff and cavern stood out in sharp relief- on the right the dark and patchy edge of the pack ice was visible in the far distance. Their prominence was an insignificant feature on the shore and the northern tip of the island was within easy reach. What took days of hard hiking could be gained by wing in minutes.
Toothless held a gentle, smooth turn, apparently to humor his rider's gawking. The uninitiated might mistake his perfectly relaxed patience for contentment, but his ear-lobes were tipped up ever so slightly. He was listening. Waiting.
It did not go unnoticed for long.
"Al-right." Hiccup nodded and let his shoulders slump in clear surrender, then flashed a broad grin. "Let's go higher."
The dragon's answering rumble vibrated through his bones.
That night Toothless slept soundly. Hiccup stayed up. He was none the worse for ware, really, save for some sore muscles, windburnt cheeks, and horrifically tangled hair. By the light of his oil lamp he sketched a design for a mask of wood and leather to protect his face and a fur wrap that could be secured to it to cover the back of his head and his neck. He noted where he wanted to add loops to the saddle's neck strap so he would have something to tuck his feet into, and where it needed extra padding both for his and Toothless's comfort.
Endless ideas and possibilities rattled in his head, and he slept little that night.
The morning dawned sharp with a piercing cold the likes of which Hiccup had never known. Not even the Nightfury dared anything but a peep out of the door. The fire was going, but Hiccup still wrapped up in his full winter gear. A number of times throughout the day he heard sharp, echoing reports in the distance. He could only liken them to the crack of a heavy metal axe splitting in the heat of battle, or the sound the great overhead beams of the mead hall had made once during a raid when an injured Gronkle crashed into them at full speed and shattered them like kindling.
Those comparisons were not at all heartening, so it wasn't until days later, when the weather broke, that he investigated and discovered trees shattered and split open as if struck by lightning. He recognized it- like barrels and buckets in the village that split and burst when they froze. The trees held out longer, but when they failed they did so with explosive, deadly force.
He hadn't ventured out at all on those days. Oblivious to exactly how wise that decision was at the time, he spent them curled between his dragon and his fire, painstakingly crafting wood and leather with chilled, bare fingers.
And when the weather broke, he was ready.
"Timberjacks and Thunderdrums both spend extended periods away from shore, the Jacks in the sky and the Thunderdrums in the open sea. If either suddenly retreat, head for shelter. They can predict a turn in the weather with almost uncanny accuracy."
In the wilds, Hiccup had always lived close to the weather. Yet he was surprised at just how much his perspective changed after he started literally throwing himself into it. When not a cloud passed unnoticed or a wind blew untested it would've been difficult not to learn. He picked up on the moods of the winds, the tell-tale signatures in the clouds, the shapes and colors of storms and where they all came from. The behavior of animals was just as informative, with Timberjacks and Thunderdrums by far and away the most telling.
Hiccup noted them as such in a sketchbook, dropped the entry in below a small spread of a half dozen gliding Timberjacks, and lifted his gaze. He sat on the jutting crown of a sea stack with his cloak draped about him. The breeze was soft enough that he could get away with drawing, but cold enough that he left his mask on and only bared his left hand. The mask was an odd one, not like the first he'd made. Black leather stretched over a carved wood frame. It was almost the same color as the Nightfury's scales and stood out in stark contrast against the white rabbit fur wrap he wore to protect his upper neck and ears.
Those rabbit furs and the coarser furs that lined his cloak tickled at his neck. He flexed his left hand, cramped from drawing and stiff from the cold. Past the smoky leather at his nose, he could smell the sea.
Toothless wheeled not far away as he worked a school of small fish with the assistance of at least three humpback whales. A pair of Thunderdrums arrived late to the party and Hiccup sketched them in below his latest note, taking care to include their characteristic forward-facing spouts. He noted with satisfaction that the dragons were not hurried as they would be before a storm.
It wasn't that Hiccup was particularly scared of storms- Toothless had long since proven he could navigate even in whiteout conditions. And if the wind was too bad, they could shelter in even the most impromptu crag. Hiccup had taken to carrying a little extra food, and it was near impossible to chill a coiled-up Toothless. They could wait out the storm. By midwinter they had already done so more than once.
But he wore a constant reminder almost literally on his forehead- a situation could go from harmless to dire in a breath. A thin band of brown leather lay tight against the forehead of the mask where it could easily be pulled down to cover the eye-holes, like a blindfold. It would have been exactly like a blindfold, in fact, had Hiccup not cut two thin slits in it, one for each eye. He could barely see out of it. That was the point.
Toothless had grown and built up enough muscle that Hiccup started tagging along on his fishing excursions. He'd deposit Hiccup before he flew out to sea, leaving the Viking to contentedly explore for hours. A few weeks previous, somewhere around midwinter, if Hiccup had to guess, they'd flown east not long after dawn. There'd been an ice storm the day before, but it was the kind of day Hiccup had grown to love- bitterly cold but shockingly clear, just like the first day he'd properly flown with Toothless. His eyes started to water halfway through the flight but he wiped his cheeks, wrote it off as a side effect of the glare of sunlight off the ice, and whenever he could tried to tip his head so his prototype mask shaded his eyes.
It was not enough.
The dragon dropped him off and departed, as per usual. It didn't occur to Hiccup to feel anything but annoyed about his watering, gritty eyes, so he started away with a quick step, as if he could outpace the uncomfortable sensation. A half hour later he noticed his vision had gone hazy. As if a white fog had descended, he could not see into the distance even though his every other sense insisted it was a calm, clear day. He turned back, followed the trench he had made in the snow as the fog encroached and blotted out the whole of his vision. He didn't panic until he lost his tracks on the windswept beach. Then he stumbled and staggered in the direction he though he must have come from, bit his tongue to keep himself from crying as he hit obstacles he couldn't see and fell over again and again.
Toothless found him hours later, curled up against a boulder, mask at his feet and tears frozen on his face. The anxious Fury nudged and nuzzled and cooed, but it only started the young Viking crying again. When he tried to curl around the distraught boy, he was pushed away with shaking hands.
Hiccup crept his way into the saddle and begged "Let's go home, bud. Just take me home…"
Dear, unerring Toothless took him back to the longboat, the only home the Fury had ever known. And though it was what he expected, Hiccup wasn't sure if it was the 'home' he'd meant.
It took two days for his vision to return. He didn't eat until it did. When he made a new mask to replace the one he'd left on that beach he carved out a ridge of bumps on the forehead, just like those on the flat of the dragon's head, and rubbed oil and charcoal into the leather until it shone black.
His hands were still blackened from that stain, but he found he didn't much mind. Hiccup sat on the sea stack, absently watched Toothless circle over what had once been a school of fish. It couldn't be coincidence that he hadn't left Hiccup's sight since the snow blindness incident. Hiccup appreciated it beyond words.
But he glanced south as he closed his sketchbook and tucked the utensils away. It had taken him almost five months of unhurried walking to reach the north tip of the island. He guessed Toothless could easily reach Berk by noon, with an early start.
He tucked the thoughts away as well.
Later. Soon now, but later. He would cross that bridge when he came to it, and before then he would not be chased away. He was a Viking, and he was not alone. With Toothless at his side, not even blindness in the teeth of winter would best him.
I loved the slitted eyes on Valka's mask. Between persistent snow/ice and flying above the clouds, there must be a lot of opportunities for glare to fry a rider's eyes. The snow blindness episode is a nod to one of my all-time favorite books, The Foxman (and if you've read and like that one, you may consider me your staunch ally). It's another Paulson, which reminds me…
Shout out to Hatchet (technically Brian's Winter) fans! Trees can and do explode when they freeze, but we're talking some serious cold- unreal cold. Cold that makes 'spit and it bounces' cold look sweater weather. -50, -60 degrees F (Google says that's -45, -50 C?!). Dammit, Jack! Were you trying to kill them?
No, Frost isn't, and will not be, in this story. But I do have a soft spot for him. Perhaps he brought that first blizzard on for giggles, bounced on a branch and laughed when snow dumped on the dragon-boy and the Nightfury pup. Played in the wind and swept around them when they flew. Shouted encouragement and cheered them on with an honest, gleeful smile no one could see before he roved on. Maybe, midway through the twentieth century, he paused on a New York mountainside and reminisced as he watched a young man with a falcon on his fist go sledding on a snapping turtle shell. Hummed to himself, Nice to see a familiar face. And though weary of bittersweet, wove for the falcon-boy a winterscape worthy of any North Sea isle and smiled in fond remembrance even though there was still no one to see…
No, there will be no Hic/Tooth romance. And, if you listen closely, you can hear distant weeping as the MSotM readers are traumatized at the very thought.
This quote is from the author of the HTTYD books herself, Cressida Cowell. I do not like where some people could take this; one does not simply brush off the burden of proof, folks. 'Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack' is still a logical fallacy. Do not fall prey to its wiles. But! Being reasonable does not mean we have to be sticks in the mud! And does that quote not spark the imagination?