CONSTELLATIONS ➸ how to train your dragon

VEGA

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.*･｡VEGA.*･｡

——

   The moon hung low in the sky. It's pure glow contrasted against the red and orange hue of where the sun had set, taking its rightful position until the ball of flames was to snatch it back again. They battled each morning.

   Vega twiddled with the red rose she held, twisting it back and forth between her fingers, ignoring the thorns that drew pin-drops of blood from her skin. The light of the moon illuminated her features, cheekbones glowing and her eyes twinkling. She shuffled ever so slightly where she sat on the edge of the cliff — a very common destination she had chosen to venture to when she didn't want to be bothered — and ignored the scrambling sound of small rock and pebbles falling. It didn't faze her perhaps as much as it should have.

   She looked down at the rose again, and sighed. It was a beautiful flower, one that could only hurt her heart; it squeezed the organ tightly, constricting its flow. She felt dizzy and light.

   There had been two-hundred and fifty roses at her parents funeral.

   It had been one from each family in the village. Berk had been small back then, that day four years ago, much more so than it was now. Every family had passed their caskets and placed a red rose delicately on top, the sky smelling sweet and floral when the boat was set alight at sea. Vega had kept her rose, she was unable to let it go. The flower was a way of saying goodbye to her mother and father, a metaphor for their blossoming their new journeys in Valhalla, but the girl wasn't ready to to commit to that. So she had kept it.

She had kept the flower in hopes of never having to say goodbye to her parents, to admit to the loss she felt in her soul. Keeping it, she had hoped that it would never let the gut-wrenching pain consume her the way that he had seen it consume others. Vega didn't want that; she didn't want to say goodbye, she wanted her parents back.

   It hadn't taken so much as a week for the rose to die, and for her to realise that they were never coming back. That had been her goodbye.

   With a scoff at the memories in her head, Vega threw the rose out of her hands and into the ocean below. She didn't watch as it cascaded through the sky or into the watery depths, she didn't need to. Vega had known what would happen to the flower the minute she had tossed it away. She knew that she would never see it again. It hadn't meant much to her, though; it was just a flower that she had found on the ground outside of the twins house. It meant nothing.

She had never been the sentimental type, a trait that she had gotten from her father. A new day, a new dawn — that was what he had always said. As a Viking who had always travelled the world, searching for the end of it in wonder if he would fall off, he had always insisted that there wasn't time to think about the past, to dwell.

Every day was a new one; you had to live it.

Vega's mother, however, had always taken a different view. She believed that there was a new life after death, different to what other Vikings thought and to which her rather pessimistic husband had always scoffed. Lachlan Storm believed that when you were dead, you were dead. Valhalla was the only chance of 'new life'. That was what they were taught from a young age, and her mother had always insisted that her husband was closed minded.

Atlas Storm had always said that she would come back after she died. As a tree, another human, anything — it was all possible, to her. She had told her daughter stories of reincarnation, of new life and being, of endless days. It had always been prevent amongst their family like, on Atlas' side. As a child, she had been told story of souls being found within other beings — that your soul would hunt and search for the right one, the perfect one. She had always said that your soul would find the right being to it your purpose, one that would eventually complete all of your unfinished business, in some way or another.

Vega's mother had told her stories about her own mother, who had always let her child knows that when she died, she wished to reincarnate and come back as a sparrow. There was something about the open air that she had loved, the freedom to soar across the sky. And that she had; the very same bird had landed upon her mothers casket before it headed out to sea, and Atlas Storm had never found more proof that reincarnation existed than that.

As a little girl, Vega had believed it. She had soaked it all up like a sponge in thirst for water. Now, not so much. She had waited for four long years and her mother hadn't come back as anything but dust, as far as she was aware. Was she crazy to have felt disappointed?

It had been an unexpected view, from a Viking. Then again, nothing about her mother had ever been typical. She had been a wonderful Viking, a powerful dragon slayer, but she had been unexpected, too. Her mother had told her a million fables over the years, stories about where dragons had come from, the nest that Berk had been searching for for centuries, why they had to stop them whether they had wanted to, or not. Her parents had fought dragons to save and protect their family; it had always been a matter of love, of life and death. Whilst others did it for passion, they had done it for reason. And Vega had always thought that she would have been a dragon fighter for that reason, too.

When the creatures had killed her mother and father brutally, however, it had all changed. Rapidly.

Now, Vega saw nothing but pests. Killers. In her eyes, dragons deserved to die for the sake of greater good, for the sake of the war they were fighting. They had killed her parents and Vega was determined to kill any dragon that came across her sight, to be one of the first to plunge a blade deep within the nest when they were to find it.

Revenge was sweet, or so she had been told.

At the age of eleven, Vega had come to a realisation. It was the state of a new life, a new her. Now that her parents were gone, she had to grow up. She had to become what they had always wished her to be; a survivor, a fighter.

From the day foreword, Vega Storm had been different. She had been blinded by loss an fuelled by power. In the next four years, she had pushed herself to the limit.

When she was old enough, she was going to learn how to be a Dragon Slayer. She was going to join them in the hunt for the dragon's nest as soon as she could, and she was going to take revenge.

Vega Storm was going to kill the beasts that had left her alone, that had taken everything she cared about away from her in a mere few minutes. She had been waiting four years to get her chance and now, at the age of fifteen, it was finally time. Starting from tomorrow, Vega was going into Dragon Training, and she was going to become the best killer that Berk had ever seen. She had the reason, the ruthlessness, and she wanted the power.

Since her parents had died, Vega had been an empty shell. Little to no emotion, little to no heart. Blunt and brutal; a statuesque face and thought. No feelings left other than blood-thirst and determination that lurked within her veins, the pain in her eyes that no one ever saw.

Starting tomorrow, Vega was going to live out the life that her parents had always wanted her to have. She was going to follow in their footsteps and become as great as they had been. She wasn't a little girl anymore and it was time to make them proud in the only way she knew how.

She was going to kill every last dragon and find their nest, no matter what it took.

Or, at least, so she had thought.

——