This is Berk.
It snows nine months of the year, and hails the other three.
Any food that grows here is tough and tasteless.
The people that grow here are even more so.
The only upsides are the pets.
Where some people have ponies or parrots...
...we have dragons.
A small dragon known as a Terrible Terror landed flat on the sleeping boy's face, chittering loudly.
Most people would be put off housing with vicious, fire-breathing reptiles.
The Terror gave the boy a friendly flame-burst hello before fluttering up to the shoulder of its master: a burly, dark-haired man sporting a scar from brow to cheek on the right side of his face. The boy took him in blearily.
Not us. We're Vikings.
The boy rubbed his face, checking to make sure his eyebrows were still there.
We can handle it.
"Rise and shine, Hiccup! Time to get moving," said the man. He moved to the next sleeping form with similar encouragements. The boy sat up with a weary sigh, rubbing his eyes against the flickering firelight.
That's me. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third. I've never met a dragon I didn't like.
Hiccup swung his legs over the edge of the bed and reached down, sleepily fumbling for his prosthesis.
Well... actually there was this one dragon... as big as a mountain, with a really bad attitude. So terrible we called him Death. He and I had a little disagreement over the summer.
Grateful that he'd repeated the process so many times he could do it in his sleep, Hiccup closed his eyes again as he settled the stump of his left calf into the attachment. His hands automatically located the straps and cinched them tightly around his leg.
But that dragon came off much worse than I did. And now my village is safer for it. The Chief was proud of me that day. Even better... so was my dad.
It's just lucky for me they're one and the same.
Prosthetic foot securely attached, Hiccup reached into the basket under his bed to pull out his belt and his vest. And an overcoat. And some mittens. And an extra sock for his right foot.
So now instead of spending all our time defending ourselves against dragon raids, we get to do other things... like spend three weeks cooped up in a snowbound lodge in the freezing cold, learning the finer points of tracking and hunting.
"Let's go! We're burning daylight!" urged the man.
"How do you burn daylight when it's still dark?" groaned a gangly boy with long blonde hair. He nestled deeper under his covers.
"You're the expert—you tell me," the man answered, and he whipped the blanket away. The boy clamped into a tight cringe and shivered against the sudden chill. "Up, now! Speck, go get them up in the loft," the man added to his dragon, pointing.
The Terrible Terror happily obliged and flapped away.
The big guy ripping the blankets off my friends is Spitelout Jorgenson. My dad's right-hand man. He's been teaching Vikings how to hunt as long as I can remember.
"Is breakfast ready yet?" asked a muscular, dark-haired boy.
That's his son Snotlout.
"After we pack up," said Spitelout, walking over to another bed.
Over there is Fishlegs.
Spitelout gave the rotund young man yet another shake.
"Just five more minutes..." Fishlegs murmured.
And then Fishlegs lost his blanket, too.
The gangly blonde finally sat up and blinked, reaching for his socks. "This is really the last day, right? I'm getting kind of sick of waking up to you guys' faces."
That's Tuffnut. His twin sister Ruffnut is even more charming than he is.
There came a cry of disgust from above, and a second later Speck the Terrible Terror came sailing out of the loft, not entirely of his own accord. He landed on Tuffnut's head with a squeal.
Ruffnut's been sharing the upstairs with the only other girl to come on this little excursion.
"Where's my saddle?"
Hiccup heard that voice and the sleep fled from his eyes. He tried his best not to appear as disheveled as he felt.
Astrid.
She stood lightly at the top of the stairs, her sunny hair bound in a thick, hurried plait. Hiccup was just admiring the way one loose hank of it always fell across her eyes when he realized he was putting his mittens on the wrong hands.
"They're all by the door," answered Spitelout. "I want an early start; ready your mounts soon as you can."
"You going out, Astrid?" Hiccup asked as he pulled his boot on.
"Yeah..." she answered.
Hiccup sprang from his bed and moved toward the door to get his saddle.
"...Just as soon as I get the rest of my things packed. I'll be right out," Astrid finished, and disappeared to the back of the loft.
"That's the way, Hiccup. Good lad," said Spitelout, grabbing Hiccup's saddle and thrusting the bundle of cloth and leather trappings into Hiccup's arms. The old hunter slid back the bolt and opened the door in one fluid motion, briefly flooding the lower room with a chill.
Hiccup glanced hurriedly toward the loft. "Ah, okay, I guess I'll see you—outside," he called back as Spitelout shunted him out into the snow.
"Need any heavy lifting there, Astrid?" Hiccup heard Snotlout say before the door was closed and all sound was lost.
Yep.
That was Astrid.
With a sigh, Hiccup hefted the bundle in his arms and squinted into the dimness. Stark pines loomed in the pre-dawn haze, awash with frozen waves of white.
Okay, so maybe this isn't exactly Berk...
This is actually the island of Forget Me. Great name, I know, but it fits. We call it that because that's what everyone who sets foot here wants to do. It's the coldest, wettest, most miserable rock along the entire Meridian of Misery.
So much snow falls here that they say the ground underneath has never actually seen daylight.
Do I believe it?
Hiccup picked a beeline course to where his mount would be, and started wading.
Yes I do.
After only a few steps, his foot began to squeak. The mainspring always squeaked when it was cold. The animals would hear every step of his approach.
Well, every other step.
Hiccup's prosthetic left foot had been needing some refitting. The lower bolt was beginning to rust again. But there was time enough to worry about fixing that back home. For now he was just pleased with how well the snowshoe attachment was working out. He had built it just for this hunting trip.
Frosty moonlight peeked through the pines, silvering Hiccup's breath as he came to the clearing where the animals had bedded down.
He saw the snow-dusted mounds of their bodies, gently rising and falling amid the white drifts. One of the pack-Nadders lifted its scaly, horny head at his approach. It eyed him sleepily for only a moment, yawning a huge, toothy yawn and sticking out its forked tongue before nestling back down among its fellows.
By the way, Berk's kind of short on horses.
Crunch-squeak-crunch-squeak-crunch... Hiccup passed the frills of the rest of the Deadly Nadders, jutting from the snow like inverted icicles. He passed the ridged horns and huge form of Snotlout's dragon, a blood-red Monstrous Nightmare named Fireworm, followed by a smaller, snoring mass that could only have been Miniboss, the Gronckle that belonged to Fishlegs.
At the far end of the temporary nest, Hiccup found the Thorston twins' two-headed Hideous Zippleback, but saw no sign of his own dragon.
"Toothless?" he called softly, "Come on, bud, we get to go home today..."
Nothing.
Hiccup shivered. The morning was so still. Hesitant to disturb the brooding silence, he whispered a little louder, "Toothless!"
A barely-audible churning of wet snow made Hiccup turn. He spotted two green eyes gazing languidly out at him from beneath one of Fireworm's enormous wings. The head the eyes belonged to inched a little farther out of the snow, revealing charcoal-black scaly skin under the thick white frosting.
"There you are," Hiccup smiled wearily. He retraced the path he had ploughed through the drifts until he came even with his Night Fury. Dropping saddle and harness to the ground (and watching them disappear into a drift), he held out a friendly hand. "You ready to go home, Toothless?"
Toothless shook the snow from his head and auricles, spattering Hiccup slightly, and edged forward for a scratch under the chin.
"Come here, let's get you strapped up..." said Hiccup, moving back a pace.
The Night Fury uncurled and stood to stretch, smoke and steam wafting up from the fading bed of embers the dragon had laid for himself the night before. It was a convenient way to keep warm in lieu of roost or cave.
Arching his back so high into the Nightmare's wing that he woke her up, Toothless shook the remaining snow from his wings and came to stand ready before Hiccup. He knew the routine.
Fireworm merely shifted with a grunt and burst into a mild orange flame.
"Ooookay let's back up a little, c'mere Toothless... here we go..." Hiccup quickly snatched his saddle from the snow and moved to a safe distance. Toothless followed with a reluctant little grumble as behind him, Miniboss snuggled closer to share in Fireworm's warmth.
The innate ability to ignite her own skin for brief periods of time had made the Monstrous Nightmare quite popular among the other dragons during the dark, frigid hunting trip. Occasionally the feeling was even mutual.
But despite the immense appeal of returning to nestle under the great flaming wing, Toothless could not slight Hiccup's call. He could never let down the human on whom he depended for so much.
Oh, and there's one more thing you need to know...
He stood obligingly still and steady as Hiccup sorted out the bundle and began fastening on harness, saddle, and prosthesis.
Hiccup was not the only amputee on the expedition. Consequently, getting Toothless saddled for the day was a complicated affair. But the heat and glow from the adjacent combusting Monstrous Nightmare were comforting during the long process in the chill morning. Hiccup wondered if perhaps he worked slowly enough, Ast
This is Berk.
It snows nine months of the year, and hails the other three.
Any food that grows here is tough and tasteless.
The people that grow here are even more so.
The only upsides are the pets.
Where some people have ponies or parrots...
...we have dragons.
A small dragon known as a Terrible Terror landed flat on the sleeping boy's face, chittering loudly.
Most people would be put off housing with vicious, fire-breathing reptiles.
The Terror gave the boy a friendly flame-burst hello before fluttering up to the shoulder of its master: a burly, dark-haired man sporting a scar from brow to cheek on the right side of his face. The boy took him in blearily.
Not us. We're Vikings.
The boy rubbed his face, checking to make sure his eyebrows were still there.
We can handle it.
"Rise and shine, Hiccup! Time to get moving," said the man. He moved to the next sleeping form with similar encouragements. The boy sat up with a weary sigh, rubbing his eyes against the flickering firelight.
That's me. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third. I've never met a dragon I didn't like.
Hiccup swung his legs over the edge of the bed and reached down, sleepily fumbling for his prosthesis.
Well... actually there was this one dragon... as big as a mountain, with a really bad attitude. So terrible we called him Death. He and I had a little disagreement over the summer.
Grateful that he'd repeated the process so many times he could do it in his sleep, Hiccup closed his eyes again as he settled the stump of his left calf into the attachment. His hands automatically located the straps and cinched them tightly around his leg.
But that dragon came off much worse than I did. And now my village is safer for it. The Chief was proud of me that day. Even better... so was my dad.
It's just lucky for me they're one and the same.
Prosthetic foot securely attached, Hiccup reached into the basket under his bed to pull out his belt and his vest. And an overcoat. And some mittens. And an extra sock for his right foot.
So now instead of spending all our time defending ourselves against dragon raids, we get to do other things... like spend three weeks cooped up in a snowbound lodge in the freezing cold, learning the finer points of tracking and hunting.
"Let's go! We're burning daylight!" urged the man.
"How do you burn daylight when it's still dark?" groaned a gangly boy with long blonde hair. He nestled deeper under his covers.
"You're the expert—you tell me," the man answered, and he whipped the blanket away. The boy clamped into a tight cringe and shivered against the sudden chill. "Up, now! Speck, go get them up in the loft," the man added to his dragon, pointing.
The Terrible Terror happily obliged and flapped away.
The big guy ripping the blankets off my friends is Spitelout Jorgenson. My dad's right-hand man. He's been teaching Vikings how to hunt as long as I can remember.
"Is breakfast ready yet?" asked a muscular, dark-haired boy.
That's his son Snotlout.
"After we pack up," said Spitelout, walking over to another bed.
Over there is Fishlegs.
Spitelout gave the rotund young man yet another shake.
"Just five more minutes..." Fishlegs murmured.
And then Fishlegs lost his blanket, too.
The gangly blonde finally sat up and blinked, reaching for his socks. "This is really the last day, right? I'm getting kind of sick of waking up to you guys' faces."
That's Tuffnut. His twin sister Ruffnut is even more charming than he is.
There came a cry of disgust from above, and a second later Speck the Terrible Terror came sailing out of the loft, not entirely of his own accord. He landed on Tuffnut's head with a squeal.
Ruffnut's been sharing the upstairs with the only other girl to come on this little excursion.
"Where's my saddle?"
Hiccup heard that voice and the sleep fled from his eyes. He tried his best not to appear as disheveled as he felt.
Astrid.
She stood lightly at the top of the stairs, her sunny hair bound in a thick, hurried plait. Hiccup was just admiring the way one loose hank of it always fell across her eyes when he realized he was putting his mittens on the wrong hands.
"They're all by the door," answered Spitelout. "I want an early start; ready your mounts soon as you can."
"You going out, Astrid?" Hiccup asked as he pulled his boot on.
"Yeah..." she answered.
Hiccup sprang from his bed and moved toward the door to get his saddle.
"...Just as soon as I get the rest of my things packed. I'll be right out," Astrid finished, and disappeared to the back of the loft.
"That's the way, Hiccup. Good lad," said Spitelout, grabbing Hiccup's saddle and thrusting the bundle of cloth and leather trappings into Hiccup's arms. The old hunter slid back the bolt and opened the door in one fluid motion, briefly flooding the lower room with a chill.
Hiccup glanced hurriedly toward the loft. "Ah, okay, I guess I'll see you—outside," he called back as Spitelout shunted him out into the snow.
"Need any heavy lifting there, Astrid?" Hiccup heard Snotlout say before the door was closed and all sound was lost.
Yep.
That was Astrid.
With a sigh, Hiccup hefted the bundle in his arms and squinted into the dimness. Stark pines loomed in the pre-dawn haze, awash with frozen waves of white.
Okay, so maybe this isn't exactly Berk...
This is actually the island of Forget Me. Great name, I know, but it fits. We call it that because that's what everyone who sets foot here wants to do. It's the coldest, wettest, most miserable rock along the entire Meridian of Misery.
So much snow falls here that they say the ground underneath has never actually seen daylight.
Do I believe it?
Hiccup picked a beeline course to where his mount would be, and started wading.
Yes I do.
After only a few steps, his foot began to squeak. The mainspring always squeaked when it was cold. The animals would hear every step of his approach.
Well, every other step.
Hiccup's prosthetic left foot had been needing some refitting. The lower bolt was beginning to rust again. But there was time enough to worry about fixing that back home. For now he was just pleased with how well the snowshoe attachment was working out. He had built it just for this hunting trip.
Frosty moonlight peeked through the pines, silvering Hiccup's breath as he came to the clearing where the animals had bedded down.
He saw the snow-dusted mounds of their bodies, gently rising and falling amid the white drifts. One of the pack-Nadders lifted its scaly, horny head at his approach. It eyed him sleepily for only a moment, yawning a huge, toothy yawn and sticking out its forked tongue before nestling back down among its fellows.
By the way, Berk's kind of short on horses.
Crunch-squeak-crunch-squeak-crunch... Hiccup passed the frills of the rest of the Deadly Nadders, jutting from the snow like inverted icicles. He passed the ridged horns and huge form of Snotlout's dragon, a blood-red Monstrous Nightmare named Fireworm, followed by a smaller, snoring mass that could only have been Miniboss, the Gronckle that belonged to Fishlegs.
At the far end of the temporary nest, Hiccup found the Thorston twins' two-headed Hideous Zippleback, but saw no sign of his own dragon.
"Toothless?" he called softly, "Come on, bud, we get to go home today..."
Nothing.
Hiccup shivered. The morning was so still. Hesitant to disturb the brooding silence, he whispered a little louder, "Toothless!"
A barely-audible churning of wet snow made Hiccup turn. He spotted two green eyes gazing languidly out at him from beneath one of Fireworm's enormous wings. The head the eyes belonged to inched a little farther out of the snow, revealing charcoal-black scaly skin under the thick white frosting.
"There you are," Hiccup smiled wearily. He retraced the path he had ploughed through the drifts until he came even with his Night Fury. Dropping saddle and harness to the ground (and watching them disappear into a drift), he held out a friendly hand. "You ready to go home, Toothless?"
Toothless shook the snow from his head and auricles, spattering Hiccup slightly, and edged forward for a scratch under the chin.
"Come here, let's get you strapped up..." said Hiccup, moving back a pace.
The Night Fury uncurled and stood to stretch, smoke and steam wafting up from the fading bed of embers the dragon had laid for himself the night before. It was a convenient way to keep warm in lieu of roost or cave.
Arching his back so high into the Nightmare's wing that he woke her up, Toothless shook the remaining snow from his wings and came to stand ready before Hiccup. He knew the routine.
Fireworm merely shifted with a grunt and burst into a mild orange flame.
"Ooookay let's back up a little, c'mere Toothless... here we go..." Hiccup quickly snatched his saddle from the snow and moved to a safe distance. Toothless followed with a reluctant little grumble as behind him, Miniboss snuggled closer to share in Fireworm's warmth.
The innate ability to ignite her own skin for brief periods of time had made the Monstrous Nightmare quite popular among the other dragons during the dark, frigid hunting trip. Occasionally the feeling was even mutual.
But despite the immense appeal of returning to nestle under the great flaming wing, Toothless could not slight Hiccup's call. He could never let down the human on whom he depended for so much.
Oh, and there's one more thing you need to know...
He stood obligingly still and steady as Hiccup sorted out the bundle and began fastening on harness, saddle, and prosthesis.
Hiccup was not the only amputee on the expedition. Consequently, getting Toothless saddled for the day was a complicated affair. But the heat and glow from the adjacent combusting Monstrous Nightmare were comforting during the long process in the chill morning. Hiccup wondered if perhaps he worked slowly enough, Ast
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