Author's Notes: Another fluffy and wholesome Davilda one-shot for your viewing pleasure. This one's been sitting on my computer for a while, and I only just finished it tonight. I hope you enjoy!
Hilda had come up with a lot of bad ideas in the relatively short time David had known her. Venturing into the sewers to find the Rat King. Wrestling a ghost to get Frida's stolen book back. Sneaking out of Camp Sparrow in the middle of the night to bring snacks to a lonely nisse. Just to name a few.
But this one took the cake for Hilda's absolute worst idea yet.
David and Hilda were farther outside the wall than either of them had ever been (with one notable exception) standing atop a cliff not far from where the ruins of Hilda's old cabin lay. They were up high enough to where they were level with a herd of woffs that flew by on their migration. Aside from the two of them, Alfur, Twig, and David's pet woffling Nigel had come along.
"I don't know about this," David said nervously as Hilda surveyed the herd.
"There's no need to be scared, David," Hilda assured him. "I've ridden woffs loads of times before!"
"That's fine for you," said David. "But why do I have to come along?"
"Well, one of these days, Nigel's going to be big enough that you'll be able to ride him!" Hilda explained to him. "Now's a good a time as any to learn!"
"Hilda, I'm terrified of heights!" David reminded her.
"Are you, still?" Hilda inquired. "You seemed fine with the Great Raven and Gerda's blimp."
"I was most definitely not fine riding on the back of the Great Raven, and that blimp was completely different!" David insisted.
"Oh, come on now, David!" Hilda implored. "It's like I told you before; the best way to overcome your fears is to face them. Do you really want to be scared of everything forever?'
"Well... no," David admitted.
"Then trust me!" Hilda asked of him, taking his hand to reassure him.
"I'm with David on this one," Alfur piped up from atop Twig's head. "Need I remind you Hilda that the last time you and I rode a woff together, it tried to buck us off?"
"Not now, Alfur!" Hilda brushed off. To be fair, in that particular instance, Hilda made the mistake of trying to steer the woff in question toward the mountain peak. Woff's didn't like their riders trying to direct them away from their brethren like that; you had to relax and let the woff do all the work, and hope that they took you where you meant to go.
All the same, she'd rather Alfur not discuss the matter around David. Not while Hilda was trying to help her boyfriend overcome his fear of flying.
Luckily, Hilda spotted a group of woffs that were flying straight toward them on a path that would take them right under the cliff upon which she and David stood. She carefully traced their flight path, eyes on the one flying closest to them...
Then, without warning, Hilda grabbed David by the hand and took off running towards the lower end of the cliff.
"Hilda! What are you-!?" David protested as his mad girlfriend dragged him along towards what looked like certain death.
David's heart froze in chest as he saw the edge of the cliff come up faster than he could react. Before he could dig his heels in the earth and stop them, Hilda jumped- taking David with her- and sent them both hurtling over the edge.
"Oh... CRUDDLESTICKSSSSS-!"
David's cry of terror echoed across the valley as he and Hilda went over the side together, their hands joined. David was sure that the cold, hard rock of the valley below would come up to meet them both much sooner and much later than he would like, splattering them both over the mountainside like a giant splash of spilt strawberry jam.
Instead, David found to his relief that they'd both landed on a soft mound of fur belonging to a Common Yellow Woff.
David's heart was going a million miles a minute, but he was alive, as was Hilda. He grabbed one of the woff's ears to use as a handle with his free hand while Hilda grabbed the other. The woff looked up curiously at it's unexpected passengers; once it realized that they weren't trying to pull it off course, it relaxed and continued on it's way.
Having followed his master's cries, Nigel caught up with them and came to fly up alongside the larger woff. It tried to catch the adult's attention with his higher-pitched woff song, but the adult male had no patience for the wayward pup, and casually nudged him aside. Crestfallen, Nigel instead flew above the adult to where Hilda and David sat, trying to remain out of their mount's field of view less it become agitated.
As for David, his heart rate was beginning to calm down as he got used to the feeling of being in the air. It helped that the woff kept it's flight path straight and steady.
"Are you okay?" Hilda asked.
"We are... really high up!" David observed.
"Just don't look down," Hilda told him.
"Hey," she said, squeezing his hand, encouraging David to look at her. "Just look at me. Everything's fine... I've got you."
"Yeah... alright," David acknowledged, taking a deep breath.
Hilda ran her thumb along the back of his hand to comfort him, and that did help David relax a little. After a while, he looked ahead, and beheld the sight of the valleys and peaks before him. It was an incredible sight. The few times David had flown before, he'd been too terrified to appreciate the view... but as his fear slowly ebbed away, he came to admire just how beautiful it was. The towns and houses below them looked so small from up here, like a model landscape. From this height, he could see a train chugging along through the valley below; an emerald-green steam engine pulling a line of passenger coaches. It was the Flying Huntsman, the pride of the Trolberg Railroad. From up here, it looked no different from the motorized train set he had of the very same locomotive at home.
Then, there were the woffs. David had never noticed just how many different kinds there were... Most in the herd were Common Yellow Woffs like the one he and Hilda rode upon, easily recognizable for their plain yellow-orange coats, they were the most common breed of woff. They didn't seem to notice himself, Hilda, or even Nigel, and there were no other wofflings in the herd.
There were also a few Red Woffs, some Brown Woffs, and even a single Black Bull Woff, likely the alpha male. It was at least a third larger than any of it's brethren and seemed rather temperamental, buffeting it's smaller cousins out of the way as it made towards the head of the herd. Only an aging Grey Woff was brave enough to stand up to the boisterous bull, knocking it back as the Black Woff tried to shove it aside. A scuffle soon broke out among the two elder woffs which brought them down to ground level, the Grey Woff winning out as it knocked the Black Woff into the ground, overpowering the bull despite it's size.
Hilda and David cheered on the Grey Woff as it rejoined the herd, triumphant. The Black Bull Woff broke off from the herd, humiliated, flying back the way it'd come, but no longer pushing it's common brethren out of the way.
"Huh. Call me crazy, but I think this might actually be... fun!" David said confidently.
"I told you!" Said Hilda. "Just you wait; soon, you'll be flying woffs all on your own!"
"But I like having you here," David blurted out, making Hilda blush. Realizing what he'd said, David blushed too and looked away, though he never once let go of Hilda's hand.
Get a grip, said a voice inside his head. You've only been dating for a few months now; when are you going to stop making everything so flippin' awkward?
"It's beautiful up here," David said, looking pointedly at Hilda. She smiled and turned redder still.
Without thinking, David pulled Hilda closer to him and kissed her on the lips. They hadn't kissed like this since David had first professed his feelings for her. Their relationship up until that point had been mostly just little pecks on the cheek and occasionally on the lips. It'd been far too long since they'd shared a real kiss; David made a mental note to rectify that going forward.
When at last they broke apart, Hilda looked happier than David had ever seen her before... and a little bit flustered. So little had changed since the two of them had started dating; Hilda was still dragging him along on all sorts of dangerous and often death-defying adventures, and David was learning to be a little more brave and outgoing while at the same time trying to temper Hilda's adventurous spirit with caution. They complimented each other well; a year ago, David never would've imagined that he'd fall in love with the crazy, blue-haired girl from the wilderness, and yet here he was... sharing a kiss with her as they flew over the mountains on the back of a wild woff.
It made him think back to that first time he saw Hilda, riding on the back of the Great Raven himself at the annual Trolberg Bird Parade. Frida told him he was being absurd when David said it looked like there was a girl on his back. Even when they met Hilda in the flesh days later at the Sparrow Scout hall, Frida didn't believe him when he said that Hilda was the same girl from the parade.
Then, after being friends for only a few months, Hilda came to his window in the company of the Great Raven himself. Hilda gave him precious little time to process this before the Great Raven whisked them both off to the Trolberg Weather Station to rescue Victoria Van Gale, and David was too terrified by his first flight to give it anymore thought.
Now it occurred to David that he'd never asked Hilda how she even knew the Great Raven, much less how it came to be that he allowed her to ride him.
"So, um... you know the Great Raven?" David asked.
"What? Oh, yeah..." said Hilda.
"How did that happen?" He inquired further.
"It's a long story," said Hilda. "I was hanging out with Trevor and his friends; Trevor threw a rock at him, and he lost his memory, and then I sort of saved him from drowning, so..."
"And that was all in your first day in Trolberg?" David ascertained.
"Yeah! Guess it was," Hilda replied.
"I'll never understand how you manage to make friends with so many strange creatures, "David remarked. "But then, I guess you do have a way of working your way into other people's hearts."
"Good Lord, that was awful!" Hilda chuckled at David's cheesy lines.
"What? I'm trying my best!" David insisted.
"Oh, hush," said Hilda, silencing David with a peck on the lips. "I was only teasing, love."
As the time wore on, the woff became weary of the two children riding on it's back and began to gradually descend to the point where Hilda and David could safely jump off, conveniently leaving them close to the city gates. Alfur and Twig, who'd been following them all the way from the ground, caught up with the young couple before long. Hilda and David walked together back to Hilda's flat hand-in-hand with Alfur, Twig, and Nigel in tow; the sun was setting, and it wouldn't be long before they all turned in for the night.
Hilda and David weren't ready to part ways yet, as Hilda insisted that David come up to her room and spend time with her.
Alfur went straight to bed, as he was exhausted from having to baby-sit the two young lovers all day. Johanna had already retired for the night by the time her daughter and David returned, which gave them some privacy.
David waited in the living room while Hilda took a bath and changed into her pajamas before joining her in her room.
"I've got to be honest... that wasn't nearly as bad as I thought," David confessed once Hilda called him back into her bedroom.
"So you did have fun today!" Hilda proclaimed.
"Yeah... yeah, I guess I did!" David replied as he took a seat on the bed beside her.
"Then maybe we would could do it again sometime?" Hilda suggested.
"Yeah... maybe..." said David. He was still a bit rattled from his first time riding woffs, and thus was torn halfway between wanting to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground and wanting to spend more time with Hilda.
But there was more to it than that. David had been scared of everything for as long as he could remember. Frida tried her best to protect him whenever he got scared, but with Hilda... he found he was scared less often. He liked it better this way; ever since Hilda came into his life, he'd felt his anxiety ebbing away little by little as the strange blue-haired girl from the wilderness took him and Frida on increasingly wild adventures.
It made him feel confident in himself, and less anxiety made him feel happier overall... and it made him very glad that Hilda was his friend; and all the more glad that she was his girlfriend.
David and Hilda passed the rest of the night sitting atop the covers on Hilda's bed, reading a book. Twig and Nigel had curled up at the end of the bed by the time Johanna came in and told David that his mum had called, and was asking him to come home.
David gave Hilda a peck on the lips as a goodbye, picked up Nigel, and carried him back outside to wear his bike was waiting. By then the little woff had woken up and was able to fly alongside his master as David took off down the street.
Back at her house, Hilda pinned a drawing of herself and David riding on the back of a woff, took a moment to admire her handiwork, then went to bed.
Author's Notes: What do you think? It seems only natural that at some point after they start dating, Hilda would want to show David how to ride woffs. He's already ridden on the back of the Great Raven (in a raging storm, no less) so this would be a natural progression of their relationship.