The next morning came and to her surprise Hiccup left her to her own devices. He crammed some of his breakfast into his mouth and claimed that he and Toothless where going out flying. Elsa couldn't blame them. Until she had a better understanding on how her powers worked at all Hiccup was of little use, it was almost far more productive to explore their island closer than be breathing down her neck while she thought.
At first she started off simple, she would take a steaming hot cup of water and try to cool it off as fast as she could. She tried this for several hours and in truth she almost lost heart in this effort because she didn't know how much progress she was making. Elsa then started making two cups of hot water at once and tried to cool one of and leave the other as a reference.
By noon she started making noticeable progress and she began writing down what her feelings were between tests. It took her several hours before she began to notice that the time it took her to cool the water when she was frustrated versus when she calm was like night and day. Perhaps it was triggered by the sense of courage Hiccup forced into her yesterday but regardless of why she decided she had made progress with her powers when she could cool of a piping hot mug in less than a minute when it normally took ten minutes. When Hiccup came back he was surprised by her progress and proceeded to ask her various questions while simultaneously pour over her notes while also eating. How could the viking do all three at once while formulating theories on the arcane was beyond her and Elsa was almost positive that either Hiccup was a pro at multitasking or clinically insane.
The next day Elsa decided to switch gears. To keep herself entertained during her lessons as a child Elsa was able to keep a quill suspended in mid air with a small whirlwind in her palm. Hiccup chose to stay in camp today and would occasionally look her way between the pages he was working on his journal. The first two hours of practice yielded little success so Elsa tried to keep her calm intact so she practised on hot water again before trying again. She felt joyful when she managed to pull off her old childhood trick again. So joyful in fact she put a little too much umph into the whirlwind in her palm that she sent it flying off hundreds of feet skywards and sent a gust loose over the camp that knocked over the tent, put out the fire, and knocked Hiccup off a napping Toothless.
They decided to break for lunch and afterwards Elsa retreated deeper into the island to try wind control again. By the end of the day she could control the direction of a mild gust of wind with little effort.
That was three days ago. And since then Elsa shifted her focus into controlling snow and ice again. First it was a few flakes. But it quickly began to escalate to entire snow drifts and completely freezing over small ponds. Hiccup stopped asking questions days ago and only occasionally looked at her notes. But he never went off flying with Toothless and only occasionally made a note in his own journal.
"Not good enough" He said
Elsa was done experimenting for the day and amused herself by creating snowmen again, like she wanted to be able to do on her first day.
"I beg you pardon?"
He gestured to the snowman
"This snowman, that you just made. Not good enough. Try again"
Elsa raised an eyebrow
"Alright master of winter sculptures, where did I go wrong?"
"This isnt bad for a six year old, but considering what you are capable of doing? It needs more detail. Try to make it to the size and scale of a normal human. Extra points if you can do detailing work on the face"
Not one to back down from his challenge, Elsa began to start creating snowmen to Hiccups specs. But something she quickly learned was it was a lot more easy to create a snowman from scratch and do it all in one than do detail work after she created it. Why this was she did not know, but while she could create snowmen about Hiccups size and his general body shape. She could not make any details of his clothing or his face once the snowman was created. And despite her best efforts any kind of details made where rough at best.
"Last time I checked, we are here to teach you control, not push your limits"
Elsa flushed at his point
"Got any Ideas about how you want to go about doing this?" he asked, she shook her head
"I was just going to keep practicing snowmen until I got it right"
"Save it for another day, let's start tomorrow off with something a little easier to practice control."
So the two ate their evening meal and the two began to share and enjoy in each other's company and Hiccup indulge Elsa with some of his misadventures
"And so Gobber walks around the arena telling us the dragons we were to be training against, all the while Fishlegs is rattling off their stats like this is a game of some sort! Then Gobber puts his hand on the lever to the gronckle cage, and here we are with little to no weapons training for exercises of strength or endurance or I don't know. Maybe work together in a coordinated manner? Nope he just says ' I believe in learning on the job' sets the mad gronckle out chasing us all over the arena, scrambling for shields. The twins were fighting for the same shield, Fish was trying to talk specs, Snot was being an Idiot. All the while this dragon is shooting and charging at whoever she sees and is picking us off like flies. While Gobber is sitting on the sidelines, weaponless but somehow didn't get noticed in all this and is laughing his arse off at our misery!"
Elsa had to laugh at the imagery of the young teens running around like headless chickens
"Thank the Gods your dad didn't decide to pair me off with him to train, He would have tossed me onto the nearest iceberg and yelled 'Good luck' while staying nice and cosy on the ship"
"If you're lucky,he probably would have done reasearch on a way to ship you off to Nifeheim"
Elsa had laughed more in these days with Hiccup than she had in the last few years. And despite what she came out here to do, Elsa was beginning to treasure Hiccups friendship more and more with each passing day.
The next day They returned to the woods and Hiccup began to teach her basic target practice with snow balls against strategically placed buckets. She spent an entire day training an she began to become proficient at taking out targets within fifty feet. Though Hiccups aim with his multi gadget shield was still better than hers, It was early days yet and when she tried practicing on detailed snowmen she made some progress. It was at this time a Terror came to the Island with a note. A note summoning Hiccup back to Berk.