"Today won't be as intense as yesterday," Myrkrid announced. "You'll finish your gliding lessons, and then we'll sleep for the rest of the day. Tonight, you'll try flying, and you'll start adjusting to your new nocturnal schedule. It's time to put the 'night' back in Night Fury. By the way, how did you sleep?"
"Quite well," he responded as he stretched. "Can I ask you something? You were making some kind of sounds when we were going to sleep, and –"
"I was? Oh, this is embarrassing." She looked away. "That was a dragon lullaby. I haven't done that since I had hatchlings. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sorry if I kept you awake."
"Far from it," he replied. "It was very relaxing; I think it helped me fall asleep. It made me feel... safe."
"Is that something you're not familiar with?" she asked.
"I don't think I've felt safe since the day my mother died," he said quietly.
Myrkrid stamped her foot, almost angrily. "So I'm treating you like a hatchling, and you're thinking of me like your mother? From my point of view, this is notgoing well!"
"No, not like my mother," he tried to reassure her. "I trust you because you've shown that you want what's best for me. You're starting to ask me what I want, instead of telling me. I can talk to you, and I feel like you're actually listening. To me, that spells 'friend'." He paused. "Of course, that's something else I'm not so familiar with."
After staring at a tree leaf for a few seconds, she said, "I'll go get us some breakfast," and flapped away.
Hiccup spent the morning learning how to turn and bank. It came more easily to him than gliding in a straight line. "You're learning a lot faster than I expected, Dimmadreki," his teacher called up to him. "Could it be that your dragon instincts are kicking in?"
He landed in front of her. "I was wondering about that. I still feel like I'm Hiccup, as far as my thinking and feeling goes, but I'm thinking and feeling with a dragon's brain now. I probably have reflexes and instincts that I never had before. I guess, the longer I live in this body, the more natural it will feel. I might even reach the point where I'm so familiar with being a Night Fury that I wouldn't want to go back to being human, even if I could. That's kind of a scary thought."
"That's not exactly what I was getting at," she fussed. "But go ahead and think that way, if it gets you into the air faster. Speaking of which, try that left-hand bank turn again."
By lunch time, he'd learned just about everything about gliding that she could think of. "The only thing you haven't done is soar on a thermal, and you can't do that in this cove. I'll show you how that works after you've learned to fly. We'll start on that tonight."
Fly? Tonight? Just like that? For a quick moment, he was horrified at the thought. Surely he must have to do more prep work first! Two days ago, he'd been walking because that's all he could do; could he become a creature of the sky, as quickly as that?
Myrkrid thought so, and she seemed to know what she was talking about. In a way, it came down to one simple question: did he trust her?
Yes, he did.
"Get some sleep while you can," she suggested. "We're going to be up all night. That's what Night Furies do."
He lay down next to her, still hesitant about being that close to a dragon. She edged over toward him; he edged away.
"What's it going to take for you to stop treating me like the enemy?" she asked.
"I've spent my entire life thinking of dragons as the enemy," he replied. "Fighting and killing dragons was my life's ambition. It's hard enough that I am one now; it's even harder to try and fall asleep right next to one."
