How to Train Your Dragon Life of Hic

Life of Hic

Summary: "I suppose, in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go."/ Nobody would believe a scrawny vegetarian boy survived two hundred and twenty seven days on a lifeboat with an injured Night Fury. Not even God.

English Drama/Friendship Rated: T Chapters: Words: Hiccup & Toothless

**a/n: **This actually deserves an iota of explanation. Yes, this story is an adaptation of both the novel and film, "Life of Pi", which are both incredible and unflinching tales of struggle, friendship, and religion. But, with a high number of twists: in fact, the only contributing factors from "Life of Pi" are the general storyline (writer interviews man about his experiences on sharing a lifeboat with a ferocious animal) and a few central themes. I'll try to keep it very close to Hiccup's own thoughts and emotions, and explore the parallels between him and Toothless, and Pi and Richard Parker. Don't expect constant updates or decency. A majority of the story is written through Hiccup speaking. All right, I'll shut up now. Enjoy.

Part One:

Interview with a Dreamer

"I was born in a zoo in Berk, Denmark. Mom was healthy and so was I. That day, we lost a Terrible Terror that was scared off by her labor screams. One of the workers went off looking for it, but it was trampled by a Monstrous Nightmare. But we were both healthy, so I'm thankful for that.

Would you like a cup of tea, Miss Cuffson?"

"Thank you, Mister Haddock. That sounds heavenly." _(Subject is a thirty-nine-year-old male. Skinny and freckled though, like a little boy. Loves tea.) _"And you can call me Ruth. Or Ruffnut. People used to call me that when I was a kid."

_(Subject also loves quirking his eyebrows and making sarcastic comments. Nothing offensive, though.) _"Sometimes tells me you started a lot of fights when you were younger, Ruth. And it's okay to have a nickname. Everyone who knew me called me 'Hiccup', even though Mom named me Jacob Thaddeus Haddock. According to Norse mythology, the runt of the litter was always named Hiccup. And that's a pretty good description of me. Mom said I was the size of a baby Terrible Terror when I was born. Barely five pounds."

"Wow." _(Subject gets a sad glint in his eyes when he talks about his mother. It's no surprise. Subject uses dragon names in passing: they're stitched into his vocabulary. Quite interesting.) _"That's small. So… would you prefer I call you Hiccup?"

"I guess so. I don't even react to 'Jacob' anymore. But there's a bit of a story behind- - oh, the tea's ready! Do you take any sugar?"

"No. Thank you… wow, this is great! Where did you get the leaves?"

"Right here in Canada. The priest sells them by the bag after service. Calls it 'The Tea of Christ'. He's got a good sense of humor, that man."

_(Subject mentions religion often as well. Kitchen has crucifix above the stove. Another cross above the living room sofa. Obviously has strong relations with the Big Guy Upstairs. Subjects also brews the best damn cup of tea to ever exist.) _"Well, it certainly tastes holy. Now, what were you saying?"

"Hmm? Oh, right. Well, that all goes back to Gobber. I'm sure you're pretty well acquainted with him now."

"He didn't waste a second making friends with me. I was looking for a place to rest my feet and went into a little café on some forgotten street corner. And I had barely sat down before he noticed my manuscripts and asked if I was a writer. A friendly man. Warm, too. He told me he had a story that would make me believe in God. But that it wasn't his to tell. And, well, that's why I'm here, Mister- - I mean, Hiccup."

"Ha. My uncle can be a little off putting at first, ya know, with all the metal. But he's a good man. A very good man."

"So he's your uncle?"

"Not by blood. It's more of a title. But he's been friends with my father ever since they served in the army together. He worked at the zoo for awhile, making enclosures and things for the dragons. He loved metal. Being made of it helped, I guess, but he could make anything. I sometimes helped him out in his shop.

Anyway, as you might imagine, I was teased when I was a kid. Not just for the name: I was smaller than the other kids and not very good at sports. I liked reading more than football. But they still made fun of the name. Pretending to hiccup when I walked by, ya know. And the older boys got kind of… _creative _with substituting the first syllable with a word I'd rather not repeat. Either way, it wasn't fun."

"I understand. It wasn't easy being known as Ruffnut."

"Yeah. Kids can be so cruel sometimes. But when I told Gobber about it, he told me a story about another Hiccup from the times of the Vikings. He was the smallest boy in his village and no one thought he would live up to anything. But he became the bravest warrior in all of Viking Mythology, Hiccup the Great, and wrote about the dragons. We used some of his writings in zoo care.

Well, after learning about this warrior, I couldn't wait to tell my classmates when school started back. When the teacher was calling role, I was so excited I was shaking. Finally, she called my name and I stood up and went to the board.

'My name is Jacob Thaddeus Haddock, known to most as Hiccup,' I said, writing it in big block letters on the board. My hands were so sweaty I almost dropped the chalk. 'Also known as Hiccup the Great, the bravest and wisest warrior to ever exist.'

My teacher wasn't very impressed. 'Sit down, Hiccup,' she said to me, looking down at me over the rims of her glasses. I remember that. She had awful glasses that made her eyes look huge. But, I didn't give up. I inherited stubbornness from my dad. I repeated the demonstration in every class: writing my name on the board, reminding them what my name meant. By the end of the day, I was known as Hiccup the Great."

"Wow. So I guess things got better for you after that?" _(Subject likes to tell stories. Sometimes strays off topic and looks lost before remembering what he was discussing.)_

"Not exactly. I was still a skinny, shy kid with bucked teeth and no friends. But no one really hassled me after that. And they shortened Hiccup the Great to Hic. So I was Hic for awhile. Gods, have we really wasted ten minutes talking about names?"

"I wouldn't call it wasting time, Hiccup. I'm learning a lot about your life."

"Okay. That's good. When I was younger, even when I was a teenager, I would never talk to anyone outside my family. I hated talking to other people. And now I love it. I guess it's one of those things that gets changed when you go through Hell."

"I guess so."

"Speaking of, is that all you wanted to hear about?"

"No, no! I'm interested in everything about your life. I wanna know everything. Gobber told me it was a story that would make me believe in God and a story like that needs to be told from the beginning." _(Subject has a nice smile. And a wife. Do not forget that.)_

"Okay, then. Well, I told you about being born… and all the drama about my name… so I guess I'll talk about the zoo. It makes my heart hurt sometimes, but in a good way.

We lived in downtown Berk, which had recently become recognized as a 'tourist town'. We had hunting, fishing, and a charming view of the sunset. We also had the highest dragon population in the world. Most of them live throughout Denmark and Norway and there're a lot in Iceland, too, but otherwise, you don't see many anywhere else. I've only seen a few here in Canada: ya know, a couple of Terrible Terrors out in the streets, a Skrill or two whenever it rains.

But people loved to see the dragons. They were scared by them, terrified, but seeing them in cages gave guests a sense of superiority. Watching them pace around was like taunting them. 'Ha, ha. Here I am, free to use my own wings. What about you, trapped in your little enclosure, forced to parade around for us?'

The zoo and gardens were first a hotel that Dad ran. He didn't like it much and, after seeing so many other hotels spring up, he decided to build something else. So, after my cousin came to live with us, Dad decided to build a zoo. It was finished by the time I was born, so each childhood memory is set against the zoo.

It was beautiful. We were lucky enough to acquire all of the grounds, so there was plenty of room to build enclosures. Concrete pathways spread from the entrance like rays from the Sun and were all connected at their edges. Everything was always fertile and green, even in the winter. Poppies bloomed in clusters like pools of blood. Canopies stretched across the paths, filtering jade light onto the ground. I grew up in a world of color, a world in bloom.

Even better than the flora was the fauna. I've always loved dragons. Ever since I can remember, they've been there. I remember sneaking out of the house when I was little to play with the baby Gronckles. The calls of the Zipplebacks woke me up in the morning, every morning really. I wasn't allowed to depart for school without petting the Terrible Terror at the zoo entrance."

"Did you let the Terrible Terrors roam out of cages?"

"Yeah. They've never attacked anyone. They're like scaly cats, really. There were these benches between enclosures that guests could sit on to eat their lunch or read or sleep, and if you sat there for a minute or two, a Terrible Terror would waddle up to you and jump in your lap. They liked to steal food, though.

As you could guess, I kind of became obsessed with the dragons. I drew them all the time. Dad didn't like that much: he thought a boy should be out, playing baseball or wrestling, not sketching dragons. But Mom loved my drawings. She kept one pinned on her vanity mirror."

"Gobber told me you were something of an artist. He also said you were an inventor."

"'Inventor'? That's an overstatement."

"Why?"

"Well, ya know, I know you've seen shelves at your local drug store just _filled _with my handy inventions. No, I'm not an inventor. I like to work with metal and when I was on the ship… I had to use my imagination. I didn't have much to work with. That doesn't make me an inventor."

"You sound more like a tinker." _(Subject is quite modest and can shift from nostalgic to sarcastic in a matter of seconds.)_

"Yeah! That's a better word. I mess around with things, try to build what I can. But, yeah, I'm not an inventor. Or an artist. If anything, I guess I'm a dragon expert. I got the chance to study them up close and my parents knew almost everything about them. They're beautiful creatures. People sometimes forget that. They just see the dangerous.

In fact, at the zoo gates, there was the ticket booth and a booth with a curtain. Next to the curtain was a sign that said 'Pull back to see the most dangerous animal in the zoo'. We had to replace the curtain monthly from all the eager hands that pulled on it in anticipation to see this beast. What they found was a mirror.

Humans do more damage to dragons that dragons do to humans. We had a few dragons get kidnapped each year; others died from food guests threw into the cages. Dragons have delicate digestive systems. They need fish, not cotton candy and soft pretzels. And especially not trash. A Scauldron choked to death on a beer bottle someone threw into its pond. A Gronckle was poisoned by a cookie soaked in bleach. Someone had just offered it to him, knowing it would kill 'em.

I can't believe someone would do that. Kill a creature on purpose… Wow, I'm being a huge hypocrite. Sorry. Another cup of tea, Ruffnut?"

"Thanks, that sounds great… no, I agree. It sounds terrible. I mean, I used to pull on cat tails and step on bugs when I was a kid, but you would think adults understand that killing animals isn't right. What you did, I hear, was to survive. You weren't poisoning an innocent zoo animal."

"I suppose so. Here you go. Would you like a cookie?"

"Yes, please." _(Subject keeps an overabundance of food in the kitchen. Cabinets are packed with canned food. Shelves crammed with jars of spices and packages of cookies. Kitchen cluttered, but clean.) _"Thanks again. Hey, you said something earlier about your cousin coming to live with you. Is he the one who… uh… "

"Yeah. He was two years older than me and a lot stronger. He looked like a professional football player when he was five. His name was Scott Jorgenson, but I called him _Snotlout _behind his back because… well, I thought it was a creative insult. And I miss him as much as a soul can miss another soul, but I hated him when we were kids. He was always teasing me and was so full of himself. Dad seemed to like him more than me. Scott was like the son Dad always wanted: strong, athletic, popular. _Everyone _liked him.

Scott came to live with Mom and Dad when he was one, too little to remember his parents. They died in a car accident. That seems to kill everyone nowadays. They raised him like their own child, even after I was born just a year or so after he came. We were brought up as brothers, a fact few people actually believed. I guess they might believe we were cousins, which we were, but not brothers.

I hated him so much. I hated being his brother…"

"I don't think that makes you a bad person. Everyone hates their siblings when they're kids. I hated my own twin brother until college."

"Yeah, but… I feel like I should've _said _something. Ya know? It's just… it all happened so suddenly."

"Maybe you'd like to talk about something else?"

"I don't know. I'll finish talking about him. I've got to pick up my son in a few minutes anyway. Where was I… me and Scott shared a bedroom in the house. He wasn't very neat and enjoyed 'accidentally' breaking my stuff. He didn't like dragons very much. I think he'd rather hunt them to study them. Everyone has their preferences, but… it didn't seem right. I tried to avoid him, because when we were together he liked to use me as a punching bag.

But there was this one time… this one time that I didn't hate him. I was five and he was seven, and we were out behind the Monstrous Nightmare enclosure. Now, the Nightmares are usually pretty placid. They'll act all menacing and growl, but they're mostly just curious. It's just pain or aggression that sets them off.

One of the Nightmares had just snapped one of its front claws and was in severe pain. It screamed, a noise like a human would make if it broke a leg suddenly, and started to charge. I was sitting down and drawing, but I wouldn't have been able to outrun the dragon if I was on foot. Either way, I was about to run over by a spooked Monstrous Nightmare that was about to set itself on fire.

And then I was knocked over by something heavy and I thought I was dead. But it had been Scott, throwing me out of harm's way. I landed weird and had a bad bruise on my forehead for awhile, but it was better than being dead. He didn't say anything afterwards. Just kind of stared at the Monstrous Nightmare and then at me. I think he realized something then. I don't know what.

I'm very sorry, but I have to get my son now. You're welcome to stay here, Ruffnut. We've got a TV and there's lots of food in the fridge. I'll only be gone a few minutes."

"Thanks, Hiccup. I'll just go over my notes while you're gone. You've told some very interesting stories and I can't wait to hear what's next. You should be the one writing this book, not me."

"No. I don't need to write a book. You do. That's why you came, wasn't it? … okay, bye Ruffnut."

"Bye." _(Subject is very interesting and seems to be nearing the climax in this story. Stopped in the hallway to whisper something to the cross over the table. Subject will probably get to his religious beliefs soon. Mentioned both "God" and "gods". Subject also has the saddest eyes this author has ever seen.)_


End file.

How to Train Your Dragon, Drama, Friendship