Evening

Toothless pushes his dragon-boy companion over with his nose and puts a paw on him to hold him there, insisting that he explain. Threat! he whistles, a sharp snap of a sound. That – he looks over in the direction of the ship - fear danger fear not-like so then, he wonders why why why you and he purrs as an example before glaring at his dragon-boy and reiterating threat no no no!

The feral boy cries a low wondering sound, making an unfamiliar shape in the space between them with his paws, and chatters want-want-want-want, the sound of a predator eager to pounce.

When Toothless removes his paw and allows him to rise, Hiccup scouts around on the forest floor, searching. He clears leaves and debris from an open space, and draws in the earth, wild patterns and strange shapes, agitated.

The language they speak is perfectly suited for emotion and sensation, and for warning flock-mates of dangers or alerting them to prey, for begging permission and snarling threats. It is fluent in the things that matter most to dragons, but it is not good at communicating new things. Somewhere deep inside himself, Hiccup wonders if there is a better way to do so, although he does not know what it is. He stopped speaking human words when there was no one left to remind him to do so, and no one to speak them with. Time and disuse have mostly erased his ability to use them, and will continue to do so, and certainly he would fare no better speaking human words to dragons than he does speaking as dragons do.

Still, he often becomes frustrated when he finds himself unable to explain an idea he can clearly imagine, but cannot speak of. He can show what he means, sometimes, but he has so many ideas that cannot be drawn or made, gestured or imitated or modeled in actions.

Eventually the bigger dragon understands that there is a thing on the ship, a thing with drawings, and that it is interesting and wonderful. He can tell from Hiccup's sketches in the earth, visible in the last embers of sun fire and the triumphant moon, that it is not a big thing, and from the way his companion moves and the sounds he makes – wondering and amazed and eager – that it is an exciting thing.

He can see his companion's desire to return and hunt it again, like a hunger but for something that cannot be eaten. And for love – for love, for Toothless would do much more than hunt a mysterious wonderful thing kept on a ship of humans, should it please the little dragon who is half himself – he cannot refuse.

Patience, Toothless warns his beloved-companion gently, easing the rebuke with a sliding sideways glance that invites conspiracy, as if they were planning a trick on a flock-mate, to thieve a toy from a nest not their own or food from beneath an unwary paw. He whistles the hunting command wait-to-pounce and looks upward as if counting the stars. He is not – Toothless can no more count beyond the two of this and that, or you and me, than can Hiccup – but he can see the difference between the few bright ones that are visible now and the many more that will be visible later.

They can hunt in the darkness of the night as readily as they can during the day, but humans can see in the dark barely at all. Although they do so rarely, when the flock raids human nests they attack by night, because then humans are sleeping and then blind in the dark so they cannot see the raiders coming or chase them when they flee.

Toothless himself can see almost as clearly in the dark as he can in the day, and even when the stars are lost behind deep storm clouds or in a cave where the sky is far away and hidden, if he looks very hard.

Soon, though, the anticipation of the hunt is stronger than his caution, and with his dragon-boy on his shoulders Toothless leaps into the air, savoring the first strong downbeat of flight.

Invisible in the darkness, they soar, sensing the winds that change with the turn of the tide and the cooler air of evening. When they pass high above the great fire that humans have lit on the shore, the warmth of it stirs the air, creating a brief thermal that carries them up in an easy gliding spiral, floating like in strong ocean waves by an island shore.

There are many humans near the fire, but Toothless cannot see any on the ground of the ship. There is no movement there. He circles, gliding so that his wingbeats will not make a sound until they are so close to the waves that the waves are louder than the dragon-pair landing on the ship. Now the feeling of the cave below the wood is expected, and the black dragon is careful not to let his steps echo.

Hiccup is smaller and lighter, but he mimics his dragon-self just the same, moving cautiously. They communicate to each other only in gesture and expression, now; they would not speak aloud with enemies so close.

Despite his anticipation, Hiccup is acutely aware of the humans on the shore, and it goes against all he knows to turn his back on an enemy without watching it carefully first.

As silent as the fall of a leaf, he pads to the flank of the ship, setting his paws on the edge and rearing up to look over it at them, wary and on guard.

Humans have no fires inside like dragons do, but they have made a fire because they cannot see in the dark. Perhaps they are cold, too – the dragon-boy can feel the warmth of the great fire on his skin, and it burns in his eyes as their shadows pass between him and the flames. And they burn their prey, which is strange to the feral child – he recognizes the smell of burned meat, for dragons burn kills sometimes, if they are hunting with their fire, but most things he eats raw.

They are terribly strange creatures, to his wild eyes. Their movements are unbalanced and clumsy as they walk and stumble on their back paws, and they wave their front paws wildly. If the gestures have meaning the dragon-boy does not understand them.

How do they hunt, so awkwardly? They cannot leap or pounce, and they cannot fly!

Hiccup cannot even imagine what it would be like, to not be able to fly. To never leave the ground –! It would be like being trapped, held down and tangled in the earth.

They move like bears and they sound like seagulls, and it is frightening. Humans have fur the way bears do, thick and heavy down their backs and around their bodies, and on their heads and their throats all down their chests. All the dragons of Hiccup's flock have scales. He has fur, yes, so there must be dragons with fur somewhere, but it remains unusual enough to be strange. It makes the humans seem more like bears, and bears are dangerous – the dragon-boy knows not to approach them. They are territorial and aggressive and unpredictable.

Seagulls are stupid, raucous and foolish thieves, loud and meaningless in their cries. The sounds the humans are making now, all together and over and over, are as discordant and harsh. Hiccup is used to dragon-sounds, and while dragons do sing in that their voices use many elements of song – trills and lilts, chirps and hums, thrums and rumbles – they do not sing all together, although their voices often merge together by chance into the sounds of the nest.

He is not sure what smells are human smells and which are ship smells; the odors are all mixed up together like the scent of a dragon-flock with its nest. Perhaps, it occurs to him, a ship can be a human nest. With his small nose he can pick up a sharp biting scent he does not know, and blood, which he does; a reek that must be human skin because it smells like furs worn by humans, and the rust and metal of their weapons and tools. Other scents he has never encountered before. None of it smells anything like his home and his family. The little boy breathes in the air to taste it, and wrinkles his nose in dislike.

The fear they evoke goes beyond how alien they are to him. Humans make no sense, except as enemies. They are stupid – they do not talk except in loud harsh sounds – but they make such clever things! They travel in flocks and live in nests, but they do not listen to each other – they do not see signals. They are clumsy on their back feet – a predator that cannot pounce – but they are dangerous.

They are setters of traps and hunters of dragons. They are the enemy, hostile and distant and intimidating.

Hiccup much prefers his dragon-family.

Because the humans are far away, they are less interesting than the mysterious and fascinating things still hidden on the ship, and Hiccup turns away from the fire on the shore.

C'mon, he gestures, look look interest us look good good here.

He and Toothless squirm under the covering wing and pull things out onto the ground of the ship to look at them. Hiccup is searching for the colorful papers, at first, but then there are so many other things to investigate and he is delighted to be so distracted.

They push over empty holding things, gently so as not to make a noise, and put their noses and their paws into full ones. Some of them contain things that smell edible, and soon their contents are scattered across the ship's broad back as dragon and dragon-boy tear off pieces and eat them, curious about the unfamiliar tastes, sharing their opinions back and forth in the expressions they make and the movements of their bodies.

Hiccup does not like the meat that is seawater-salty and hard to chew, but Toothless does, pulling it out of the holding thing in a great long cord like rope or the insides of prey. It follows him across the ship as he backs away, chewing on it enthusiastically until he has a piece that fits in his mouth. The dragon-boy is much more pleased by a holding-thing full of something that tastes like fruit but is a sticky mush like honey. He smears it across his paws and licks it off them again, staining his face with it. Neither of them is particularly interested in a kind of food that has a shell on the outside, like a crab but not so hard, but it tears apart easily, and it is soft inside, like crabs. A similar food has nuts hiding inside it, Hiccup is surprised to find when he shreds another piece.

A small holding-thing has something like dark sand but which smells very strongly and very strange, and Hiccup covers it back up as soon as he opens it. Even one sniff of it burns in his nose like fire and tickles like sneezes.

Some of the holding-things are made of wood and cannot be opened without breaking them and making a noise that will draw the attention of humans, so those they leave alone.

There are many, many, many furs. Hiccup drags them out of their pile like hatchlings in a nest and spreads them out as if making a nest to sleep in, running his paws through their softness. He dips his shoulder to the ground to roll and squirm across them so that they brush against his face. He would purr with the enjoyment of it if they were not being sneaky, but he finds Toothless in the dark and drops his jaw in a smile to show his joy.

Toothless puts his nose to the nearest fur and rubs his cheek against it, shoving it across the ship-ground as he goes from one to another, exploring the different textures and scents of the many furs.

All of the metal things are still too big to use, which frustrates the dragon-boy. His knife is one of the most useful things he has ever found, and it would be good to have another one.

But the metal is forgotten in an instant when he finds the wonderful thing of paper and colors again, hidden in another pile of furs.

You! he gestures, catching Toothless' attention and summoning him away from the rope of salty meat, which the dragon is trying to tear another piece from. This! and his body and the sharpness of his gestures reflects urgency and fascination and excitement.

They settle down in the moonlight and the edges of the fire on the shore to look at it together. Hiccup paws at it to open it and show the different papers – there are many drawings! – and beside him where their shoulders touch he feels Toothless go tense and still and fascinated.

He is pleased to find it again, but most of all to show it to his beloved-companion and know that Toothless can share his amazement and wonder.

Even in the dark it is beautiful. The drawings are still meaningless, and the colors muted in the night, but some of them shine like metal with the firelight on the shore and the moon above. Toothless places his nose against it in a tentative nudge, and Hiccup brushes his paws across the surface. He is surprised to find that there are shallow impressions in the paper like scars across scales, or the marks of dragon-claws torn through the wood of a tree. Even the scars on the paper make shapes, invisible to eyes but revealed under his touch!

It is not paper, not really, he realizes, now that in the dark his paws and nose are more important than his eyes, but something else, soft like the bare skin of prey under fur, and with a similar scent under sharper smells that might be the colors. Toothless touches the end of his tongue to it, gently and curiously, not as if it were a thing to eat but as if it were a hatchling to be licked and comforted. Paper, to the feral boy, means pieces of a rougher material, one by one by one, scraps stolen and hoarded and then chased around the nest when the wings of flock-kin startle it into flight, which is sometimes fun because of the chasing and sometimes irritating because he does not think that paper is supposed to fly. It should stay on the ground where he puts it so he can find it and play with it again.

But this is so far outside anything he has ever seen that he cannot think of it as paper.

It is magic.

Ragnar cannot shake the memory of the strange creature from earlier, even hours later in the company of the rest of the crew, with a bonfire lit and fresh venison roasting over it, not that Thorfinn can cook without the most part of the fat running into the flames and the rest of the meat burnt or dry or raw. Even with the laughter of the others echoing off the sides of the ship (because everyone, even Thorfinn, knows that Thorfinn cannot cook), Ragnar sees only the memory, not the fire.

He is still not quite sure what he had seen. It had been something out of a story, some saga where things are different, or a nightmare. A child, yes, he is fairly sure, but crouched like an animal, and not pretending the way his nephews do as they play and roll on the floor with the dogs, but meaning it. For a moment he had truly thought it a dragon, and then perhaps some joke of the gods, part one thing and part the other.

When he had looked again, it had possessed the curious sexlessness of very small children, long red-brown hair tangled in the sea wind but not even as matted as the beards of some warriors, grubby only as all children are, with grass stains across its hands and arms, and a smudge of dirt on its face as there would be on the face of any child left to its own devices. Pale human skin scattered with freckles had vanished into a patchwork of mismatched fur, worn over faded and stained fabric or holding it together, a jumble of dark earth colors like an animal near-invisible in the woods.

Creature or child, it had bristled with fear, and for a moment Ragnar had thought that the dragon, hissing and snarling and growling as it was, was hunting it. He had reached out to defend it, to reassure the child that it was safe and that he would not let the dragon harm it.

Only then had he realized that it was him the child feared, that the dragon-screams of defiance the gesture provoked were coming, impossibly, from the child-creature's throat. It had raised a small but calloused hand between them, not reaching out but as if to claw and slash, and he had seen hatred in its eyes.

The fear he can understand. Ragnar is a big man, and he has frightened children before, coming upon them unexpected; or deliberately, telling some story to his nephews and their mob of interchangeable friends to make them shriek and shiver with terrified delight. The dragon he can understand – every Viking in the north knows how to fight dragons; the beasts are as inevitable as winter, and as welcome. But what mad chance could have brought the two together, he cannot figure. If the dragon had not been hunting the child, how had both dragon and child come to be there?

There had been a woman once, in his village, who had claimed to keep a bear for a pet. She had not been the first to try such a thing – there was a story of a man who had tamed a lynx from a kitten, a story Ragnar had heard from his grandmother, and he will gladly kill in honest battle any man who calls his grandmother a liar. And there are tribes, far away, who call birds from the sky like dogs, hunting with them and beside them; these marvels Ragnar has seen for himself.

The woman had walked into the woods with food and followed the beast to its lair, and for months she had sat near the den and walked in the footsteps of the bear, singing to it, gradually and carefully getting closer and closer until one day she had laid a hand upon it and groomed away a tuft of fur from the living bear. When winter had come she had ventured into the bear's den, close enough to lie beside it as it slept, and she had reemerged declaring herself a priestess of the great bear, the peaceful and gentle protector, or so she claimed, of their people, for he had been tamed through her magic.

She had spent much of the winter with the sleeping bear, emerging only to accept tributes and petitions from the believers her accomplishment had earned her.

When spring came Ragnar had found her dead, her body broken and torn and shredded, discarded like the offal of a butchered deer, and the bear's new cubs had played with the trinkets she had collected as the due of a priestess.

He has never heard of anyone who has tried to tame a dragon, and certainly no child could do so. Certainly no child so strange and wild and mad.

What had it been then, if not a child? An elvish changeling, in the form of almost a child? The monstrous offspring of beast and man, an abomination? Some whim of the shapeshifter, tiring of changing only his own form and reaching out to transform a wild beast, to watch with amusement the bewilderment of Vikings?

Or can dragons now take on the shape of children, then? Is this some new wickedness of the beasts that sink ships and burn villages and hunt men? Will he pick up a child, one day, only to have it transform into a beast in his arms? Will his nephews play with strangers who become dragons and devour them?

Surely such things are impossible.

He could almost believe it a vision, of too much steep autumn sunlight in his eyes. Certainly no one among his comrades will believe his tale. They had seen the dragon flee the ship and fly away, but when he told them of the little dragon-like child with it, that had leapt to its back as gracefully and as surefooted as their captain to the deck of her ship, they had laughed. They had not known they had brought along a skald, they had teased him, and urged him to tell them another such tale of monstrous children come out of the sea to haunt their ship. Only the breaching of a cask of plundered mead, and another soon after, and the lighting of the bonfire, to the accompaniment of a raiding song, had deterred the most mocking; even his glowering retreat to the edge of the firelight had failed to silence them.

If he had not seen them himself, Ragnar too would not believe his own tale. He too would be singing the rowing song that had driven them through the night to ambush the village that had not looked for raiders so early in the morning, for their sentries had seen nothing on the ocean as the long autumn night had closed in; he too would be making up new verses and twisting old ones to celebrate their achievement and tease particular friends and longtime rivals both.

His eyes, too, would be blinded by firelight and distracted by the promise of either food, in the roasting of it, or spectacle, in the failure to do so well. He would be looking inward, away from the dark ocean and the ship with her cargo of plunder. Safely beached as she is, there are still sentries on watch, excluded from the meal and the mead and the singing by their poor chance in the casting of lots. They are watching the ocean from their posts on the sea rocks and the peak of the mast, in case the raiders were followed away.

They burned the ships in harbor there, save for the best, sent off homewards by a different sea-road under the care of a prize crew; should the villagers learn to walk on water and outrun a fine Viking longboat, only then may they seek revenge. And while the captain does not believe that word of their conquest will have spread to their rivals already, there is always the chance, she says, that the prize crew should cross paths with another crew gone a-viking and be unable to resist the urge to boast.

She is a wise enough captain to know that they will do so and think no less of them – that is a beautiful ship she has entrusted them with and she too, perhaps, would boast. Ragnar would have her at his back in any battle; she calls herself Elva Spearwife, for she is assuredly, as she likes to say, laughing, no shield-maiden. The weapon sings in her hand like a lover, regardless, and the ship leaps as keenly at her command.

Banished by the mockery of his crewmates to the edge of the camp as he is, though, he looks outward. Without the fire in his eyes he sees instead the shadows moving on deck where there should be none.

Still stung by the taunts of his crewmates, Ragnar fixes his eyes on the movement as he would the threatening promise of a storm on the horizon. He rises to his feet in silence, taking up his own windlass bow and the brutal short arrows it fires, and moves across the sand with the confidence of a man who has navigated the deck of a ship in such storms; next to that chaos there is nothing on this open beach to catch his feet and betray his movement.

The sentry nearest the fire is hungry; he is watching the roasting meat and the roasting of Thorfinn, with words meant to scorch and a new verse working its way into the rowing song to celebrate his valiant deeds of cooking his boot by accident on the edge of the flame, and of disguising venison as coals so that their enemies and rivals will never think to steal it. It is a simple thing for Ragnar to put himself between sentry and fire, signaling him to silence as the warrior joins him on his perch.

Ragnar is perhaps a shade out of temper; he grabs the sentry's chin and turns his head by force to look at the ship, fixing his hand over the youth's jaw to prevent him from making a noise and startling the intruders away.

For intruders they are, and Ragnar is vindicated; the sinuous deeper shadow, darkness in the night, is the black dragon, and at its feet there is a smaller shape.

The big man hand-signals wait and ambush with his free hand, waiting until the sentry nods his head – with difficulty – before he lets the young man go.

All of the other sentries but one he can reach on foot, and to a warrior not one is watching the ship herself; at best they are watching the sea, at worst the fire. The last has the watch on the peak of the mast, a watch Ragnar is glad he has never had to fill. The Spearwife puts her agile shieldmaidens and younger warriors on the heights, not men grown to their full strength.

The last sentry Ragnar signals with brief flashes of firelight reflected off a shard of bronze mirror, catching the attention of the half-grown girl wrapped in the furled canvas of the sail for warmth. He then flashes the same messages of wait and ambush, pointing towards the deck of the ship and hoping that her eyes are keen enough to see the moving, but silent, shadows.

In an ambush there is no shout to herald the attack; they are waiting for Ragnar to fire his windlass bow and they will strike with sling and spear and bow in his wake, surrounding the intruders and hemming them in until a weapon finds its mark.

He waits, as the ghosts of the light signals burn to ashes in his eyes and fade, letting the starlight and bright moonlight and the edges of the bonfire take over until he can see his targets most clearly.

If the child-creature on the open deck, lurking still and silent and lying in wait near-invisibly – to attack? to hunt his crewmates as they return to the ship, drunken and sated and unwary? – is some creation of the trickster, it is a cunning one. Perhaps he will not mind it being sent back to him.

Ragnar feels the eager tension of the windlass bow against his shoulder and sights on the movement in the darkness. He thinks of the dragon's roars and its fangs; of the hatred in the child-creature's eyes and the dragon-screech in its throat, and imagines it grown to some more monstrous form and hunting his nephews and their small silly friends.

A wave moves the ship as if she were breathing, before she settles again into the sand, and in that stillness Ragnar looses the first arrow.

Toothless has settled at his beloved-companion's side in a resting crouch, jaw on the dragon-boy's shoulder and back, and through this touch he can feel the barest quiver of a purr, held back so that they will be hidden in the night. From this he knows that Hiccup is all but choking on his wonder, on the purr that longs to tear its way out of his throat and shake him from nose to paws, and on the desire to cry aloud with the joy of it as he examines the strange and marvelous picture-thing.

There is no warning – no snarl, no roar, no flame, no sound of wind across wings as an enemy dives – when their careful sneaking silence is broken by a hum and a snap. Toothless is a hunter – he spots the movement, all his attention on it in an instant, and he recognizes the bite of a weapon-that-flies, biting into the ship so close to them that it is close enough to touch and so quick that it is still humming its anger.

Confused and disoriented, the dragon-boy leaps to all his paws, recoiling from the human weapon, and cries out an alarm call, a dragonish sound of fear and panic, confused more than hurt. The sound enrages the black dragon, and he too is on his feet as they move together, huddling together to be smaller as they hide from their unknown enemy.

Human weapons hiss and bite into the dead wood of the ship, blind in the dark but so many of them, so sharp! Toothless roars his anger as his partner-companion cowers at his side. When he looks now he can see many humans around the ship, looking towards it.

The black dragon is angry, yes, but he is more frightened for his companion, Hiccup who is half himself. He does not think about it at all as he crouches to the ground of the ship, concealing the dragon-boy beneath his body and his wings. Had he thought about it, he might have reasoned that Hiccup is his to protect, and Hiccup is smaller, and he cannot see as well in the dark.

He does not. He thinks only mine! and no! and danger!

But they escaped from this ship once before when it was light and they can do so again. They have only to fly away, and they will be far away soon.

Toothless raises his head from beneath the shelter of his mantled wings and roars in a breath that screams out again as blasting fire and tears into a cluster of humans on the beach, striking back even as they strike at him. One of their weapons nips his shoulder and he shrieks at them all, turning as if to drop the unbitten shoulder to his dragon-boy before fear commands him to stand over Hiccup and keep him protected beneath folded wings.

Part of him wants to tuck his tail under and hide, to surrender and beg as he would in a fight with another dragon bigger than him and stronger and faster, but another part flames and screams and leaps towards the battle with its fangs out hungry for the attack. Part of him feels cornered, with human weapons falling all around them like hail or the spikes of a blue-spikes cousin, and another part feels too exposed, with nowhere to run or hide, pinned down in the open in the territory of humans, and all these parts fight with each other inside him even as he fights the enemies all around.

If they can only get away into the air they will be safe, but Toothless cannot stop hovering over his dragon-boy companion, protecting him from the deadly rain of spikes and stones. His fear is keeping them both on the ground as much as the spikes he can see fly above them. But if they had leapt then those spikes would have struck them, he realizes, and he turns one eye up to look for threats from above even as he spits another blast of flame at the flicker of light on the bared metal of a sharp weapon, an easy target.

Movement there draws his gaze, and through the darkness he sees a smaller human perched on the trees that are part of the ship, hidden behind the great leaves but moving now, raising a weapon to throw down on them. There is a light in its eyes that is more than human firelight or the blaze of Toothless' own flames. It stares like a hunter, eager to pounce. The sharp blade on the tip of its weapon is like a dragon's tail; it will bite much harder than the spikes, and all of the different parts of Toothless inside yowl threat!

He rears to his back feet, screaming, and spins, twisting and coiling, and blasts the tree below the paws of the human where it balances on a branch. The flash makes it turn away, howling, and the fire tears into the tree like claws until it explodes, pieces of it flying as quick as small fierce dragons. The hunter falls, crying out in an angry high voice, and the tree falls with it, screaming in the deep moan of the death of a tree.

Pieces of tree knock aside the flying spikes and stones from the humans still on the shore, and the trunk of it crunches into the ship. Even Toothless' night eyes cannot see all the pieces as they scatter and flee, and the ground shakes at its fall, roaring its protest. Pieces of ship and the human things the dragon-pair scattered across the deck fly too, breaking and stumbling.

For a moment dragons and humans go still, assessing the new battlefield. The ship groans like the water-cousin it reminded Toothless and Hiccup of, whimpering from the pain in its flanks and back. Waves splash and churn, disturbed in their breathing by all the broken things falling into them. The human hunter who had hidden in the tree pushes aside pieces of tree and ship, faltering and reeling, and shrieks its anger at its fall.

Now! Toothless whistles urgently, looking away and down to the dragon-boy at his feet, protected beneath his chest. Now they can escape, now while the humans are distracted, now they can fly away, as quick as lightning strikes and as agile, veering and diving and soaring so that their enemy cannot follow them home!

When he drops his shoulder again, Hiccup does not leap to it as he should. He is crouched on the ground of the ship, head down and all his weight on his clever front paws as he does not like to do, and Toothless knows at once that something is wrong.

Is he hurt, did a spike bite him, what is wrong? Toothless has tried to protect his beloved-companion but he has failed, and now guilt and fear fight over the pieces of him inside, defeating them all at once. Terrified, the black dragon whimpers an almost pure sound of panic and fright tinged with his love for his Hiccup-self, lowering his nose to the ground to place it under Hiccup's jaw. He raises his head slowly and carefully even as he shakes with fear, bringing his companion's eyes up to meet his.

He does not smell of blood – there is the raw fresh smell of injury and torn meat in the air, but it is from the human hunter, and this Toothless cares about not at all. Instead Toothless reads from the wide dark eyes that do not look at him, and the way that he pulls away, setting his paws back down as if he might fall, that Hiccup is dizzy. When the bigger dragon noses at him he yelps at the lightest touch on his skull, whining.

Toothless recognizes stunned – they play rough, they are reckless, and it is not unusual for Hiccup to be hurt in a fall or a slip or a shove. Something must have struck him, as Toothless reared up so stupidly, leaving him exposed as everything fell all around them.

He knows that the stunned will go away soon.

He knows too that they cannot fly this way.

The flying-with helps them fly together but it is not perfect. Even when Hiccup is properly awake there is always a risk that he might fall, although Toothless suspects that Hiccup likes it that way, likes being part of the flight and balancing between flight and falling, shifting his weight and moving his grip on the flying-with and the pressure of his back paws tangled in the cords and against Toothless' sides, reacting to changes in the wind and the movements of the air and the acrobatics of the fearlessly agile black dragon as they spin and turn and veer.

And it is wonderful, when they are flying free, but now the feral boy is blinking and shaking as if he has been sleeping so deeply that dreams still hold him and are trying to drag him down into their bottomless waters. Dreams can be shaken away but stunned cannot, stunned can only be waited for.

But they cannot wait here!

Toothless shudders, trying to think past the fear and the horror and the confusion of having half of himself reeling and lost even as enemies surround them and attack. They think best when they think together – not as the king does, inside the skulls of his dragons – but reacting to each other, working together, cleverer than anyone, and most clever of all together. Toothless needs the comfort of his other half's presence, awake and intelligent and inventive, but guilt bites him deeply and draws hot blood.

If they cannot fly, then they can still run.

It is a stupid idea.

Hiccup would like it.

They are surrounded by grounded human weapons and lost things and bits of the corpse of the tree, hidden a bit but not for long. Toothless noses at his companion, yelping a simple instruction low and urgent. Up! he urges, need you need up up up now! If his dragon-boy cannot ride then Toothless will have to carry him in his jaws – Hiccup is still small enough to be carried that way by many dragons, although he does not like it – and it will be hard to escape as quickly.

Hiccup whimpers, turning away and closing his eyes against the bright flares of still-burning fires, but he obeys, not in a leap to the black dragon's shoulders but a clumsy crawl. Toothless waits impatiently and in fear as the dragon-boy paws at the straps of the flying-with, securing himself more out of habit than understanding.

Good? Toothless croons, trying to see but knowing he cannot. Usually it is a good thing that Hiccup rides on his shoulders, in his blind spot, but sometimes not being able to completely see his partner is infuriating.

When he feels more than hears Hiccup mumble agreement, he breathes in ready to fire and they run, not away, over the sea, but into a leap over the flank of the ship and soaring as if ready to dive down into the teeth of their enemies. They are spread out like hunters, and their prey is cornered, but there is an open space in their trap that they do not know about and there the dragons can escape.

Toothless flames, hot and furious, not at the humans, but at their fire, alighting on the shore and racing low and steady in the wake of the blast as quickly as he can, following it as the humans recoil away from the heat and the light and the bite of his battle-fire.

Human voices shriek and roar, discordant and mixed together, as he charges past them. From the sides of his eyes he can see many human faces turned towards them, staring, jaws open in anger or fear or shock, he does not know, but none of them have turned a weapon towards them yet.

It is, for a moment, wonderful.

The fire on the shore cannot flee. It can only stand and fight. The two flames become one brawling blaze with a great roar, louder than many dragons, and the pieces of the fire scatter still burning away from the battle.

Toothless races for this gap, aware always of the smaller dragon-child on his back, who has no scales and instead has gentle paws with no claws and smooth soft skin and fur of his own that will burn if they get too close and stay too long. The heat of the scattering flames lick against Toothless' scales, warm after the cold of the autumn night and the ice of fear inside. Dangerous as this trick is, it feels like dragon-fire which means safety and home.

His instinct is to leap, to catch the heat of the fire under his wings and ride the thermals up into the night, one sharp snap of speed and flight, but he cannot. He slows only slightly as he picks his way through the hot ashes, warm against his scales but too hot for the angry humans regrouping behind them, roaring and snarling even as they blink and flail against the fire-blast. The black dragon chooses a safe path until there is no fire ahead. All the human sounds are behind them as Toothless slips into the forest.

It is glorious to leave the screams and rages of humans behind. After the brightness of the flames and the explosions of battle-fire the night is soothing, cool and dark and safe like the stones of a well-known cave that has been rasped smooth by the touch of many dragons. It feels as if it might be a good hiding-place, to wait here in the darkness that humans cannot see through, but it is bright and clear to the black dragon, for he is looking very hard indeed.

Still Toothless can feel the tension of fear running through his body, making his wings twitch and his steps erratic. The sick sour taste of it is in his mouth and throat, of human foods turned bitter because of the ashes and flame, and even when he breathes in the night air to wash it away he can still smell the fire at his tail.

But on his back he can hear the smallest of confused and disoriented trills.

The black dragon scans the forest, crushing plants underfoot and flicking aside stones as he pads on. You? he croons to his beloved-companion, anxious. Love-you love-you Hiccup-beloved hurt hurt worried hurt bad hate angry danger danger you hurt love-you!

Instead of responding as Toothless hoped he would, Hiccup hides his face against the nape of Toothless' neck and breathes very carefully. He holds on tightly not to the flying-with but to Toothless' scales, staying as close as possible. The stunned is fading, Toothless knows, but it still holds him tightly.

They do not have time, Toothless knows, frightened. The human sounds that had faded as they walked on are growing louder again. They are being hunted! In the air they leave no trail except for scent, but on the ground they can be followed.

Almost instantly a stone ricochets off a tree near them, not falling knocked away by the paws of a wild creature but thrown hard and quick and cruel by human weapons. They cannot see in the darkness the way Toothless can, but their enemies can throw many stones. There are always more.

Humming reassurance to his dragon-boy, and hearing uneasiness and fear winding their way into his voice, the black dragon glances over his shoulder and sees humans through the trees, carrying fire and weapons. They have not given up.

It is not like a fight in the nest. Toothless and Hiccup often get into trouble there and make flock-mates angry at them. They thieve scraps of prey-fur and pretty stones from nests, and food from unwary cousins. They work together. Hiccup will distract their target from whatever their cousin has that they want. Toothless will creep around where that cousin cannot see him and snatch it, and be away as soon as their flock-mate realizes that they are playing a trick, his dragon-boy fleeing in another direction so that they cannot both be chased at once. Often their flock-mate will hesitate, unsure which to pursue and waiting too long, and so catches neither.

They have a game where they race across the nest from one place to another, competing just to play and to strut and preen and cackle in pride and temporary triumph, and a good trick on each other is to disturb resting dragons that will stir and spread their wings and roar and snap at the little one already past them and away, and will be very unhappy when another young dragon bowls through them in his partner's wake. That is a good distraction and even though Toothless can fly it is very hard to win when it is Hiccup in the lead and who has surprised their flock-mates into action like seagulls startled from their scavenging when the dragon-pair races into their midst to chase them all away in great confusion.

Sometimes they choose a place that is not their sleeping-in nest and decide that this is their space now, and play at chasing away all others, snapping at the noses of hatchlings and young dragons that try to intrude, laughing through their snarls as others join the game and trespass just to make the little dragon-boy and the black dragon run from one place to another, trying to drive them out, over and over again until someone tires of the game.

None of those games and those tricks have ever ended in a pursuit that does not stop. They have fled from predators that pounce but cannot pounce again before the dragons can flee, and wild beasts defending their dens or their kills or their small ones, but always once they have run then they are away. In the nest they can hide from annoyed cousins, but no one hunts a flock-mate they are angry with – this nest is their home, their rival can only hide for so long.

Nothing chases as relentlessly as these humans do!

Toothless snarls as he runs, as quickly as he can through the confining trees, wishing that Hiccup was recovered enough to fly, for while he is stirring and Toothless can feel that he is more awake from the tension in his body, he knows that even if there was clear sky overhead they could not yet safely get away. And there is no clear sky! The trees are not so close that the bigger dragon cannot move through them quickly enough to keep the humans at his tail, but they loom over him like the stones of a too-small cave.

He needs them to stop chasing, just for a little while. Toothless needs them to stop throwing stones all around – although they may throw stones at each other, which he can hear has happened, because humans are fighting with each other now – and shooting spikes into the darkness that come too close. His black scales hide him in the night but he is moving where nothing else is. Everything else that lives in this forest is hiding, but Toothless has no den here to retreat into.

On his back, Hiccup snarls, and lifts a paw away from Toothless' scales to swipe at his eyes, sitting up and pushing his fur away from his face. He whistles a curious question, a thin and frightened what? sound.

Careful, Toothless snaps at him, a movement of eyes and jaw and the flick of his ear-flaps down and back as if huddling and hiding, and breathes hush.

Their pursuers have heard the small noise, and a spike flies through the space between trees and buries itself in another one, humming furiously. Hiccup ducks, hiding his face against Toothless' neck, and the sensation with the sound and the memory of a chasing game in the nest give Toothless an idea.

The buzz of the spike sounds remarkably like the buzz of bees, and they need a trick, a trick to make humans stop chasing them.

Hide! Toothless signals his rider, and he buzzes the same imitation of bees that Hiccup had used earlier to draw the bigger dragon's attention to the hive, turning towards the sound of the ocean not far.

On his back he feels Hiccup turn to look behind them at the fire-light visible through the trees as it moves in the paws of humans – if their enemies set the forest aflame, will they still chase them? He thrums confusion what what us bees fear threat which becomes a deep low snarl of anger for a moment before falling silent entirely.

Then he cries a soft sound of realization and the edge of amusement.

A moment later he taps a paw on the side of Toothless' neck to signal ready, settling himself into the flying-with and bracing for flight without having to be told.

Despite the roars of humans, despite the danger, despite the fear that grows from being hunted, Toothless feels his jaw drop in a dragon's smile. Hiccup is back with him.

Toothless is fearless now.

He runs swiftly now, feeling his companion shift and grip and run with him, reflecting his movements in his own body, keeping his balance again, awake and alive. The black dragon remembers exploring in the woods as the sun went down, and begins to recognize where they are. Although Toothless is unfamiliar with the concept of a map, he can hold one in his mind as a memory of a place and how to get to that place and its relationship to other places.

One last sprint, and he can see on the far side of the clearing at the edge of the forest the moonlight on the waves, hidden some by clouds but still bright. The clouds are a welcome sight – when they fly away they can hide in the clouds and not have to go a long way home. Humans cannot fly but the instinct to not let an enemy follow them back to the nest has its claws deep in his memory, older than thought.

Now he turns, tired of running, ready to fight. He opens his jaw and snaps out his fangs in a snarl this time, and roars.

He roars danger and threat and defensive, angry and scared and, under that, edges of can't-catch-me like a small clever paw reaching into a nest where no one can see.

Tension runs through his body like waiting to pounce, even though enemies are trying to pounce on him, and it echoes through Hiccup as well where the dragon-boy waits on his shoulders, all fear and excitement tangled together like the guts of prey, blood-hot and sinuous and mixed together inside.

A dragon might know this was a trick. It might see the signals, of wings spread just so, ready to fly and not braced to fight, and only the end of his tail twitching, held all but still – one of their family would know the light in Toothless' eyes as mischief, not rage or fear. A dragon might see the signals that are the way Toothless holds his paws, resting his weight on his back feet and ready to spring away.

They might see Hiccup peeking through the edges of his long head-fur, eyes wide and paws clinging tightly to the cords of the flying-with, as they face down their enemies, but together, always together.

When a flock of humans stumbles out of the forest, leaves and sticks and the sap of the blood of trees caught in their head-furs and the furs on their bodies, they see what Toothless wants them to see – a dragon at bay, not flying, not running, panting as if tired, head down and eyes closing.

They charge, weapons raised and voices crying anger and fear and eagerness to kill.

And Toothless leaps, not at them but up.

His wings catch the air and the first downbeat is a delight so great it cannot even be cried aloud; there is no sound big enough to sing of it.

His tail catches the broken hive as it sweeps past, cutting under their bodies to balance them as they fly up and up into the darkness, and the song of that strike is not a dragon's song. It is the hum that becomes a buzz that becomes a roar of outraged bees.

The bees are too small to see in the darkness, but there are many of them and they make a cloud that has come down to the ground, full of anger and stings and hunting for the enemy that has threatened their nest.

Hiccup and Toothless are too quick and soon too high for the bees to find them, but humans cannot fly.

Now humans are chased through an unfamiliar forest by an enemy that will not relent and that cannot be hidden from, stumbling through the dark woods and unable to escape as the stings of bees snap and bite at them.

The dragon-pair sees none of it, and hears only echoes.

They are already far away, safe in the dark and the sky. Clouds shelter them even from the light of the moon, and the sea breezes fill Toothless' wings as he glides.

From his shoulders he hears Hiccup laugh as dragons do, all trills and chirps and a hough hough hough sound, like coughing but not quite. The dragon-boy reaches out to pet him, stretching as far as he can to brush a paw up and down Toothless' skull, until the wind shoves them unexpectedly and he slips, off balance.

He catches himself immediately, but Toothless shrugs his shoulders, rolling one eye back to glare. The black dragon will not forget as quickly the blank look in his companion's eyes when the ship-tree fell, or the fear that goes with stunned and leaves them separate, cut in two and unable to communicate. The guilt still bites him for allowing his partner-companion to be injured when he was trying to protect him, and the black dragon hides from it, turning away and lowering his head. When he takes them out of the glide and sets a course towards home, orienting himself on the stars unconsciously, his guilt is reflected in the beat of his wings and the breaths he draws.

Toothless cannot hide the way he feels – not from Hiccup – but he hopes the dragon-boy will not notice in the excitement that lingers in challenging humans and escaping.

Hiccup signals stop or perhaps no, the lightest of taps against his scales, half-scolding and commanding but familiar. He rests his paw against Toothless' side as if he could hold down the breaths that still come too fast in fear and the rush of battle.

Toothless whimpers an objection, defending the feeling that bites at him even though it hurts. You you hurt you good love-you worry worry mine you!

Good you good you brave proud me proud you good love-you, Hiccup contradicts, insisting. He turns his cheek to the black dragon's scales, purring a deep true sound of affection and contentment.

The dragon-boy stays still for a while, resting and thinking and watching the stars above and the waves below, and feeling the steadying heartbeat of the dragon who is as much a part of him as his own heart, who is his heart. Toothless' signals change as they fly, from anxious and guilty and afraid becoming contentment and relief and joy.

He is frightened still by the humans who had chased them, but distantly, like a nightmare that is fading and half-forgotten. He has seen into a world that is alien and threatening, driving him and his beloved-companion away even as it promises wonders. He is disappointed to have lost the beautiful thing of colors, and angry a bit at the humans who had driven them away before they could steal it and taken it away to be theirs, but amused at the outcome of the chase and Toothless' cleverness in leading the humans into a trap set by dragons. In some distant way he cannot describe, he is aware of the irony in this and pleased by what he sees as the justice of it. and he is tired with the deep true exhaustion of excitement and restlessness and cold quick-striking fear all tumbled together and used well.

It does not occur to him that if they had been hurt, if the humans had captured the dragon-pair and killed them, that the flock would have lost another of their young ones, so soon after the death of Smallest, because it would not be the same. There would have been a reason, and they chose the danger, and the two young dragons who are a single person are not hatchlings newly born. They are old enough to hear the voice of the great king and to face all the many dangers of their wild lives with only their own courage and fierceness and cleverness, without being protected by anyone else.

They could have stayed in the nest and grieved but instead they explored and found new amazing things and escaped danger, and that is how things should be. The feral boy understands this deep inside, although he could not put it into words even if he spoke a different language. He is simply too young. But he knows, and does not have to explain this understanding, even to himself, when he and his dragon-half can live it.

He and Toothless are reckless and daring, taking impulsive risks and doing foolish things, but they are brave and adventurous and inventive and that is how they know they are alive and themselves together.

That is how he fights, when bigger dragons push him aside or ignore him or snarl at him when fights break out in the nest, as fights do often. He and Toothless are smaller than many dragons, but they are clever and quick instead. They do not fight dragons much bigger than they are by leaping at hard scales or being swiped at by sharp claws or wrestling with heavy-thick cousins. They fly swift and agile until their rival cannot catch them and tires of the chase and the quarrel, or they think of a way to make the fight a foolish thing because there are more interesting things to do.

Part of him imagines that death and danger, too, are enemies that can be fought in their own way, baited and teased and then driven away by cleverness.

They can defy death just as they would defy a bully or an enemy, by being braver and cleverer and today, Hiccup decides – despite the ache of his skull and the sick taste of fear still fading from his throat and the loss of the pretty colorful toy – they have fought well. They have snarled back at death and chased it away from them.

He is not at all sorry, except for the fear that Toothless felt. That alone he regrets.

It will be a good story to tell their friends when winter comes again and the flock does not leave the nest but curls up warm all together and dozes. For now there are bright scattered stars far above them as Toothless soars high above the thinning clouds, and the dark water and the floating ice and the stars-in-ice that vanish when pounced on below. There is the cold of the night air in the feral boy's eyes and in his chest as he breathes with the heat from their heart-fires inside. There is the sanctuary of home and the flock to return to, the scent of the open sky, and each other.

Death has taken Smallest, but it cannot have Toothless and his beloved dragon-boy.

-end-

thanks for reading – Le'letha