AN: Valka is my favourite dragon-lady, and I wanted to write a piece with her, so here you have it.

Disclaimer: the How To Train Your Dragon franchise is property of Dreamworks, and the book series is property of Cressida Cowell; I own absolutely nothing.

Wildling

by Miss Mungoe

She's the eccentric wife of Stoick the Vast.

Or at least, that's the word around Berk. She's Valka,"a beauty weren't it fer the twigs in her hair and did her mother never teach 'er ta braid it proper-like?" She's peaceful at heart, a gentle soul, though"the wife of th' chief ought ta be more acceptin' of his ways", but she eyes his axe and shield with a wary gaze and vows to do no harm.

The truth of the matter is that Valka doesn't remember her mother much, and so her father taught her the knots that keep her mane in check. But she was also taught the value of life, and the beauty of all living things, man or beast. She was a wild lass climbing trees to reach the highest points, and now she's an odd wife who can't cook or stitch a shirt, who talks of peace amongst warriors. But though a wife she's no less wild, and she climbs her trees and crags and mountainsides with her eyes always on the clouds just out of her reach.

Her husband, sweet as he is if a bit brash, loves her – loves the twigs in her hair and the dirt on her soles, but most of all he loves the fire in her heart. He'll catch her 'round the waist and spin her, his pride in his wife bright in his eyes and on his whiskered face. They'll call her a wild thing, and he'll laugh and agree, but there'll be a trove of affection in his easy smiles. And he'll listen to the tales of her adventures, of afternoon shadows and the sunrise over Berk from the southernmost point rumour has it you'd have to be mad indeed to climb. He'll listen and hoard her joy like keepsakes, and Valka loves him a little more each day – from the way he'll never quite fit comfortably through a doorway, to the soft tune he hums while he sharpens his weapons.

He treats her words like godly things, but when she mentions dragons, her husband changes. Smiling eyes go dark and cold, and the hands that have so often gently cradled her hips, her face, tighten to fists. There's an anger there, like a dragon's molten belly, ignited by so little and furious like Odin's wrath. Because Berk is a place of warriors, and Valka is the odd one out – "can't swing an axe or a ladle alike" as the word goes, and "Hel protect her poor deceased mother's heart from discovering her daughter's faults an' foibles!"

But Valka persists, and stubbornly braids leaves and flowers in her knotted hair, though she's the wife of the chief and has never wanted for pretty trinkets.

They've been married two winters when the rumours start – that "there'll be no wee ones. Not if there's not been one yet". And she becomes Valka, who ought to have spent more time at home, and who'd angered the gods with her talk of peace with dragons. There'll be no children for Stoick the Vast, they say, and Valka runs to the wild to still the noise in her ears, and she climbs the tallest trees until she can breathe again. There's a hurt in her chest, and she knows not what her role is, in this village of warriors and beasts.

She watches dragons pass overhead, and wonders idly if there are trees somewhere that reach all the way into the clouds.

"A...child?"

The word is uncertain on her tongue – a skitterish thing, and she's afraid to voice her hope out loud.

But the village midwife smiles. "A child," she assures her, and Valka walks home with both joy and fear in her breast, resting heavy above the soft curve of her rounded stomach.

She doesn't go rambling for weeks, but stays at home. She asks Gobber for lessons in cooking, but her attempts at something as simple as meatballs yield little but a burst of laughter and a "there's no need for axes when yeh've got these things", and her first batch literally knocks the neighbour out cold, and Stoick laughs so hard he nearly falls out of his chair.

Her belly grows and grows until she can't ramble or walk, and the legs that have carried her up the sides of trees in moments now take a man's age to guide her across the hearth-room. She's tired often, and her husband's worry shows with streaks of white in his red-gold beard, and there are new murmurs now – "the babe's too large for her to carry, but what d'you figure with the father being who he is?" Valka ignores it, and spends her evenings before the fire-pit, fingertips sore from needle-pricks as she makes her best attempt at swaddling cloths.

She's not a warrior and no proper warrior's wife, but she'll be a mother yet, she decides, and her affection for her unborn child grows like wild, green things around her heart, and in the long weeks that follow the hearth-room doesn't seem quite so cramped.

Months later, she's still no warrior and no proper warrior's wife, but with their wee babe tucked in the crook of her elbow, come to the world with a start, quick as a hiccup, Valka takes up her new mantle, tucking it about her shoulder like a garment ill-fitting but meant to wear in. She cradles the babe with hands roughened not from callouses of weaponry or cooking, but branches and brambles and the jutting stones of the wild.

And with her husband's smile as wide as the world, she finds herself hoping their boy will grow up just as odd as she but also just as loved, coming home with twigs in his hair and dirt on his soles, and fearlessly climbing trees jutting high into the sky.

He's the eccentric son of Stoick the Vast, but he's also the pride of Berk – a warrior and a peacemaker, chief-son, cartographer and dragonrider all at once. "Like his mother," her husband tells her – Stoick, who looks at her as though it's not been twenty years and she's been sitting by his side by the hearth all this time, pricking her fingers from poorly attempted needlepoint and humming their song under her breath while Gobber cooks in the kitchen.

She wonders if she has any right at all to call herself a mother, a wife, but there's her child who's wee no longer and who looks at her as though he's found a long sought answer, and her husband as vast as she remembers and just as fond, kind eyes even now searching for twigs in her hair–

And Valka finds that maybe – maybe she does.

AN: Haddock family-love is the only thing getting me through the grief the film left me with.