Chapter One: Different.
A deep forest thicket hid a dozen or so children.
They were less than ten winters old, and were playing hide and seek under the half-hearted supervision of a parent who was more interested in whittling and thinking of how his wife's new breastplate looked in the mid-morning sun than paying any real attention to the offspring around him.
The sun was high in the sky, signalling noon as a blonde haired girl crept through the verdure around her. She grinned from ear to ear, as she carefully stepped towards the hiding spot one of her crowd had taken. She'd spotted the black haired boy, and the blond boy, and the twins. They in turn had found the fisherman's son, the tanner's son and the daughter of a recently departed shield-maiden. They were all creeping towards different hiding places the forest had in their assigned area, giggling occasionally. They liked this game - they weren't allowed to play it during the winter, nor at night, but that was fine for them.
The blonde girl stepped towards the russet patch and leapt for it, before discovering it was just a very similar colour to the hair of the boy she was looking for. She clenched her fists and stomped her foot as the stump had defeated her, before the adult whistled, and signalled their playtime was over.
Her defeat forgotten, she walked with her friends and they spoke animatedly about who found whom, and where they each hid. It had been a good day of playing - they were all a little tired and prepared for nattmal. The fisherman's son bragged to them that his father had brought home enough fish to feed the entire village until Mörsugur! They all giggled to each other and some exclaimed that one of their number - a heavier set boy who had yet to shed his baby fat - would eat all of the fish before then. They all giggled, as did the boy in question.
They all knew the dragons would get most of it in the end. But they continued to laugh and joke about it, and as they headed back towards the village, nobody paid any mind to the fact their number had dwindled by one.
The red-haired boy was missing from their group, yet none had noticed it. Nobody, in fact, noticed it until supper time. The boy's father; a truly vast man in stature, looked for him in the dusty loft, the bath house, the docks. He became truly distraught each time he failed to find his reed of a son. Where could he be? What trouble could he be in?
The towering man quickly charged towards the enormous stone hall that held the majority of the population and swept inside like a storm, looking for his boy. He gave rushed greetings to the folk of his village, never holding their gazes as he sped around the room. The chieftain headed to the area the children sat in, and counted off. Still he failed to find his son, and he knelt beside the bench and gave an amicable smile to the nearest child. He asked after his son, his boy, and found only confused looks and little giggles.
It was awfully funny to them that the Chief was so worried about his boy, who was sitting somewhere on the bench of course. Where else could he be? But as they looked around, they all became confused. The redhead was, in fact, missing.
The Chief nodded and grunted as he stood up, and he called out, asking after the adult who had been their guardian that afternoon. He yelled at him angrily as he demanded to know what he'd been doing - what he'd been thinking by forgetting about a child in his charge. The man before him was a woodworker - a job that was often regarded as a waste of time amongst the villagers. The way their houses fell so often, being the man to shape the intricate carvings on each of the huts and longhouses was often joked about and disregarded.
But the man never shied to the task, claiming that it was his bold defiance to the beasts that caused them to burn their homes down out of sheer spite that their dwellings of rock and stone were depressing, dank holes of the earth. Then as now, he stood in the face of anger and mockery and rebuked that the slippery boy must've wandered off.
As this all transpired, a hunting party was sent out to the forests, and a red-faced man with equally red hair all over was shouting at the carpenter.
A ghost travelled through the village.
A twig of a boy, by all accounts. The heavy bear fur vest he had on was a few sizes too big for him as it was, but it was a gift from his father, so he wore it all the same. He limped out of the treeline and looked at his village with a triumphant grin. He'd hidden so well, nobody had found him! He'd been there since midday, inside of a tree that had been hollowed somehow, and had been hiding until he could no more.
When the other children had asked him if he was good at hiding and being quiet, he nodded and ran off to do just that - proving it to them. But nobody had found him, so he must be the best!
His game hadn't all been positive, however. At one point as he ventured from his spot to find another, he tripped over a branch and hurt his legs. A sharp rock had stabbed itself into the soft gap of flesh between his kneecap and the joint, and now bled freely through a rip in his pants. He'd cried at first, but his father always told him that he was a strong, able Viking - Vikings do not cry. So he'd simply carried on. But as the cut began to hurt more, each step drawing a hiss, the boy had decided to go home and get it patched up.
The boy had gotten to his house when he spotted all of the adults, armed and with torches, walking along the path near his home towards the forest. He frowned and tried to think what the reason might be. Perhaps they were looking for trolls… but he had looked all over the woods and never found one. He shrugged a little, before heading into his house. His father would want him safe. He went to the large bucket of water at the back of his abode and dunked his head into it, before going to a basket by the firepit and retrieving a strip of fabric to bandage his knee. He made sure it was clean and wiped the blood from his new scar and tied the makeshift bandage around it tightly, patting it and smiling to himself, looking around his house. He'd missed supper, he reasoned, so he walked towards his bedroom, and climbed the steps built into the side of the wall. He reached the door to his room and frowned - he'd left it closed, but something had definitely opened it.
He was always prudent toward his own privacy - the place he held within his village meant a few things. For one, he actually had a room of his own; most other families shared one communal space within their homes and had very little privacy. This allowed him to be alone, and he'd discovered since learning to hold a pencil, that one of his favourite things to do was draw. He'd rarely ask for anything from his father, busy as he was, but when he did it was always for paper and charcoal. While his agemates wanted toy or practice swords and axes, he'd always desired more of that thin, smooth material. Most other vikings scratched runes into metal and wood, but he'd always desired paper. He could draw on paper, and his blossoming skill was something he took great pride in.
Stepping inside, he simply forgot about the opened door and looked around for anything out of place, and after finding nothing to be wrong, he sighed a little and yawned. The boy turned around and shut the door behind himself, stretching his gangly arms. He shrugged his bear fur vest off and placed it on the single chair in the room.
His room was small enough his father couldn't stand in it comfortably, but it was enormous to him. He had a desk on one side that went from the edge of one wall to the other that was littered with miscellanea. There were seashells and rocks from the beach on the far side of his island, bones, leaves. Paper with charcoal scratchings all over them, images of his home and his father and the barest memories of a mother he'd never met. Of dragons and the skyline, and one of how he pictured he'd look in a few winters time that he kept pinned to the wall above it all.
The boy picked up the picture and grinned toothily at it. "Hiccup Haddock the Third, Chief of Berk and best Viking ever", was scrawled along the top in slanted runes, and a picture of what he hoped was a muscled, powerful future version of himself with a hammer like his father and Þórr. He was atop a dead dragon with crossed out eyes and blood all over.
Grinning wider, the scrawny heir turned and put himself into his bed, tugging the covers up to himself after kicking his boots off and to the side of his room.
Hiccup shut his eyes and took a deep breath, excited for the future that awaited him.
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Hello again.
The rewrite has officially begun, and there's about 25,000 words down so far. I'll be splitting it into chapters over time, and slowly releasing them so I can keep ahead of it.
I make no promises on times for chapter posts, or length, sadly. I don't want to burn out on it again.
Reviews are as ever, appreciated.