(no subject)

[axestrid]

Characters: Hiccup and Astrid


"Hiccup, I think we're lost."

Astrid banked Stormfly hard to the left and sort of circled Hiccup and Toothless, shading her eyes to scan through the smazy fog that clung to the air above the water.

"None of these rock formations look familiar," she said, a little worried. "Are any of them on your maps?"

She enjoyed these flights of fancy, as it were, with Hiccup, but she didn't so much like getting lost, especially when the sun wouldn't be up but a few more hours. She was confident the dragons would be able to get back to Berk--they had a pretty reliable sense of direction, it seemed--but she wasn't too keen on the idea of being somewhere unfamiliar and so far from home after dark.

Comments

[axestrid]

It was less a hundred other tribes with the same idea and more a hundred members of any given tribe against two people who happened to have the advantage of dragons, but she knew it was mostly useless to argue specifics like that with Hiccup. He was very dear to her, but his idea of the big picture tended to be a little different than hers. His was usually far more optimistic.

Slipping behind Toothless as the Night Fury descended to land on the ledge, Stormfly hovered a moment while Toothless made room for her, then lanted quietly beside him. Dismounting, Astrid followed Hiccup's lead, digging into Stormfly's saddlebag, but pulling out her axe. Well, they only needed one torch, and between the two of them she was far more likely to cleave any opposing skulls.

The light of the torch flickered against Hiccup's features, and she traced the lines of his face a moment, a soft smile rising unbidden to her lips. His twiggy frame really did belie his strength, she thought: he was strong in ways she couldn't imagine. What he lacked in muscle he made up for in pure and simple courage of the heart.

But he promptly ruined any idea that he was kind of cool with some well-placed sarcasm. Rolling her eyes, Astrid shoved him with her shoulder.

"If there were giant spiders you'd be screaming like Fishlegs," she accused.

She was kind of nervous, though. If there was anyone in here, they either had a dragon, or they were some kind of cave-dwelling weirdo; any villages on this rock had to be far, far inland, and it would have been a long, cold walk underground to get to this cave. Frankly she would have preferred it be someone with a dragon. At least in that case Hiccup could probably do his dragon whisperer schtick and they'd come out of it with a friend instead of an ambush.

"It feels like the air in here hasn't been disturbed in a year," she said with a shiver. It wasn't any colder in here than it was outside, but it felt bitter and biting, like the chilly darkness was clawing at her bones. "Do you think there's anything living in here?" Besides potential spiders or skeletons, of course.