(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.

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[axestrid]

Hiccup's gaze went unnoticed for the moment, but her thoughts had meandered down a similar path as they lingered there in the cool, damp recesses of the cave filled with sunstone. Her mind had snagged on something, like a sleeve caught on a sharp stone. She hadn't hesitated to bring her axe down when Hiccup was potentially threatened. She had swung the blade as hard as she could, with all the precision she could muster, to cleave the skeleton's head from its body, even before fully realizing what it was.

What did that even mean? She hadn't waited for an introduction, hadn't even considered it, for that matter. She had just seen a figure lunge for him, and she'd reacted.

Astrid cared about Hiccup a great deal, and those kisses hadn't been forgotten, but she really had no idea what to do with her feelings anyway. She saw Hiccup every day, and they spent a good deal of time together... maybe it was enough. She was mostly convinced that if she mentioned to Hiccup that she thought about him often, he would think she'd cracked her head. Astrid was a force to be reckoned with, and she knew it as well as everyone else in the village did, but it seemed that her trigger-happy nature was on ultra high alert in certain company. She hadn't hesitated to decapitate that skeleton, hadn't questioned it, because something happening to Hiccup was simply not an option.

The rumble of thunder jarred her from her thoughts then, and she met Hiccup's eye, clearing her throat a bit awkwardly.

"I dunno," she said, "I kinda like it in here. I mean, sure, Skeletor there wasn't exactly the best welcome wagon I've ever encountered, but... we won't get rained on or zapped this far in, at least." Another thunderclap shook the rock, and a rain of fine dust wafted down from the ceiling. Astrid lifted her eyes to the sunstone again, then looked back to Hiccup. "If there were people in here, there might still be some supplies," she said. "Maybe we can build a fire and wait things out with a nice view."

It was better than being stuck in the wind and the rain at the mouth of the cave, at least, right?