Seasons of Youth (RotBTFD)

Summer ☼ Part 2

"Okay, I've got the ice-cream." Moana enters her room.

Rapunzel and Anna are sitting on the floor, pillows and stuffed animals all around them. Anna, with puffy eyes, is blowing her nose on a tissue.

Moana hands Rapunzel the ice-cream pot and two spoons. Rapunzel turns the pot on her hand, revealing a name scribbled on it: Merida. Do not touch.

"Oh", Rapunzel foresees "She will not be happy about this..."

"It's for a good cause." Moana states. "And we can buy her a new pot and replace this one in the common room's fridge before she even realizes it was gone."

Rapunzel shrugs and opens the pot, giving Anna a spoon. The three of them dig in.

"Thanks for letting me sleep here with you..." Anna says between ice-cream spoons. "I really don't wanna be alone tonight."

"Of course, honey!", Rapunzel softly runs a hand through Anna's hair in a motherly way.

"It was so awful" Anna sobs.

"What an asshole..." Moana mutters, getting another spoon from the ice-cream pot.

"He's gonna pay for that." Rapunzel's eyes glow red in anger.

- ☼ -

Summer light pours inside from the big windows on the left wall of the study room, giving the place an overall felling of coziness.

Hiccup and Astrid are sited by the corner. Books and notes scattered on the table top.

"But that doesn't make any sense!", Astrid says, frustrated.

"It does! I just don't know how to explain this... Here"

Hiccup get a blank page from the pile and starts to sketch something.

"Look, suppose there's a block on this end of the rope and a block two times heavier on the other end... What forces are acting upon each block?"

"Gravity"

"Yes, okay. What else?"

"If this block is in contact with that surface, then friction?", Astrid says in doubt.

"Yes! So, you have to...?"

"Cancel this vector with this vector and add this one to this one... I know that already! It's easy this way, but when you look at the test..."

"But it's exactly the same thing! There are just more forces at work", Hiccup gets the test and points at it with his pen. "Draw the little arrows the way you just did in the simpler example."

Astrid picks the pen and stares at the paper. She draws a couple of vectors and stops.

"I... I don't know!", she drops the pen, shoving her face in the palms of her hands.

"You do." Hiccup says, gently. "You know, this, Astrid. You're just nervous. Thinking too much"

She sighs heavily, letting her arms drop to the sides.

"I just never got a C before, Hiccup."

"Hey, it happens to everyone.", did she just call you by your nickname? Not 'Haddock'... 'Hiccup'. "You can't be good at everything, right?", he smiles.

"I can try." She smiles back.

- ☼ -

Right next to the study room, there's Marble Hills Academy's library. Usually, not a very busy location, but, as of lately, it's been having a fair amount of people walking into its hallways.