Heart of a Chief, Soul of a Dragon

Chapter 8

        We followed her down the twisting paths of the cave, a vague amount of green light coming through that just allowed us to see so that we wouldn't fall down. Hiccup had been trying to call out to the woman that was supposedly his mother, but she wouldn't stop running.

"Hold on!" he cried. "Wait just a minute! Come back here!"

"This way. Come." I could tell Hiccup was starting to get frustrated.

"You can't just say something like that and run off! You're my mother? I mean, what the- do you grasp how insane it sounds? I have questions!"

"Come. Quickly!" We approached a sloped rock, and while his supposed mother was able to climb up it, no problem, Hiccup kept slipping down if he tried to get a grip on the part she had slipped through.

"Where have you been all this time?" He slipped back down again. "What've you been doing? They said you were dead!" Toothless finally stepped in to hoist Hiccup up onto the rock ledge, then Shriek allowed me up onto her back to do the same. Hiccup took my hands and yanked me over the rock, pulling me through the gap. "Everyone thinks you were eaten by..."

Hiccup trailed off as we jumped down onto the ground, the world around us capturing our interests in full. The sunlight caused me to squint, a sudden change from the darkness of the caves, but as soon as I was able to adjust, I gasped and reached out for Hiccup's hand. Multitudes of dragons circled around a large, mossy spire of ice that leaned against the cliffs surrounding it. Little baby Gronkles played and wrestled with each other, causing me to smile.

Wide-eyed joy and curiosity pushed us to wander further in, so lost in the full glory of it all, that when a large dragon zipped past our heads, Hiccup and I stumbled a bit. The dragons that had been circling landed on the different spires, coming to rest so that they could stare at these new strangers here. As I looked around at everything, I managed to catch the smile on Hiccup's face, and I felt my heart jump. There were only a few things in the world that gave him that smile, and this... this was the epitome of his joy.

Hiccup jumped as he looked up to see his mother on the back of a large, unknown dragon, both looking down at us in curiosity. They seemed to have a strong bond, one that could potentially rival that of Hiccup and Toothless. I moved my hands up to the crook of his elbow, and leaned against Hiccup's arm as he stared at his mother in awe.

"This is where you've been for twenty years?" She nodded. "You've been rescuing them," he marveled. "Unbelievable."

"You're not upset?"

"What? No." He paused for a moment and sighed. "I-I don't know. It's a bit much to get my head around, to be frank. It's not every day you find out your mother is some kind of crazy, feral, vigilante dragon lady."

She chuckled, then hooked her stick around her dragon's wing, using them to descend onto the ground. She smiled at the two of us as she got closer.

"At least I'm not boring, right?"

"I suppose there is that... one... specific thing." I let go of Hiccup and reached out to pet one of the dragons that kept nudging him, so that he could continue to focus on talking to his mother. But I couldn't keep my eyes off the two of them. They really did look alike, now that I could get a look at them together. And they both seemed to have that love for dragons.

"D-Do you like it?" she asked cautiously.

"I-I-I don't have the words." Toothless grumbled as a group of dragons surrounded him, but when he realized he was trapped in, he cowered and lowered closer to the ground. One of the dragons started to sniff Toothless' wings, then lifted it up, causing Toothless' eyes to widen. His flailing scared away the other dragons, and the three of us laughed at the adorable scene.