Hiccup closed leaned against Toothless stomach and closed his eyes. He went over all the different things that he was going to have to do in the upcoming weeks. He started to worry himself over everything, big and small. He took a deep breath and went to grab a piece of paper and a bit of charcoal. He began to list all the things that he needed to check on and get in line before it became a problem. He circled one item on his list. Food reserves for the freeze.
"We have so many new mouths to feed." He mumbled. He had a few flashbacks to previous winters. The one that stuck out in his head the most was when he and Toothless were stuck in the cabin. 'Well at least we won't be in that situation again.' He thought. Then he started thinking about winters in the village, before everything happened. He wondered how his father dealt with a huge population. He pinned the paper under Toothless paw. Getting up again he went to the nearest hole in the side of the mountain to look outside. He shook his head as he walked back passed Toothless. He stopped and crouched down in front of Toothless.
"Be good while I'm gone. And if I don't come back lead them. Give them hope and safety. I love you." He pat his dragon's head.
He climbed down again, angry at himself for not building stairs yet. When he finally reached the bottom he found Dusty and Color again.
"Hey guys I hate to do this but I need a favor."
"A favor? Like what?" Dusty asked.
"Well I need one of you to bring me to Berk."
"Why?"
"I need to talk to my father about something, and he's the only person I know that could answer the question." Hiccup admitted.
"So you want one of us to risk our lives so that you can talk to someone who hates you, because you think he's the only person who can answer some question?"
"That's the long and short of it I suppose."
"So what is it that you want to ask him?" Color asked. Hiccup took a second to think. He didn't really want them to know but it did seem fair to let them find out.
"I want to ask him something about the freeze. I have this feeling that this year's is going to be really bad for some reason. So I want to ask him how to make sure that we all make it through. I wasn't expecting this many new people and I'm afraid that we won't have the food supply to ensure everyone won't starve. I know that we can still go out and do a little hunting and maybe some fishing but even with that it'll only go so far.
My dad knows how to deal with a giant group of people looking at him for answers. Plus he's been The Chief of Berk for gods know how long. If there is anyone who knows what to do it would be him."
"Do you think that he'll actually talk to you?" Dusty wondered.
"I don't know. I'm hoping that he'll talk to me as one leader to another. Even just for a few minutes if he overlooks everything to answer one or two questions would be invaluable. He'll probably ask for something in return but I won't put us in danger. No information is valuable enough to put you guys in that situation."
"You seem pretty stuck on the idea so I won't contest but who will bring you?" Color asked.
"If anyone is bringing him anywhere, it's me." A familiar voice said. Hiccup whipped around to find Toothless barely able to stand and breathing heavily.
"Well that's a pretty good sign i'd say." Hiccup grumbled to himself. He walked up to the Night Fury, cupping his chin in his hand. "You had me worried. What happened? How's your wing? You need to eat."
"Hiccup I'm fine." Toothless protested.
"You're not fine. You've been dead to the world for five days. You need to eat something, and recover. Plus there is no way that your wing is healed yet. Don't push yourself because of me. You know that I won't willingly put you in a life or death situation on purpose. I'd only do that if we accidentally trapped ourselves in a house we built." They both chuckled a little. "So if you're going to be stubborn and won't let me go without you, then I'll wait. But I will have to go to Berk sooner than later."
"Why do you need to go to Berk? Hiccup damnit, there is nothing there for you anymore."
"I know, but I need to talk to my dad. It's important."
"What could be so important that you would risk our lives to talk to someone who, last time we met, tried to kill us. Not only that, but you killed one of theirs. That doesn't exactly put us on speaking terms." Toothless was visually irritated at Hiccup.
"You think I don't know that!" Hiccup yelled. He caught himself and sighed. "Sorry." He hung his head. "But like I said, I wouldn't want to go if it wasn't important, if I thought the risk wouldn't be worth it. My dad has the knowledge I need and without it, we could lose a lot of people to the freeze.
We've grown to quickly and I'm afraid that we won't have enough food to last us. Unfortunately I overlooked something like this and now we don't have the time to properly expand our food sources. Right now from what I can tell, we're probably going to over fish and over hunt just to keep everyone fed. Which is going to hurt us next year. We can find new fishing spots and new hunting areas. Not that we weren't planning to anyway but it takes time. Time that we can't waste right now."
"Okay but what should we be doing then?" Dusty asked. "If we don't have that much time how can we use it effectively?" Toothless took over.
"We need to start looking for new sources of food immediately. Tell the scouting parties to look at the wildlife in their areas and have them report to us if they think that we could use it as a source for big game. None of the higher risk areas will be considered, to dangerous to move large groups of us to those areas. In the areas around smaller villages we want to make sure that we aren't causing them any harm. They don't think of us as a threat and we want it to stay like that.
On top of that we'll talk to fishing groups and see what is feasible for expansion. Luckily we're not that spread out and have a lot of sea left to look at so it shouldn't be too bad to find a few new spots quickly. Whether that fixes our food issue or not we'll have to wait and see but as least it would put less strain on what we currently have.
Right now we're looking to sustain more than expand.
When you talk to the groups, try not to start a panic. We need everyone to focus and we can't do that if everyone thinks something is wrong. Simply tell them that because of all the new people we're looking to expand immediately and we're looking for new areas to expand to." Toothless looked at the two dragons in front of him. "And this conversation stays between us." Both dragons nodded. "Now I'm pretty sure it's late and I do need to eat. Oh and congratulations, it seem that you two have finally realized that you're mates." That got a good laugh out of all of them.