Dragon Song

Chapter 1:

"To hear a dragon sing is one of the rarest and most beautiful things you will ever have the fortune to experience," Asair had once told his young daughter, Skullette as he led her into the forest to teach her how to track the many beasts that lingered on the island. They weren't as dangerous as the ones always raiding their village, stealing their fish, sheep, and any food they managed to harvest. These only attacked if provoked, and they were only here to track and observe what they found, not hunt. As he spoke, he took note of certain details around that would lead them to their target. "I heard it once when I was a boy, never again, but forget I did not."

"Why would a dragon sing?" asked a curious Skullette. She was eight years old, her eyes flitting around as they searched. Small for her age but bright and curious enough to want to soak up everything around her, images, sight, sound, smells, Skullette was determined to learn. Of what teacher was uncertain since it always seemed to change with every new discovery.

And Asair was never one to discourage it; he was the one she got it from in the first place. Asair Aleshanee was known for quite a few things in the small village of Berk that had built up over the years since he washed on its shores years ago, a refugee with nothing and nowhere else left to go. And one of those things that had endured through his youth in an island that was more likely to charge first and think later was the need to question things rather than simply accept without thinking it through. It had annoyed the adults as he had grown up, and it annoyed now the adults he had grown up with as children, not just because he encouraged his exuberant daughter to do so as well, but because he supported their own children to ask questions they had little patience for, too. Especially one who hadn't needed encouragement to start with his own curiosities and asking his own questions, and certainly didn't need more to continue thinking that way.

The Chief's boy was smart, but skinny and small even for his young six years when compared to the other children, and nowhere near as strong. Everyone knew he was different, but for other reasons than the way Asair and his daughter were different. Everyone thought he was bad luck, and okay, so the boy was clumsy, but he really had good intentions, and could learn if someone could take the time to teach him in a way he'd better understand. Everyone knew the other children made fun of him and isolated him, but often enough times Asair felt he was among the very few who actually cared enough to try and stop it. Maybe because Hiccup reminded him of himself as a child. Asair had since changed from the scrawny young boy he'd been, but he was still one to rather use his mind than his fists.

After all, tracking and trapping, with any animal really, required patience, skill, and the ability to factor in the terrain and use all your senses so your prey didn't sneak up on you and turn you into the hunted. Perhaps Hiccup would do better in this area, or at least would be interested in seeing how his trapping mechanisms worked. He was already considering taking the boy into the least dangerous spots in the forest to show him, although Stoick would probably prefer Hiccup be more like him.

Well, good thing Asair hardly gave a damn what Stoick preferred if it made Hiccup happy.

The boy took after his mother, of that Asair could see. Inquisitive and a fighter but not in the traditional Viking way. They were both horrible Vikings if one were to compare them to everyone else. But as Asair had told the woman back when they were just kids trying not to get eaten, that wasn't exactly such a bad thing. Times changed, and somebody ought to start that change.

There was obligation due to Valka, his late mother taken before Hiccup could even know her face, yet a fondness that had him looking out for the lad any time he could. Didn't seem to make any difference since no matter how hard the boy tried, no one took any patience or pity dealing with him, not even Stoick.