============

Back on Berk.....

"Valka, still no sign of the chief, Astrid, Eret, or their dragons."

Valka sat back down in her chair heavily as Yar left the hut. She sighed and looked at Cloudjumper as he nuzzled her. "Where are they, Cloudjumper?," Valka said shakily. The regal Stormcutter looked at the ground. Valka stared at the helmet that was Hiccup's when he was younger, and her breastplate before she was abducted. Her eyes began to water at the prospect of never seeing her son, his lovable girlfriend, or their amazing dragons again. "I already lost Stoick," Valka whispered. "I don't wanna lose my son. I just returned, Cloudjumper. I haven't spent nearly the amount of time I should've with him yet, I don't want him to go now. He's too young." Cloudjumper moaned sadly and wrapped himself around the chair that the mighty Stoick the Vast had once inhabited, then the young, courageous Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, and now the stand-in chief, the mother whom no one had seen for twenty years.

Valka leaned forward and buried her head in her hands, and her shoulders began to shake. "I don't know anymore, Cloudjumper," she sobbed. "My life has been a wreck! I don't know what--" Suddenly, Valka stopped crying. Slowly, she lifted her head. "What am I doing?," she chastised herself. " 'A chief protects his own'. I bet that's what Hiccup is doing out there, and that's what I need to start doing. Cloudjumper, come! We're gonna go get them back, and we're not going alone." Valka jumped out of the chair, ran to the wall, and grabbed the armor that had protected her for twenty years in the Dragon Sanctuary off the wall. She threw it on, and Cloudjumper ran out the door, closely followed by his master.

Valka tightened her armband. "You're in charge, Gobber!," she yelled as she ran by the old blacksmith.

"Wha?," Gobber said, confused.

"Don't ask, just do it!," Valka called over her shoulder, vaulting onto Cloudjumper's back. The Stormcutter swerved over to the old, now unused Berk Dragon Training Academy that Valka's son had founded five years ago. As she expected, the other four riders were lounging around in there, depressed. Valka landed outside the Academy and strode in smoothly. Ruffnut looked up.

She gasped. "DidtheyfindEretdidtheydidtheydidthey?," she demanded giddily. Valka grinned at Ruffnut's enthusiasm for Eret and shook her head. Ruffnut returned to her depressed look and slouched forward, hands holding up her head.

"Have they come back?," Snotlout asked.

"No," Valka said. "But, that's why I came to you. We're going out to find them." The riders perked up and grinned at each other, ready for the violence they so greatly adored...well, not Fishlegs, but the others loved the thought of a battle.

"Mount up!," Valka shouted joyfully. The riders called their dragons, hopped on, and followed Valka off the island.

============

I sat on the beach, my tail wrapped around my legs, my body shivering in the cold, snowflake-filled air. My breath came out in white swirls of vapor, twirling around my head like a snake. I looked up at the moon. It stared back silently, blankly, uncaring of the pain I was going through. My whole body ached more and more with every fragment of prophecy that pierced through my thin, fragile, weak skin. My sanity was slowly and painfully leaving me, ripping out my heart and soul with a rusty, dull blade. I was breaking, shutting down mentally. I didn't want to get hurt, like I saw in the future. I didn't want Toothless, Stormfly, Hiccup, Astrid, any of the once-fictional characters I loved to get hurt.

My mind was dealing with losing its grip and the emotional break-downs of beginning to fall in love, and that wasn't the worst of it. I kept having nightmares, horrible, subconscious omens. All they were, were flashes of one picture, over and over again. A terrifying, demonic monster with only one eye. The remaining one, an orb of pure black with a ring of gray in the middle, and more black in the center of that. That one eye was evil, cold, penetrating. Then, there was that horrible grin, the smile of a killer. The teeth were bloodstained, and the mouth had more blood around it. But, the worst part, was the empty, gaping, horrific hole where the right eye used to be. Where as the left eye was crying with maniacal anger, the socket was crying with blood. The red tears rolled down the gray, scaly cheeks, and landed in my field of vision every time the nightmare occurred. It had me waking up in the middle of the night, absolutely sure that the figure would be standing above me, ready to run me through.

Now, as I sat, freezing in the cold, I remembered that face, when it was reasonably attractive for an evil dragoness. Cinderpaw, the menace that was saying how she wanted to kill Hiccup so badly at the clifftop.

I shivered, and sneezed. A small bolt of plasma shot out my mouth and sizzled into the snow. I looked at my paws, and a small, warm tear slid out of my eyes and down my cheeks. "Why, God?," I prayed. "Why did this have to happen to me? My life is so hard, so confusing. Why did you put me under the impression that I was a human, when I really wasn't? What about my human parents? What, what....what do they think of me, now that they know I'm a dragon? God, why am I here?" Then His answer came to me as I stared into the snow.

Because I have a special plan for you, for everyone. Not to harm you, but to help you.

I looked up at the moon again, and smiled. "I know," I whispered. "Thank you."

"What ARE you doing?!" I jumped and looked behind my shivering shoulders, and Toothless was standing at the mouth of the cave. "You're gonna catch your death of cold in this weather," he chastised. I grinned at the ground sheepishly.

"Would you like to join me in my freezing?," I said. I expected Toothless to shake his head, laugh, and order me inside. But, what he did next surprised me.

He walked up and sat down next to me, and wrapped his wing around me. "If you're gonna freeze," he whispered. "You're gonna want someone to freeze with you. To help you up when you thaw." I looked at Toothless, shocked for a moment, then I smiled. I leaned into him, and we both stared up at the moon. "Sure looks like it has a face, doesn't it?," Toothless said after a moment.

"Yeah," I replied wistfully. I felt tired now, and my eyelids felt like they weighed a ton. I let them fall, and within minutes I was asleep.