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I sat straight up after having another nightmare.

Stormfly and I had flown for two days now. The stress of tracking down Hiccup, Astrid, and Toothless had been taking its toll on me, hence the nightmares. The last two nights, it was about Toothless, and that's all I remember about them.

Tonight's nightmare, though, was something entirely different.

We were in the car, mom humming along with the radio. I listened to my own music on my iPod while I sketched a picture of Toothless. We drove past the ancient Blue Moon Diner; its broken neon sign flickered as the rain bounced off it and splattered into the heavily eroded sidewalk. It was about five o'clock, pm, but it was winter, and so it was dark by now. The huge maple and oak trees lining the cracked, bumpy road hung over it, creating an umbrella. The houses were small, dilapidated, rotting from the outside in. The paint peeled off each one, and the roofs, covered in moss, sagged. Half the shingles were missing on several of the abandoned homes, and one of them was missing the front door and half the front wall.

Mom pulled out onto the road that ran past Wintworth Elementary, the school I had gone to for my first six years of education. It was a rundown schoolhouse, built in the thirties and made entirely of brick. The floors creaked when you walked on them, the classrooms were small, the cafeteria was tiny and doubled as the gym, and the portables were beginning to rot on the corners. The field was reasonable, in fairly good condition for a patch of grass as old as the school, maybe even older.

The school, though, was going to be torn down this summer. They were going to rebuild it; it would be on three floors, the bottom one (the basement) holding the gym AND a stage. Those kids would have it so much better than us middle-schoolers who had gone to Wintworth.

The car slowly went down the hill, past the insurance dealer and the KoffieKrave Coffee shop, which was located right next to Starbucks for competitive reasons.

My mom smiled at me as we headed to our apartment. "Sorry we had to stay so late, Emi," she said. "Thank you for being patient." I grinned up at her. We stopped at the red light. When it turned green, we drove forward. Then, a truck with an impatient driver in it ran their red and sped forward.

By the time the ambulance arrived, it was too late.

This was the nightmare that came tonight. I don't care if she wasn't my real mother; that story haunted me. I cry whenever I remember it. Yes, I was born from this mother, but I was also born from a dragon mother. Having been born twice, but only spending my life with one, my human one, made her even more special to me.

I sat with my face buried in my paws, crying. Suddenly, I felt a familiar clammy presence around me.

"Mom? Dad?"

The two Night Fury angels wrapped their wings of vapor around me.

"We wanted to tell you something," my mom said. "We were your dragon parents AND your human parents, we just didn't know till we got up here." I gasped.

"How?," I managed to squeak.

Dad shrugged.

"But," I stammered. "You both DIED before I hatched, and then you were alive, in the future, as HUMANS, then you died AGAIN?"

Mom nodded. "We don't know how it worked," she said. "All we know is God had a plan for us, one that worked out the same way as yours did." Then she licked my forehead. "Now go to sleep, Paintsplash. Astrid needs your help."

"Wait, what?," I said, starting to get worried again. "What about Hiccup? And Toothless? Are they NOT in danger? Is Astrid in terrible condition?" None of my questions were answered, though. My parents, who really WERE my parents, had disappeared.

I sat in the snow, dumbfounded, shocked, scared. My life had been just flipped upside down, and I had found out it was Astrid who needed help, and that Hiccup and Toothless were already taken care of. But by who? Asla and Thrae?

However, my mind was mainly on something else, and I furrowed my brow with an anger born of fear.

What was threatening Astrid?