They didn't die, of course, because that would be quite the depressing way to end a story that had hardly begun. No, indeed they had quite the adventure or misadventures waiting for them, it only depends on which way one chooses to see it.
Hiccup would say it was a misadventure.
Early that same morning, time and space away but not as far as one would think, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III left his house before the break of dawn to avoid the same thing he'd flew from his whole life; parents.
Instead of his father, like he'd avoided for 20 some years, today and everyday since that break in the twenty years, it was his mother.
It had been hard to readjust as the chieftain after Stoick's death, and also the reintroduction of his mother back into his life. Occasionally, she would be the mother she never was and reach across to wipe some dirt with her finger from his face, or take his clothes that he had thrown across the floor for the next day and wash them before they were clean, or she would go through and find another bottle of ale and frown at it, forgetting that Hiccup was well past the age to enjoy such beverages. With only a father before, it was simple enough.
His father let him be dirty. His father was a worse slob than he was with his clothes. His father let him drink things that burned his throat, and he would pat his only son on the back and tell him it got better on the second sip. And his mother would never be any of those things, but hell she was alive.
In fact, Hiccup had only had both parents for a year and three days (and the whole year was before he could remember anything) before they were wretched apart again and he was once again the child of a single parent.
It was more than a little difficult and awkward to co-exist with a whole totally new parent again. And now Hiccup was twenty-three and very much past the age he was considered to be a man. His mother had him when she was only 21, and most say that was much later than most to be starting to have children. His father had been a little older, but supposedly there had been some trouble conceiving Hiccup, so his age wasn't exactly comparable to his.
Hiccup? He was currently a free man. Well, as free as any chief could be.
Today, he flew away from all his troubles and people that would all pester him with the same questions: When was he taking a bride?
If Astrid were still around, this all would have been so simple. But she wasn't. Was she dead? He wouldn't ever know. She had just…disappeared. Now, living in the time he did, that was hardly surprising of a feat, people vanished unexpectedly most times. But usually it was people he faintly knew- the five-year-old son of the bread maker, an old weapon designer, the plump woman that babysat the annoying brats next door to his house. Really, he knew it could happen to anyone but Astrid wasn't just anyone.
Everyone knew she was going to be the chief's wife, and she had a certain way with people that Hiccup never excelled at. For days, people searched. Hiccup even called on his old friend Camacazi, who he had sworn off talking to a couple years back because Astrid was a little jealous, and the two searched for a week longer.
But he was a chief now, and he couldn't search forever, and soon everyone accepted she had vanished into the wind.
It was a sort of betrayal to Hiccup from everyone. Not only did everyone stop looking for her and just exist on like she never had been (even though they didn't know how not to, just like they hardly talked about Stoick except in tales of old and bravery) but even more so only after five months of her absence, people began to ask about his next choice for a wife.
Now it was a year, and people were becoming more aggressive with their rules. The elders were on his tail everyday, and soon he'd be matched with a pretty and ruthless Viking daughter of someone and he'd be forced into a marriage with them. In one part of his mind, he understood their fear. If he were to die, who would take over? It was always the son of the leader, and anything could happen in such times of uncertainty, especially since he was so determined to connect and domesticate these once dangerous dragons.
Eight years after the 'Integration' as he called it, and Berk was doing surprisingly well. Even more surprising, was that other tribes were jumping on this bandwagon too! Soon Hiccup began his first foreign affairs deals when Thuggery of the Meat-heads had appeared at his door a couple weeks after Stoick's death and half-demanded, half-asked for the magic dragons that they had. Hiccup suspected that Thuggery thought that now that the 'strong' chief was dead, it would be easy to take the dragons.
Hiccup didn't want to monopolize them; he wanted to spread them around. Perhaps Thuggery was a little too surprised when Hiccup just blinked and asked if he would like to take some of the baby dragons or dragons that were displaced after the previous alpha died.
Soon every other leader or heir was pounding at his doorstep asking for Hiccup. He willingly gave them on one condition; they don't use dragons in their usual Viking affairs. They weren't allowed to use them to take over other clans or lands, they couldn't take them and pillage villages along the European coastline, and they had to understand that these were not simply pets but an extension of themselves.
Hiccup's own tribe didn't necessarily even agree with these conditions, but one perk of being chief was no one really questioned him.
He contemplated all this as he went to his Night Fury's space. It was spring now, warm and sunny, so Toothless decided to sleep outside. All for the better; the darn dragon moved like a cat, but cats usually weren't the size of ships and knocked over his mother's bran new china and dining utensils!
Toothless was already wide-awake, happily chewing on some fish that he had most likely stolen from the bay.
"Toothless! What have I told you about stealing?" Hiccup scolded as he pried a half-eaten fish carcass from his friend's mouth. Once, even with Toothless, he wouldn't have dared to take something directly from the mouth of a dragon, but his fear had simply evaporated.
Toothless gave him an angry look, and made a motion to snap the fish right out of Hiccup's hands, but Hiccup had already thrown the fish far away. The hurt on Toothless' face was nearly enough to make Hiccup go through the brush to find it again, but he shrugged it off.
"C'mon, we should go and practice." Hiccup said, hopping on. Toothless gave a whining noise, looking back at the house and town where people were beginning to stir. Even his dragon knew that he had a job or duty that he SHOULD be doing. But honestly, if he had to sit through another awkward 'dates' with people his mother and Gobber set up, he might stick himself willingly in Toothless' mouth. That option would be far less painful.
"Oh since when do you care about that?" Hiccup asked irritably, kicking his leathery hide with his foot, and Toothless lethargically took off, and flew extra close to town, so close that a want to-be bride or elder could snatch him away. Hiccup reminded himself to make Toothless pay for that little stunt later.
Hiccup guided Toothless toward a cave area, and Toothless began to blanch, making whining noises, but Hiccup was firm. They would practice their cave flying.
When they landed, Toothless rebelled by throwing himself on the ground, and rolling over to expose where a couple of his scales had fallen out the last time he'd come here.
"Don't do that. It's not going to work," Hiccup shook his finger, "Besides, I gave you extra fish and put stuff on it to stop the hurting. You can't get better unless we practice, and who knows when we'll need these skills?"
Toothless dragged himself toward the cave at the pace of a snail, glaring at his master the whole way there. Yet, once he reached the entrance of the cave, his eyes widened and he took off suddenly.
Hiccup swore underneath his breath. "This is payback, right? Come back, buddy!" When it was clear his dragon was not coming back to him, Hiccup went running. He still hadn't mastered that tactic, what with his leg and all, and it was a difficult rhythm of his foot slapping the rock followed by a metallic clunk.
The cave had no forks, but it was dark, and when he came upon a little circle of light situated far up the cave, too far up for him to see where it ended, Toothless was pacing making little whining noises in the back of his throat.
When he saw Hiccup, he stopped pacing and waited until Hiccup approached him, then carefully walked down the bend, checking back. "I'm here, what are you showing me, buddy?" Hiccup asked, but didn't really expect an answer.
The light slowly became more vibrant as they moved, until Hiccup could almost see Toothless in the darkness. He paused in a cavern, and his nose nudged something on the ground that Hiccup's eyes couldn't pick up.
"Ugg, Toothless if this is another dead deer I swear to God-," He began, but leaned forward to see Toothless' find, but realized it was human.
And it was a woman with a young child.
He realized that Toothless must have smelled the blood, and there was quite a lot of it, but that he wouldn't have led him here if they weren't still alive. He didn't honestly know how to carry them both out at once- he'd gotten stronger, but he more feared that they were both critically injured.
"I'm taking the little girl out of the cave. Come with me, and I'll come back for the woman." He announced. He felt uneasy about leaving the woman alone, even for the short trip back outside, but the younger one was more at risk and easier to protect. Toothless obliged, and he set the golden haired girl on a soft patch of moss, and Toothless took a protective stance.
The woman was just as he'd left her, no signs that leaving her alone had been detrimental to her at all. And when he first picked her up, he almost dropped her because in this light, for a moment, he thought it was Astrid.
But when he carried her outside, he saw that he was sorely mistaken. They may have the same blonde, nearly white, hair, but this girl's face was softer, rounder. Her lips were full and her nose was tiny, and her lashes where long. She was also womanlier like than Astrid was.
Astrid, always the tomboy, had grown to be tall and skinny with a few curves as she got older, but of course, she strapped them all down tightly. This girl had a tiny waist and a larger, erm…Hiccup looked away from that area. This girl or woman, she looked around his age, perhaps a little older, was also not wearing traditional Viking garb, from any tribe. Indeed her linens seemed to hail from a faraway place that Hiccup could not even begin to imagine.
Toothless bowed down to let his master on with the two women propped in front of him, and it was a careful ride back to Berk.
OoOoOoOo
Elsa opened her eyes slowly. It was dim, and she assumed her and Ophelia to be still in the cave. She wasn't sure how far they had fallen, nor how violently, but her whole body hurt. As she moved her back, she noted it was not hard stone but soft down underneath her.
This made her open her eyes to the dark lighting, and saw the thick wooden support beams of a crudely made house. Her vision adjusted, and she had the slight strength to move her head.
Ophelia! She shot up and only relaxed when she saw her little niece on the bed next to her, and she seemed to be sleeping.
"Dear, perhaps you shouldn't wake so fast." The voice seemed to emanate from the darkness. Elsa squinted her eyes and saw a motherly looking woman with a few streaks of gray in her light brown hair and a narrow face emerge from the darkness, holding a candle.
"Hello." Elsa greeted, every queen-like, "If you do not mind, could you perhaps tell me where I am?" She asked. Elsa was sure she was not in Arendelle- everything here seemed so much dirtier and unkempt compared to her city and castle.
"The Isle of Berk,' the woman looked at her carefully, "But of course, it seems that you come from very far away." Elsa frowned, and looked at herself.
"Where have my clothes I was wearing gone?" Elsa asked. Her clothes were soft, but crude and made from animal pelts and other things.
"They were so torn, dear, I'm mending them. I didn't think you wanted to go around nude." She got up, "I'm sure you have more questions, but I must alert the chief you are awake."
Elsa tried to object, but the woman left, and Elsa plopped back on her bed and winced. She was sore all over. She raised her hands against the light and saw scars criss-crossing her hands. She looked herself all over and found many cuts, bruises, and bandages from cloth tied around her skin. But it seemed nothing was broken, which was more than she had expected.
Ophelia on the other hand seemed to have a broken leg, because it was wrapped with wooden sticks to keep it straight. Oh Odin, what was Elsa going to tell Anna? A hurt knee was one thing, but a broken leg was a whole other matter.
Even so, how was she going to explain this to Anna? Berk? Where the heck was that? How was it possible to fall through a hole in Arendelle and end up somewhere totally different that she was so unfamiliar with it had to be far outside of her own country.
She was in the middle of a breakdown, when the door re-opened and a man stepped in.
"You're crying." He stated suddenly, and his whole face froze, and Elsa glanced up at him.
"Are you the chief?" She asked, and he nodded slowly, "Don't you seem a bit young?" It was a bit hypocritical, as she had become queen at the age of 21 and all, but he already seemed a little unsure of how to deal with a crying girl, so Elsa was not confident in the rest of his skills.
"I'm twenty-three, but hey, I get that a bit." He shrugged it off, and the woman re-appeared, "I'm Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III and this is my mother, Valka." He introduced, and Elsa had to hide a scoff behind her hand.
Hiccup's face changed, "Don't laugh at my mother." He stated angrily, but his mother patted his back.
"Dear, I think it's your name." She looked at Elsa and rolled her eyes, "His father insisted it was tradition. Vikings have names like that, of course." She sighed. Elsa frowned a bit.
"Vikings?" She said slowly, then glanced around. Hiccup watched her, and saw a little light of understand, and then fear, in her eyes. She turned, looking at Hiccup, "Do you know what year it is? I just want to make sure I'm not imagining things." She questioned, almost a challenge.
Hiccup was a little taken back. Only people like him cared about what year it was, other Vikings just cared that they had their celebrations each year, but who gave a flying dragon what the actual count was.
"950." He answered, and she nodded, and he realized he could not gauge her reaction, for she kept her personal thoughts very well, or she simply was not surprised at all, "Imagining things?" He prompt, and she opened her mouth, then closed it again.
"Well, I had a nasty fall, I think." She said with a shrug.
"I did find you and your daughter in a cave." Hiccup offered, and Elsa shook her head.
"Oh no, Ophelia is my niece. I sometimes imagine that if I had children, she'd be the kind that I would like." She admitted, stroking the little girl's hair, "her leg though? Will it be okay?"
Hiccup looked at Valka, as he had not tended to their wounds. "It's broken, yes, but we Vikings are not a careful group." She said with a rueful smile, "I cast quite a many legs and arms once."
"Good. I don't even know how I'd explain to her mother about that one if it was really broken for good!" Elsa chuckled, but then suddenly stopped talking.
Hiccup coughed. "I'm so sorry, but I don't think we've caught your name. Or where you're from." He said.
Elsa's eyes widened. "Oh, of course. I'm so- oh, well, I feel like my sister, so scatterbrained." She had a little battle whether to tell these people if she were a queen or not, but they didn't seem particularly viscous in the way that perhaps they would demand a ransom for her- even if Arendelle existed yet if what they said was true- and selfishly, perhaps if she told them she was a Queen, she'd get good treatment here. This man-Hiccup-may be a chief but she was a Queen.
"I'm Queen Elsa of Arendelle, Norway." She said, "Nice to meet you both." She finished a little smugly.
"Queen you say?" Valka asked, her eyes sparkling.
"Yes. Sole sovereign, too." Elsa added, riding on the coattails of the amazement in Valka's eyes.
"Hiccup, talk to her more. Make her feel comfortable." Valka said, going for the door. Hiccup did not like the glimmer in his mother's eyes, not one bit.
"Where are you going?" He asked, slightly afraid.
"Oh, nowhere. Well to get food. The poor dear must be starving." Valka said, and Elsa nodded in agreement. She really was quite hungry.
"I can get that." Hiccup said.
"You are the chief. Make her feel welcome." Valka said firmly, and shut the door behind her.
Hiccup didn't believe her, but all he could do was stare at the door suspiciously.