Souls Apart - A HTTYD Fanfic

Prologue - The winter child

Deep in the middle of Devastating Winter, a child was born on Berk. The mother died during childbirth, leaving the father to raise the baby girl.
The skirmishes that season were fierce; rival tribes were relentless in their attacks upon Berk. It was in one such fight that Rakur Bagan, father of the winter child, was mortally wounded by an enemy blade.
As he lay dying, he clasped the hand of his good friend Hofferson, and with his last breath requested that he see no harm befell his child.
This Hofferson swore to do, by the gods Thor and Odin.

Hofferson and his wife took the child into their home, and raised her alongside their own daughter, a year and a half the orphan's senior. She was treated well, but as time passed, an ugly truth raised its head.

The child was ill.

Some unshakable weakness plagued her. She had no strength, no stamina. Days passed during which even walking was beyond her capacity. Healers were called from near and far to treat her, but all said the same thing:

"She suffers an incomplete soul. There is no cure."

In a community of such harshness and strength, such a child would normally be left in a forest or upon a high mountain peak, at the mercy of the gods. But Hofferson had given his word he would protect her, and would not break that oath.

Many believed the girl would die before her tenth summer. Others believed a number far less. But by whatever miracle may have been worked, she survived season after season, year after year, until her fifteenth summer dawned.

Thus her story begins.