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Statistics: Posted by hobbit_of_narnia — Tue Dec 01, 2015 5:15 am
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Statistics: Posted by hobbit_of_narnia — Tue Dec 01, 2015 4:00 am
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Statistics: Posted by Ariel.of.Narnia — Tue Dec 01, 2015 1:25 am
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Part Five
“This looks like a good spot,” Hiccup muttered to himself as he looked over the valley. “If I were a troll, this is definitely the place I’d choose to live. It’s got a little cave over there, though I don’t know…now that I think about it, it might get a bit damp when the wind’s blowing this direction when it’s raining. But do trolls mind getting wet? Probably not.” He sat down cross-legged on the ground behind a moss-covered rock so that he would be mostly hidden, and he watched the valley intently. But nothing moved in it. “I wonder what would draw them,’ he mumbled to himself. Then an idea dawned on him, and he reached down and removed his left boot and sock. He then tossed the sock into the valley and put his boot back on. “Gobber said the trolls steal his socks, so maybe they’d come for mine too.” Then, taking out his sketchbook, he opened it to a blank page. “I have to draw the troll when I see it,” he whispered, “or my dad will never believe me.” He resumed his waiting position behind the rock, his pencil poised, and every muscle tensed. He waited for so long that both his feet fell soundly asleep, but he didn’t dare stomp them to wake them up for fear of frightening any trolls away. The sun was beginning to set, and the light was going. His sock still lay on the floor of the valley, plainly visible from his vantage point. No trolls had come to take it.
“I wonder why they didn’t come?” Hiccup wondered out loud. He sighed sadly. “Dad’s gonna kill me for doing this. I don’t even have any proof. Why couldn’t a troll have come? Maybe I’m in the wrong place after all.” He stood up dejectedly. His legs, after being in one position for so long, gave way, and he fell down. Wincing, he raised himself back up, steadying himself with one hand against the rock, waiting until the tingling feeling had mostly left this feet. But before he left, he took one last long look at the valley.
Wait! Where was the sock? It wasn’t where it had been only a minute before. Hiccup’s heart raced. Now he did have proof: a missing sock! He stumbled back through the woods, tripping over branches and over his own feet, and falling once. The sun had set and the only light was the very late evening kind. He came at last to the harbor, and he could see his father sitting on the rock, exactly how he had left him, still fishing. The bucket was full of gleaming fish. Hiccup carefully tiptoed to the rock-seat beside Stoick and sat down. Neither of them said a word for a very long time. The end of Stoick’s pole dipped down, and the dorsal fin of a fish broke the surface of the water. Stoick eased it in until he could pull it from the water, and it must have been at least as long as Hiccup’s arm.
“Did you find any trolls?” Stoick asked gruffly.
“Well, yes and no,” Hiccup replied. “I didn’t see any, exactly. But they stole something from me.”
“They certainly did. They stole the time you should have been spending with your father.” Stoick shot a very meaningful look at Hiccup.
“Well, I suppose you could say that, but they stole something else, too, something real, something actually real and solid. And I can show you that I don’t have it anymore.”
“What did they steal?” Stoick asked in the tone of a sardonic martyr.
“They stole my sock. Here, look!” Hiccup took off his boots and showed Stoick his feet: the right with a sock, the left without.
“Just say that you left it somewhere so you wouldn’t come here without proof,” Stoick said, “because we both know that’s what really happened.”
“No, no, Dad, really! I put it in their valley to attract them, like bait. Like the bait you put on the end of the line to pull the fish in, only it’s a sock!” Stoick stood up, obviously at the end of his patience.
“Listen, son,” he said. “I’ve had it to here with all your daydreaming. It’s time you grew up. No more trolls, okay? And no more books for a week. You need to put your mind to the more important things. Fishing is important. Trolls are not.” He stooped and picked up the bucket of fish, and put his pole over his shoulder and started up the path. Hiccup put his boots back on and took his own pole up from off the ground where Stoick had laid it. Then he followed his father.
Stoick’s eyes were sad, though his back was turned to Hiccup so Hiccup could not see it. But he didn’t think it would matter. The boy was a dreamer. But dreamers didn’t survive long in Berk, for Berk was a place where only the strongest counted. And not the dreamers. He had tried all he could to make something useful out of him. But it was a hopeless case. Hiccup would never understand the more important things.
Hiccup, following behind, was silent. His left toes were cold, but he didn’t dare say that out loud. Not to his father, the great chief of Berk, no. He was a strong man, who would think his son a weakling if he mentioned his feet were cold. He hadn’t cared about the trolls. All he’d cared about was the fish. He would never understand the more important things.
Finé
*****
I have to say, I'm not 100% satisfied with the ending, but I couldn't think of anything else. *unhappy sigh* Useless, empty brain!
Statistics: Posted by hobbit_of_narnia — Mon Nov 30, 2015 8:32 pm
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*applauds*Statistics: Posted by narniac101 — Fri Nov 20, 2015 3:47 am
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Okay, then. It'll be a little bit shorter without them, but that's okay.
Statistics: Posted by hobbit_of_narnia — Fri Nov 20, 2015 3:31 am
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Personally, I'm digging this father-son fic as it is without them. But that's just me.
Statistics: Posted by Ariel.of.Narnia — Fri Nov 20, 2015 2:08 am
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The harbor was on a part of the island a good long distance from the village, but not uncomfortably long…not for Stoick. When they came at last to the place where the path widened out into the little bit of land around the harbor, the chief was nearly as fresh as when he’d started out.
And Hiccup? He arrived around five minutes after his father did, winded and limping a little. The cliffs around the place protected it from the cold gusts that otherwise would have been blowing in off the sea, but he was shivering a little.
Stoick had already cast his line in. There was a stone nearby that was shaped almost like a seat, right at the edge of the water, and the chief gestured toward it.
“Sit right there,” he said. Hiccup slid onto it and dropped his line in the water near the shore. “No, son, not like that,” Stoick said, propping his pole up against a rock. “You won’t catch anything worth bragging about if you’re in water that shallow. Here.” He took the pole from Hiccup and pulled in the line. Then he handed back the pole and took Hiccup’s hands in his own massive paws. “Like this,” he said, and, with a flick that nearly wrenched Hiccup’s arms from his shoulders, he cast the line far out into the middle of the harbor. “There. Now see what you catch.”
Hiccup sat still for a minute, staring at the ripples the lines made in the water.
“I’ve gone fishing here for years,” Stoick told him. “One of the best spots you’ll ever find for fish, son.”
Or for trolls, Hiccup thought. But he didn’t say it out loud.
“It’s time I taught you about the more important things in life,” Stoick went on. “Like fishing, for example, over drawing. Drawing is almost completely useless. Sure, it can be used here and there for maps and such things, but it’s not as important as fishing. Fishing gives you food. You need food to survive. Maps, not so much.”
“Uh-huh.” Hiccup tried to sound like he was paying attention, but really he had just seen what looked like a bit of movement in the woods on the cliff across from them. A troll, maybe?
“Hiccup, your line, son!”
Hiccup jumped and jerked back on the pole.
“No, no, slower! You’ll break your line that way. Here.” Stoic took the pole and gradually pulled an arm’s length of the line in. “Now you try.”
Hiccup took the line and tried to do as his father had.
“No, slower! Now let it out a bit—no, now back in, quick, while he’s coming towards you. Now ease it back a—oh, no, no, no, not like that! Here!” He took the pole again.
“Yeah, Dad, what if you did this one first.”
“I probably should.” While Stoick was absorbed with the task at hand, Hiccup inched off his rock and tiptoed backwards until he was behind his father, then he turned and ran back up the path. In a minute Stoick had pulled in a fish: a cod. “Well, not too bad,” Stoick began, turning to where Hiccup had been sitting. “It might—Hiccup? Ughhhh.” He sighed. “Well, he’ll be back sooner or later.” He put the fish in the bucket and took up his own pole again. “And when he does…I’ll be here.”
*****
This is as far as I've gone, because I couldn't decide on one thing: twins or no twins?
What does everybody think: should Ruff and Tuff be in the story?
Statistics: Posted by hobbit_of_narnia — Fri Nov 20, 2015 1:03 am
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Part Three
Hiccup drew a quick breath. “Dad, I know this path!”
“You do?”
“Yeah.” Hiccup tripped over a branch in his eagerness. “It leads down to that little harbor thing, doesn’t it? And there’s like cliffs all on the three sides, and then there’s the sea on the other, and there’s some little stunted up trees near the water, and all those twisted rocks like statues all over.”
Stoick’s eyes seemed to smile; you couldn’t see his mouth too well under the moustache and beard. “Gone fishing there before?”
“Fishing?” Hiccup blinked once or twice. “No, uh yeah, no. But they say there are trolls that live among these rocks. I came down here once looking for them.”
“Oh…trolls.” The smile faded from the chief’s eyes. “Trolls don’t exist, son.”
“Well, but maybe they do, Dad! Just because you’ve never seen one doesn’t mean—”
“Hiccup…” Stoick’s voice dragged the name out warningly.
“Well, but Dad, maybe they’re just—”
“Hiccup.”
“It’s just maybe possible that they—”
“Hiccup!”
Hiccup fell silent, and cowered back a little as his father glared down at him. After a long moment of silence, Stoick turned back around and continued walking, and his stride showed that he was annoyed. Hiccup fell behind a little, and softly finished his sentence to himself:
“That they’re good at hiding.”
*****
This section was a little short.
It just kind of stopped abruptly without giving me any kind of warning. My mind is weird.Statistics: Posted by hobbit_of_narnia — Thu Nov 19, 2015 9:03 pm
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Statistics: Posted by Ariel.of.Narnia — Thu Nov 19, 2015 6:34 am
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Part Two
“Hello, Stoick!” a burly villager called. “Taking your boy fishing, I see.”
“Of course. Time he learned.”
“Yeah, you got to learn sooner or later.”
Hiccup glanced back and caught an amused look on the Viking’s face. And who wouldn’t laugh? I look like a rowboat with a warship’s mast on it! He scowled and looked down at the ground. Why do I have to be so small?
“Hey, Stoick!” Another Viking. Sounded like Spitelout Jorgenson. Hiccup didn’t even look up. “You going fishing?” Spitelout continued. “And taking your little boy with you.” Little boy. That hurt.
“Yes, he’s coming with me today. We’ll see how he handles himself.”
The brawny Viking laughed out loud. “I took my son Snotlout the other day. This was his, let’s see, twelfth? no, thirteenth trip. Caught a big one, long as my arm.”
“That’s nice,” Stoick said. His teeth were clenched. Hiccup could hear it in his voice. He was probably angry at Spitelout for mentioning his strapping son Snotlout. Again. He never missed a chance to rub it in.
Why doesn’t he just say it out loud? Hiccup wondered. “My son is something to be proud of. Your boy isn’t.” He felt like crying, so he pretended to be keenly interested in the ground so that no one would see.
Then he heard a familiar, uneven gait ahead. Gobber!
“Hello, Stoick! Hello, Hiccup! Going fishing, eh?”
“As you see.” Stoick actually stopped walking this time.
“Ah, yes. Good day for it, too.” Good old Gobber. The things he said didn’t always sting like the others’. “Don’t you think Hiccup might need a slightly smaller pole than the one he’s got there?” Stoick snorted.
“Ah, he’ll be alright with the one he’s got now. I used one just like it when I was his age. If it was good enough for me, it’ll be good enough for him.”
“Well, that may be so. But I was just thinking, y’know, maybe if you gave him a smaller pole he’d be more, well, quick with the cast and all that. You wouldn’t want him to catch fewer fish because he was slower casting, now would you?” There was a silence, and Hiccup felt both of them looking at him. He nervously dug the toe of his boot into the dirt.
“That’s true,” Stoick said at last.
“Great! I might have something in my shop I can make into a pole for him, real quick. I’ll be right back.” Gobber lumbered back into his shop and Hiccup looked up at his father out of the corner of his eye. Stoick didn’t seem to be too displeased. Hiccup sighed in relief.
In a minute Gobber came out with a small fishing pole. It was still a little larger than Hiccup would have chosen, but it was better than the one he had now.
“Now don’t let the fish pull you in, Hiccup!” Gobber said brightly. “Good luck, Stoick!”
*****
Statistics: Posted by hobbit_of_narnia — Thu Nov 19, 2015 2:34 am
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