amavi, perdidi.

You say it the same way someone might scold a child for dipping too many fingers into the honey jar, though the Night Fury doesn’t so much as flick an ear in acknowledgment. You’re sitting with your back to a lichen-slick rock, knees drawn up, your journal propped against them. The pages are stained with smudged graphite and fingerprints of fish oil. The fire you built—nothing more than a patient pile of glowing embers now—throws its weak light over the sketch you’ve been working on, lines struggling to form something precise: the next improvement to that sad, stubborn tail of his.

He’s sprawled out beside you on a mound of moss that the rain has left soft and fragrant, the kind that springs back beneath your touch. His scales are the color of spilled ink, yet here and there they glimmer faintly as if studded with stars hidden behind a cloud. His tail—your absurd contraption of leather scraps and piano wire—is leaned against the nearest tree trunk, drying in the warm drift of the fire’s heat. He doesn’t seem to care that it looks like something a half-blind cartwright would have abandoned.

If anything, he looks pleased. Content in the way only a creature certain of his own superiority can be. He has his nose buried in the remnants of your fish stash, snuffling through it with all the delicacy of a marauder ransacking a pantry.

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” you murmur, yanking the pouch of smoked herring out of reach before he can sink his teeth into it. His jaw snaps shut just shy of your fingers, the motion swift and precise, like the spring of a trap. “Hey. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, buddy. We had a deal. Sit nicely, get a snack. You’re breaking the rules.”

Rules mean nothing to him, of course. He collapses forward onto his stomach with theatrical resignation, wings folding halfway like a sulky bat. The low, rumbling chirp that escapes him sounds almost petulant. His eyes—bright, unblinking green, so vivid they seem to make their own light—stay locked on you with a gaze that manages to be both accusatory and curious.

You tip your head back against the rock and sigh. “You’re a terrible conversationalist. Gojo, for all his idiocy, used to talk back. Usually with something stupid, but still.”

At Gojo’s name, those ear-like fins flick forward. You narrow your eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. I know. I shouldn’t be talking about him while I’m out here with you. It’s like inviting bad luck. Or summoning trouble. He had this uncanny habit of appearing exactly when I didn't want him to. Like he could smell my peace and decide it would be better if his face was in it.”

The Night Fury tilts his head. You toss him a strip of fish. He catches it mid-air without so much as shifting his body, chewing smugly, his gaze never leaving yours.

“You wouldn’t like him,” you say, idly worrying at a clump of moss between your nails. “He’s too loud. Always grinning like he’s in on a joke you’re too slow to get, always leaning over your shoulder, all close and—” You cut yourself off with a groan and look up at the dense canopy overhead. “Why am I talking about him to you?”

The dragon blinks, pupils narrowing to sharp slits in the firelight. A sound rumbles from him—half amusement, half hunger, perhaps both.

“This isn’t about me,” you insist, pointing at him. “It’s about you. And the fact that you’re… complicated.” Your gaze drops to his tail, its fraying leather edges. “Do you even know what you are? Do you understand that people would kill to find you? That I should have dragged you back to the village the moment I saw you—so they could put you in a pen, or a cage, or whatever it is they think dragons deserve?”

He regards you without a shred of concern. Instead, he steps forward, slow and deliberate, until his snout nudges your knee. His breath smells faintly of smoke and fish.

“Fine,” you mutter, giving in. You scratch beneath his jaw, and his eyes half-close in something suspiciously like bliss. A deep, rolling purr vibrates through him.

Then he flops unceremoniously onto his back, wings splayed out like fallen sails, belly exposed to the night air. You can’t help it—you laugh, the sound breaking too loud in the quiet clearing, startling a pair of sparrows from the branches above.

Your fingers trace over the smooth, warm scales of his chest. The firelight dances across them, making them flare gold, then vanish back into black. And you find yourself staring—not just at the dragon, but at the impossibility of this moment. At the way he trusts you, enough to stay still, enough to be vulnerable. It feels like holding a secret in your hands. A dangerous, fragile, perfect secret. And for now, it is yours alone.

“I still don’t know what to name you, bud,” you murmur, fingers working gently under the curve of his jaw where the scales are smoothest. The Night Fury leans into the touch with surprising delicacy for something that can turn an entire boat to splinters. His head tilts, green eyes narrowing in what might be curiosity, or judgment.

He opens his mouth, just slightly, enough to let out a low, trilling chirr. You squint at him, leaning forward, and a slow smile begins to tug at your mouth. “No teeth, huh?”

The dragon makes the sound again, head cocking further to one side, the lamplight of the fire catching on the smooth planes of his face.

Your grin breaks wide. “Toothless,” you declare, and the name feels as if it clicks into place, like it had been sitting in the air between you this whole time, just waiting for you to speak it. “That’s you.”

He blinks, unbothered, and nudges your hand in silent demand for more scratches, as if to say the name is fine, but the important part is you not stopping.

You slip your Toothless journal into the bottom drawer of the desk almost as soon as you arrive home, as if hiding a secret is easier when it is out of sight, even though you know you’ll only pull it out again tomorrow. The workshop smells of coal ash and seawater, of soot-stained wood and salt-crusted ropes, of your father even now, years after he left and never returned. The hearth in the corner has gone cold; you bend to feed it a few sticks of pine, stack them carefully, and wait until the fire catches, the smoke curling up the chimney in a thin, steady column.

Toothless still can’t fly. Or at least not properly. Not yet. The pitiful lattice you’ve created that is his tailfin contraption stays stubborn and refuses to move on its own. You’ve tried to adjust the hinges, the weights, but no matter what, it requires something external to trigger it. You think about that as you change into your tunic, the one that smells faintly of smoke and fish and dragon breath. You think about it as you settle on the edge of your bed in the loft above the workshop, listening to the gentle crack of the fire below.

Tomorrow. Always tomorrow.

Last year you had scraped through Dragon Training. Barely. To call it a pass felt dishonest. You’d been clumsy, hesitant, your stomach in knots at every snarling maw, every lash of wings. You had looked away at the wrong times, flinched when others lunged forward. Gojo had been the Champion, of course. Of course. He was the one who had stood in the ring before the entire village, who had driven his spear into a dragon’s throat while the crowd roared his name. 

You hadn’t stayed to see the end. You couldn’t. The sound of the creature’s cries had been enough to drive you out, running before anyone could see your face, before anyone could accuse you of cowardice. But even with your eyes averted, it had felt as if your hands were slick with the same blood, as if you were guilty too.

Afterward, you had tried to remove yourself from all of it—from them. Gojo with his brilliance, Geto and Shoko with their laughter and confidence, even Nanami, who had once looked at you like you belonged. You let them drift away. Instead, you sat in your father’s old workshop, behind his desk, surrounded by the clutter he had left behind: half-finished sketches, warped bits of iron, compasses that pointed nowhere. You mended broken gear when people brought it to you. You helped the Chief with routes for fishing and trade and, when pressed, for hunting. It was useful work. Ordinary work.

But still, every time the Chief looked at you, you felt his eyes fix not on you but through you—searching for the man who had once occupied this space, the man who had left chasing the dragon’s nest and had never come back. In his gaze, you were both daughter and ghost. Even Yaga, who wasn’t really your uncle but insisted on acting as if he were, carried that same look sometimes: pity tempered with something that made your skin itch, as if all of Berk’s grief had settled beneath it and was crawling there, restlessly heavy, waiting for you to acknowledge it.

You lie back on the bed and close your eyes, but the smell of iron, the hiss of the fire, the memory of scales against your palm—all of it lingers. And so does the thought of tomorrow.

Flashes of white cross your vision, swiftly fleeting, until they shape themselves into him. Younger, lighter, not yet burdened by the weight of names and titles. And you—smaller too, trailing after him, orbiting like some pale moon around the sun he has always been. His laughter spills out, bright and careless, carried by the wind, and you follow it into the clearing. He brandishes a stick as if it were a sword, dares you with every glance over his shoulder. Behind you, the voices of your father and the Chief blur together, deep and indistinct, like a tide pulling itself back into the sea.

You run. You run until the air tastes of salt and the sun presses its hot hand against your back. You run until your lungs burn and your legs tremble. He taunts you—come closer, he says, touch me if you can, and tonight all my sweets are yours. Every piece of taffy, every sugared almond, every treasure hoarded in his pocket. The promise is rich and intoxicating. And still, you can never catch him. He is always just beyond your reach, quicksilver and sunlit, untouchable even when he is only a boy, even when he is still your best friend.

At last, you slow. You stop, bending over with your palms pressed to your knees, chest heaving, breath scraping in and out of your throat. When you lift your head to look back—to search for your father’s face, for his voice, for something solid—the dream frays at its edges. And then it dissolves completely. You wake with a sharp gasp, heart hammering against your ribs like a drumbeat, as though you had been running still.

You press your palms against your head, groaning softly at the throb behind your eyes, before pulling the covers back and forcing yourself upright. The room is cold. Yaga had promised to stop by today with sketches of some new contraption—something he called a ballista, a machine meant to rip dragons from the sky with brutal efficiency. The thought of it makes you uneasy, but you don’t linger on it. There are other things to attend to. 

Toothless needs feeding twice, once by day and once by dusk, or else he’ll grow irritable and flash his teeth at you in mock threat. He wouldn’t hurt you, not really. You are his only chance at flight again, even if you still haven’t solved the puzzle of his ruined tailfin.

Breakfast is brief and unremarkable: milk and bread gone stale at the edges, a thin slice of ham. You chew quickly, without tasting much, and then you’re unlocking the workshop. The familiar smells greet you—coal, iron, oil—and you set to sharpening a set of blades that must be returned before nightfall. Soon the forge glows, filling the space with heat that wraps around your skin like a second garment.

The bell at the shop door startles you. You wipe your hands, remove your apron, and step toward the front. And then you see him.

Gojo Satoru.

At first he doesn’t notice you. He’s half-turned, speaking easily to someone outside, promising he won’t be long, that this errand will take only a moment. And yet, he is almost unchanged. His lips  still as pink as fresh-pressed berries, his eyes that impossible sky-blue, clear and endless. His hair is pale as moonlight, the kind of beauty that has always felt like it should belong to someone mythic. He runs a hand through it, carelessly habitual, and then finally—finally—he looks up and sees you.

“Yaga sent me here,” he says, clearing his throat, as if he owes you an explanation. He steps inside, places something heavy on the table.

A chestplate. Its surface is battered, torn, a deep gash cutting across the front as if carved by claws, or worse, by teeth. You tilt your head, touch the edge of the metal. “This will take a day to repair. Is that all right?”

“Yeah,” he answers quickly, nodding once.

And then, silence.

You notice the way he avoids your gaze, how his eyes only flicker to yours in brief, glancing passes, as if the weight of looking fully at you is too much. You think of the boy he once was, the one whose laughter had lit up the air like music, who could outrun you every time and still wait for you at the finish line with a grin. But this version of him carries something quieter, sadder, in the way he holds himself. It unsettles you.

You wonder why he has come here at all. He is the Chief’s son—he has any number of smiths at his disposal, men who would mend his armor before sundown just to stay in his favor. You haven’t spoken to him since that day in the ring, the day he cut down a dragon before the eyes of the whole village.

“How much will it be?” he asks, and the way he says it makes it sound like an admission of guilt. You frown, just faintly, before shaking your head. You couldn’t take money from him. Not for this. Not when every coin from his hand would feel like a debt you couldn’t repay.

“Nothing,” you answer, steady now, meeting his eyes at last. “It won’t take long. I just have other work—it’ll be finished by tomorrow.”

For a moment, his expression falters. He blinks once, tilts his head like he’s trying to understand you anew, then gives a small nod. His mouth flattens into something that isn’t quite a smile, and he turns toward the door. The bell trembles as he opens it, the faint clink of metal against wood, and then he is almost gone.

Almost. He leans back in, one hand on the frame, his eyes finding yours again. “Oh. Father might come by. Wants to talk to you about trade routes, I think. Boring stuff, as always.”

“Right,” you say, drier than you meant, though you don’t take it back.

Another nod. And then the door shuts, the bell quiets, and the room exhales with you. You let the breath go slowly, as if you’ve been holding it for years, and the air feels lighter without him in it. Lighter, and yet not empty at all.

By midday, Yaga still hasn’t appeared. You keep the forge burning for as long as your patience allows, hand off the last of the orders with stiff politeness, and at last unfasten the leather apron from your shoulders. The front door—the one that opens directly into the square, into chatter and glances you’d rather not bear—remains bolted. Instead, you slip through the back.

The air outside smells faintly of yeast and roasted meat; taverns press close to one another here, spilling voices and clinking cups into the narrow street. You keep your head low, satchel pulled tight against your ribs, and let yourself become part of the crowd’s rhythm, unremarkable, unnoticed. A bag of fish bumps against your hip as you walk. You pray no one looks closely enough to ask.

At the edge of town, the cobblestones break apart into dirt, then grass, until the forest swallows you whole. You know the path now—every fallen branch, every crooked birch, every patch of moss the color of old emeralds. You had marked it the first time, scratching symbols into bark with a blade, terrified of forgetting the way. Of forgetting him.

Twenty minutes, maybe more, before the trees open into the familiar clearing. And there he is, dark as a storm at midnight, green eyes gleaming with recognition.

“Hey, hey,” you call out, too late, because he’s already bounding toward you. He’s heavy as he presses into your chest, claws scraping harmlessly at your tunic, breath hot and smoky against your cheek. You laugh despite yourself, stumbling as you shove the satchel to the ground. “Easy!”

“Slowly, okay?” you murmur, pressing a hand to the ridged curve of his head as you kneel, the bag rustling under your fingers. “Don’t choke. Chew your food.”

As if he’d ever obey. He tears into the fish with a fervor that borders on desperation, swallowing each bite as though the world might steal it away from him if he lingers too long. You can only roll your eyes and flick your fingers against the side of his jaw in mock reprimand before sinking onto the grass, your back to a cool stone. The journal rests in your lap.

You open it, pencil poised, and stare at the sketches that already crowd its pages: wings inked in graphite arcs, diagrams of tails and contraptions that blur between invention and hope. Still, it’s the tailfin that holds you hostage. That mangled piece of him that refuses to heal, that you’ve tried to mend with leather straps, bits of rope, anything your hands could shape into a miracle. But none of it has worked. None of it could teach him the one thing you cannot give him: control. 

How was he supposed to work a trigger, when the very concept of it belongs to human hands?

You sigh, pencil faltering, and glance up. He has already devoured the last of the fish and now stands in front of you, green eyes gleaming. He looks at you as though you are the magician here, the one who can conjure more fish from thin air, the one who might restore to him the thing he has lost.

“I’ll get you more this evening,” you tell him, voice softer than you mean it to be. He chirrs low in his throat, then folds himself down beside you, a weight of scales and trust, his head cocked toward your open book. He blinks slowly, like he is humoring you, like he understands something about this ritual of yours—your pencil scratching, your muttered frustrations—even if he doesn’t.

And still, you can’t help but ache for him. Because you remember. You remember that first day in this hidden clearing, when he had fought so furiously to leave it. The way his enormous wings had cracked the air as he hurled himself skyward, only to crash back down, body shuddering, eyes wild with a despair so raw it seemed unbearable.

You remember the moment he had seen you, too. How he had flung himself at you in a blur of claws and teeth, your back hitting the ground, the sharp weight of him pinning you, his mouth so close to your face you had felt the heat of his breath. You had thought it was the end. That you were nothing more than a meal, and your life would vanish into his hunger.

But he had stopped. Somehow, impossibly, he had stopped.

And then, when you came back that evening—when you dared to return with fish clutched in shaking hands—he had looked at you differently. Not as prey. Not entirely as a threat. But something in between. And each day after, with every offering, with every cautious approach, you’d felt him draw nearer. Until this moment, now, where he lies stretched on the grass beside you, purring low, trusting you enough to let you sit here with him like it’s always been this way.

When you finally return home, Yaga’s already there. Leaning against the front door like he’s been standing for hours, arms crossed, one brow raised in that look that makes you feel ten years old again.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asks, voice gruff but not unkind.

“I went out for lunch,” you say quickly, stepping past him and unlocking the door. The hinges creak as it swings open, letting out the familiar scent of ash, wood shavings, and oil. “I’ve gotten sick of old ham and stale bread. And it’s not like I get time to cook, anyway.”

“Lunch,” he repeats flatly, following you in. “Sure. That’s what we’re calling it.”

He doesn’t press, but the way he looks around the workshop makes your stomach tighten. He’s careful not to glance at your father’s old desk or the map-covered wall with all its pins and string—the same map your father studied the night before he disappeared. Yaga pretends not to notice it, the way he always does, but his silence feels heavy all the same.

“Alright, enough brooding,” he mutters finally, pulling a few rolls of parchment from his satchel and spreading them across the worktable. “Here. This is what I’ve been working on. Think you can lend a hand?”

You wipe your palms on your apron and step closer. The drawings sprawl across the page in sharp, deliberate lines. It’s the machine—massive, all angles and tension rods. It looks like a crossbow, but one too large for any human to hold. The kind of weapon that would need multiple people to load it.

“This is for dragons?” you ask quietly.

“More or less.” He shrugs. “Big one. Designed to shoot clean and far. I’m working on the arrows now. Just need help building the main mechanism—and a rope that won’t snap under strain.”

You study the plans again. It’s brilliant and elegant in its precision. And it’s meant to kill something that looks at you with bright green eyes and chirrs when it sees fish. You fold your arms tightly across your chest.

“Piano wire,” you say finally. “It’s strong. Doesn’t fray easy.”

Yaga nods, scratching his beard. “Yeah, that’s not a bad thought. I’ll pick some up and swing by in a few days. You can help me make it.”

He begins gathering his papers, tucking them carefully away. When he’s done, he rummages through his satchel again, then pulls out a small gear, brass and half-polished. “Found this in one of the traders’ carts. Thought you might like it.” He sets it on the table and makes for the door.

You stand there watching him, the words pressing at the back of your throat. You want to tell him. About Toothless. About the scales like polished onyx, about how he looks at you as if you’ve hung the stars. You want to ask if it’s wrong—if it’s foolish to care about something that everyone else calls a monster.

“Uncle Yaga?”

He stops, hand on the latch, looking over his shoulder. “Hm?”

“I’m… working on something,” you start, your voice low. “Say you had something powerful, but it couldn’t move on its own. Wouldn’t that make it dependent? Weak?”

He hums thoughtfully, stepping back just enough that the afternoon light catches his face. “Not weak,” he says after a pause. “Just… needing help. Everything starts that way. Even tools need hands. Even hands need purpose.”

You frown. “So it needs something to control it?”

He smiles a little, the kind of small, sad smile that makes his wrinkles fold deeper. “Not control,” he says. “Guide. A system needs an external force to act on it. To get it moving. That’s how the world works, kid. Nothing gets off the ground on its own.”

He taps the doorframe lightly before stepping out. “Don’t stay up too late tinkering.”

When the door closes, the workshop settles into quiet. The smell of smoke lingers. You look down at the brass gear glinting faintly in the light, at the curl of parchment still half-open on the table.

Nothing gets off the ground on its own.

You press your lips together, the realization landing heavy and certain. Toothless—your dragon, your secret—wasn’t meant to stay grounded forever. He wanted the sky, but he couldn’t reach it alone.

And maybe, you think as you trace the edge of the gear with your thumb, maybe it had to be you who helped him fly.

You don’t end up sleeping that night. Not for lack of trying, but because your mind won’t still. It hums like a forge left burning too long. So you sit at your worktable, elbows braced against the wood, sketching and scratching and erasing until the paper beneath your hand begins to curl.

At first, it’s just lines—rough, uneven—pieces of something you can’t quite see yet. His tail, broken and lopsided, haunts the edges of the page. You try to remember the exact angle it used to be at, the way it flared when he moved. You sketch and measure, your pencil darting across the parchment like a nervous bird.

When your wrist aches, you lean back in your chair and look out the window. The village is dark, all quiet but for the occasional cough of the wind against the glass. Thin plumes of smoke drift lazily from the chimneys, curling toward the stars. In the distance, the faint outlines of stables and fences. Horses shifting in their sleep. The dreamlike hush of the world when it forgets it’s alive.

You sigh. You’ve gone through your father’s things a hundred times—his journals, his broken compass, the charred corner of a map you’ve traced so often it’s gone soft. You keep thinking there must be something you’ve missed. Some little clue he left behind, something to make sense of how he vanished into the fog and never came back.

When you finally look down again, your notebook sits open, the half-formed sketch staring back at you like a question you can’t answer. You groan, drag your hand over your face, and flip to a fresh page.

A trigger. That’s what Yaga said, wasn’t it? Something external. Something to start the system moving. You twirl the small brass gear in your fingers, watching how the light hits the teeth, how each one fits perfectly into the next. A trigger, yes, but how were you supposed to help him? You couldn’t fly. You couldn’t even reach the top of your roof without trembling. How do you help something like him, something made for the sky, get back to it?

It’s not like you could ride him.

…Right?

The thought is ridiculous. You shake your head, laugh quietly to yourself. Then, before you can stop it, your hand moves again. Pencil to paper. A saddle. You start with a rough frame, then add straps, braces, a place to hook your legs so you don’t fall off and die a spectacular, instant death. You hesitate for a moment before adding lines to connect it to the tail, to the trigger.

That’s when something shifts.

You flip back through your sketches, to the earlier designs for his tail fin. Your pulse quickens. You see it now—the way it could all fit together, the way you could be that external force. A rider, yes, but more than that. A counterweight. A friend. The one thing he’s missing.

Your pencil moves faster. The trigger shifts from your hands to the footrest, because that makes more sense—you’ll need your hands for him. You draw the mechanism again, finer this time, each line cleaner than the last. When you finally sit back, the candle’s burned halfway down and wax pools across the table, hardening like spilt sunlight.

And there it is.

The sketch glows in the candlelight, the graphite catching gold around the edges. You stare at it for a long moment, heart drumming. Because this? This could work. It could make him whole again. You don’t know how you’ll convince him to wear something on his back, or how you’ll fit the tailfin without him snapping at you. But you’ll find a way. You’ll bribe him with fish. You’ll distract him, talk to him, sing if you have to. Whatever it takes.

You don’t even notice dawn until the light starts seeping through the cracks in the shutters. It paints everything pale blue, makes the smoke outside shimmer like mist. You rub the sleep from your eyes, roll your shoulders, and set to work.

By the time customers start coming in, you’ve got the trigger finished—a little crude, but solid. Two days later, the saddle follows, every stitch neat and sure, every buckle gleaming. When it’s done, you stand there for a long time, hands on your hips, grinning like a fool.

That night, you sneak out when the streets are quiet. You carry both pieces—saddle and trigger—wrapped in cloth, heavy in your arms. The forest air smells like pine and salt. You leave the bundle at the edge of the trees, just where the path begins to twist out of sight.

The next morning, you bring the bait: a bag full of fish, their scales glinting like silver coins in the light. You drag the materials through the brush, heart pounding, a mix of terror and anticipation blooming in your chest.

And when you see him waiting there—head tilted, emerald eyes bright—you can’t help but laugh.

Because somehow, impossibly, you’re about to do the unthinkable. You’re going to build a way for a dragon to fly again.

You pet him first, as if that small motion could disguise the sheer audacity of what you’re about to do. His scales are warm beneath your palm, smoother than they look, and when you smile, it’s the kind of smile meant to deceive. To pretend. You are absolutely not about to invade his personal space, not about to commit what is, by dragon standards, probably a crime.

“Good boy,” you murmur, voice deliberately casual.

He chirrs in response, pleased and oblivious, tail swishing lazily against the grass. You grab the bag of fish and drag it toward the pond, where the light scatters like molten gold across the surface. The smell of salt and smoke hangs in the air; your hands smell like oil and metal. Behind you, you can hear him shuffle after you, claws pressing into the soft earth. Along with that low, throaty hum he makes whenever he’s interested in something.

You keep walking, pretending to be serene when, in truth, your heart is thrumming like a blacksmith’s hammer.

The plan is simple. Or, at least, it sounds simple when you repeat it in your head: distract the dragon, attach the trigger mechanism, live. Ideally, in that order.

You set down the supplies, glance back to make sure he’s watching, then open the fish bag. The scent immediately fills the clearing, and his pupils dilate like a cat’s. He lets out a low coo, takes a hesitant step forward.

“Alright, alright,” you whisper, throwing him a salmon. “There. Lunch.”

He dives for it, all grace forgotten, devouring it in two violent gulps. That’s your cue. You bolt.

You grab the tailfin, heart pounding, and run to his back end, dropping to your knees as you fit the trigger into the metal brace you built for him days ago. The leather straps are stubborn, the buckle tight, but your hands work fast, practiced. Behind you, Toothless crunches through another fish, his tail twitching dangerously close to your head.

If he notices what you’re doing, you’ll probably die.

You glance up. He doesn’t. Yet.

“Good dragon,” you mutter, as if the words themselves might form a shield. You pretend to soothe him, fingers gliding across his scales with a tenderness that feels almost genuine. Maybe it is genuine. You did bribe a fisherman for those salmon, after all—offering to fix all his broken boats in exchange for the freshest catch. Surely that counts as devotion.

But then, the saddle.

You lift it carefully from where it rests by the grass. It’s heavier than you remember—stiff leather, brass buckles, the faint smell of smoke from the forge. You move slowly, holding your breath as you drape it over his back. He shifts slightly, glances once, but doesn’t seem to care. Until he does.

The moment the buckle clicks, his head whips around. You freeze.

Toothless blinks. His pupils narrow to slits, and his jaw opens just enough to show rows of pointed, very functional teeth. His big green eyes, once full of guileless curiosity, now gleam with a new kind of awareness. Betrayal, perhaps. Or hunger.

“Okay,” you stammer, hands raised, voice wobbling. “Okay, bud, listen. I’m just.. helping, alright? Helping. You like help.”

He does not, in fact, like help.

He bares his teeth further, a growl vibrating through his chest. You take one nervous step back, then—without thinking, without planning, without any real survival instinct—you climb.

Later, you will not be able to explain this decision. You’ll probably call it instinct, or desperation, or sheer idiocy. But right now, it feels like the only choice. Your foot finds the stirrup, you swing your leg, and suddenly, you are sitting on a dragon.

The thought dawns on you as he shrieks—loud, indignant, and offended to his very core. You should’ve seen it coming. Of course a dragon like Toothless, all pride and temper and impossible dignity, would throw a tantrum the second he realized he needed help. He flails his wings like a storm given form, the wind whipping your hair into your mouth as you cling to the saddle for dear life, half-screaming, half-laughing.

“Oh, this was such a great idea,” you yell over the chaos, words lost to the air. He twists sharply, and your stomach lurches. You can practically feel your insides rearranging themselves. You’re definitely going to vomit.

He bucks again, this time higher, and you cling tighter, pressing your chest to his back, your fingers digging into the leather. Your legs squeeze around him instinctively, your heart slamming against your ribs. His wings thrash against the air, the ground trembling beneath every frantic step.

“Okay, okay, Toothless, calm down, bud!” you gasp, though you’re fairly certain he can’t hear a thing. Your entire body shakes from the force of him moving, each motion wildly jerky, and your eyes squeeze shut as if that might make the world stop spinning. You can feel his muscles coil beneath you—raw power, the kind that could kill you in a heartbeat if he decided to.

And then, purely by accident, your foot shifts. Just slightly. The smallest turn of your heel against the new mechanism.

Click.

The sound is quiet, almost delicate. But it’s enough.

The tailfin unfurls behind him, catching the light like black silk. Toothless freezes. His wings stop mid-beat, his body going rigid beneath you. For a moment, all you can hear is your own breath, loud in your ears. You keep your eyes shut, too afraid to open them, your arms still wrapped tightly around his neck.

He lets out a low, uncertain rumble. The kind that vibrates through your entire chest.

Slowly, you open one eye. He’s staring at you, head tilted, those luminous green eyes wide and unblinking. The fury has vanished, replaced by something almost… curious.

You glance down at your foot, then at his tail, now perfectly open.

“Oh,” you whisper, still clinging to him. “So that’s what I did.”

Toothless blinks once. Twice. Then makes a sound that’s somewhere between a snort and a huff. If dragons could roll their eyes, you’re certain he just did.

“Right,” you mutter, voice shaky but lighter now. “So we’re good? No eating me today?”

He chirrs. Softly this time.

Your grip loosens. The forest is quiet again, save for your heartbeat, still racing in your chest. You don’t move for a while, afraid that if you do, he’ll start another fit. But as the silence stretches, something changes in him. His body relaxes, the tension in his shoulders easing, and his tail sways gently from side to side.

You realize, then, that for the first time, he’s not trying to shake you off. He’s letting you stay.

The air between you hums with something new. It’s trust. Fragile and trembling, but real. And as you sit there, your hand still pressed against his scales, you can’t help the small, disbelieving laugh that escapes you.

Because somehow, against all odds, this might actually work. You are the first person to ever sit on top of a dragon. 

“Hey, buddy?” you murmur, voice still thick with the quiet of dawn. The sky is a pale wash of color—blues surrendering to amber, clouds melting into gold. You tilt your head at him, and he tilts his back, perfectly mirroring you. There’s something almost childlike in the way he does it, eyes wide and luminous, like he’s trying to read your thoughts through your expression.

“What say we go for a morning trip around the island?”

The words are soft, coaxing, half-joking. But he chirps in answer—wondrously delighted. You don’t know why you’re surprised anymore. He always understands you, somehow. His excitement builds in an instant. He’s practically vibrating, wings twitching, claws scraping at the ground. You barely have time to brace yourself before he bolts, barreling up the sloping side of the clearing.

“Toothless, wait—!”

But he’s already gone. The wind rushes at your face, salt and sunlight stinging your eyes as the horizon falls away beneath you. He leaps off the cliff like he was born to fly. Only he wasn’t, not anymore. Not with that broken fin.

The realization hits just as gravity does. The world tilts, sky swallowing sea, and your scream tears through the morning. You feel him twist beneath you, the wild panic of muscle and instinct—his wings flaring too late, his body heavy and unbalanced. You can feel his heart thundering through the saddle, faster than your own.

Your foot shifts, trying to find balance, and you hear it—the faint click of the tailfin retracting into its broken shape. He plummets. The ocean rushes toward you both, black and merciless under the sunrise. You grab at his neck, burying your face into the warm, slick scales, and for one terrifying moment, you think this is it. You think you’ve killed both of you. You’ve killed yourself trying to do the impossible. And you’ve gone and killed a Night Fury, too. 

But then, something inside you moves. It’s instinct, maybe. Or something older, something buried deep. Your heel presses down, just slightly, and his tailfin snaps open like a heartbeat.

Everything stills.

He catches the wind, just barely, and it’s as if the world remembers him again. The fall smooths into a glide, the chaos into grace. His wings open wide, cutting through the mist, and you both skim across the surface of the water. Spray hits your cheeks. The air is cold and alive and fresh.

“Holy shit,” you whisper, half in awe, half in disbelief.

He chirrups again, triumphant this time, and you can feel his pride humming through him. You laugh, the sound startled out of you. “You absolute menace,” you say, but your voice is trembling with joy.

He banks left, and you nearly slide off. 

“Okay—okay! Easy, bud!” You adjust your foot again, tentatively, and the fin moves in answer. A small movement, a delicate tilt—and he turns, smooth and clean this time. You try again, right foot, right fin. And he dips, the air rushing past your ears like song.

You gasp, exhilarated. He’s watching you now, one eye flicking back, gauging your reactions. It’s as if the two of you are speaking without words; your movements, his corrections, a dance you’re only just beginning to learn. You start testing it: one tilt, then another, finding the rhythm between balance and trust.

The wind thickens around you as he rises, up past the cliffs, higher than the trees. The island unfolds beneath you—rivers catching sunlight, waves breaking against the rocks. You feel the pull of the sky, endless and open, and Toothless hums beneath you like a living extension of it.

For the first time, he isn’t falling. For the first time, you’re both flying.

And as the two of you spiral above the island—your laughter tangling with his wild, joyous roars—you realize what Yaga meant. The trigger didn’t have to come from him. It came from you. From both of you, together. Even if it’s jagged around the edges and not smoothly sailing, for now.

You don’t tell him that, of course. You just press a hand to his neck, and when he purrs, you swear the whole sky vibrates with it.

The adrenaline doesn’t leave your body for the rest of the day. Even hours after the flight, you still feel it thrumming under your skin, impossible to quiet. You sharpen weapons that afternoon, though your mind isn’t really on the blade. It’s in the sky. On the way the air bent beneath you. On the sound of Toothless’s wings slicing through the wind, the way your foot had moved without thinking. You replay it over and over again, trying to memorize the rhythm of it—the give, the pull, the balance. You want to get better. You need to get better.

Better at dragon riding.

When night falls, the village lights still burn, so you don’t risk another flight. Instead, you sneak back to the clearing with the bag of smoked salmon slung over your shoulder. The forest hums around you, soft with crickets and wind. The moment Toothless spots you, his pupils widen, and he croons. You can’t help but smile.

“Hey, you,” you whisper, setting down the bag. You toss him a piece of fish, and he snaps it up in one quick motion, his tail swishing contentedly. You reach out, hand steady now, and run your fingers beneath his chin. His scales are cool, like river stones left under shade. He leans into your touch, rumbling deep in his chest.

You tell him about your day in a half-murmur—about the training grounds, about Yaga, about how you nearly burned your fingers at the forge because you were too busy thinking about flying. You leave out the part about the dragon-killing crossbow. You can’t bear to say it out loud, not when he looks at you with those wide, trusting eyes.

When he finishes eating, he nudges your arm with his nose, asking for more affection, maybe more conversation. You give him both. You pat his snout and whisper, “We’ll get you flying properly soon, okay? Without me. You’ll see.”

The thought sits heavy in your chest as you stand to leave. He watches you go, head cocked, tail curling loosely behind him. You can feel his gaze long after you step into the trees.

The forest is quiet, but the world beyond it isn’t.

When you reach the edge of the woods, your breath catches in your throat. The night sky is no longer dark—it’s burning. Flames lick at rooftops, smoke spills upward like a storm cloud, and the air reeks of ash. The shouts of villagers pierce the air, frantically raw. And above it all, shadows move. Wings beat. Dragons wheel through the smoke, roaring as arrows cut through the sky toward them.

And the dragons respond the only way they can. With fire.

You run for it. The air tastes like smoke, the world split open with noise. People rush past you, hauling buckets, dragging children, shouting names into the chaos. You push through them, ducking beneath a spray of sparks, sprinting toward your workshop,

And then you slam into someone, shoulder-first.

It’s Satoru. He staggers back, cursing under his breath. His eyes are wild, bright with the reflection of fire, his hair disheveled, face streaked with soot. For a moment, neither of you speak. Then his jaw tightens.

“Watch where you’re going,” he snaps, and the words cut through the roar around you. He clicks his tongue, glancing at the sky where dragons wheel and dive. “And get home safe. Both of us know you’re on their side.”

You freeze, breath catching, confusion slicing through the fear. “What—”

But he’s already gone. Turning, running back into the smoke.

You stand there for a moment, the words echoing in your head, heavier than the sound of wings above. On their side. You open your mouth, but nothing comes out. You can’t even tell if you’d meant to defend yourself—or if you’re afraid he might be right. 

Someone calls out your name, and you jolt at the voice. Yaga’s.

Before you can turn, his hand wraps around your arm, rough, pulling you through the narrow alley. He’s older, broader, his breaths labored as he half-drags you home. When you reach the door—still miraculously untouched by flame—he shoves you inside and slams it shut.

“What do you think you were doing out there?” he barks. His face is red, sweat dripping down his temples. You can see the anger in the way his chest rises and falls, the fear buried beneath it.

“I—I was trying to—”

“Answer me!” His voice cracks the air like thunder. You flinch, pressing back against the wall, heart hammering.

“I was trying to help!” you blurt out. “People were—”

He steps closer, his expression twisting, grief shadowing his features. “Your father tried to help,” he growls, voice rough now, trembling with something raw. “And look where that got him.”

You freeze.

His hand drops from your arm. He exhales shakily, the sound brittle in the smoke-thick air. “Didn’t I tell you to stay inside whenever there’s a raid?” he mutters, quieter now, almost pleading. “I can’t lose you too.”

Your brain stops. The world narrows to the sound of your own pulse—heavy, uneven, heart pumping in your ears. You can still hear him, still see the way his mouth shapes the words that hit like stones. Your father tried to help, and look where that got him. It lodges somewhere deep, between the lungs and the heart, where grief has already carved out its home.

You look at him then. Really look. The smoke-stained lines of his face, the way his jaw sets, how the light from the window flickers across his skin in shades of ash and orange. And for a moment, if you unfocus—if you let your vision blur—he looks so much like your father. That same tired shape of the shoulders, that same stubborn mouth. The resemblance aches.

He says your name again. Louder this time. Demanding. And when you don’t answer, he shouts, the sound splintering something inside you.

You swallow hard, throat dry. “Get out.”

He blinks. “What?”

You meet his eyes now, and your voice, when it comes, is hoarse but steady. “Get out, Uncle Yaga. Before I say something that hurts both of us.”

The words hang there. Like old parchment nailed to the wall.

He stares at you, and for a moment, you think he’ll argue—that he’ll remind you of who he is, of what he’s lost too. But then his mouth tightens, and the fight drains out of his shoulders. He nods once, silent, his gaze flicking briefly toward the ceiling, as though the strength he’s looking for might be hiding up there.

When he finally leaves, the door shuts with a sound too soft for how loud the silence feels afterward.

You stand there for a long time. The air is thick, the smoke outside seeping faintly through the cracks. The workshop feels smaller now, the wooden beams darker, heavier. Your eyes drift toward the far end of the room—to the worktable that still smells faintly of oil and soot.

Your father’s desk.

The papers are still scattered where you left them earlier, sketches curling at the edges, a mug long gone cold. And above it, pinned to the wall, the map—creased and faded from years of handling. The ink has begun to bleed at the corners, but you can still trace his handwriting. Routes. Islands. Notes written in the messy scrawl he’d always used when he was excited.

You step closer, fingertips brushing against the parchment. It’s a map of the islands and their skies, the dragons that had once been dots of mystery, marked now with names and guesses and hope. And specifically, where he thought the route to the Dragon’s Nest would be.

You stand there until your eyes burn. The smoke, you tell yourself. But you know it isn’t.