Okay, you guys are awesome. This story has over 100 people following it. 100! I've never gotten over 50 before, so I'm freaking out. You guys are awesome! And SO sorry for the wait. Most of this chapter was written shortly after the previous chapter, but for the longest time I didn't have time to finish it. Finally got my BA and just finished grad school to get my masters and become a teacher. It was an accelerated program that left me exhausted for a year and a half. Anyway, onto the chapter!

PS: Hidden World was wonderful and heartbreaking.

Snoggle-what?

Hiccup told me all that he knew as we ran after Astrid toward the village. Gothi had gone to visit Halla for some reason. While they had been talking, Gothi had started slurring her words and mentioned something about her eyesight before falling unconscious. Halla had gotten her into the bed downstairs before running for Hiccup and telling him to find me and Astrid.

What had happened to Gothi sounded familiar. My grandfather had died from it when I had just started high school. Even if they didn't have a name for it in Berk, I knew its name back home; stroke.

But Gothi couldn't die from it as my grandfather had. She had been around in the movie, had chosen Hiccup over Astrid to face the Nightmare. She couldn't die from this. Unless the story had changed. But I hadn't done anything to change anything major, had I? Could my simply being here change something so drastically?

I shook my head as Hiccup and I entered the village a good distance behind Astrid. I could think on that later. Right now, I needed to get to Halla's and help.

Hiccup and I arrived just minutes after Astrid, who was talking with the same people I had seen her leave the mead hall with. The man had an arm around the woman as she spoke softly to Astrid. I walked past them and opened the door to Halla's. She looked up from where she knelt beside Gothi, pouring something into the older woman's mouth.

"Kendra. I need you to finish mixing what is already in the mortar." She nodded toward the table before returning her focus to Goth.

I quickly set to work finishing what Halla had been mixing. She moved away from Gothi a few minutes later and I paused my work for her to throw something else into the mix.

"How is she?" I asked as I finished the mixture and Halla took it from me.

Halla went back to Gothi and put some of the mixture into Gothi's mouth. She heaved a heavy sigh as she closed the elderly woman's mouth. "Truthfully, I am not sure. This has happened before, but it has been many years and I was not the one to treat them. And that treatment sometimes did not work."

I looked to the unconscious woman on the bed. "So she treated them."

"No," replied Halla. She turned away from Gothi and looked at me. "My husband did."

"Husband?" This was the first mention I had ever heard of her having a husband. She had never mentioned being married, and neither had anyone else on the island that I talked to.

Halla nodded, pursing her lips as she returned her gaze to Gothi. "He was a doctor. He travelled the world to learn his trade. Learned a few things that even Gothi did not know."

"What happened to him?" I asked softly. No one had even mentioned him around me before now. So whatever it was, could not have been good and must have really hurt Halla.

Halla turned away, glancing down at Gothi. Then she cleared her throat and stood up. She set the now empty bowl on the table as she walked past me. "I need to go talk to her family and the chief. Come get me if something happens."

She was out the door before I could come up with anything to say. Her husband was dead, and apparently it hurt so bad it seemed the village was in agreement not to talk about him at all. At that moment, I realized that even though I had lived with Halla for a good length of time and cared about her a great deal, I didn't really know much about her.

I sighed, turning away from the door only to find myself being watched. Gothi's pale blue eyes were open and focused on me.

"Oh thank goodness, you're awake! I've got to- "I trailed off. Gothi just continued to stare at me, but something about her gaze made me uncomfortable. Her eyes almost seemed to hold more knowledge than before.

She had said magic or the gods had brought me to Berk. "Gothi, did you see something?"

Gothi opened her mouth to say something but ended up closing it and simply nodding.

From the way she was looking at me, I had a feeling I knew exactly what she had seen. "You know where I'm from, don't you?"

She nodded.

I let out a shaky breath and looked away from her. I was partly relieved and partly frightened. On the one hand, she had somehow seen where I was from. Something, or someone, had shown her where I was from. On the other hand, she now knew where I was from. She knew that I had knowledge of Berk's future.

I looked back over at Gothi. "Do you know what I know? Did you see that too?"

Another nod.

It felt as though a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Someone else knew what was to come, what was going to happen to Berk, to Hiccup sometime in the future. It wasn't something I had to do alone anymore. There was now someone I could talk to that would believe me, that wouldn't think I had completely lost it.

"This is, this is great!" I grinned at her. "Now I have someone to talk to about all this."

Gothi glanced down for a moment before smiling at me sadly.

I frowned. "What? What's wrong?"

Gothi opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. She closed her mouth and sighed.

Then it clicked. "You can't talk, can you?"

She shook her head.

So much for having someone to talk to. She could listen, and maybe she could even write a simply reply that I would be able to read, but an actual in depth conversation was now apparently out of the question.

It reminded me of something a character said on one of my mom's favorite shows; magic comes with a price. She now knew the future, knew what was to come and where I came from, but had lost the ability to speak. That couldn't be a coincidence.

I glanced toward the door. "I, um, I better go tell Halla that you are awake."

She gave me that sad smile again and nodded. I turned and headed to the door. When I pulled it open, I could see that Astrid was still outside with her parents and that Halla was now talking to Stoick. Hiccup leaned against a house across the way and more people had gathered to find out what was happening to their elder.

Halla looked toward the house when the door opened, her brow furrowed in worry. I smiled as she excused herself from the chief and walked over to where I stood in the doorway.

"She's awake," I said, cutting her off when she opened her mouth to speak.

Halla started to move around me, but I stepped over to cut her off. She frowned at me. "Kendra…"

"She can't talk," I told her quietly, spotting Astrid and her parents over Halla's shoulder straining to hear what was being said. "She saw something, and now she can't talk."

Halla's eyes widened slightly. She then glanced back at Astrid and her family. "She has woken up. I'll examine her and then you can come see her."

Astrid's mother seemed to slump in relief and leaned against her husband. The man smiled and nodded at Halla, who returned the nod before moving past me into the house. I smiled at them before following Halla inside and closing the door behind me.

Halla was already kneeling beside the bed examining Gothi. This went on for about ten minutes before Halla stood back up and went to the door, telling Astrid and her parents that they could come inside and see her, but warning them that Gothi had lost her voice.

As the family went over to see Gothi, Halla closed the door and gestured for me to follow her to the other side of the room. "It's remarkable. I've never heard of someone who fell ill as she had recovering so quickly."

I glanced over to where Gothi lay on the bed that had once been mine, Astrid's mother kneeling beside her. Astrid herself sat at the foot of the bed, her father watching over the three women. "She's very lucky. The same thing happened to my grandfather when I was around fourteen, and it killed him."

"It has killed a few over the years," Halla replied. "But most it left them a shell of their former selves. Unable to do many simple tasks on their own."

I nodded but didn't say anything.

"Though this was no normal illness either," Halla said after a moment. "She was given a vision and her voice was taken as the price. Without her voice, and with her writing abilities impaired at the moment due to the illness, she can give us no clue about what it was she saw."

I didn't say anything, just looked back over at the family around the bed. What was there to say? That I knew what Gothi saw because she had seen where I had come from and what I knew? Yeah, could not see that one going over very well. Unfortunately, the only one that could understand was no longer able to speak.

Gothi ended up staying at Halla's for a few weeks while she recovered from the stroke. She had to relearn how to feed herself and take care of herself, the stroke having robbed her of those basic abilities.

In the meantime, the people of Berk still had their own occasional injuries (some courtesy of yet another dragon raid) and illnesses that needed to be taken care of. Every time I offered to help them though, to take one more thing off of Halla's plate, they just said that they would wait until Halla was done helping Gothi. I knew why, but it was still irritating. They wouldn't let me help them for the same reason I still sometimes got looks while going out to train with Astrid.

I groaned in frustration as Halla closed the door behind yet another villager that refused to let me help them instead of waiting around for Halla. "I know I'm not as knowledgeable as you or Gothi, but I'm not completely stupid. I can do some of the simple things. Yet they still won't let me help them."

Halla glanced past me, looking at Gothi where she sat up in bed. I followed her gaze just in time to see Gothi gently knock her fist against her head.

"Gothi's right," said Halla. "We're a village of stubborn people. Change does not come easily to us."

I sighed, leaning against a table. "It's just frustrating. I can help."

Halla pat my shoulder on her way back to Gothi. "I know you can. You'll get the chance to sooner or later."

The day that Gothi left to go back to her own home was the day that I noticed that something was different about the village. People's homes had decorations on them, decorations that vaguely reminded me of Christmas. Had those been up the day before when I had last trained with Astrid? If they had, I had somehow completely missed them.

I ran a hand through my hair as I made my way towards the upper level to stop by the smithy. Yes, I had been busy helping Halla, but I didn't think I was that oblivious to my surroundings. I had noticed that it had snowed, and that the homes damaged in the last raid had been repaired. Yet somehow I had completely missed the decorations.

Both Gobber and Hiccup were busy working when I arrived at the smithy, which was also decorated. On the shelf next to the various attachments for Gobber's hand was a helmet with antlers covered in…was that garland?

I knocked on the doorway. Gobber caught sight of me first. "Been a while since I've seen you around here, lass."

Hiccup looked up from his work and grinned. "Hey."

"Hey," I replied, grinning at him. "Yeah, Astrid and her family and Halla are taking Gothi home, just to make sure she's all right. From the look on her face when Halla mentioned that they were all going with her and the way she gripped her staff, I think she's fine."

"That woman's too stubborn to check out anytime soon." Gobber laughed before turning his attention back to the metal he was working.

I smiled as Hiccup headed for the back room and waved for me to follow. "But yeah, between helping Halla and training, didn't really give me much of a chance to stop by."

"How's training going?" Hiccup asked as he pushed the curtain aside, gesturing for me to enter first.

I shrugged as I headed into the back room. "Okay. Still covered in bruises. I think Astrid was working out her frustrations about everything with Gothi while training me. Oh, before I forget. What is with the decorations everywhere? I know I've been busy, but I didn't think I was that blind."

Hiccup chuckled as he let the curtain fall behind him, heading over to sit on the stool. "They're Snoggletog decorations."

Leaning against the workbench, I stared at Hiccup as he sat down. "Snog-what?"

"Snoggletog," he repeated, grinning at what must have surely been a strange expression on my face. "Stupid name, I know. But it's a holiday here. Decorations. A feast in the Hall. Giving each other gifts. Odin delivers gifts to the kids during the night that once they grow older, realize it was just their father all those years."

I laughed. "It sounds a lot like a winter holiday that's celebrated where I'm from. When is it?"

"Two days."

I blinked. "Wow. Apparently I am that blind."

Hiccup opened his mouth. I glared at him. "No comment, please."

There were even more decorations up around the village by the time Snoggletog arrived. Halla had even gotten up on the roof to string up huge garland and colorful lanterns now that we weren't taking care of Gothi 24/7.

The couple of times I stopped by the forge, Gobber actually wasn't working much. Most of the time he had put on the helmet with the antlers and garland on his head and had pulled out a hand attachment covered in small bells. The few times that he was working when I arrived, he was not wearing these items but was singing at the top of his lungs. These were times when Hiccup would take a break and we'd go into the back room. It muted it slightly, but not much.

The morning of the holiday dawned bright with a fresh layer of snow on the ground. I woke up early, which was a habit now drilled into me by Astrid, even though we weren't training that day. She was spending the morning with her family before the feast in the Hall that evening.

Halla was already up when I went downstairs, stirring something in the pot over the fire. She looked up when she heard me and smiled. "Happy Snoggletog, Kendra."

"Happy Snoggletog," I said, stopping next to her as she ladled some of whatever was in the pot into two bowls. She held one out to me. "Thanks."

I sat down in a nearby chair and started eating. She sat down her bowl and grabbed a rather large package wrapped in brown cloth off the table. "Now, I know it's not much since we've been busy these past few weeks, but I hope you like it."

I stopped eating, spoon halfway to my mouth. Snoggletog. Gifts. She was giving me a gift, yet I had not even thought to get her anything. I had no clue what she would even want. I put the spoon back in the bowl and set both down on the table.

"I-Thank you," I said, taking the package from her. "I don't have anything for you, though. I hadn't even heard of Snoggletog until two days ago."

She gave me a warm smile. "I had a feeling you might not know of it," she said. She gestured to the package in my hands. "Go on, then."

"Still feel bad, though," I muttered as I unwrapped the cloth. Halla said nothing, but when I glanced up at her she was still smiling.

I pulled back the last of the cloth to find a beautiful dark blue tunic inside. Long sleeved and with a hood lined with a soft tan fur. I ran my hand over the fur, gasping at how soft it was.

I looked up at Halla. Her smile was even larger now. "We're well into winter now. Thought you could use something nice and warm while you train. Something that's just yours, not one of my old things."

I got up from the chair, set the top and wrapping down on the chair, and then hugged Halla. I felt her arms wrap around me as I smiled over her shoulder. "Thank you. It's beautiful."

I ended up wearing the top for the first time that night to the Snoggletog feast in the Hall. The sun was setting when the feast got started and walking into the Hall, I was once again reminded of Christmas. Garland and softly glowing lanterns had been strung up between the columns. The air was filled with the scent of food and the sound of people talking and singing. I was able to immediately pick out Gobber's voice.

Platters of food lined the edge of the fire pit in the center of the room. Barrels of ale were along the wall to the left, and plenty of people were gathered around them refilling the mugs.

I headed for the food, the smell making my mouth water, while Halla headed over to talk to Phlegma. I had just grabbed a plate with a leg of lamb and a piece of bread when I saw someone out of the corner of my eye come up next to me.

I glanced up and smiled at Hiccup. "Hey. Happy Snoggletog."

"Happy Snoggletog," he said with a grin. He held up his hands to show that they both held a mug of ale. "Grabbed some for both of us."

"Thanks," I said. He headed off toward a table and I followed after him.

He led the way to a lone table to the right side of the Hall, where no one else seemed to be seated. A plate of food already sat on the table and there was a wrapped package on the bench. Hiccup set the mugs of ale down and then sat down before the plate, next to the package.

I sat down at the table across from him. "I've never had ale before, so this should be interesting."

Hiccup looked surprised. "Really?"

I shrugged. "Where I'm from, we have rules about not drinking things like ale until a certain age and I'm under that age."

He looked even more surprised than he had before.

"Yeah, things are different there," I said, grabbing my mug and holding it up. "Bottom's up."

I took a sip and gagged, fighting down the urge to spit it out all over Hiccup. It made my nose tingle and the flavor... Let's just keep it simple and say that I did not like it at all.

I forced myself to swallow it, blinking rapidly and clapping a hand over my mouth to keep from spitting it out. Or throwing up. Through blurry eyes, I saw Hiccup get up quickly.

"Ugh. Oh, my God, that's horrid," I said, sticking out my tongue and shuddering.

Suddenly I had another cup in front of me, this time filled with milk. I took the offered cup from Hiccup, who then moved to sit back down. "Thanks."

I took a sip of the milk. Never knew milk to taste so wonderful. I pushed the cup of ale down the table, away from me before setting down the milk. "I don't know how anyone can drink that. Must be an acquired taste."

Hiccup just fought down a smile as he tore off a piece of bread and ate it. "Well, at least we'll never have to worry about you getting drunk from ale."

I scoffed. "You got that right."

It was at that precise moment that a clearly very drunk Gobber wandered over to our table. The horns of his helmet were covered in garland and the attachment for his hand was a piece of wood with a dozen jingle bells attached to it. In his hand was a large mug of ale. "Happy Snoggletog you two!"

"Happy Snoggletog, Gobber," I said, Hiccup echoing the greeting.

"Not hitting the ale tonight, Kendra?" Gobber asked, looking down at our table.

I followed his gaze and saw him looking at my mug of milk. "Yeah, it didn't agree with me. So Hiccup got me some milk instead."

Gobber chuckled. "Guess that means I won't be able to talk you into joining us in some Snoggletog songs then?"

"Um, definitely not," I said, shaking my head. "I've been told that my singing sounds like a dying cat. And that was my dad being nice."

Gobber laughed loudly at that, clapping my shoulder. His mug of ale sloshed, some spilling onto the floor. I laughed, if somewhat awkwardly. Though Gobber didn't notice. Across from me, Hiccup grinned in a way that said that he could relate.

Gobber's laugher slowed and he took a long drink from his mug. "And did you enjoy your gift?"

Across from me, Hiccup went still. His wide eyes went between me and Gobber.

"Oh yeah, this tunic from Halla is really nice and – "

I stopped at the pointed look Gobber was giving Hiccup. He wasn't talking about the tunic that Halla had given me that morning. Hiccup now seemed to have found something on his plate to be fascinating.

"I'm off to get more ale," he said, giving Hiccup one last look before he walked away.

I started at Hiccup for a moment, waiting for him to look up. When he finally did, he sighed. "I was waiting for a good time to give it to you."

He grabbed the package that had been on the bench next to him and handed it to me. Wrapped in a soft cloth that was tied off, the package wasn't very large and weighted little. I moved my plate off to the side and set it on the table to unwrap it.

Wrapped within the cloth was a dagger. The blade shined in the light and the handle looked to be a light wood with leather wrapped around the hand grip. The handle was decorated with carvings of dragons.

"There's a sheath as well, but I wasn't able to finish it in time. The handle took longer than I thought it would."

I looked up at Hiccup. He watched me cautiously, waiting for my reaction. This kid had made me a dagger. He had made me a gift for Snoggletog. I had received gifts before that I had loved, like clothes and an iPod, or tickets to a concert, but never something that something had actually made themselves for me before. Had labored over themselves.

I stood up, swallowing a lump in my throat. "Get up."

Hiccup looked like that was the last thing he expected me to say. "What?"

"Up."

He stood as I came around the table and once he was clear of the bench, I pulled him into a hug. Hiccup seemed startled for a moment before hugging me back. "Uh, I take it you like it?"

I let out a wet laugh, my breath ruffling his hair. "I love it."

I let him go, stepping away as I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. "No one has ever made something for me before. They always got it from someone else." Like Walmart. "Just, thank you."

He smiled. "Happy Snoggletog, Kendra."

I smiled, stepping forward and hugging him again. "Happy Snoggletog, Hiccup."