Work Text:
The skies were the most glorious place in the world.
Hiccup had always liked looking at things. It was why he liked to draw; he could draw something he’d seen in the woods or up on the mountain or down by the sea, he could draw it and then look at it again and again and again. He loved maps and books with pictures in; the only book on the entire island he had failed to devour in his quest for pictures as a child was The Book of Dragons, which coincidentally turned out to be the book with the most pictures in. His fear of dragons had never really got him anywhere; his ability to look and to see things in others and in himself, to see himself in others, to see a scared, resigned soul in desperate need of help, had got him rather a long way.
Up in the sky, on the back of his glorious dragon, he could see absolutely everything. Indeed, he could see and had seen so much that he had no real need to draw anything anymore. His mind was so full of dragons and trees and sea creatures and beautiful colours and swirling birds and and swathes and swathes of creation that he didn’t need to draw if for his own satisfaction.
He did anyway.
Maps and illustrations scrawled in charcoal and squid ink, ash and chicken blood, pastes made out of crushed flower petals and blades of grass, bits of shell and fish scales. He made schematics for creations and inventions; they were nailed into the walls, bound into books, carvings scratched into the skirting board and the walls and the ceiling, arms of chairs and edges of tables. He did it when he couldn’t fly, he did it when he couldn’t be out, he did it when he was stuck indoors coughing and sneezing and spluttering and no one including his dragon had any kind of interest in letting him out of the house.
But there was nothing like being in the air, being buffeted by the wind, with splatters of cloud condesing on your cheeks. Nothing like looking down at waves frothing, full of dark blue and light blue and green and grey and foam, sea creatures jumping out of the ocean, jumping back in. Fly a bit further and rocks would come gnawing out of the water, chewing at it until they had their teeth on the land. The teeth weren’t pretty, they were mossy and cracked and split. The land was nicer, green, orange, yellow, brown. Trees that bristled and swayed, rivers that rumbled over cliffs so loudly Hiccup could hear them from hundreds of metres up. Lakes so big they were almost seas themselves. Mountains so high that to reach the top meant flying through every colour, every cloud, until the air got thin and looking below didn’t even result in anything because tit was all hidden by the clouds.
That far up, they could both scream and roar and no would hear. They could scream and roar and be free.
Up where no one went, the world was the most magnificent of all.