Deyr fé
Deyja frændr
Deyr sjálfr ið sama
En orðstír
Deyr aldregi
Hveim er sér góðan getr
(Hávamál, The Wisdom of Odin)
"Cattle die, kinsmen die; all men are mortal. Words of praise will never perish nor a noble name."
There is something extremely peaceful and irritating for Astrid whenever she wakes up in the morning. For one, her Viking blood makes her want to be aggressive; hesitations are immaterial. Another, beside her is Hiccup, sleeping peacefully, his hand draped on her waist. She smiles and suddenly feels comfortable.
Oftentimes, she thinks of kicking him to wake him up for her constant need of doing violence and because she also wonders why she's always the first one to wake up, but she knows he would hide the pain that his lost leg would always inflict upon him in permanence and would look at her with that sheepish smile. She knows, and he knows, she hates that dearly. She will then punch his shoulder to release him from his ministrations over his failed attempt of lying and they would laugh, completely mending what had just transpired.
She used to hate him for his very being screams nothing of Viking. That sort of powerlessness; it was one thing that she never wished she would be. She once dreamed of being the best Viking of her generation, being savage, impressing Thor, and never really this. She remembers it took her few days before finally deciding she will formally share her life with him in marriage when he proposed, to finally accept that she is going through a totally different way of life and abandon what she had longed to be before. But this is where she is. She wants to laugh now for being a sap thinking that she can't even bear the thought of a life that is not like this. Nothing to complain about. But, for the first time, she feels what could possibly be called fear that this will be lost. Now his very being is her only console.
She waits for him to wake up. When he does, he starts with one of several things that usually does: he would enthusiastically tell her his latest ideas for some invention that no one would really understand, the ones that he dreamed about so he will not forget as she reminds him everytime, despite how fragmented it could be; he would automatically jump up and reach for his charcoal and parchment to write or draw something, totally ignoring her, but would thereafter look at her as if he couldn't believe he deserve to be where he is because of his forgetfulness; if she's not in their bed, he would automatically reach for his prosthesis to do something productive, like cook or feed Toothless and Stormfly, and then remove it afterwards to try and fix his leg; he would look at her nonchalantly for a tease until she gets pissed and says something frustratingly dismissive, roughly pushing him away, and he would laugh with a remark that there are no boundaries between the two of them or something with the same effect; or, he woud tell her good morning as his fingers tug her hair so that he could see her face fully leaving her with a slight protest that she didn't get to do it first or that she hates sweet nothings, which by then would lead to a kiss that automatically shuts her up reaching to a clandestine activity. The last one, she can't argue, is the best.
Besides, she's happy enough that she gets to perform her atrocities when she hunts with her reliable axe, and sometimes, when she gets to do her beating with him.