Chapter Text
It soon becomes abundantly clear that they’re not alone the minute the Edge appears over the horizon. The furnace in the middle of the main hut consistently churn out a light plume of smoke and the Night Terrors chirp their hellos from the sea stacks in front of the island, alert on their usual guard duty. There are no boats, but the doors to the dragon pens are as wide open as they left them—letting the two riders notice their emptiness.
However, Hiccup has to be honest; that last point isn’t some kind of proof no one is on the island. He’ll even admit he prefers, and understand that most of his friends also prefer, to sleep with Toothless in his room—or at least within eyesight—regardless of the level of danger the team is currently facing.
He sees a little explosion coming from the twins’ hut and winces.
“Time to face the music, bud,” he sighs. Beside him, Astrid snickers. “You think this is so funny.”
She innocently crosses her arms, pointing a little finger at him. “Hey, you’re the one who decided to leave in the middle of the night.”
Hiccup sticks a finger out at her in return. “And you followed me!”
Stormfly soundlessly lands in front of the pens, bending down so Astrid can safely dismount and grab the bags she brought along with her—all of which are still wet from the melting snow. Lured by the prospect of chicken, she immediately leaves to the troughs, much to Astrid’s exasperation.
“Someone has to be the voice of reason around here,” she tells him, mock-tired, sliding her pack over her shoulders. She motions to the main hut and starts walking. “Come on, let’s see who came to hear about your sneaking around.” Her words are clearly chosen to sound like a joke, but the air is still and her voice cracks somewhat; it betrays her uneasiness.
“You still believe me though, right? We both saw that freak snowstorm,” Hiccup tries, hoping she won’t shut down when it comes to explaining their little adventure—and uncertain whether she’ll turn around and force him to visit Gothi at the crack of dawn. Not that he’d blame her, really.
She rolls her eyes, punching his arm hard. Toothless warbles a little laugh from behind them.
“What was that for?!”
“Of course I believe you,” she says, matter-of-fact, as though what they’d seen isn’t mass-psychosis material. “I just don’t think it’s anything to worry about so much.”
“What’s worrying?”
Hiccup yelps and nearly loses his balance; a rather embarrassing sound, one he will take to his grave, thank you very much. Once he turns to the culprit, he sees Snotlout and the twins, and thinks: Well, this won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
“I had no idea you could scream like that,” Ruffnut laughs. “Do it again!”
“Absolutely not,” Hiccup cringes, narrowing his eyes at the three riders.
Only then does Fishlegs appear from the door frame, eyes tired. “Where were you?”
Hiccup exchanges a look with Astrid, who only nods, before he sighs and sits down at the main table. The rest of the riders clearly notice the shift in mood because they sit down around him, the only light in the room coming from the fire in front of them.
He wants to tell them, almost desperately; they’ve become family to him, between the battles and the bickering and the quiet evenings when they’d spread out in the main hut, silent (at least most of them—you know the twins) but enjoying each other’s presence nonetheless. Despite all that, he still feels some things are best not spoken aloud; the wind seems to agree, the coldness turning into a little warmth at the back of his neck, filtered through the crack in the main door behind him.
“Remember our first time on Glacier Island?”
“This time it’ll work for sure, I promise! I’ve got a good feeling.”
A finger wags in his face from left to right while Snotlout tuts. “Uh, no. Remember last time? When you almost died flying that thing?”
“Yes, Snotlout. I do remember that. But I’ve been working on it, and—”
For once, he and his dragon seem to be on the same side; Hookfang looks at Hiccup like he’s taken away his favourite meal away. “You flipped midair when you weren’t even moving!”
That gets a reaction of out Hiccup, however. Now that the wind is acting all weird around him, his mind races trying to explain how in Thor’s world he might have flipped sideways when he was statue-still trying to stabilize his wings.
“Oh great, I just gave you a new puzzle to solve,” Snotlout groans. “We’ll see you in six business days." As he turns, he grumbles under his breath, “If you haven’t fallen to your death by then.”
“I heard that,” Hiccup says, eyes narrowed at him, his expression mirrored in Toothless. “And you’re supposed to help me out if I do fall, Snotlout.”
The man rolls his eyes, arms crossed and voice petulant. “And who assigned me that job?”
“Yourself, actually,” Hiccup points out, palm up and outstretched to gesture to the dragon-rider duo. “It was that or you clean up the pens.”
“Not much of a choice there, as usual—”
Hiccup pinches the bridge of his nose as the spiel continues. He’ll never get to try his new flight suit if this goes on any longer.
But Snotlout is right. That flip he did last year was really weird. The wind currents had seemed favorable, pushing him up away from the river and rocks for most of it, until—and he will surely regret this kind of description later—the wind seemed to get bored and made him fly all kinds of messed up ways before Toothless crashed into him.
He just hopes it doesn’t do that again.
“—but fine, go ahead, jump to your death. It’s not like the gods themselves told you to fuck off in that ice cave—”
“Woah there,” Hiccup immediately yelps, “harsh language, come on.”
“Whatever! If you die, I called it,” Snotlout finally stops, pointing at Hiccup accusingly.
Instead of dignifying that with an answer, and as though the wind agrees with him, he wordlessly leaps off the cliff, leaving Snotloud fumbling behind him.
At first the air struggles to carry him, but his practice runs and modifications have done wonders for control and mid-flight stabilization; he glides seamlessly between the rock formations, dodging the few stray boulders sticking out of the river.
He only has half a mind to rejoice before the breeze, now much colder, picks up drastically, sending him much higher than he’d expected.
“Woah, what the f—”
The whole of the Edge nearly disappears from his sight in a matter of a few seconds. There’s only him up here, with the clouds and no boats or dragons for miles upon miles. The sun shines from his right, rising slowly as ever, warming the bits of his clothes that are much darker while the wind takes care of cooling him off, running its metaphorical fingers through his hair and filling his lungs with the feeling of freedom.
Seemingly satisfied, the breeze lets up, maintaining Hiccup’s altitude near the clouds.
This is what he imagines dragons feel like; wings outstretched, letting the elements take care of their route and destination. There’s nothing to tie him down up here, or expectations to live up to, annoyances to tolerate, responsibilities to carry. It’s only cold air and the warmth of the morning light, snowflakes drifting between the clouds, the moon overhead when it decides to be.
Hiccup can’t help himself; the second one of the clouds’ flakes drops onto his cheek, he giggles, whoops and screams into the air. This is what home feels like to him. The edge of his fingers touches another small cloud, leaving his hand cold and wet, but he can’t possibly care about temperature when the vast expanse of the world is open, just right there below him.
So he dives lower, hoping to catch a whiff of the briny, salty sea breeze, the one that destroys ships and brings sailors back home safely. The wind lets him, and maybe it’s his euphoria-addled brain that keeps describing things like the wind is a person, but it guides him to the surface of the water. With the updates to his flight suit, he can’t bend down to touch the surface, but some waves crash against the expanse of blue and flick their salty foam up at him. He looks back up, seeing the Edge a few miles ahead of him, with its huts and the snow-capped peak; a home within a home.
He closes his eyes for an instant, breathing in deep, and feels something much colder on his face; a fingertip-light touch along the ridge of his cheekbone to his temple. Water, maybe, or some leftover ice from the recent iceberg melting season. It doesn’t last long; a splitting headache, right where the chill had been, makes him wince.
And suddenly, all of that ease is yanked away from him violently. He crashes into the water a few meters away from the beach, coughing and holding the side of his head.
The wind doesn’t come to help him for any of his other tests after that. Nor does its telltale strange, overwhelming feeling of being watched return to Hiccup. Its absence feels strange after having it gaze upon his every move since Glacier Island. It doesn’t come to help the dragons out when the Edge erupts again and again over the few weeks of summer—if it can even be called that—they have.
At least, that’s certainly what’s happening when he’s awake.
At night he’s certain it returns, because he always wakes up cold, with frost covering the skylight. The few days he pulls an all-nighter, the moon and stars shine overhead brightly enough to illuminate his work bench, not a cloud in sight.
After a while he stops questioning things; if the gods are toying with him, so be it. If someone keeps invading the Edge when they’re asleep, he hasn’t found any reason to be suspicious of them, since they haven’t taken or done anything to warrant any hostility.
The rest of team follows suit, as usual. It’s a bit hard to be surprised every single time a small pile of snow appears somewhere on their outpost, when it’s almost a daily occurrence. Even the twins don’t blink at it anymore; instead they instigate snowball fights and make crooked snow dragons in late august.
So life goes on, earthquakes, a distinct lack of dragon hunters, and all.
It’s only once they’re in the cave with that damn sandbuster dragon that it finally clicks. It’s not the realisation you’re expecting, sorry, but it is a realisation all the same.
“Of course—how could I not see that!” Hiccup exclaims, hitting his forehead with his hand.
Snotloud screams beside him. “I don’t know what stupid idea just went through your head, but now is not the time!”
Hiccup turns around wildly around the room, looking at the baubles and bits of treasure. Gems, gold jewelry, chests, crystalline tears, weapons, bags of… corn feed? None of this works, at least he thinks it won’t. It’s not like he knows anything about them, who their family might be or what they might’ve done—but this is certainly a place to start.
“Hiccup!”
“Wha—what? Yes?”
“A little help over here?!”
Right! Yes. Bad evil dragon that wants to kill them. And that wants to steal the last thing he has of his mother.
The three of them run away from the dragon, some much more gracefully than others—gods his leg hurts—just until they can make a proper plan to get out of here.
“Come on, Hiccup, think,” he tells himself. This is a dragon’s nest, the very place where all a species’ characteristics show more evidently than anywhere else. Underground, lots of shiny things, teardrops of glass from its breath, a lot of bones but none are mangled or ripped apart.
Only a tiny ray of sunlight comes through the thick covering on the ceiling.
Only a small…
He fumbles for the medallion in his pocket and uses the sliver of light they do have down here to his advantage at the last possible second. The dragon recoils, and Hiccup himself winces at the sound; evil bad dragon or not, he hates the sound of one in distress.
He also hears the distant calls of his own dragon, and the others’ footsteps above him. There’s no wind here though, and despite his relief from hearing his friends come to the rescue, he can’t help but wonder what exactly it is he did to have this weird, silent treatment.
Hopefully his idea will appease it somewhat.
“Snotlout! Come here, take this,” he gestures to the medallion. “Stay in this position and aim it into the dragon’s eyes. It really doesn’t like sunlight.”
Snotlout does exactly as asked, for once, but not without a few grumbles and confusion written all over his face. “What are you doing?!”
He ignores most of his questions, taking the five seconds he has to find something suitable, or at least an idea of something suitable. He knows he saw something earlier, next to the little figurines that gave him the idea in the first place.
Scanning left to right, then back to left again, he finally sees it. He grabs it with one hand and stuffs it into his pocket.
“Wow, Hiccup, I didn’t know you had it in you,” Snotlout says, strangely amazed.
Hiccup rolls his eyes, but doesn’t get to tell him off before glass cracks and falls from above them, the sound of their dragons unmistakable.
“Toothless!” he runs to his friend’s side, scratching behind his ears. “I missed you too, bud. Let’s get out of here.”
Snotlout passes him the medallion, with a new chain attached to it, which he hooks over his head and into his tunic without questioning where exactly it is that Snotlout got that silver from. The man himself has a fancy-looking sword hooked over his shoulder, even though it looks way too heavy to safely rest there. “Found what you were looking for?”
“Yeah,” Hiccup nods, dusting off most of the sand from his hair and pants. He gets off Toothless’ back just long enough to grab a spare leg before sitting down on the beach to attach it—properly this time.
He should really work on another attachment method to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
Astrid runs to him the second he’s on his feet again (the joke was tempting), grabbing his face and pulling him which and every way to make sure he’s unharmed.
“I’m okay,” Hiccup tries to reassure her, only to wince and stumble the second he tries walking.
She’s there to hold him up before he faceplants into the sand again, an arm around his waist. “Your leg—”
“Is just sore.” It is hard to placate Astrid even on a good day, but she seems to back off when he tells her, “I haven’t had the time to properly sand down this spare. Give me a minute to adjust.”
It took them a little while to get back to the market itself, with the pain and Toothless’ need for petting—the sun low on the horizon once they arrive near the tents. Unfortunately, that meant being forced to listen to Tuff and Ruff’s nonsense about tears.
“How does that kind of reaction even happen, anyway?” Hiccup asks absentmindedly, one hand over Toothless’ shoulder and the other in his pocket, rubbing skin against metal.
Astrid shrugs. “It’s the twins.” She sent him a questioning look, from his eyes to his pocket and back up again; he didn’t bother replying with all the others around. Not that she would’ve liked the answer anyway..
He throws his hands up in the air, eyes to the skies in exasperation, “but three days ago someone said tea—” cue some wailing, “that word out loud and nothing happened.”
“It’s like they get a running gag once a day and drive us all crazy with it until they get tired,” Snotlout says, before groaning. “Great, another annoyance.”
“Ah! Master Hiccup!”
Hiccup finally steps away from Toothless to greet Johann properly. He is quite the strange man, and insists on shaking his hand every time they meet one another. They all know Johann isn’t local to the archipelago, and probably has customs native to his own town and country, but he is really insistent.
They shake hands anyway; if there’s anything Hiccup has learned from his dad, it’s to placate all and any diplomatic traditions that come his way.
“I must say, you and your team always seem to right the wrongs in this mad, mad world,” Johann begins, his hands wide as he talks on and on, praises the riders for getting rid of the sandbuster, as is customary at this point.
Hiccup desperately wants to keep his energy for literally anything else, but with how late it’s getting—
“You seem preoccupied with something, Master Hiccup,” Johann points out teasingly. “I understand! The thrill of battle has dissipated; you must be quite exhausted. For my part, I am quite glad commerce can recommence— speaking of which, Master Snotlout, what a dazzling weapon!”
“Save it, Johann, it’s not for sale.”
Now that it’s been pointed out, Hiccup takes a good look at that sword. Split by a groove in the center of the blade instead of a ridge, a large-diameter fuller, ruby-adorned rain guard… and the width of that hilt—
“Wait, Snotlout—”
Johann dips into a bow, “I bid you adieu, my friends,” and wordlessly leaves, letting Hiccup stew in his own fear, the paranoia returning with a vengeance.
There’s simply no way, right? He fell into that volcano. He fell inside the volcano of their own island and he knows they didn’t bother flying over to see if he had survived that fall—who in the world even could have?—but how could he have snuck away on the off chance he was, indeed, still alive? Worse, if he wasn’t, who had access to his things? Ryker is dead, and the Berserkers are allies now, so—
“Hiccup,” Astrid says, cutting through his thoughts. She looks at him like he’s a dead man walking—and, well, he certainly feels like it. Suddenly his tiredness is gone, taken away by the frigid wind of terror and guilt. “Talk to us.”
“It’s Viggo’s.”
He shares a glance with Astrid, and she seems to grasp exactly what’s been going through his head. “Who could’ve brought it here?”
“I don’t know,” he sighs, “I just can’t believe we didn’t—”
“What, look for him? Hiccup, he fell into an active volcano. Who’s to say he was the one who left it in that cave? Maybe one of his underlings found it and thought he could make a quick buck,” she tells him, a hand over his shoulder.
“We didn’t even try, Astrid. We’re supposed to be better than them.”
When she doesn’t say anything in return, he knows it’s because she doesn’t exactly have an excuse for it either. This whole thing is overwhelming him, much more than any other misadventure has in the last couple of weeks. There’s no sign of the wind he’d gotten so used to, he’s either let a man die without funerary rites or let a man be tortured under immense pressure and heat for weeks before finally clawing his way out of Hel, he’s nearly lost his mother’s pendant, and he nearly died alongside one of his friends in a stupid, sand-filled cave—
“You guys go on ahead,” he says with an air of finality that creates equal worried and surprised looks on his team’s faces. “I have to make a little detour.”
He hops onto Toothless’ back, and doesn’t wait for anyone to respond before they both take off. The sunset continues its merry way down into the ocean on their left, while they climb up into the skies.
On Glacier Island, Hiccup has noticed, the air isn’t much colder than it is up above the clouds. It’s the wind that freezes everything into place, and the snow that creates tumuli for all that’s died under the conditions. But there is no wind this late at night; the sky cloudless and moonless, with only the stars serving as guide for weary travellers circulating around this bundle of islands.
Not that anyone is suicidal enough to make a pit stop here.
Toothless soundlessly lands on the small plain below them, right next to the entrance of the small cave they found last time they were here. He looks anxious, rumbling out his concern in the form of small growls and warbles.
“It’s okay, bud,” Hiccup tries to reassure him, petting the underside of his chin, “I’ll try to be quick.”
A small stray breeze runs past his foot, pulling up a few snowflakes from the ground. Toothless immediately gets distracted, following those white dots through the air. Hiccup chuckles to himself before slowly making his way to the alcove, wincing less and less with every step.
He’s a Viking, he isn’t too bothered by the cold—but these days, every shiver brings hope to his heart, only to have it ripped out again when the wind’s presence doesn’t show itself. So he had to comfort himself however he could, and had to deal with his leg in pain however he could when the morning frost isn’t enough to soothe the ache: by putting his stump into an ice-cold water bath every couple of days. The air here does much of the same, and he has to bite back on a very embarrassing whimper of relief when he puts some of the snow directly against the chaffing on his calf.
He settles down near the pond, still covered in thick layers of ice, and makes a little oval of snow and ice shards. It’s not much, but he can always come back to make this prettier. In fact, he’s sure he’ll be back soon enough. Astrid was right, this place seems too lonely for what it is.
Because it looks like a grave. Maybe not for whatever came out of that ice, but for someone at the very least. Someone who is as unknown as the gods and as mysterious as the workings of the universe; but someone human, who deserves at the very least proper funerary rites.
Like Viggo should have gotten.
Right in the middle of the oval, he sets down a single object, after he’d fished it out of his pocket. He takes a deep breath.
“So,” he begins, talking to no one at all, “we don’t usually do things like this, but I hope you’ll accept this gift.”
The necklace sticks out against the white of the snow, its leather cord dark and the metal slightly worn; the only recent polishing it’s gotten was Hiccup rubbing it anxiously the whole flight here. The cord is knotted at the top, loose enough to be adjusted.
He can hear the wind outside, but inside this cave it is deafeningly silent.
“I don’t know how you died,” he continues, “and I don’t know what rites you did receive on an island like this. I don’t even know if these rites are appropriate for where—or when—you’re from.”
Hiccup smooths down the pendant onto the little snow boat, leaving it fully flat on its bed. The air gets significantly colder, and he smiles when he feels that presence again—if you told him six months ago that he’d be relieved to feel watching eyes at his back, he would’ve thought you were crazier than the twins— and keeps on talking.
“But being…here, maybe you were a fan of the snow, so I found you this!” He points to the pendant with his hands, realising too late that he’s not actually talking to anyone physically present in the cave with him. He sighs, rubs his hand over his face. “Maybe this snowflake can keep you company in the halls of Valhalla—if the gods may be benevolent enough to deliver it to you. This is how we do graves in my tribe. A boat with the body would float over the water, and we would send burning arrows so the vessel may reach the shores of Asgard.”
He can’t help but think of his mother, who he knows never could have such rites. His father never found her body.
He winces at the thought, unable to stop his voice from cracking the slightest bit. “I don’t have any weapons or other things I can send to you now,” he says slowly, “but at least this is proof someone out there is thinking about you.”
He covers the necklace with some more snow, grabbing a few extra bits of ice to form a clearer boat-shape around the mound. The wind is calm, serene, even—but it doesn’t try to get too close this time. That’s okay, he thinks. He’s just glad it’s back.
(He also seriously wonders when he started thinking of it as a friend rather than an oddity.)
“I’ll be back to visit,” he tells the little boat, eyes falling on the figurine of the night fury once again—without the aggressive, ‘get-out-of-here’ gusts pushing him away from the shelf. He smiles at it, and mumbles to himself, “whoever was here really loved dragons.” How else could he interpret the only other grave goods sitting here? Moreover, before Hiccup himself, no one else had ever come close enough to observe a night fury and live to tell the tale—who, other than an elder, and friend to dragons, would know to add such small details to the ice, like the scales and dorsal fins?
Leaving the cave, Hiccup calls out for Toothless with his mind still spinning somewhat. Maybe someone had been frozen to death here, and whoever completed their rites had the mind to make sure both they and their figurines could be conserved in the same way.
Or maybe someone really likes making ice figurines, and Hiccup is reading too deeply into things.
As promised, he starts visiting Glacier Island over the next couple of weeks. He’s just not the kind of man who goes back on his word, right? Well, there’s a balance between acting upon one’s oaths and ignoring them; there’s also taking it too seriously, and then a third, secret option: using that oath to one’s own advantage.
Which is totally what Hiccup’s doing now.
It’s become a habit since the wind came back: every few days he hits a roadblock on his newest project—upgrades to his flight suit, a new tail mechanism for Toothless, the new Dragon Eye, a dragon figurine, some gadget or other for Fishlegs—and instead of wallowing in misery like he usually does (much to the twins’ amusement), he gets on his dragon and ‘runs an errand.’ He works out whatever excuse works best but takes an honestly ridiculous amount of time to complete it.
His bad habit only really manifests itself after they fly over Berserker Island and their dragons lose their cool. It’s never happened before, and he only has half a mind to give a stern talking-to to the wind; by the time he gets back to the cave, completely ignoring his usual pit stop at the Edge, the presence is still following him quietly. Pensively, maybe.
Hiccup fills the silence enough for all three of them, he supposes. He has his sketchbook balanced on his thigh, either drawing on the page some nonsensical diagrams and sketches, or nibbling on the wooden end of the charcoal. The most recent thing he’s drawn is a messy rendering of a very specific dragon.
“But it makes no sense,” he says to the empty air—Toothless has been snoozing long enough at his back to be fully asleep for a while still. “Garff and the other Deathsong had a melody we could hear.”
He etches some more, adding the scars on the elder Deathsong in his sketchbook. It’s not his best work by any means, being more of a figure artist than someone who can go off memory alone; thankfully this isn’t his official, prim-and-clean sketchbook reserved for the dragons’ notes and encyclopedia Fishlegs like to work on. In fact, he likes to call this book his scrap-notebook, where he just jots down whatever comes to mind before he forgets about it.
“There are no plants, no animals, no other dragons on that island that could possibly…” he sighs. He flips the page to the next. “Hopefully you have nothing to do with this, Wind.”
He steals a glance at the growing collection of dragon figurines—ice and wood both—now adorning the shelves, and then lays his eyes where he’d left the little snow boat and the pendant. It’s gone now; maybe the gods do listen to him sometimes—or the wind decided to mess with him and send his offering flying out of the cave. You never know.
A little bit of snow lands on his hair once the culprit decides to pause its silent streak.
“Funny,” he says, rolling his eyes. They drop back down to his sketchbook, the blank page a warm tone against the cool of ice and white rime around him. “I really gotta figure out a name for you, or something.”
What, like talking to empty air isn’t crazy enough?, he thinks to himself. He thunks the back of the charcoal against his forehead and starts mindlessly sketching again.
“Ice or Wind is a bit too on the nose,” he whispers absentmindedly, more focused on the rendering of the frost fractals he sees on the side of the pond.“I don’t think you’re a vættr either, and you keep following me everywhere, so locations are off limits…”
He moves on from the ice to another drawing, but this time he lets his imagination run wild. Maybe this wind has a corporeal body; a troll, like from Gobber’s stories? Or maybe it’s Loki, playing a long, elaborate joke on him. Maybe Njörðr decided to follow Hiccup around but not show himself, for whatever reason. Why would they be following him, though? Loki should be interested in Tuff and Ruff instead, for being pranksters and all. He’s not necessarily interesting enough to be followed by the gods… but what does he know? They’re gods—he’s got no business telling them what to do either.
And then it dawns on him: maybe, worse than his own gods, it’s one of the twins’ weird stories from places beyond the archipelago, like that one.. Akuilo, was it? He’s pretty sure he has that one wrong. Those people down south do worship household gods, like their own húsvættir, alongside the spirits of the dead themselves (don’t tell the twins, but they’re the ones whose rambles gave Hiccup the idea to make these wooden figurines; since he doesn’t know where this place’s resident hails from, he might as well cover his bases, you know?) and the spirits of their leaders—but it would make no sense, because this wind follows him all the way to the Edge, even to Berk! Household spirits stay with the homes and objects they are tied to. He crosses that from the long, long list of things this wind could be.
Whatever it is, it’s not tied down to this island, but the temperature sure seems to make it at home; Hiccup suddenly realises he doesn’t have to always come here to talk to this wind, though it is much more practical to speak to the empty air when he’s on a deserted island—and, well, a change of scenery never hurt anyone. He was born in the middle of a terrible February snowstorm, so he isn’t too out of place here.
There are so many deities it could be, but also so many other, much more logical options…
“Or maybe I’ve gone completely insane,” Hiccup shrugs. “Ventus? That’s what they call the wind, way down south, right?”
He is decidedly not amused when some snow drops from nowhere onto his sketchbook. That settles it, he thinks, they don’t like that nickname. Maybe it doesn’t like when Hiccup equates it to the wind? He stares at another pile of snow, just a few feet from where his legs are tucked inside his blanket. The idea comes slowly, half-formed, but he says it anyway. “Kalda? ” When the air stills, he explains, “it’s—well, a possessive form for wind? Something kalda means ‘something’ of the fresh breeze. Or Flykra? It’s the same for snowflakes. Since I don’t know exactly what you are…”
A few bits of snow immediately pick up from the ground, up into a tower before flitting over him and Toothless like a miniature snowstorm; a clear way to identify its favorite. Hiccup smiles and immediately writes it down as the title on his page.
When he gains enough awareness to wipe the excess water off the notebook, he realises he’s drawn the vague shape of a person following Toothless. He blinks, sighs, and guesses that insanity is the most plausible option of all.
The next visit’s excuse of choice is going to get more paper for his sketchbooks and notebooks—which, thankfully for him, he did need for his drawings of the Wing Maidens, their newest allies; unfortunately for him, it’s also Astrid’s one day off from guarding the Edge. (Yes, even she gets a day off sometimes. Even though it certainly doesn’t look like a day off.) He’s been in a rut regarding the Hunters for the last two days, and Toothless was practically dragging him out of his hut by the time he noticed he didn’t have more spare inserts. It’s a win-win!
Because it’s Astrid, she sees through his trick immediately. Her brows are furrowed and the blue of her eyes almost completely hidden with how much it’s making her squint. He has the childish urge to say you’ll get stuck like that but he bites his tongue, waiting for the shoe to drop instead.
“Bullshit.”
Hiccup throws his hands up in the air. “Come on! I didn’t even say anything!”
Astrid points a finger directly into his eyes. “I know that look. It’s a very dumb look. You had it whenever you kept sneaking around to Toothless when we were kids.”
“Wha— a dumb look? I didn’t know you had that in you, Astrid, I’m hurt,” he pouts.
She pinches his ear. “I’m not that stupid, Hiccup. You should see your face,” with a small snort, she moves her hand to press on his cheek instead. “Red up to the ears.”
“You know, the twins told me something about glass houses and rocks,” he says as he raises an eyebrow at her. “I heard you and Heather last night.”
She promptly punches his arm hard enough to make him stumble. “Shut up.” And then his mistake dawns on both of them; he’s already groaning by the time she points out, “what are you implying about that cave, Hiccup Haddock?!”
“Nothing! Nothing, I swear, there’s just—”
She pinches the bridge of her nose, exasperated. “Only you could possibly go out and find yourself a vættr for a friend— if that’s all you guys are…”
Hiccup sighs, somewhat miffed that he has to correct that statement. “Well, sadly for me, I haven’t seen anything that would support that theory,” he tells her. “So far it’s still just that weird presence from six months ago.”
“What? Nothing else?”
“I don’t know what’s worse,” he deadpans, “you making fun of me for something I can’t do, or you not making fun of me for hanging out with what’s probably just a wind current.”
“Ye of no faith,” she tries, but it falls flat. “I don’t know if it’s just the wind, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
Toothless and Hiccup both raise their heads at that. “So I can—”
“Get out of here,” she says, shoving him toward his dragon. “Get that puzzle solved, get your paper for your theory sketches—yes I’ve seen those—and get some work done on that secret project of yours? The suspense is killing me.”
“Yes, Ma’am!”
Unfortunately for him, good things don’t stay for very long. On the day he’d planned to make another visit to Glacier Island, after getting stuck for the millionth time on his Dragon Eye design and desperately needing a change of scenery—maybe a few pointers from a benevolent wind, even— they get a terror mail from Mala.
The wind—Flykra, he’s gotta get used to this name even if he’s got the feeling it doesn’t fit still—follows him all the way to the Defenders of the Wing, alongside the other riders. The contents of the letter was vague but decidedly grim; none of them knew what to expect, and that caused an uncomfortable silence to settle over them. The coldness of the breeze flitted between them, making Astrid shiver, much to the concern of the others, before running through Hiccup’s hair soothingly.
The mood is quickly justified when Mala tells them it’s time for the Great Protector to leave.
“To go where?”
“Vanaheim, its final resting place,” Throk adds, just as the twins begin their usual nonsense.
This time, it’s about some Viking travel guide. Oh, gods. Leave it to them to give Hiccup gray hairs before he even turns 30.
“The mythical resting place of all dragons?” he whispers, trying his best to ignore them, “you’ve seen it?”
She looks almost offended when she hears it. “By the ancients, no. We’ve had no way of following it.”
The cold wind brings the twins’ words to them, and they both turn to look at them pointedly. “There are some places in the animal kingdom where humans mustn’t tread.”
“She’s right,” Hiccup immediately adds, eyes narrowing, and it’s not worth his energy to keep watching their musings with anything more than disdain.
Mala guides him to the Protector, whom Throk grooms and whispers to in hushed tones, betraying how much the loss is affecting him. With the sun setting slowly over the island, the dragon is bathed in a soft, golden light, much like it would be in its natural habitat, standing over the glow of lava. Hiccup sees its age in its eyes and gives it a solemn nod; Flykra, by some miracle, is still a cold, shapeless presence beside him.
“It is with great happiness that they part, Hiccup,” she says, standing on his other side. She seems to look past his head for a brief second before her eyes return to her Protector.
“Happiness?” Hiccup mutters, “I don’t know about that. If I had to say goodbye to Toothless,” and he can’t stop his voice from shaking a little at the thought, “I don’t know what I’d do.”
“Sadness is a matter of perspective, Hiccup. It is how you choose to view the world that makes it one thing or another.” She puts a hand on his arm briefly. “You of all people should know that any being—human, spirit, or dragon—can be dangerous and benevolent, both due to your perspective and their own. Similarly this parting can be both happy and sad—we have chosen the former, as a day to rejoice. A changing of the guard, if you will. This is a well-earned rest for the Great Protector, and we should all be so lucky to have lived such a meaningful life.”
Empty warmth suddenly fills the space at his left, and his hand instinctively reaches out to the air, trying to hold the hand of someone that’s not there.
Even after they get back to the Edge, despite Flykra’s steady breeze, its pushiness for Hiccup to go to sleep at a decent hour—even though he finally has the Dragon Eye somewhat figured out—and its overall reassuring presence, Mala’s words echo in his mind for a long while.
It echoes even when he visits Glacier Island the next morning, with the Dragon Eye prototype in a saddle bag and a few blankets in another.
A change in perspective, he says within the confines of his mind, maybe I just need a second one.
The wind goes quiet as he sticks Inferno into the ice at his right. He sets his work station up somewhat messily: one of the blankets lays directly on the snow, protecting the metal parts from the droplets of water that would otherwise inevitably end up inside the Dragon Eye; the other blanket goes around his shoulders, because he knows he might be here for a while; most of the mechanical parts are off to one side and his notes on the other. Toothless is at his back again, cosied up against one of the walls and snoring already.
What’s funny is that the wind itself might not be very active, but the temperature fluctuates wildly from space to space. At one point the air over his right shoulder freezes over, and then warmth comes to replace it before the cold comes back again, beside his left leg this time.
Like the wind and the cold are two separate entities.
He voices that thought aloud, only for a fat, warm-white snowflake drops directly onto his nose.
“No wonder you didn’t like that nickname,” Hiccup muses, bringing two of the pieces of the device together. It’s missing gemstones, that he knows—nothing else would be able to create the colours they see on the projections—but he thought he’d gotten the main lens size right. He seems to be off by just a couple of millimeters; he writes that down on the side.
“You know,” he adds, “I—”
How does he even say this?
“It’s nice,” he says lamely. “I like the others, and Astrid has been my best friend for years, don’t get me wrong, but…”
It’s not just the size of the main lens that’s wrong! The angle of the curve and the material itself is off, that’s what’s been bothering him. He goes to note that down, too, and due to the movement the blanket over his shoulders slips off and down onto the back of his calves—yes, he’s been kneeling the whole time, thank the gods Astrid isn’t here to make fun of his posture— though the air isn’t as cold as he expected.
“I don’t know, I’m not making any sense, am I?”
He half-laughs, gives up with a shake of his head, and gets back to his work—mumbling things here and there. He doesn’t expect an answer, but sometimes the metal frosts over or there’s particularly cold air over a certain piece, prompting him to try combinations of mechanisms he wouldn't have thought of otherwise.
Whenever he says ‘thank you’ it’s for more than just giving him an idea. He says it with a calm he hadn’t enjoyed before, grateful for an easy companionship that has no requirements on either side yet keeps him content all the same. Whenever he says “thank you,” he means “I like your presence,” “you are a safer space than anything I’ve ever met before,” and “I wish I could see you.”
At some point he moves the blanket back towards Toothless so he can sit on top of it, one leg folded under the other as it stretches out. He takes off his prosthetic and leaves it off to the side, sighing when the cold air makes contact with the slightly swollen skin of his tibia.
He moves the second blanket from his shoulders to his lap. He really means to only take a minute to rest his eyes, leaning back against Toothless’ warmth—but instead the crackle of his sword, the gentle wind against his hair, the cold yet steady presence at his side, and his dragon's light snores lull him into a half-sleep.
He wakes up some unknown amount of time later with snow in his hair, the blanket now pulled up to his shoulders.