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"Wild boar, coming through!"
Elsa ducked to let the boar, on its platter, pass over her head and in the direction of the table. Beside her, Heather did the same thing. At least Kristoff gave fair warning while carrying large things around at head-height, not something that could always be said for other members of the household.
Heather straightened up, glanced cautiously around, and tossed another handful of freshly-shelled hazelnuts into the bowl. "Is the whole wild boar really necessary?"
"Have you seen how they eat?" said Elsa, with a nod towards everyone in the house. Even Toothless, perched in the rafters, was looking down and licking his lips.
Heather grinned. "I've seen how you eat."
Only from the people in this room would Elsa have accepted such teasing. Even so, she looked away and laughed self-deprecatingly. It had not been all that long ago that she had still eaten quickly out of fear that her food would disappear, or that it would be the last that she would see for a while. She was doing better with that now, though it still amazed her every time that there was a feast.
It had been entertaining to see Snotlout's face when she beat him in an eating contest, though.
"Besides," said Elsa, "I don't think that Toothless is going to let anything go to waste." She scooped up a large wooden plate in each hand and turned, narrowly avoiding bumping into Anna in the process.
"Sorry!" said Anna, then slipped past and vanished into the pantry. Elsa decided against pointing out that the Terrible Terror on her younger sister's shoulder was currently chewing on one leg of the goat skin she had draped over her. It was not as if Anna would have the heart to stop it.
Stoick probably had the best idea, she supposed, having claimed a seat at one end of the table and allowed the rest of the chaos to unfold around him. Hemlock sat on his lap, drooling happily on the lefse clutched in her chubby fists. As Elsa slid platters into some of the last empty space on the table, Stoick was still bouncing his young daughter on his knee, oblivious even to Gobber and Valka bickering over who was going to carve the boar.
Then again, it was not just Stoick who had managed to find a rather quieter corner. Astrid was watching over the glørg, despite Kristoff's best efforts to take over its production, and keeping the cauldron just on the edge of the fire where the mixture would not boil and turn too thick. Kristoff had volunteered to make sure that she did not get any kelp that might give her the idea of adding it to the mixture.
"Hazelnuts and crabcakes!" announced Heather, then caught sight of the table and paused, cocking her hip, to examine the spread. "If there's any room left."
The door to the pantry opened again, and Anna reemerged, a triumphant grin on her face and the Terror now most of the way onto her head. She was clutching a small wicker basket, which she held out excitedly in front of her as she made her way over to Elsa.
"I need this kept cold," she said. "Explain later."
At first Elsa thought that she was going to be expected to take the basket, but Anna kept hold of it, just offered up in front of her. With a look of bemusement, Elsa waved her hand above the basket, a fine swirling latticework of ice growing beneath her fingers. It formed a lid, and Anna almost bounced on the spot with delight before pulling Elsa into a hug.
"Perfect," she said breathlessly, then stepped around and set about finding a place on the table for it.
Elsa was still watching her, smiling but with her brow furrowed, when an arm slipped around her waist. She jumped, hands raising, then realised that it was Heather and relaxed instead.
"It's all right," said Heather immediately. "We've all been busy."
"Where's the man of the house?" said Gobber over the general noise, looking pointedly at Astrid.
Astrid shrugged. "Probably still down in the birthing stables. You know what he's like around Snoggletog."
"Better than he is with human births, that's for sure," said Valka. She sat down beside Stoick and plucked Hemlock from his lap, catching the stray piece of lefse that made a bid for freedom.
Both of Heather's arms wrapped around Elsa's waist, her chin coming to rest on Elsa's shoulder. She always felt so warm, even bundled up in furs against the cold, but now it was nothing more than the heat of her skin through the lighter wool of her shirt. There was still a sliver of Elsa that almost shied away from any touch - and a rather larger sliver that was terrified to know when this would come to its inevitable end. As of yet, though, she was still here. As were they all.
Elsa turned just slightly, so that she could see Heather's smile out of the corner of her eye, and then put one of her hand over Heather's. Their house always smelt of smoke, no matter what they did, but that was coming to smell like home as well. Almost as much as any place that smelt of dragon.
When the door opened, everyone seemed to look round at once, and Hiccup paused in the doorway to take in the number of looks assailing him. Then he grinned, and brushed snow out of his hair. "Hey, gang. Didn't miss anything important, did I?"
"How many new babies are there?" asked Anna, before anyone else could manage a response.
"Four Zipplebacks, seven Gronckles," said Hiccup. "And I think the Skrills must be getting close to hatching, but I can't get near enough to find out. Hey, bud," he added, as Toothless pattered along the rafters and jumped down beside him, mercifully managing to find an empty stretch of floor large enough. Even so, his tail almost clipped Sven across the nose. Hiccup cupped Toothless's jaw and nuzzled their foreheads together. "You been keeping the humans in line, huh?"
"The dragon gets a better greeting than I do," said Astrid.
Hiccup gave a sheepish grin, and stepped round to his wife instead. She grabbed his collar as he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her in for a kiss. Elsa looked away; romantic though it was, it still felt strange to thing of Hiccup as a married man. Part of her would always think of him as the boy who had found her years ago, huddled beneath Berk and with her ankle a twisted mess.
But then Heather wolf-whistled, and people started laughing, including Astrid. Astrid pushed Hiccup playfully backwards and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "You've been cuddling Monstrous Nightmares again," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Maybe a bit," replied Hiccup. His forehead was starting to shine from the heat in the room, and he undid the buckles down the front of his flight suit to reveal the rumpled shirt beneath. "Are we trying to open a sauna in here?"
"Do you want some ice?" said Elsa. That was a success as well, being able to offer without fear.
"Might go for some come dessert," Hiccup replied. He loosened his belt to remove his leather top, and ran a hand through his hair to ruffle it. "But I'm guessing that nobody wants to wait and have the food get cold."
"Now that's more like it," said Gobber. "Come on, get your arse in the chair."
Laughing, Hiccup went to take one of the seats at the side of the table, but Astrid darted forwards and pulled him round to the head instead, opposite his father, and all but shoved him down into the seat. He was still looking as surprised when Kristoff casually handed him a carving knife and gestured towards the wild boar that took pride of place in the centre of the table.
"Shouldn't my Dad..." Hiccup started.
Last Snoggletog, there had not been much of a celebration. Even though it had been months after Drago, there had still been scars in the cliffs and buildings, the memories of everything to do with ice just a little too raw. Elsa reached up to rub the scar that ran jaggedly down over the left side of her chest.
"Nope," said Stoick firmly. "Man of the house gets to carve. And it's your house that we're in."
Hiccup laughed again, half-proud, half-nervous, and for a moment Elsa could see the boy beneath the man once again. Then he stood up, squared his shoulders, and raised the blade above the boar. "Well, then. Here's to Snoggletog Eve."
The others hurried to take their seats at the table, Toothless jumping back into the rafters out of the way of the human hubbub below. Elsa found herself sitting at Hiccup's left hand, Heather squeezed up close to her on the bench just so that there was enough room for everyone. Or perhaps only partly for that, she supposed, as Heather gave a squeeze of Elsa's knee and a wicked smile.
"All right, gang," said Hiccup, making the first slice into the boar's shoulder. "Trenchers at the ready, if you want to get your portions before my father gets going."
"Hey!" said Stoick, too late to prevent laughter.
Even now, it was hard for Elsa to want to concentrate on the conversations that broke out around the table, instead of piling food onto her plate and sneaking bites to her mouth. It was habit, ground-in, something that had been forged over ten years and could not be undone even in six. By the time that she caught herself, Hiccup was waxing lyrical about the number of hatchlings from this year, more than had ever previously been born on Berk as more and more dragons chose to nest and hatch in their stables beneath the town. The Skrill eggs particularly excited him - only two, and the mother was guarding them fiercely, but once they were old enough he wanted one sent to Ashblade for her role in bringing the Berserkers under control again, and to cement the alliance once more.
"I'm really hoping that she's going to let me get close enough to help them hatch," he said, completely ignoring the slice of boar speared on the end of his knife. "But even if she doesn't, I'm pretty sure that the hatchlings will. They're always more friendly than the mothers. Thank you," he added at a mumble, as Astrid steered his knife pointedly towards his mouth.
"Getting in practice down there?" Valka called, with a nod towards the knife. The unspoken teasing about grandchildren hung in the air.
Hiccup almost choked, and grabbed for his water, but Astrid just snorted. "Just trying to get him to eat between talking," she replied.
"We've been having that problem for years," said Gobber.
Patting Hiccup on the hand and leaving him to his strangled sound, Astrid picked up the plate at her elbow and offered it around. "Kelp cakes?"
There was an immediate rush of people looking away whilst trying not to make it too apparent that they were looking away. Astrid's cooking had unique... qualities. It might not have been Elsa's imagination that someone sighed with relief when she slipped a couple of the kelp cakes on her own plate. "Of course," she said.
Food was still food, and no matter that the kelp and wheat that made up most of the cakes was salty and strange on the tongue, she had eaten far worse over the years. Hiccup studiously did not meet her eye as more were added to his plate, and as soon as Astrid's attention was elsewhere nudged across some cabbage to cover them up. "Where was that mutton again?"
Gobber reached the end of a chicken leg and tossed the bones up to Toothless, who plucked them from the air and crunched them down with a faint rumble.
"So," said Anna, "who's helping me lead the waltz after the feast tomorrow?"
It went almost without saying that Kristoff was not going to let himself get dragged into another attempt to teach Vikings how to waltz, but Elsa had plenty of practice in maintaining a merely politely enquiring expression in response.
Hiccup still came to her rescue. "Should the Queen of Arendelle really be dancing with the commoners of Berk?" he said, in a remarkable impersonation of an upper-class Arendellen accent.
"Queen in Exile," Anna corrected him, without a trace of bitterness in her voice. "Which also means I can have as much cloudberry jelly as I want."
A huge spoonful of it went onto her plate before anyone else could grab the bowl and prevent her from monopolising it. She certainly did not look the part, in Viking garb with her hair in two plaits, even if the Terror on her shoulders had pushed off the goatskin in order to make more of a perch for itself. It was snoring into her hair. Sometimes she would speak to Elsa or to Hiccup about her fears for Arendelle, and they knew that one day they would all need to turn their sights south again, but the situation was still too complicated and she had not long come of age.
"Yes, because that is the most important thing," said Kristoff. Anna jabbed him with her elbow, not exactly hard under the close eating conditions. With an unimpressed glance, he sucked the last of the meat off the rib in his hand and flicked the bone to Toothless in turn.
"Don't look at me," said Elsa, quite aware that her sister was now doing just that. Even if she would not have said that she was particularly good at the waltz, she was not sure that a single resident of Berk could actually claim such a title, and most of them settled for being cheerfully bad instead.
Heather rolled her eyes. "Fine. I will. As long as someone doesn't get jealous," she said sweetly, putting one hand on Elsa's thigh and giving her a coy look from behind her braid.
"Jealous of what?" said Elsa, with a perfectly straight face. "Besides, you'll be wearing one of my dresses tomorrow."
"I suppose that tells me," said Heather, though she did not exactly look put-out at the thought of wearing one.
Anna broke into trying to persuade Elsa to make her a dress as well, and Elsa laughed and pretended that such an act was completely out of the question. It was the same game that they played every Snoggletog, and every year Anna would 'win' - though neither really considered themselves the loser - but as Elsa was acting more interested in her food then her sister, she became aware that a furtive conversation was going on to her right as well.
"We said we were going to tell people," Hiccup said. Astrid had hold of his wrist, pinning it to the table.
"I didn't think you meant now."
"I'm pretty sure I made it clear that we meant today."
Astrid narrowed her eyes at him. "Oh, is that so?"
"I thought we were announcing it today!"
Perhaps unfortunately, Anna had gone silent at that moment, expecting Elsa to be the one to continue to joke. Hiccup looked down the length of the table, looking like a child caught raiding the pantry. "Carry on," he said, with what was probably a slightly optimistic wave to them.
"Oh no," said Stoick. "You've said that you're making an announcement, now you'll have to announce something."
Hiccup gave Astrid a vaguely beseeching expression, with wide eyes that made him look young once again. Rolling her eyes but smiling, Astrid released his wrist. "Go on, then."
Sheepish and ruffled, Hiccup got to his feet and picked up his tankard, clasping it in both hands for a moment before switching it to his left and taking hold of Astrid's hand as well. "All right, so I know it's Snoggletog and it's not like we need an extra reason to be celebrating, but I figured since we'll actually all be round the same table for once... it would be an opportune time. And..." he trailed off as Astrid got up to stand beside him, and gave her a faintly quizzical look.
"I never said you were making the announcement," she said.
At the far end of the table, Valka started to laugh. Hemlock was the first one to join in, and even Hiccup was fighting against a smile as he turned back to Astrid. "Really," he said flatly. "We're doing this."
She smiled, reached out, and tweaked the front of his shirt. "Well, yes. But you're not the one who's pregnant."
It took a moment for anyone to realise what she had said. Anna was first, jumping up with a cry of delight and dragging Astrid into an embrace that even looked tight. Stoick and Valka both started talking at once, and through it all Hiccup was giving Astrid a look of absolute fond exasperation.
"Congratulations," Heather said, the first one to actually manage a comment that cut through the others. Hiccup gave a sheepish smile and nodded in return. Soon all of the others were chorusing their congratulations as well, and Hiccup was being pulled around the table to shake Kristoff's hand and then manhandled in Stoick's general direction.
Stoick was faintly teary-eyed as he rose to his feet and pulled Hiccup into a hug that was probably just as rib-crunching as it had been of old. Hiccup clung on in return, only backing away when Stoick released him and Valka, Hemlock still cradled in one arm, hugged him as well. As Hiccup picked up his baby sister to ask her what she thought of the whole matter, Elsa felt an arm slip around her waist again, Heather's other hand tightening around her fingers.
"Are you all right?" said Elsa softly. There was no sign of anything untowards in Heather's expression, but the grip of her hands was tight.
Heather cocked her head, watching Hiccup talk nonsense to Hemlock and Astrid get tugged over to talk to Valka, dinner all but forgotten between them all. "I'm good," she said. Her smile made a dimple appear in her cheek, and Elsa leant in to press a peck to it.
"They're noisy," said Elsa.
"I knew that," said Heather. She watched, fondly, as Toothless dropped down from the rafters to see what all the fuss was about, and rumbled in Astrid's direction before rubbing his cheek against her side.
Astrid laughed and scratched his forehead. "We were finally sure when he was," she admitted.
As if on some sort of cue, Toothless chirped and bumped his nose to Astrid's still-flat stomach. Hiccup gave a sheepish laugh, passed Hemlock back to his mother, and reached out to pull Astrid close. For a moment he let their foreheads rest together, then Stoick clapped him on the shoulder enough to bring him staggering out.
"And when is the rest of the village going to know that their next future chief is on their way?"
"When I say so," said Astrid, folding her arms and looking pleased with herself. Hiccup shrugged in what was probably agreement.
"That means you're next, by the way," said Valka.
Elsa looked round, ready to defend Anna under the grounds that her younger sister was neither married nor had shown any desire to have children. Cooing over Hemlock and other babies, yes, but not actually having children of her own yet. What she did not expect, however, was for Valka to be looking straight at her, still smiling.
"Me?" she said.
She could hear her own incredulity, and even Heather started laughing.
"You don't see a slight problem with that?" she added drily. Perhaps she had been spending too much time around Hiccup.
"In case you haven't noticed," said Gobber, "I've somehow managed to end up with... how many children is it supposed to be now?"
He looked to Valka, who laughed and flicked his helmet to knock it askew. "I'm don't think anyone's quite sure any more."
She cast a fond gaze across the entire table. Everyone there counted as family in some way or another, but somewhere along the line it had stopped being clear exactly how some of the lines were drawn. Elsa remembered a time that Hiccup had described her as his sister, even after Anna had joined them. Then again, he had called Toothless his brother as well.
With casual ease, Kristoff put a hand in Toothless's face to stop him from stealing the ham which he was eyeing up. Dragon table manners weren't that out of place on Berk, but they did try to keep something resembling order.
Luckily, Heather came to Elsa's rescue. "I think that's something we'd need to talk about at another time. Skrill hatchlings are going to be enough for the time being."
On top of an adult Skrill and the young Night Fury sleeping with its mother upstairs, it probably was going to mean something of a houseful. There were more dragon hatchlings than there were human children nowadays on Berk, even with the baby boom of the last few years.
"Well," said Anna, clasping her hands in front of her. "I think this is a good time for what I had been saving for dessert."
She fished around the table until she turned up the basket which she had shown to Elsa earlier, and held it up with a smile. Elsa waved away the ice which covered it, and Anna whipped off the fabric with the air of a conjuror showing off some new sleight of hand to reveal a nest of small, sugar-topped chocolates.
"I managed to get these bought in. There's enough for everyone."
"And she didn't eat any of them in advance," added Kristoff. Anna glared at him. "Well, apart from that one."
"It was misshapen," said Anna primly, over more sniggering. "But the rest of them I saved as a Snoggletog treat. For everyone."
While it was possible to get chocolate from time to time during the year, when Johann was still visiting, during the winter the seas were too treacherous and the storms too fierce for travel around the archipelago. Johann and many other traders turned south during that time instead, to further-off lands, and bought back more interesting items for trade come spring.
Hiccup patted Anna on the shoulder. "Thank you. That was... well-timed, I have to say."
"Well, I know it's not exactly wetting the baby's head," said Anna, "but this should involve less quaffing. And less mess to clean up."
"And less of me trying to deal with my drunken husband attempting to fly," added Astrid, draping an arm around Hiccup's shoulders. Hiccup was probably trying to look stern in response, but it slipped to a smile instead even when Astrid punched him with her free hand. "And Toothless trying to hide under the bed."
"Aye, there's been enough bed-fixing in Berk since the dragons have arrived," said Gobber.
"Don't start," Hiccup said warningly, wagging a finger in Gobber's direction. There were quite enough mentally scarring stories about broken beds, Elsa had gathered, and Hiccup had always been a little more easily-embarrassed than some of the others when it came to such jokes.
Anna cleared her throat and waved the chocolates under Hiccup's nose until he took one, offering it immediately to Astrid. Rolling her eyes, she let him feed it to her all the same, and Anna set about offering the chocolates to one and all. Even if Stoick redirected them before Hemlock got hold of one, considering her capability to make a mess of anything in her vicinity.
By the time that they got down to the last one, people were arguing good-naturedly over it, and Elsa felt comfortable enough to slip her arm around Heather in response and lean into her hold.
"Snoggletogs aren't boring around here, are they?" said Heather.
Elsa kissed her cheek. "That's... certainly one way to put it. Even without the input of the dragons."