Chapter One
Chapter One
It is the great north wind that made the Vikings - Norse Proverb
***
Cool was the night air that had wrested the babe from her slumber, and fierce was the blow that usurped his. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III sat up abruptly, coughing and gasping, poised to flee from the yet unseen threat.
No, not a home invader--it was something even more threatening, Astrid.
"Oh!" he cried out in surprise, babbling. "What?! Why would you do that? What are you doing?!"
"Hiccup," Astrid seethed, the silver ribbons of light illuminating her fierce scowl, her fist at the ready should his exhausted haze remain, "the fire's out again."
A grunt was Hiccup's only rejoinder as he rubbed his eyes, exhausted.
Astrid, realizing that Hiccup had finally woken after the fourth attempt to rouse him, lowered her striking hand.
"You let the fire die again, Hiccup," she hissed, almost not heard at all , as the baby wailed helplessly in the wooden cradle at their bedside, "it's cold in here and Ingrid won't sleep."
"Come on, Astrid," Hiccup protested, feeling the weight of his exhaustion pull him back down into the bed, like an anchor into the icy waters, as he closed his eyes. "I don't even have my leg on, is it really that cold in here?"
Steam appeared with each breath as they sat in an uncomfortable silence, both taking exception to lngrid, who kept screaming for the better part of a minute. He opened one eye to see Astrid's expression calm while she smiled sweetly at him, her smile widening even more as she noticed his open eye. He then wondered if he maybe shouldn't have--
Astrid punched him, right in the stomach.
--done that.
White hot waves of pain surged through him, right to his toes as his eyes watered.
"Oh," he groaned weakly, sitting back up as the air left his lungs. "Point taken."
"Thanks, my love," she crooned in a silvery purr, kissing his cheek.
As Hiccup reached for his metal leg, he could hear Astrid scooping their daughter out of the cradle and humming softly to the baby, humming the only melody that seemed to calm Ingrid--his mother and father's courtship song. Hiccup smiled as he heard the baby's cries still before Astrid's hushed, yet loving voice.
"Nice one, Astrid," Hiccup laughed as he bent and fastened the detached leg into place.
He then turned to look at his wife, her flaxen hair and white nightgown catching the moon's light through the window, and the baby held to her breast for a nighttime feeding. Hiccup was struck by her beauty in this moment, and how such a formidable, and dangerous, woman could exude such a divine, maternal radiance. Everything about this, the lighting, Astrid's beauty, the way the baby nestled into her mother, he had to hold onto this--he had to sketch this while he still remembered it.
If only there were some way to capture moments like this in an instant.
A smile formed as his eyes narrowed, glittering with adoration. Astrid returned his affectionate gaze with a smile and whispered, "Go light the fire, Haddock."
Grinning ear to ear, Hiccup shook his head and then rose awkwardly from the bed, realizing he was still sleepy and thus unbalanced.
Clothes, he needed clothes.
Yesterday's tunic and trousers would suffice, Hiccup supposed, haphazardly pulling each over his body. Hiccup then staggered around the bedroom, his trousers snagging on the metal leg and Astrid laughing.
He ignored her and grumbled, shambling out of their bedchamber and into the main sitting area to look at the cold, empty hearth.
He sighed with resignation.
The fire was indeed out, and he forgot to bring wood in from the pile in the barn...again. He'd need to go fetch more, and risk waking the sleeping dragons.
The barn was an addition Hiccup built onto the chieftain's residence when most of Berk had to be rebuilt years ago. The structure leaned against the house and was large enough for both Toothless and Stormfly, as well her occasional brood, to sleep comfortably. With his ascension to chief, and his engagement to Astrid announced, Hiccup drew the plans for the barn and then recruited the help of his friends to build it. Considering that Snotlout and the twins had helped to construct the majority of it, Hiccup was pleasantly surprised by the end result, and even more so that it maintained a great deal of structural integrity ten years later.
Hiccup opened the front door, intent on quietly slipping outside, and kept his gaze on the iron handle, depressing the latch as he shut the door softly. He turned away, his mind elsewhere, and tripped over something after only a couple of paces in that direction.
Sprawled out on his stomach, the wet snow quickly soaking through his wool clothes, he pressed up from the ground and looked up to the moonlit sky to see a large black silhouette--reptilian and feline all at once--with a pair of large green eyes curiously staring down at him.
Toothless, the unholy offspring of lightning and death, tilted his head and then drew his lips back into a smile, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
Hiccup looked back at his feet, to see his metal leg tangled up in the saddle that Toothless had laid out and presented when he heard him coming out of the house. A lack of sleep getting the better of him, Hiccup hadn't noticed Toothless, or the saddle, and tripped.
"Aw, Toothless," Hiccup whined, untangling his leg from the saddle and standing up, "you could have killed me. Bad dragon."
Toothless straightened his expression, pulled his tongue back into his mouth, and rolled his eyes at Hiccup.
"Don't roll your eyes at me," Hiccup droned on in mock seriousness, putting his hands on his hips. "If you kill me, who would fly with you?"
Toothless narrowed his eyes and then moved his mouth silently in an attempt to imitate Hiccup's facial expression and manner of speaking. He quickly grew bored of that and turned his back to Hiccup, sweeping his tail at Hiccup's legs and knocking him to the ground again.
Hiccup grunted as he hit the soft slush, but that soon gave way to laughing as he rose to his feet and picked the saddle up from the ground.
"I'd love to fly, and it's a beautiful night," he confessed, gazing up at the stars. "It's just that I let the fire go out, and Astrid isn't too happy with me--the baby is crying a lot tonight."
Toothless turned around, facing Hiccup and casting an empathetic gaze at his human pet.
"Say," Hiccup began, his light green eyes coming alive with an idea, "could you help me start the--"
From inside the house, Ingrid's inconsolable screams, followed by Astrid's 'THOR DAMN IT, HICCUP! LIGHT THAT ODIN-FORSAKEN FIRE!', suddenly cut him off and Toothless crouched down, groaning and putting his front legs over his ear flaps as he tightly closed his eyes. When Ingrid stopped to catch her breath, Toothless uncovered his ears and darted into the darkness in a bid to escape.
"--fire," Hiccup sighed, helplessly watching Toothless disappear into the shadows. "Useless reptile."
"Well, Dad," conceded Hiccup, smiling as he looked over to the visage of Stoick the Vast in the mountainside, "looks like I'm about to do things the Viking way. I bet you'd be proud."
"Son," Hiccup playfully bantered to himself, in a Stoick-like brogue that would have done Gobber proud if he were awake to see it. "No chief of Berk should forget how to light a fire the old fashioned way. Use those dragons too much and you'll go soft."
The sting of tears that threatened to come forth were blinked away as quickly as they formed.
Hiccup missed him so much.
***
