Of the Northmost Winds and Skies

Chapter 41: The Snow Queen plays baseball

Despite all his confident claims of "knowing this would happen" and "being used to it", Jack would've been lying if he said seeing the dragon riders again, but not being seen in return, didn't bother him. And saying it only bothered him would've been an understatement. It made him feel somewhat ungrateful; Jamie had made all the kids believe, he still had the twins and, most importantly, he had Hiccup. He did know this would happen, and even if he'd been human for a few months, he should be used to it. And yet.

He ignored his hurt feelings the best he could as he headed for the clouds hanging over Berk, circling the island. Already, he could feel the Snow Queen's power building up, devastating winter lurking just around the corner. Jack closed his eyes and extended his senses across the Barbaric Archipelago. He couldn't quite pinpoint her presence, but he could pinpoint the exact position of every island they'd visited on their journey, and then some more. He could tell which ones had living creatures on them, and what kind of living creatures – humans, dragons, the mysterious, shifting aura of magical entities. But not Snow.

It would've been nice if they'd gotten some allies along the way, but those were, as they all knew by now, hard to come by in the Archipelago.

He wrapped the island in his magic. At least that was something that easily came back to him – even if he still felt weak from the fever. As long as everyone stayed put on the island, they should be safe: Snow's puppets would hopefully not be able to break through, and if they somehow did anyway, the dragons should be able to fight back without Snow's magic hurting them from the inside, like she'd done to Toothless before.

Of course, Jack had no way to give this a test run, so who really knew what would happen? He only hoped Hiccup and Jamie managed to warn the others. Even if they didn't believe the magical part of it, they had to believe something was about to attack them. By the same enemy as last time, too – Jack would've gladly been the one to warn them again, but... well.

He opened his eyes when he heard the familiar sound of Toothless' wings beating. They were still far away – Jack's hearing was better now, and he could hear them clearly even from a distance. Or maybe it was more like he felt them move through the air.

He smiled and headed up into the cover of the clouds, taking a wide U-turn before coming back down right behind Toothless and Hiccup. Soundlessly, he floated close to Hiccup's ear.

"That didn't take long."

Boy and dragon let out matching yelps, Toothless whirling around so suddenly, the force made Hiccup faceplant on Toothless' head. He groaned as Toothless steadied himself, massaging his nose.

"Why?" he complained, but Jack could barely hear him over his own laughter. Hiccup stared at him, cheeks red, with an unwilling smile on his face while he waited for Jack to calm down. "Okay," he said when the cackling had subsided to soft fits of giggles, "you're definitely exhausted. You don't usually laugh that hard about scaring me."

"Eh, I'm fine. Oh- Hello, Toothless." Toothless had come closer to him, bumping his head against Jack's shoulder. Jack laughed softly, scratching his jaw. "I told you we had a lot in common. Flying, mainly."

Hiccup hummed, and Jack could tell he was thinking back to that moment on the Edge. "Gods," he murmured. "That's why you tried leaping after your staff."

"Oh, I tried leaping off several high places. It's a wonder I didn't get myself killed."

"Truly," Hiccup agreed with a lopsided smile. "The gods must've been looking out for you."

Jack would've blushed if he could. "Hiccup, we don't have a lot of time left, are you really going to spend it all making fun of me?"

"For being so oblivious, Freya herself had to come down and give you a nudge?" Hiccup asked. "Absolutely."