Snow for the Dragon

This Is Berk

Hiccup sat in his cabin on the ship, gazing grumpily into the crackling fire that burned in the fireplace. The crackling of the fire was the only sound that filled the otherwise silent room. Toothless lay , in a corner of the room, snoring away, his black scales shining in the burning light of the fire.

It had been four days since they bid farewell to Arendelle and they had just crossed the Meridian of misery a day ago. They should be reaching Berk any time now. The general air around the place was dull. Valka spent most of her time discussing things with their ship captain; Toothless and the other dragons behaved how they normally did; Snotlout seemed to be as gloomy as Hiccup. But every had an inkling to the fact that this was simply because he would miss the grand food he received as a guest in the castle in Arendelle. He would also probably miss the female crowd of Arendelle. The women in Berk were in no way ugly... but they were a lot heftier, except for Astrid and ruffnut , and were not ad plesent to look at as the women in Arendelle. The only person who seemed eager and happy to return to Berk was Astrid. She had been talking non stop about her new ideas for dragon races, new axe throwing sports and also about incorporating some of the architecture they had seen in Arendelle to the buildings in Berk, to give then a makeover.Hiccup was probably the gloomiest of them all. His whole table was a mess, papers and blueprints lying scattered around the place . One book lay wide open, exposing a page for no one to see. It was the carefully sketched drawing ofthe snowflake he had drawn from Arendelle. He had it open and had been gazing at it silently from time to time.

Suddenly, the silence of the room was broken as Hiccup's door banged open and Astrid rushed in, her face flushed and glowing with happiness and relief. Toothless leapt up from his slumber at hearing the noise and groaned when he saw that it was just Astrid. She ignore the dragon and grinned widely at hiccup, panting slightly from the effort of running up the stair to his cabin, which was built and floor higher than the deck. "It's Berk! My Gods we're finally home!" Astrid exclaimed with joy. Hiccup smiled weakly and gave her a small thumbs up as she turned and ran back out, closing the door after her, probably to tell everyone else.As he watched her leave, Hiccup felt his stomach clench slightly, the sensation clashing with the happiness at being back.For he really was happy to be home, he had missed Berk, it was just that no matter how hard he had tried he had been unable to rid himself of the feeling that he had left something behind. The emptiness that had been with him since he walked out of Elsa's study their last day in Arendelle lay over his shoulders like a dark heavy cloak and he didn't know how to get rid of it. During their journey back to Berk Hiccup had tried to understand how he couldn't have noticed how his feelings towards Elsa had started to change. The fact that he hadn't seen the signs made even less sense considering the fact that she was not the first woman he had developed feelings for. He had a crush on Astrid for a whole year when he was fifteen.
In other words, he should've been able to recognize the signs and he probably would've if he hadn't so fiercely been telling himself that they had meant nothing at all. Another reason explanation why he had had such difficulty noticing his shifting feelings for Elsa was that they were so different than the feelings he had had for Astrid. Also, he had fallen for Elsa so much slower.Astrid had been like fire who had consumed everything in her path. Once he had been old enough to notice girls at all she had captured his attention and he had been drawn to her like a moth was drawn to a flame. He had only admired her from afar in his pubescent years and the only time he ever got close to her was when they were spending time as good friends. As time wore on , he realized that nothing could happen between them and he began to see her just like she had always seen him, a best friend. Elsa on the other hand hadn't been anything like fire. She had not swept in and consumed his entire world. Instead she had, without even trying to, awoken his curiosity with the expressionless, controlled and perfect picture she had created to show the outside world. She had been so difficult to read that he had wanted to see if he could figure out how to get past her defenses, only for her to slowly creep her way past his own as well. Just like the frost and ice she could control, she had at some point left a small mark within his heart that had slowly spread the more he had started to get to know the woman underneath the royal disguise.
The more she had let him in, the more fascinated he had become of the person that was hidden away and instead of loosing interest in her, he had found that he wanted to know even more about her. Her many layers had intrigued him and what had started as simply curiosity had turned into something else entirely when he had found Elsa to be someone he could connect to, someone who could understand what he had gone through in his youth.
During the long hours they had worked together, Hiccup had far too many times found himself just watching at her, studying the way she would become so completely concentrated on her work that the world seemed to disappear around her. He had also seen how her hair would constantly fall down in her face and each time it had done so, Hiccup had felt the urge to reach out and push it back so he could better see her face.