A/n: I know this is so late and full of exposition, sorry guys. Work is killing me. X( Also, just a warning, this is really starting to deviate more and more from the movie... so make of that what you will lol.
Kudos and love to you reviewers/followers/favoriters! You make it so worthwhile!
Gobber the Belch raised his handless arm above the circle of young faces in the dark. The fire pit splayed light from his jutted chin up to the edge of his helm, an angle that left looming shadows in the creases and folds of his burly face. Every pair of eyes in the circle gleamed with flames in the night – all but one down-turned set of myrtle green.
"And with one twist," the beefy Viking jerked his arm down, sharply turning the hook at his arm's end, "it took my hand and swallowed it whole."
Though they had heard how Gobber lost his left hand and right leg many times, the young Vikings listened again to his tale with all the awe and respect a great warrior merits. They stamped their feet and grit their teeth, bellowed in triumph or outrage, in all the right moments of the story. The skinny green-eyed boy sitting just outside the circle jumped at every uproar, peeking uneasily at the silhouetted horns and shadowed snarls, the way a field mouse might eye the plummeting hooves of seething bulls.
When Gobber finished telling how his foot too was snatched up by angry jaws, one of the young men among them stood and growled.
"I will avenge you!" he cried out, and the others cheered in agreement. "I'll cut off the legs of every dragon I fight!"
The blacksmith shook his head, waving the crooked hook in the broad boy's direction. "Ah, but it's the wings and the tales you want," he advised. He lifted the chicken roasting o'er the fire and snapped off a wing with a sticky crack. "If it cannot fly, it cannot get away."
Green eyes lifted and settled on Gobber's twisting grin.
"A downed dragon is a dead dragon," he said, taking the chicken wing between his teeth and ripping the flesh from the bone.
The myrtle eyes widened.
It was never hard to slip away from merry-making Vikings. They laughed and drank and roared, told tales and insulted one another. Under the shroud of a drunken ruckus, quiet footsteps were never heard, and the bob of an auburn head never seen.
There were many things Hiccup never understood. Every Viking but he knew the feel of a blade or a mace like another limb, welcomed the fists of an opponent like an embrace, reveled in the slaughter of foes with terrible delight. The ladies fought alongside the men in every battle, every bit as fierce and determined, and even the children laughed and cheered on the fighters from their windows.
Some cried. Some Vikings ran from fights and flinched from their own weapons. But they never lasted long. Only the hardiest survived. Even the young ones, even a child must sometimes defend itself from flames or claws or occasionally steel, and if they could not...
Were he not the son of the village chief, Hiccup would have lain among the fallen long ago. Hence the Vikings stared with such spite, hence they sneered and shook their heads at the boy. Fate should have weeded him out long ago. He didn't belong among their ranks of perfect might. The weak were not welcome here.
But Hiccup was the chief's son, so most let him alone. Moreover, he was not entirely without use, for there was one thing the boy did understand, one blessed piece of sense in the chaos of Viking life.
Gobber was an able blacksmith. He made tough, jagged weapons, and followed sturdy designs when he built and rebuilt the stables, the barns and the houses. He was a fast worker, turning out simple, reliable results. Gobber was everything a village blacksmith need be.
But when Hiccup melted steel, he reshaped the thick red mass into long, perfectly even, beautiful blades that glimmered in the sun. When he carved into wood with careful, precise strokes, then fine, intricate patterns emerged from what was once a simple slab, winding delicately along the handle of a hammer, or the leg of a table, or the back of a chair. And when Hiccup fashioned battle armor, he crafted smooth, thick plates of metal and leather shaped individually to each fighter's figure.
The Vikings were not so interested in the beauty of his work, but they found that his swords sliced through flesh as though it were warm butter, his armor withstood weapons and flame almost as well as a dragon's hide, and even the embellished furniture was thick and took their abusive pounding of fists, mugs, and sometimes feet, without breaking – which was something to be said for this village.
Hiccup's village might even have held the boy in reasonably high regards for this work, if he would have only kept at building useful, practical things. But for every sword, he made three versions of a funny little contraption that never quite worked as it ought. For every shield and every breastplate, pages upon crumpled pages of strange designs fell from his worktable, hours devoted to them in the place of work. And he didn't make weapons quickly and efficiently like Gobber, but let his mind linger on half-conceived designs in his churning mind. He knew every creation would dent, scratch, dull —but never snap— once it passed to another Viking's hands. So he focused more on the funny machines in his sketchbook that sought to answer the many questions in his head.
The boy was a rare, logical sort of Viking, and if something didn't make sense to him he never dismissed it the way he was expected to. It was how he surpassed the blacksmith in his own study. He wouldn't accept there was only one way to craft a sword, that it didn't matter how it was done so long as it could cut, that following the motions without understanding them was all one needed. Hiccup experimented, caused mishap upon horrible mishap, until he understood how to mold a perfect sword. He tweaked Gobber's instructions until the result met with the image in his mind. He practiced –uselessly, Gobber had said—late and long until he could finally summon the sweeping patterns he already saw in the wood.
Hiccup didn't fully understand that if it were in him to kill, he might have been the most terrifying foe one could make. He didn't quite recognize that he fumbled so miserably in battle due only in part to clumsiness. The other part he only recently discovered in himself – the unwillingness to do harm. It was that, more than his size, more than his klutzy conduct, and far more than cowardice, that kept him from ever mastering combat, that slowed his hand when he fashioned his weapons, that doused the very curiosity which had led him to unravel the secrets of forging metal and shaping wood.
The boy retreated from his dining peers to the workshop, and opened his small sketchbook under the candlelight. He turned the pages until the Night Fury's rough outline lay out before him, uncanny wings outstretched and tail whipping out behind. Hiccup surveyed the single tail fin, trying to recall its estimate dimensions, the thickness, the apparent weight. Then he picked up a charcoal pencil and drew in a second fin, making the tail whole again.
When Hiccup was met with an unknown, he pondered and tinkered for an answer. The boy moved with an ease he only knew when there were no eyes on him, brows set with a sureness that only came when he crafted in the shop. He drew three, four, four-and-a-half designs, adding, simplifying, approximating his calculations. Then he began the work, heating the metal, shaping it with careful strikes of a small hammer, tailoring the leather, sliding everything in place.
By the time the half-moon began to dip from its zenith, Hiccup had completed the first prototype of the Night Fury's new tail.
...
The boy lifted the lid, and the demon practically dove into the basket of fish. Hiccup had to smile at the childlike excitement in his dark face as the draconic being rifled through the food. But the Night Fury halted suddenly, eyes narrowing, and backed away from the basket with a low growl.
Frowning, Hiccup looked inside to see what the matter could be. A long, yellow and black tail caught his eye, twisted among the stacks of silver. He reached for the striped eel, dangling it above the basket with a small cringe. The Night Fury hissed, backing away even further, eyes huge and sinister.
Instantly, the boy tossed the eel aside, beckoning the creature to calm down as he wiped the horrible feel of the sea animal from his fingers.
"It's okay! I don't really like eel much, either," he admitted.
The fangs retracted, and the seemingly toothless man – dragon, demon, what was it really?— blinked at Hiccup harmlessly. He returned to the basket and began to devour the bounty within, snapping his head back with every gulp and gurgling slightly with delight. Thus preoccupied, the Night Fury didn't notice the boy creeping towards his tail.
Hiccup reached down very cautiously for the appendage. His fingers lightly brushed against it, and it stuttered somewhat under his touch. Gradually, he pressed his fingertips down until his entire hand lay atop the glossy scales. Hiccup looked up. The Night Fury carried on with its meal, paying him no mind. Still tentative, the boy carefully took hold of the tail and slid the buckles of his prototype around it.
The creature finally lifted his head, a puzzled frown knotting at his brow. He glanced back at the kneeling human fiddling with his tail, and twitched it away from the boy. Hiccup let out a small huff as his work slipped before he could properly attach it, and reached again for the tail. He pressed the prototype back up against it, without complaint from the creature, but the moment he began to work the buckles again, suddenly the appendage whipped out from his grasp. Hiccup glanced at the Night Fury warily, but the creature only stared back with amused, half-lidded eyes, and a small smirk at the end of the thin, dark lips.
Indignation swiftly overtook the caution in the boy's eyes as he rolled them back impatiently, and he snatched at the tail yet again. This time, Hiccup tried to pin the scaled mass against the ground to keep it from escaping, but the squirming appendage under his hands only dragged him along with it. The Night Fury snorted at the flailing human, who glared back as though a strange monster laughing at his expense were no more than a nuisance. Hiccup scooted closer and swung a leg over the disobedient appendage, mumbling, "Toothless moron," as he straddled it.
With only some difficulty, Hiccup finally managed to attach his project to the Night Fury's tail. He sighed happily and overlooked his attempt to replicate the missing tail fin with a critical eye. The dimensions were very close, though it would certainly need tweaking to match exactly. All in all, he was satisfied with the outcome of his late-night creation. He did not see the Night Fury's confused eyes widen suddenly with realization, didn't hear the ripple in his wings as they spread out against the wind, and could never have prepared for what the draconic being was about to do.
When the Night Fury bounded upwards, Hiccup toppled forward. His limbs instinctively clung to the appendage beneath him, amazingly tough enough to support his weight, as he and the winged-being left the ground far behind them.
The young Viking's eyes strained, hair whipping into his flushed face. He didn't have the air to scream at first. The valley flew by with a speed no amount of running could reach. They were weightless. The wind crashed against them with the force of a storm. There was no sensation more foreign, at once terrifying and exhilarating, so far beyond anything a land-born creature could ever imagine.
"No, no, no, no, no," Hiccup chanted with the fear of one whose death lurks just beneath him, voice barely rising past the howl of wind in his ears.
Then the Night Fury screeched, and they began to fall.
Hiccup squinted at the leather tail fin he'd made. It flapped back uselessly, closing in on itself with nothing to hold it open. The Night Fury twisted, and the ground approached too fast. So with a heaving breath, the boy tore out a hand and grabbed for the flailing prototype. Once the leather was secure in his shaking fingers, he pulled with all his might, until the fin stretched out flat against the wind.
The boy watched them rise over the earth again, safely treading death, and his gasping breaths broke into trembling laughter.
"It works," he panted, grinning almost hysterically. He tilted the fin, and it steered them over the lake. "Oh my- I did it... I did it!"
The Night Fury's ears twitched at the excited tones. He looked back at the boy's hand on his fin, and frowned curiously. With a temperamental flick, he knocked the Viking off him, sending him screaming into the lake. But the moment he was gone, the Night Fury lost control again, and fell with a colossal crash into the other side of the lake.
When the draconic man emerged from the water, he sputtered with disdain, leaping in and out clumsily until it reached land. The Viking trudged out after it, clutching his knees to catch his breath, shaking. But it wasn't with cold, or with shock. Hiccup laughed and laughed, beside himself with the awe and thrill of man's first flight.
He nearly forgot to train that afternoon, and hardly cared that he did. The Vikings lived in a world of naught but blood and steel. Hiccup was entering a far vaster world.
A/n: Hope that wasn't too boring. :P
But yea can you imagine, growing up without any mode of transportation (not even horses by the looks of things), never breaking past the limits of human speed, and then suddenly experiencing pretty much the equivalent of a roller coaster?! Hiccup be trippin, man. ;)
Also he's an artiste! Lol.
Reviewers are the best~