When I Come Back

Home Sweet Home

Astrid

"All right you too. Enough." Snotlout butts in," We're all done so let's get going. I get tired after I eat." 

   The patrol was quick, but it was something I wanted to last forever.

   The fun, free, carelessness of a dragon rider once forgotten now returned.

  I was no longer an acting leader, a crutch for a cheif who missed his his, nor a viking with enough responsibilities to challenge the cheif. I was a dragon rider racing through the night sky knowing damn well that I was going to loose to Hiccup and Toothless, but not giving a care in the world.

   I knew Stormfly could feel it too. She most likely felt the physical weight of responsibility being lifted off me. Earning a laugh from her rider.

   It had been a while since I felt this free.

   Of course the first patrol was soon over and we all heading in our different directions, except me, who followed Hiccup.

   Even though I went on the first patrol, I still took him up on the offer to go to his hut and stay there until he came back the second time.

  I hadn't been in there since we first finished building the hut and I was entrusted to see what all the boxes of stuff were.

"Damn this place is nice." He said, almost to himself as we landed. "And it's sort of shaped like Toothless too!"

I chuckled, "Yeah. It took a while, but it turned out pretty well."

He turned to me with a raised eyebrow, "You guys built this?"

Keeping my eyes on the hut, I responded, "About six long months."

"Well shit! It looks nice for something that the twins and Snotlout had their hands on for months at a time" He chuckled.

   The sentence was foreign to the Hiccup that I used to know, but completely normal to the Hiccup now standing next to me.

  Ignoring his comment, I started walking towards the door. Hiccup following suit.

  He reached the door before I did with his long legs and all and held the door for me as I stepped in. Which isn't something most male vikings do.

   We looked around, there was a table in the room that they came into, which was in about every viking house, however this one was especially made for Hiccup by Gobber. It had gears and a knob poking out of a jumble of metal looking things.

" What's that?" I asked, pointing towards the gears.

"Oh! That's a sort of wheel you can turn do that you can adjust the height of the table."

   I nodded, moving on to the next thing.

   At the end of the table was a hand carved throne, noticeably smaller than the cheifs, but holding much more detail. Many of them reminding me of a Night Fury. 

  Moving on to the next thing, I noticed stairs coming down from the middle of the hut. Leading up to a sort of loft area that contained a narrow type of horizontal hall and two rooms.

   Turning past the stairs, I noticed a big fire place with multiple dragons carved into the stone framing it.

   I turned more to see a few paintings leaning against the wall. Without thinking, I walked towards them and started to lift each one individually to look at them.

   One was a painting of Hiccup with Toothless just after he woke up after the fight with the Red Death.

   Another was of Hiccup and his dad not long before he left.

   The next was a painting of the Gang and all our dragons in front of the newly renamed Academy.

   Then the last one was one of him sailing into Berk with his bright red sail.

"Is it just me? Or has Bucket gotten better at painting?" I asked, beging to turn and ask Hiccup, who startled me by the rub of his chest against my shoulder.

  Peeking over my shoulder at the paintings  he nodded in agreement.

"He deffinantly has." He finally said, not moving.

   A light blush spread across my cheeks and I quickly spun out from in front of him to hide it.