A/N: OK, this is the first in a series of little stories I've come up with about life on Berk. Some are pre-Green Death, some are post-Green Death. I have to give some credit to the one-shot creators of the tales of Berk and such for inspiring me. However, these stories are completely original and are each based on a song. Read and enjoy!

Fireflies

Thunk. Thunk.

Hiccup sat up in a tangle of blankets, startled out of his restless sleep. "Whuzzuh?"

Thunk. Raawrrr.

"Oh." Hiccup rubbed his face with one hand. "Hang on bud, I'm coming."

Grawwwr.

Hiccup brought his foot and his stump over the edge of the bed. Toothless continued to knock at the door with ever-increasing urgency. Hiccup tried to tie on his prosthetic as fast as he could. "I said I'm coming!" he hissed at the door. The thumping stopped, and Hiccup limped to the door and opened it.

Toothless was behind the door, watching Hiccup with bright green eyes. He shifted in place and whined impatiently, nearly invisible in the dark house. The coals from the fire barely glowed, reflecting in Toothless' shining orbs of jade.

Hiccup yawned. "OK, I'm up. Let's go." Toothless bounded to the door and scratched at the wood. "Toothless! Be quiet! Do you want Dad to wake up?"

Toothless shied away from the door, and his ears drooped. But he immediately began shifting in place again and growling.

"All right, all right. We're going."

Five minutes later, Hiccup was leaning against a large boulder in the old cove. He tapped his fingers against his arm, sighed, and called out, "Are you done yet?"

Toothless responded with a chirp and climbed over the top of the rock. He hung his head upside-down in front of Hiccup's face. "I'll take that as a yes. Can we go back now?" Hiccup stifled another yawn and shivered. The night air was bitterly cold, and Hiccup hadn't planned on going so far away from the village. His fur vest didn't fit over his harness, and a simple tunic was weak protection against the breeze. Toothless jumped off the rock and pushed his head up against Hiccup's frozen hands. He stroked his black scales for a minute, and then moved to leap onto his back. "Wait, hang on," he said to Toothless, stumping over to the lake. He might as well bring some water back. The streams were iced all over Berk, and this pool was the only water source other than the well that wasn't frozen solid. Hiccup pulled a waterskin from Toothless' saddle and struggled to kneel down by the water's edge. His leg refused to bend like a normal foot would have, and Hiccup felt another pang at losing such an insignificant thing that he had taken for granted.

He uncapped the skin and dipped it into the part of the pond that wasn't encased in ice, filling it to the brim. Toothless prowled over next to him, watching over Hiccup's shoulder. He brought his tail around, splashing the red fin in the water and up onto the shore.

"Toothless!"

Hiccup's prosthetic was drenched in icy lake water. It began to turn white as the water froze the metal parts of his fake leg. "Aw, come on…" If he couldn't fly, it would take an hour of tramping through wild forest to get to his house. Toothless looked at Hiccup curiously.

"Just…just leave me alone for a minute, all right!" Hiccup scooted over, away from Toothless. First the middle-of-the-night-accident, now this…what next? Toothless peered at Hiccup, hunched over, and hung his head. He could tell that he was upset, and that he had done something wrong. All he could do was watch miserably from afar.

Hiccup tossed a rock into the water and cursed his bad luck. The reflection of the moon rippled and shattered as the stone disrupted the surface of the water. Something else gleamed in the disturbance, but Hiccup was too frustrated to see what it was. Then another popped up. And another. And another.

Hiccup's head shot up. He could hardly believe his eyes. Dancing over the lake were thousands, millions, of tiny glowing lights. They looked like little lanterns, bobbing and weaving among themselves. Fireflies.

The pair stared, awed, as the fireflies drew nearer over the water. They were mirrored in the lake and appeared as fuzzy dots in the ice. Toothless warbled and reached his nose out to inspect the nearest bug. It alighted on his scales, and Hiccup laughed as Toothless went cross-eyed trying to see it. A bug landed on Hiccup's hand, and he held it up, marveling at the minute preciseness of the legs and wings. It was afire with a yellow, buttery glow that stained his hand, making it look otherworldly. The firefly buzzed away, swinging back and forth in the air. Underneath all of the little creatures was a dot of light, a single teardrop that slid over the ground in time with its partner. Hiccup reached out with a single hand and closed it around a small firefly, seeing it make his fingers pulse with light. It was a magical moment, one that made everything move slower and time stretch until the moon hardly seemed to be moving with the night.

Then, one by one, the fireflies began to move away, soaring up and over their heads and out of the cove. Hiccup released the one in his hand, and it flapped away to join its siblings in their midnight flight. Hiccup was surprised to find himself getting misty eyes as they disappeared over the mossy walls. He glanced at Toothless, who was watching the flies with longing curiosity. Then they locked eyes.

"Oh, Toothless." Hiccup slid back over to his friend and hugged him. "Sorry for getting mad at you."

Toothless wrapped a wing around Hiccup and crooned. "Imagine if we had still been asleep, huh, bud? We would have missed the whole thing."

Toothless shook his head in agreement. They sat in each other's embrace for a while longer, tracing the moon as it journeyed to the horizon.

Hiccup touched his prosthetic. It was wet from Toothless' warmth, all of the ice melted. "What do you say we go back?"

So, there's that. I've got a couple more up my sleeve, and if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them! Please review and tell me what you thought, even if you have nothing but garbage to say. I use that garbage!:) Gonna go upload some more of this now...