Hiccup frowned as he looked down on the land below. The blue ice bay, the desolate islands, the icebergs, and all the bay's grey surroundings were inhospitable and did not appear to have anyone living nearby. There was what looked like an uninhabited or abandoned village down below near the shore of the frozen bay.
He had no thoughts of stopping there anyway.
The land was very withered and harsh with little except for mosses and shrubbery dotting the landscape. It even looked rougher than Berk in some ways.
Toothless also looked eager to see this new world, given how much he gazed around at the horizons while purring softly.
Hiccup kept his eyes open for any further signs of civilization, such as roads or pillars of smoke, but he saw nothing. It helped that it was a cloudless day, and he could see far. It was also very cool up in the open wind.
No sign of any people yet. Oh well, it is still cold up here. Maybe there will be people further in.
He glanced toward a range of mountains to the West. Those mountains were very tall and covered in pines and snow.
However, directly ahead off in the South and perhaps an hour of flight ahead was a set of hills that looked distinctly greener. The land definitely looked like it had more trees off in that direction. It was also probably warmer, the thought of which he definitely appreciated after an entire day aloft in the chill wind.
He put a hand on Toothless's neck and gave him a gentle scratch, which made the dragon glance back at him.
"What do you say we keep going?" he pointed ahead.
Toothless grunted and beat his wings faster with apparent eagerness.
They continued on into the South through the rest of the afternoon, only stopping once for necessary rest. Hiccup remained in awe all the while.
I had no idea the mainland was this big.
The massive hills that they had flown over for a couple hours eventually rolled off into a plain on their left and a massive lake that hugged the hills on their right. The lake was very deep and clear, definitely a good source of drinkable water, after getting Toothless to boil it for him of course, and possibly even fish for Toothless.
They started flying alongside the shoreline.
Toothless's ears lifted several times when they passed over and startled grazing deer.
They continued on along the lake until Hiccup finally noticed Toothless's flight starting to slow with exhaustion. They had been aloft almost since they left the island shortly after dawn, and evening was finally drawing near with the sun having vanished behind the hills on their right.
He was also stiff and sore. This had easily been the longest flight yet that they had been on together. He gently scratched behind one of Toothless's ears to get his attention.
"Hey bud, what do you say we land down there?"
The dragon yawned widely and looked down where he was pointing.
"Yeah, we could do with some rest."
The Fury warbled his agreement and dove for the shore by the very large lake they were tracking. He threw out his wings, touched down in the long and swaying grass, pranced to a stop, and looked around for a few moments. The thin forest, framed by the tall hills they had followed from above, looked very empty, and there were absolutely no signs of civilization anywhere nearby.
"Looks safe enough out here..." Hiccup mumbled.
Toothless nodded, slowly leaned forward, and gently collapsed into the long grass. The dragon closed his eyes and sighed softly with all his limbs splayed out, wings unfurled, and tail stretched out behind him.
"Uh... bud... you okay?"
Toothless did not respond beyond an indistinct grumbling.
Great, I've downed the same dragon, again...
Hiccup unstrapped himself from the saddle, hopped down, and got to his feet. Then he promptly collapsed because his legs were numb from long riding.
"Uh, yeah, really should have thought about that first..."
He eventually recovered use of his legs and got to his feet. Even as he did so he yawned widely and found himself without any willpower to do anything at all strenuous. His eyes started feeling very heavy.
Toothless started snoring.
The dragon's idea was looking better and better the more Hiccup thought about it.
I mean, I am rather tired myself. Yeah, nothing will bother a dragon in the wild.
He ambled over to Toothless, bent down at his side after retrieving a small blanket, and snuggled into the small space left for him under the outstretched wing. Even while asleep, Toothless curled around him, as if to protect him further from the cold. Despite having flown a significant distance into the Southeast, they were still definitely in the lands where night carried a potent chill.
However, there was no chill when snuggled under a Fury's wing and cradled against the dragon's warm side.
Motion woke him up instead of any audible sound. He forced open his eyes and saw the slowly-growing morning light from the approaching Eastern sunrise on the far side of the placid lake. A few of the early birds were already singing their songs.
He was not tempted to get up because his present situation was warm, and the purring was very comfortable and relaxing also.
However, Toothless again shifted in place and turned his head to look back at where he lay under a warm wing. The dragon's wide and round green eyes almost glowed with a warm inner light as they always did.
Alright, time to start another day!
Hiccup rolled to his feet and stretched his arms while yawning widely. Toothless similarly hopped to his feet and stretched his limbs, wings, and tail and also rolled his jaws for good measure.
"That was a good idea, bud. We needed that after such a long flight," Hiccup mused.
"You are telling me. My wings have never felt that sore before. They still hurt a little," Toothless muttered and flexed his wings a few times.
"Well, have you ever flown that far before in one day?" Hiccup retorted.
"No, I have never needed to. I have not..." Toothless froze, his forgotten wings flopping to the ground at his side.
"What? Bud, talk to me. You have not..." Hiccup froze, his eyes going very wide in shock as he stared into narrowed, green eyes.
They both stepped back several paces and then stared at each other, neither of them able to look away or do anything else. The seconds passed in silence until Hiccup shouted in complete disbelief as everything he thought he knew about life changed.
"You can talk!"
Toothless rolled his jaws and wiggled his tongue while going cross-eyed, as if in surprised amazement of his own at what had just happened.
"Yes, I can!" he barked back.
They both blinked, both of their jaws hanging open in shock.
Hiccup started to feel very light-headed, much as had happened after his first life-changing encounter with the same dragon.
"Uhhhhhnnnnn..."
He slumped in place and knew no more.
Toothless darted forward the instant he saw something start happening to his human. He gently caught him, carefully let his human down in the grass, and then sat down to wait until his human woke up from this surprise nap from shock.
He softly grumbled to himself while staring at his dear human.
There was still so much for him to think about; such as where the two of them were going to settle down and how they were going to live, what had happened in the sky during the flight over the ocean, and, most twistingly, how he now knew how to talk like a human.
Dragons could talk to other dragons, of course, and he had learned to understand many of his human's words by pairing words to actions that followed. He was a very clever-thinking dragon.
But a dragon talking with human words was completely strange and twisted. He had tried to talk to his human before, on the off-wing chance that maybe his human could hear and understand him, but nothing had come of those attempts at talking. His human had not heard his sounds as words.
Until now.
He had no doubt that his human could understand him because he was also speaking like a human now. The grunts, growls, and warbles that he remembered and which he knew carried ideas and feeling in their claws were now gone from his tongue. They had been replaced by human words.
And he had no idea how that had happened.
"By the skies, what has happened to us? To me?" he muttered to himself and resumed rolling his tongue around in his mouth.
Doing so did not help him learn anything about what had happened to him, so he eventually stopped.
Maybe I learned after hearing him use his words enough. Maybe that strange thing in the skies did something to me.
Snort.
I do not care.
Then he lay down on his belly, draped a wing out over his human, and settled into his watch, keeping his eyes on the surrounding lands and hills. There was unlikely to be any threat that would dare challenge him.
Holding his human at his side under a wing was not new to him, but everything felt very different now, knowing that he and his human would soon truly be sharing words. He was not going to question much how they could now talk.
He bent over and huffed into his human's hair while breathing in his precious scent.
I hope you wake up soon. We have much to talk about.
Then a faint chill circled around his soul-fire as he realized that being able to freely give words would mean certain talks would happen soon. There were some things that had to be said but which carried threat in their claws.
I do not blame you, my human.
Hiccup finally awakened and rubbed his temples as he sat up, feeling very well-rested by this point. But it was later in the morning.
Ugh, why'd I sleep in...
He noticed that Toothless was sitting alert right next to him. That was not so strange. The Fury was looking at him with a distinctive mix of wariness and eagerness on his draconic face.
That, however, was strange.
"Mid-morning, gods, I must have slept in, huh?"
Toothless deliberately nodded.
That action touched a faint memory of... something. It gave him a tingling feeling all over.
"Bud, I just had the strangest dream..." Hiccup mumbled.
Toothless bent down closer to him, his vivid green eyes just slightly narrowed in attentiveness.
"Yeah, I dreamed that you could talk. Just think about that, a talking dragon. Now that is a good one, huh..." Hiccup nervously chuckled.
"This is not a dream," Toothless sighed.
Hiccup was looking directly at his dragon as Toothless answered, and as a result he saw the dragon's mouth moving as Toothless spoke directly to him.
There was no trick.
It was impossible.
And it just happened.
Toothless the Night Fury, the dragon who he had grounded and almost killed, the dragon who had almost killed him but let him go, the dragon who had trusted him in the cove, the dragon who he helped to fly again, and the dragon who he considered his best and only friend, could perfectly understand him and could now talk to him.
The dragon's voice was deep and very familiar, although he definitely had never spoken aloud in this way in the past. There was also a slight trill in some of Toothless's voice, a faint warble which was a clear sign of the non-humanness of the speaker.
It was also definite confirmation that the dragon was as much a person as he himself was.
He had been suspecting as much ever since he had started getting to know the Fury in the cove, but this realization explained much of Toothless's deliberate actions and his demonstrated intelligence over the last few weeks and months.
But then there was also the question of why Toothless had never spoken to him before.
And the realization that if Toothless was truly a person, then the same must apply to all other dragons.
Which meant that everyone on Berk had been killing people all these generations.
It was a lot to accept at once.
"I knew it... I'm dead..." Hiccup sighed and threw up his arms.
"You do not look dead to me," Toothless snorted.
"But... bud... I do not... what is... hhhhow can you talk now?" Hiccup stammered.
Toothless sat back on his haunches and then raised his forearms, holding them out to his side, paws up in a gesture of not having a good explanation. It was one he had seen from his human several times.
"I do not know. I understood some of your words before, but now I understand them all and I... can make the words also."
Hiccup numbly nodded and then turned away, overcome by feeling and unable to look Toothless in the face. He settled for staring out across the lake toward the horizon.
His heart was completely shredded by this revelation and certain of its painful implications.
Toothless walked around in front of him and lay down while purring softly. His laying down put them on the same eye-level.
"What is wrong?" Toothless asked.
Hiccup's lip quivered as he almost said something but settled for staring at the grass. A long silence took them as neither could apparently say anything else.
Then Hiccup lifted his head and took a deep breath, finally meeting Toothless's gaze.
"Toothless, I am... so sorry..." he warily broke the silence.
.
.
"Toothless? What is that?" Toothless asked.
That caught Hiccup off-guard.
"Uh, wait, what? That is you, bud."
Toothless blinked in surprise.
"You named me 'Toothless'? I thought you named me 'bud'."
"Oh... Yeeeeahhhh, no, sorry about that," Hiccup groaned.
Toothless chuffed and laughed openly, his throaty peals carrying on the morning breeze.
"Toothless? Is that for the no-teeth-showing smile I did after the sharing of fish?"
Hiccup only nodded in confirmation.
"Of all the names you could think of... you picked Toothless?" the dragon stared back with a neutral expression.
"Alright, that's my fault..." Hiccup groaned again.
"You said the same thing when you were fouling our first shared flight," Toothless pointed a paw at him.
Hiccup reluctantly grinned at that. Then he very quickly looked crestfallen again.
"Did you have another, better name before... me? You had to, probably. Something much better than a stupid name like Toothless..."
"No," Toothless shook his head with a sad warble, "I did not have a name. What is your name?" he eagerly asked.
"Hiccup," Hiccup answered.
Toothless hummed softly in thought.
"Does it mean something? I do not know that word."
"It's not a great name. It means..." Hiccup groaned, realizing the best way to explain it, "do you remember that time we were playing in the cove and you tickled me so much that I started coughing and laughing together?"
"Yes, that was fun. You were easy prey," Toothless grinned.
Hiccup scoffed at that.
"Thank you for summing that up. Anyway, yes, my name means mistake. It is a terrible name, but there are worse!" a finger was indignantly pointed.
Toothless snorted in confusion. Something about human naming customs did not make sense to him.
"Why do you have a terrible name?"
"Because Viking parents think that a hideous name will frighten off gnomes and trolls," Hiccup explained.
"Gnomes and trolls?" a dragon eyeridge lifted.
"Yep, as if our charming Viking demeanors would not do that."
They stared silently for a moment, neither of them blinking. Then they both laughed openly, Toothless with his tail thrashing wildly and Hiccup with his arms clutched to his sides.
It was the first time that true, hearty laughter had taken them both together.
Toothless recovered himself first and gave a curious warble.
"I do not know about those beasts, gnomes and trolls."
"Nor do I. They probably don't even exist!"
"How would the gnomes and trolls know the Viking's hideous name before attacking? Why would a name scare them away?" Toothless wondered.
Hiccup prepared to answer but found himself baffled at the lack of an answer. That particular detail of the tradition had never been shared with him. Probably for good reason.
There was no answer.
"Wow, way to destroy hundreds of years of tradition in one moment, bud."
Toothless grinned again and then suddenly averted his eyes. His ears and frills also fell slightly.
"You did that also when you let me live," he whispered.
That comment thoroughly destroyed the moment and reminded them both of the obvious, unspoken issue between them. It was the matter which had to be brought up eventually and which might threaten to tear them apart or break something tenuous. If this latest revelation that they could speak freely was not going to do that anyway.
"Do you know why you... fell from the sky long ago?" Hiccup eventually whispered while staring most intently at his shoes.
"Yes," Toothless hummed while looking down at his paws.
"It was me. I shot you from the sky."
"I know. Only the Viking who shot me from the sky would have been looking for me."
"I broke your tail... I am why you... cannot... fly on your own."
Toothless stepped closer, lifted a paw, and gently nudged Hiccup's hung chin. He noticed that Hiccup was crying softly, a fine stream of tears leaking from his eyes. There was also a hint of fear in the small green eyes that he usually found so powerful and filled with warmth.
"Hiccup, it was in fighting. You were fighting for your nest, just as I was fighting to protect the other dragons. You did not try to be bad and break my tail only to hurt me."
"But I did..."
Toothless hummed softly, stepped back from Hiccup, and sat down again, his tail slowly swaying as he thought.
It was true that Hiccup was responsible for shooting him from the skies, but it was chance, good or bad, that he had lost the tailfin in the fall.
"No. I would say that the tree I fell into did that more than you did. I... what I most want to know is... is..." Toothless sighed softly and paused, not sure what to say.
.
"Why did you not kill me? You could have, but you did not. Any other Viking would have killed me," he eventually finished his thought.
Hiccup wiped away the tears from his cheeks and took a deep breath while gathering his thoughts. Toothless patiently waited for him to speak, knowing that this was an important moment for both of them.
"I wanted to kill a dragon to be just like everyone else there. To prove myself. I thought I wanted to be one of them, just like my dad. I wanted to make him proud of me."
"To show yourself that you were a Viking?" Toothless whispered.
Hiccup gave a pained grimace.
"Yeah, and I thought you were a monster from the raids. But monsters are not afraid, and you were afraid. I saw that. You looked trapped in a life of fighting that you did not want. Just like me. I looked at you and I... saw myself. I had to choose then to become a killer or not. Kill you and make my tribe like me, maybe even get a date, or let you go and remain a failure to them."
There was no sound for the longest time between them except the whistle of the wind.
"Why... why did you not kill me after I let you go?" Hiccup softly asked.
Toothless got to his feet, paced for a while, glanced up at the sky, and then again took his place before Hiccup. He carefully reached out with a paw and rested it on Hiccup's shoulder.
"I wondered that myself for a long time. Part of me wanted to kill you because that is what dragons and humans do to each other. That is the natural way. But you showed me that you are not a killer. You are not one of them. You let me live, so I let you live. That was fair."
"Was the roar really necessary?" Hiccup warily grinned as Toothless stepped back from him.
"Definitely, I was not happy about being shot from the sky and being trapped," Toothless huffed.
"I... cannot blame you for that. What about in the cove then?"
"What about it?"
"Well, what were you thinking?"
Toothless rolled his eyes and snorted.
"I could ask you the same question. Why did you, a small human, walk into a place that had a hungry dragon trapped in it? Especially when you only brought one fish with you!"
Hiccup groaned at the reminder of being made to take a bite from the raw fish.
"Well, you looked hungry, and it didn't look like your fishing was working out well. Yeah, I probably should have brought you more fish the first time."
"That would have been better. Instead, I had to wait until you came back the next day."
"Was it truly necessary to share half of the first fish after you ate it!" Hiccup blanched at the memory of that shared fish.
Another toothless grin followed.
"Yes, that is what dragons do to family. They share the catch from their bellies."
"To family?" Hiccup gasped.
Toothless crooned softly and looked out over the large lake. His ears fell, and his strange and familiar voice had a distinctly solemn warble when he spoke.
"Looking back over my tail now, it was strange of me to do. You are the first person, dragon or human, who truly cared about me or tried to help me. I never knew my sire and dam, and the other dragons were mostly slaves. Some of the other dragon dams helped raise me."
"Mostly slaves, what do you mean?" Hiccup wondered.
Toothless shivered in place and failed to fully restrain a faint growl.
"Imagine a dragon so big that its teeth are bigger than a human male. That thing, that monster, is the reason why dragons attacked your old island. They had to take prey animals for the big dragon to eat, or they would be eaten instead."
Hiccup held a hand to his head in amazement at this news. He had just learned something about what happens in the dragons' nest. It made perfect sense in a way, except that there was one inconsistency with the story.
"But why do they not just fly away?" he asked.
Toothless gave a pleased growl that he thought to ask about that
"They are not free to fly away. The monster controls their thinking and makes them attack to provide for itself. It even makes them feel good about attacking, as if they did a good thing by bringing back food for it."
"So the raids would stop if we kill that monster!" Hiccup exclaimed, connecting the dots.
Toothless barked in surprise and looked around at him. His backswept ears and twitching tail showed that he was not impressed by the idea.
"Maybe. I have no idea how to kill it. Do you see that white rock down the shore?" Toothless turned and pointed with a forepaw.
Hiccup spun around and looked at the distant outcropping.
"Yeah."
"If the monster's nose is where we are standing now, that rock is where its tail starts."
"That is... impossible!" Hiccup gasped in disbelief when he realized how large the creature must be.
"Even if all the dragons in the nest were to turn against it, it could kill them all," Toothless sighed.
"There must be a way," Hiccup protested.
A paw gently rested on his shoulder a moment later.
"Hiccup, there is nothing that we can do to kill it."
"But..."
"And if I did fly near it," Toothless continued, "it might try to control me and make me... drop you."
"What?" Hiccup exclaimed in horror.
"Even I can... could hear and feel it trying to control me. If I ever looked into its eyes, I might... try to... hurt... you..." Toothless weakly whispered.
Hiccup eventually relented with a sigh of resignation.
"Well, okay then. I still feel like we should do... something. What if my old tribe finds that nest? They will not know what they are up against!" Hiccup objected.
Toothless snorted in amusement and stepped back from him.
"They cannot find that island and nest without a dragon to lead them through the mist. They will never think to try that."
Only an instant of thought was needed to confirm that obvious truth.
"No, you are probably right about that."
"I know that I am right. It is also a very old monster, and it will die eventually. The other dragons will be free then," Toothless smugly purred.
That mention of the other dragons reminded Hiccup of something he had to know.
"Toothless, do the other dragons talk?"
"Yes, they talk mostly to their own kinds. Most of them use fewer words and talk more with body-talking. None of them talk with human words."
"And you could not before?"
Toothless sigh-snorted and flicked his tail.
"No, I tried talking to you with my words, but you could not hear me."
"And I am glad that I can now," Hiccup whispered.
Toothless stepped forward and gently nudged Hiccup's forehead with his nose.
"So am I," he hummed.
Then they both looked out over the water toward the distant shores and a strange speck of white far off on the other side of the lake.
"I will relieve myself. Do not go far!" Toothless explained as he turned away and bounded toward some trees.
Hiccup went the other direction and similarly got his day started.
They met up a few minutes later where they had parted.
"We should go fly now," Toothless beckoned with a nod.
"You got it."
Hiccup approached to get on Toothless, but he paused when he noticed the artificial tailfin. He could not tear his gaze from it for the longest time.
It was probably a silly fear, but he felt that he should ask anyway.
"Toothless, you don't mind me flying with you, do you?"
Toothless looked over at him while giving him a grunt and an expression of total confusion.
"I mean, of course you need me to help you fly, but..." Hiccup continued.
Toothless slowly turned around as if to start toward the water. Then the tail swung to the side and slapped him in the cheek with the single natural fin.
"Ow, why would you do that?" Hiccup held his stung cheek.
"Because you are being tail-twisted. No, I do not mind you being on my back. That makes it easier for me to protect you. I like having you with me. When have I ever done anything to suggest otherwise?"
"How about when I first gave you the tailfin? You threw me off into the pond in the cove."
Toothless looked up at the clouds and snorted once alongside a guilty half-grin.
"Ignore that one. I was... very excited by flying again, and it would have fouled my flight to have you on my tail!"
"Well, if you had waited a moment longer I would not have been on your tail!"
"You try not flying after being grounded for many, many days. And it is easier to keep you safe when you are flying with me."
"What? Keep me safe?"
Toothless gave him another of his gummy smiles.
"Great, thanks a lot, really feeling the vote of confidence there," Hiccup groaned.
"Just get on," Toothless crouched down to help him on.
Hiccup did so, though far more gingerly than he had in the past.
This time taking flight was no different at first, but he knew that everything was very different now because of how he could freely talk to Toothless. Of course, he knew that Toothless had understood a lot of what he had been saying before, certainly far more so than any clever beast could.
But he now knew beyond any possible doubt that Toothless was as much a person as he was. It was humbling that Toothless would not mind carrying him. However, it was also something that gnawed at his conscience since he would always remember that, despite Toothless's own words to the contrary, he was the reason why Toothless was grounded on his own.
On the other hand, he knew that had everything played out differently, if Toothless had not been grounded and forced to get to know him, they may never have become friends at all. What happened to Toothless was bad, but good had come from it in the end.
That still felt like an excuse.