This is where I belong ||httyd fanfic||

67. A future of a new change..

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The next day came all too quickly for anyone.

It was as though the gods had a sixth sense for when a warrior fell on the field of battle. Thick clouds like boulders had begun to roll in from the north; Devastating Winter was rolling in with inexplicably perfect timing. People dragged themselves their houses before the dawn, the chill seeping into their arms guiding them to the shores. They sighed out their unspoken plotted words or dashed wishes as puffs of breath to stare at the ground and wait for snow.

Just one star to twinkle in the night's end or a bit of sunshine to warm their bones. That was all they wanted. Anything to take the feeling away.

Instead, they would be getting that warmth from their former chief's pyre. Harold's final service to his people.

Hiccup walked to the shore, his flight suit and robe never as heavy as in that moment. Asmund, Doc, and Raoul were there at the shore, loading the last of Harold's prized possessions onto the boat. Their expressions were unreadable, but Hiccup didn't have to have the Allfather's left eye to know their thoughts.

Juliane, her father and Sven were readying the bows and arrows just the same. The ceremonial lighting. Hiccup's fingers twitched and hovered over the bow as Juliane came to him.

He had always hated Viking funerals; they were scary and depressing and all around miserable to watch. It seemed unfair to take the body of someone you honored and stick it onto a burning boat to be cast out to sea. No matter how great you were or what you accomplished in life, that fire would burn at your body and every piece of your existence on Midgard would be erased. It was like eliminating weakness in a way. In later years, after going numb from seeing it so many times, he wrote it off as new life to the term 'going out in a blaze of glory.'

It was just another funeral. He should be used to the gloom, the sense nothing would be the same.

He wasn't.

Hiccup took the bow after relenting. His wife came to his side with a bow of her own. His father at the other, surprisingly with one himself, same with the other Berkians sans Snotlout. It was another funeral for them too.

Toothless was behind him with a reassuring nuzzle. He crooned and stared at Hiccup.

Something he needed. "Thanks, bud..."

"The pit, everyone. Ready your arrows." Leif came with a crate of lit torchwood.

One by one the people of Selardalr and their guests walked to the wood and lit their arrowheads. It had been lit from Titan's softest flame, the dragon he fought alongside and trusted. The old Rumblehorn had stayed behind with the other dragons back in town, probably to sleep. Most likely all the gloom was too much for the broken beast.

Asmund breathed, and he and Doc pushed the boat out to the calm waters.

"May the Valkyries welcome you with open arms and lead you through the fields of Asgard." The Selardalr blacksmith shut his eyes and lifted his head upward. "May you there see your brothers and sisters, may they sing your name with love and fury so that we may hear it from the depths of Valhalla. That we may know you have taken your rightful place at the Table of Kings. We shall sing back with steel and flame and tell them a warrior, a leader, a father, has joined them."