Prodigal son 9

A pair of hands gripped Astrid's shoulder, shaking her gently. She groaned in protest. The Hofferson hall was still dark, and she could hear the quiet snoring and murmuring of the Hofferson clan sleeping all around her.

"Astrid…" that was her mother's voice. Her shoulders were shaken again, and she forced her tired eyes open, blinking as she adjusted to the darkness. A shadow in a nightgown was hovering over her.

"Astrid, wake up!" her mother whispered again.

She groaned again and drove her palms into her eyes, rubbing them vigorously. Then she sat up in her bed. Beside her, cousin Eerika let out a sleepy protest and buried her head under a straw pillow. Now that Astrid was lacking the warmth of the blankets, the cold air bit her bare skin, and a shiver ran up her spine. She hugged her shoulders.

Her mother, Brunhilda, was standing beside the bed, a blanket wrapped tightly around her.

"Mum?"

"Astrid, Fishlegs is at the door." Brunhilda reported, frowning at her daughter.

Astrid nodded, blinking myopically. "Right. Tell him I'll get dressed."

"Astrid, what is he doing here at this time of night?"

"It's…complicated."

Brunhilda's troubled stare followed her daughter as she went through the familiar motions of getting dressed, and gathering her gear.

As she stepped out the front door of the Hoffersons' hall, Astrid put her hood up, relishing the warmth of the coarse furs. The cold air stung her cheeks, but despite her best efforts, her eyelids still refused to remain open for more than a few seconds at a time.

Fishlegs was standing just a few meters away, waiting patiently, though the twinkle in his eyes betrayed his excitement. He had a pack on his shoulder, and two canteens full of water.

"Fishlegs! You know what time it is?" Astrid stifled a yawn. Gods above, how she wanted to crawl right back into bed! The cold was beginning to seep through the thinner cloth of her leggings, and when she sniffed, it stung her nostrils.

He grinned at her. "Payback."

She blinked and cocked her head. "What? For what?"

"Waking my daughter up in the middle of the night so you could show me a book." He replied. His tone was excited and gleeful, despite the scolding nature of his words.

"Ah. Yeah. Sorry about that."

"Oh, no! No! No!" his grin was widening. "This is great! You'll never guess where it led! Hiccup was brilliant!"

"Yeah." She shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah I'm starting to realize that. Gobber gave me his sketches."

Fishlegs shook his head. "I'm not talking about sketches. Come with me! You have to see this!"

When the sun finally rose, it found Astrid and Fishlegs deep in the wooded wilderness to the east of their village. The forest floor was covered in dense, green flora. Astrid could feel dozens of fine prickles which had stuck in her pants, and were lightly scratching her with every movement. Through the trees to the north, she could see the orange light of dawn, sparkling on the ocean waves. It threw beams of light through the low mist which shrouded the forest floor. She stepped over a fallen, moss-covered log and paused to take a sip from one of the canteens Fishlegs had brought.

He moved easily through the forest, and he'd brought leather leggings to shield against the brambles which were such an irritant to her. Very little in the natural world could stand against a determined Viking, and though Fishlegs was a far cry from Stoick and Gobber, he was still a mountain of a man. The roots and bramble knots which constantly grasped at Astrid's feet gave way easily to his thick leather boots. Bushes and branches snapped and crunched around him as he tromped easily through the thick vegetation. Behind him he left a wide swath of destruction, and Astrid had found it easiest to simply move in his wake. She had not been this far into the forest in a long time.

"I hear you went to Stoick." He called over his shoulder.

"Yeah. I was hoping to take a look in Hiccup's room. I wanted to see if he had any more sketches."

"And did he?"

She shook her head, then realized that she was behind him, and he would not have seen the gesture. "No. The Chief wouldn't let me up there."

"That's a disappointment, but I can understand his feelings. Don't worry though, this'll solve everything!"

"You still haven't told me where we're going, Fishlegs…"

"We're near Raven's Point." The man called over his shoulder. "At first I was looking into the sketches, like you, and that got me nowhere."

"So?"

"So…" he turned back. "I sat down and thought instead. Do you remember the last raid of the season before he disappeared? He knocked over one of the search lamps."

Astrid's brows knitted vague images flashed through her mind; sitting on a water barrel, watching an entire disappointed village at it gathered in a circle around a short, spindly shape, but she couldn't tell one raid from the next; they all seemed to end that way, as she recalled. "He did that kind of thing all the time, Fishlegs."

"True." The man admitted, "But he said he hit a Night Fury."

She gawked. "I don't remember that."

"Well he said it." Fishlegs paused at the top of the shallow hill they had been climbing. The man turned, his eyes aglow with excitement, "I remember not believing him."

"How could anyone?"

"But he said it went down just off Raven Point."

Astrid stared. "…Which is where you brought me. He actually hit one?"

Positively quivering, he nodded and motioned her forward. She clambered up after him and they both stared. Heading southeast off the ocean, was a straight line of broken tree trunks. A trough had been dug into the ground where something heavy had landed and slid for a dozen yards. It was overgrown with bushes, but the narrow depression could still be seen.

"That he hit one was obvious from the start." Fishlegs said quietly as they both took in the sight. His breath condensed in the air as he spoke. "I knew that the moment I saw that drawing in the Book of Dragons. The questions were 'where did it land?', and more importantly, 'what did he do with it?'."

Astrid slid down the steep bank, following the trail. Fishlegs did as well, and they trudged along the trench, their footfalls loud against the frosty soil. The sun had not yet touched this part of the forest, and hoarfrost still clung to the low branches. As they walked, beasts scrambled and slithered away through the undergrowth.

The trench led them straight to what could only be described as a cove. A crater or sinkhole perhaps, which had grown in leaving a wide cylindrical area with sheer rock walls and a relatively flat area. A narrow creek led into a deep, calming pool of water at the center of the cove. It was filled with flickering silver trout. On one side was a grassy knoll, overgrown with weeds and tall, wispy grasses. On the other was split between a moss bed, and a sandy bank, an accumulation of rough silk which had clearly built up when the underground creek was much larger and moved far faster. Footprints wound back and forth across it, and Astrid immediately recognized them as Fishlegs'. A tree was growing in the far corner. A few fallen boulders dotted the edges of the bowl. Astrid stood at the edge of the cliff face, taking in the picturesque refuge.

"How do you know the dragon landed here?" She asked.

Fishlegs directed her attention to a variety of long, deep scratches all over the rim of the cove. They were unmistakably made by dragon claws. "He trapped it here for a time, I think." He said.

"Is there a way in?"

"I found a way in over here." Fishlegs moved along the edge of the cove. He led her to the narrow gulley out of which the creek continued its journey to the ocean. They clambered through an even narrower break in the rock face and down into the cove itself. Fishlegs encountered a little trouble with the tightest passages, but he managed to hold his gut in enough to struggle through. Astrid was leading at that point, and found her progress suddenly blocked by an old, rotten shield which had been wedged at chest-height between two boulders.

Clear evidence of Hiccup's visitations. It was a child's shield, and the pattern on the front had faded to the point of indecipherability. She ran her fingers along the rusted metal band which wrapped around the outside of the shield, and gripped the rotted, chewed leather strap at the center, a place in this wilderness where she knew for certain Hiccup's fingers had touched.

"There's more past it." Fishlegs said. She carefully vaulted over it. Fishlegs followed suit gingerly, afraid to touch the object. They tramped along the bank of the pool until they came to a fishnet, also old and rotted yet still very recognizable.

And there was more. A circle of stones denoted an old firepit, and when Astrid dug it up, she found old charcoals. A board had been placed across a few small boulders to form a table, with a stump as a chair. A hammer was found lying under the makeshift desk, along with a few nails.

However the largest evidence of Hiccup's activities was piled behind a few boulders under an overhang at the circular wall of the cove.

Long swaths of leather which had clearly been snacked on by rodents of some sort. Astrid recognized metal pins and rivets and lines of rope. There were iron arches and a series of wooden and metal handles. The constructions looked almost like…

"Saddles." Fishlegs said, approaching her from behind.

"Saddles?" Astrid asked skeptically. "How exactly would he have gotten a horse down here Fishlegs?"

He gawked at her, and then shut his mouth abruptly, biting back a comment. "Think it through, Astrid. He wasn't interested in riding horses."

"Then what? Then… the – the dragon?!" Astrid started to laugh. It was dark humor. It really was. But… Gods! "Fishlegs, listen to yourself! The unholy offspring of lightning and death itself… let a twig of a Viking put a saddle on it? Are you serious?"

The man was scowling. "It's not funny, Astrid! I think he tried to ride it!"

"Tried? Sure." She sniggered. "For all of the three seconds it took the beast to turn around and bite his idiot head off."

"He was feeding it fish! Look at the net!"

"He was feeding himself fish."

"If it ate him, where are his bones?"

"I don't know. Have you searched for its dung pile?" she sneered.

He crossed his arms defiantly. "Hiccup is alive. He tamed a Night Fury and flew away on it."

"Fine." Astrid threw up her hands, shaking her head. "Let's say he did ride a dragon. Why would he just pick up everything and fly away?"

"Look at how we treated him." Fishlegs said quietly. "Wouldn't you?"

Astrid's arms sagged, and she felt a sudden weight on her shoulders. Everything else aside, that part was true. They both fell into silent contemplation. Years of laughter, contempt, derision and dismissal…

They had not treated him well enough. So badly, in fact, that he had actually downed a Night Fury and told exactly no one. No one would have believed him anyway, and he was clearly smart enough to recognize that.

But it still didn't explain the saddles…

"You can't ride dragons, Fishlegs."

"Has anyone ever tried, or did we just kill them? We haven't been attacked by a Night Fury since Hiccup took it down." Fishlegs gestured out at the cove. "Do you see it here now? If it could have gone back to their nest, it would have, and it would have come back and attacked us again. Where is it? And where is he?"

Sunlight was creeping down the edge of the cove, and Astrid noticed a drawing, done with black charcoal. It was on the cave surface above the saddles, doodled during a rainy day perhaps.

It depicted a wide, diamond-shaped face with two cat-like eyes and four horns, or ears perhaps, sticking out of the top. The face looked friendly, with wide eyes and a mouth which almost looked as though it were smiling. Even in that simple cave-drawing Hiccup had captured something. A certain innocence and gentleness.

No one's ever tried before…

But why would they? Every Viking was taught at birth that dragons were monsters straight from Hel's realm. They were the bogeymen in the closets, and the horrors beneath the beds. They were a threat to everyone's lives. Vicious, heartless, soulless killing machines. How could one be ridden?

With a saddle, obviously. Hiccup had already answered that.

The real question lay in her perceptions. How much had she taken for granted? How many fictions were assumed fact? It was a paradigm of thought. A way of life. That 'Us or Them' mentality which precluded any possibility of cooperation. Dragons were the enemy. They were to be given no quarter, and that was that.

Kill on Sight, as the Good Book said.

Or hide, if you were unfortunate enough to find yourself in the sights of a Night Fury.

Yet Hiccup… had managed to shed all that. He had taken generations of teachings and put them aside to wipe his own slate clean and approach the beasts as new.

Fishlegs was right. According to Viking teachings, the Night Fury would have eaten the boy and flown away to rejoin the other demons and attack again.

Yet there had been no attack since Hiccup's disappearance. Something was responsible for that. Was it possible? Could one tame a dragon?

Astrid tried to imagine the demons as beasts. Mere animals. Even the most vicious wolves had to eat and sleep and bear children. Yet Vikings had managed to breed working dogs. Silent Sven used sheepdogs to corral his flocks. Was the same true of Dragons? They had to eat, otherwise what was the point of stealing Berk's food? Perhaps they slept back at their nest, and laid eggs like reptiles… perhaps. If they were just beasts… if she could just for a moment strip away that demonic background which had informed her perceptions for so long…

She grunted in frustration and took a seat on the nearest boulder, glaring at the saddles. She frowned; there were saddles. More than one. A great many, in fact. Designed and redesigned. If Hiccup had been eaten, he wouldn't have been there to redesign anything. There would be no saddle. Or perhaps one, lying torn and bloodstained in the center of the cove. Not the half-dozen redesigns she was looking at, each one building on the previous; retaining its strengths and eliminating its mistakes.

Astrid sat and stared at the saddles, her gaze unfocussed as she forced herself to accept the new reality, fighting against her own preconceptions with the same ferocity she used to confront the demo- the beasts- the animals.

Hiccup Haddock was alive. After all this time, Hiccup Haddock was alive he was alive, and what's more, he had rode a dragon. More than that, a Night Fury! She laughed at the incredulity of it, yet at the same time, she felt herself soar with pride at the accomplishment. A great feeling of relief engulfed her. It was promptly smothered by her guilt, which grew at an astounding rate. Hiccup Haddock was alive… and gone.

…and she had been among those who had driven him out of house and home.

Hiccup haddock had ignored six hundred years of chaos and slaughter. He had taken all of their notions of violence and war and set them aside to make his own judgments. Well… if any of them ever could have done it, put aside the entirety of Viking culture, it would have been the one who had never fit in to begin with.

She stared up at the sky, half expecting to hear the whistle, and see a black speck whizzing through the clouds. She wondered what they looked like from the top. How did the gods see Midgard? For just a fraction of a moment, she felt a hint, a light stab of jealousy.

"Astrid?" Fishlegs asked. He had taken a seat on an adjacent boulder, waiting patiently for her to reach the conclusion he had drawn the day before. The inevitable, life-altering, paradigm-changing conclusion. The conclusion which would inevitably lead to the breakdown of everything Berk thought it knew about the world.

"He did it didn't he?" she asked in quiet awe. "He tamed a Night Fury."

"It's why he got so good in the arena-"

"-He was learning from an actual dragon. It also explains why he refused to kill any of them." She shook her head, apprehension welling inside of her. The village might one day accept that the beasts could be flown, and that Hiccup Haddock had flown one. Yet once the idea was planted, Astrid knew they would have to rewrite everything they knew. People would start to ask how. They would experiment and try to ride. Everything would change.

And as for their Chief, Hiccup's father… Stoick the Vast was a Dragon Killer. The Pride of Berk. He had ended the lives of more beasts than any other. Every weapon he owned had spilled dragon blood. Even one of his spatulas, if the stories were true. Berk's Chieftain had spent his career building the villages' defense, and arming it against the beasts. His nights had been spent slaughtering, and his days repairing. They had eaten his wife, and until this very moment, it was believed they had eaten his child. His hatred of them was absolute, and absolutely beyond question. His authority was also beyond question, and to do so was an act of treason. Therefore riding dragons, seeing them as any/thing but demons was also an act of Treason. It wasn't a hard line of logic to follow, and its end conclusion was horrific; there would be a war. Berk would split in two.

"What are we going to tell the village?"

With a vocal grunt, Brunhilda lifted up the washing basket and set it on one of the three large beds which took up so much room in the Hofferson hall. She enjoyed the mid-morning. It was one of the few moments when the house was actually empty. An opportunity she took with great enthusiasm. She could relax and think without interruptions from the sizeable family. She could finish the daily chores, and spend the afternoons cooking and relaxing with the younger children.

She pulled a broom from behind the door and attacked the dirt on the floor with patient determination, cleaning all the nooks and crannies, all the while gently brushing the floorboards for splinters which so often caught in her grandchildren's bare feet at bedtime.

Behind her the door opened, letting in a cold wind which scattered the dust she had swept into a careful pile. She turned to the door, feeling slightly annoyed, but she put it aside as Astrid staggered through and collapsed backwards onto the nearest bed, her hood still up. The young woman let out a long breath as she stared up at the ceiling, her eyes glazed over.

"Astrid?"

"Mum?" she murmured, looking dazed.

"Astrid are you alright?" she took her eldest daughter's hand, examining the younger woman's troubled features, searching for some clue as to what she was thinking. It was to be expected that some children would seek privacy and solitude in a large cramped household. A few of the sons and cousins had moved out and started their own halls. The women took up various positions within the village, jobs and hobbies which gave them some time to themselves. Yet they all still had to come home every day and pile into a bed with up to six other people. With the exception of Brunhilda herself; she and her husband Hoark had their own bed, separated by a thin curtain.

Astrid had found her quiet time in the training arena, and in her own head. Her intensity was still there, but that fiery, passionate girl had grown into a taciturn, solemn young woman who smiled rarely, and almost never laughed at all. It was something Brunhilda regretted. She was proud of her daughter, and prouder still of the choice Astrid had made to take over teaching. It took real courage, after what happened to poor Sluglout.

Berk was in trouble. Everyone could sense it. The soil was giving smaller harvests, the beasts were frightened and sick, and after six hundred years of constant fighting, the dragon raids were finally taking their toll. Everything was in a state of disrepair. No new buildings had been put up in years, and the old ones sported more patchwork repairs than they did original materials. Stoick did what he could, but he was working with limited resources. If things didn't change drastically in a generation or two, the village would eventually fall to the dragon hordes. They would have to pack what they could and move further away. Perhaps they could find a new island, or settle with the Uglythugs or the Meatheads. Either way, Berk was in trouble. Brunhilda considered her daughter one of the few bright lights in an otherwise bleak future, and it was disheartening to see her looking so lost…

She took a seat on the bed beside her daughter, and picked up Astrid's hand, holding it gently in hers. "Astrid, what's happened? Everyone was looking for you this morning. You missed teaching." That was true. Several of the children had stopped in a few hours after she should have been in class. Whatever the reason for Fishlegs' strange pre-dawn summons, they had interfered with Astrid's regular schedule and left her in a sorry state.

The young woman groaned and drove her palms into her eyes.

"What were you doing out with Fishlegs? You know he's married, right?"

"Mum!" Astrid glared at her.

"There could be talk, Astrid." Brunhilda said, not backing down. "What in Midgard were the two of you up to?"

"It's complicated." Astrid said shortly. She rolled onto her side away from her mother, staring at the opposite wall.

Intrigued, but upset by this abrupt dismissal, Brunhilda leaned over and rubbed Astrid's back in wide, comforting circles.

"I don't know what to do, mum…" she heard Astrid murmur quietly. "I have a secret, and it might help Berk… but it could also hurt us really badly."

"Can you tell me what it is, dear one?"

"I don't know. I need to think. I don't know what to do… I need to think."

Brunhilda sighed. She was going to have to do some investigating of her own. What kind of information could put Astrid in such a state? She leaned down and kissed her daughter's temple. "Do whatever you think is right, Astrid."

"And what is that?"

"Whatever helps the most people I suppose… Let me make you some honeyed water."

Astrid gathered the fur comforter around herself and let her eyes slide shut. "Thanks mum."

I wanted to add a slightly tenderer scene. I intend for Astrid's mother to play a larger role in this fic, especially when Hiccup gets back to Berk. The name Brunhilda, as well as some aspects of her character were taken with permission from Midoriko-Sama's Becoming trilogy.

A reader asked why Hiccup speaks Danish. I'm going to put up a rather pitiful defense of my choice in *calling* it Danish. Yes the language he is speaking is technically Old East Norse (one of three Old Norse dialects), but to others, the Vikings back then were known as Danes. When they took to raiding and piracy, the Danes went Viking. 'Viking' is not a language, nor a people. It is not a noun, it is a verb meaning to raid. Vikings were pirates. One cannot speak Pirate. (Well alright… Ye can, matey! And yarrr, how awesome it be! But still… technically not a language.)

From the perspectives of the people around him, Hiccup is not a Viking, he is a Dane. One could argue that he's one of the Norsemen, but that's just a fancy way of saying 'north men'.

From his perspective, he might call it Norse, and indeed the different dialects were indistinguishable to the point of being the same (Scandinavian languages still are). But I thought that characters like Yanick would call it and think of it as Danish, since it's spoken by Danes. Especially when he might not know that much about Hiccup's society and culture. I was just trying to maintain internal consistency. Not sure I managed, but…

I should just make everyone in this story speak pirate. How awesome would that be? Yarr! Avast me hearties! Walk the plank!

Next chapter expect a new character which will direct Hiccup's actions for the rest of this story.

As always, thoughts, comments, and criticisms are always appreciated.