Lo and behold, more than two characters exist. Unfortunately, so does laziness. And the fact I'm really not a writer. you know what i'm not even going to bother with self deprecation, I have portfolios to arrange and sleep to get screw tHIS CRAP

Two strangers stood in her new living room, among the two others she hardly knew any better. They were all family, but only since July, really. There was still so much to get used to, but her parents' kindness had helped the transition to go along surprisingly smoothly. Approaching everyone, Rapunzel hoped the kindness ran in their family.

"Nice to finally meet you," she chimed to the boy, and offered her hand to shake. "Hiccup, right?" He seemed surprised by this and awkwardly reciprocated. "Uh... Yeah, hi."

Weird. That was too weird to be right. Do people shake hands with relatives? it didn't really matter, though, she realized. He had no more cousin experience than she did. Turning to Stoick, she started, "And... Long time no see, right?" She tried to laugh, and he faintly smiled when he replied, "You were practically a baby last time I saw you."

"I wish I could remember." Then, feeling the emptiness in the air again, "Should I call you uncle, or Stoick, or...?"

"Stoick is fine."

She turned to the younger stranger again. Sometimes she still forgot, but her hair was brown too. There had to be some other similarity, something. "Oh, Hiccup! I just remembered, uh - come on, I'll show you." Still, he said nothing, but she sidewalked toward the hallway until he began to follow. The room she'd moved into apparently used to be hers, though she couldn't really find any memories of it. It was all so different now, leading a new person to a new room in a new house, opening her new door... "I heard you have a way with dragons," she picked her pet off of the bedpost they were climbing. "Pascal is no great, winged beast, but he is a reptile, so..."

"Huh. I've never held a chameleon before." Pascal perched on Hiccup's arm, clutching at his jacket with multicolored legs.

"He's very friendly. As long as you're friendly to him, anyway." Leaving the two to staring one another, she snatched at a shoebox under the bed frame, finding the tiny outfits she's sewn for the lizard over the years. Poor pascal had truly suffered, she realized, picking up a particularly frilly one to show Hiccup.

"This," she felt a laugh bubbling up "THIS is how bored I used to get!" For the first time, it looked like he was actually smiling. Just barely, but it seemed genuine before it faded away.

Hiccup stared at Pascal, leaving her unsure if it was out of interest or to avert eye contact with her. "I guess you were alone a lot, huh?"

"Oh, at least I had a good friend to keep me company!" Her bright smile was, again, only met by a hesitant one. He really needed prodding to speak. "Okay, you've met the weirdo. And the lizard." she joked," I don't know anything about you yet."

His voice stayed slow with uncertainty. "Well, you know the dragon thing. And..." His eyes dragged across the room, finding nowhere comfortable to rest. "And that I don't know what kind of conversation to make right now."

"Just tell me about your friends."

"Friends. As in the, um..." He watched Pascal again, who was now climbing away over her bed.

"The human ones"

He nodded once. "Right. Well, there's Astrid and Fishlegs, I go to school with them-"

"Fishlegs?" Barely two sentences in, she found herself interrupting.

"It's a nickname Snotlout made up for him." That certainly wasn't a helpful sentence. After a pause, he explained, "And Snotlout is a nickname that was meant to get back at him, but he reclaimed it instead. As you can probably tell, we're all very sophisticated."

"I shouldn't think those names are weird anyway. I'm named after lettuce."

A gap of silence came before his reply came with a blank stare. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah. There's certain type that's called Rapunzel in Germany. My dad said he made soup from it when my mom got sick. I guess it's sweet, but still kind of-." Realizing her interruption again, he shook her head, "Sorry, forget about it. What about your name? Is that a nickname?"

His eyes drifted away as he sighed, "No, no, unfortunately, that's actually on my birth certificate."

"So, how did you get it?"

His hesitation made her start hoping she hadn't embarrassed him, but he then answered, "It's just what my dad's family names you when they have a kid that's born early. I'm actually the third in the family to be named after that bodily function."

She tried to laugh, although it seemed out of place. That sense kept coming over her more and more often. Here they were, meeting one another for the first time in almost fifteen years, the first time since they were practically babies, and it begged the question of how easy it could have to speak to one another if the time hadn't been torn apart. Now they barely knew who they were to each other, while she was still trying to figure out who she was herself.

"Do these glow?" Hiccup looked around and pointed at the room's ceiling, which was covered in dozens of stars. "In the dark, I mean. The stars?"

"Yeah, um, I always had them in my... room." Although 'my room' wasn't quite appropriate, she didn't want to call the place she used to live a prison, either. There was still hope for a lighthearted conversation. "They used to be charted into constellations and everything, but I haven't fixed that up again yet."

As soon as she mentioned the constellations, he faced her again. Hushed, but clear, he spoke "I did that same thing." The lost look on his face was gone, now excited, and his arms started moving around in strange gestures. "They weren't perfectly laid out, sure, but I put together my favorite constellations on my walls when I was little." He waved, sort of offhand, and quipped, "Littler."

She actually did laugh now, That was an odd thing. Not the joke, but how quickly he animated at these stars nobody else had asked about. She was allowed to collect them from the... room, and Eugene offered to help her arrange them when she had the time, but nobody was so interested.
"So, you like stars too." She smiled, and got an eager nod back from him. Only then did she notice the green eyes they shared as well.
"Why were they on your wall, though?"

"Oh, I wanted to put them up myself. And being five doesn't make it easy to reach the ceiling." Rapunzel had fixed this problem by climbing with chairs, shelves, and her own hair, but she figured Hiccup was probably more supervised and better groomed than the wild child she was.

"You know, Toothless always loves new people." Hiccup shrugged, looking back at her again. "You'll have to meet him sometime."

This could all be a start. Her tiny family was growing a bit, and she was glad for who was in it.