-Hiccup-
Maybe… just maybe… Astrid would ease into the sense of platonic friendship as well. She had been gone for a terribly long time. Maybe she would begin to see him as a brother? But who could Astrid meet to replace him. She would kill Fishlegs. Snotlout wouldn't last a day. Eret was already wed. And Tuffnut was to stupid to even consider. That Loki worshiping trickster had practically gotten himself banished.
Hiccup had thought about bringing Astrid to some of the other islands, but he worried that it would seem like a romantic getaway and that she'd only become more persistent. He could practically envision it.
"Hey Astrid, I wanted to take you to this beautiful island filled with single male vikings. I'm just going to go get some drinks and not come back." Hiccup planted his face in his palm just thinking about it. Not to mention he didn't even know what the other islands looked like, or if they had any better options than she had here. Either way, the pickings were slim on Berk.
He continued his monotonous fixing of saddles and answering of random requests. It seemed to Hiccup as though every saddle in Berk became damaged at once. He had deep circles under his eyes, and they only got deeper as the days ambled by. He worked 18hours a day, and for the few hours he got to sleep he had fitful nightmares.
These weren't ordinary nightmares, like being stuck on a sinking boat surrounded by a bunch of electric eels or anything simple like that. No. They were nightmares about Astrid crying her eyes out after Hiccup brought Aryila to Berk.
Aryila would prance through his dream like a sprite looking for a place to land, and he would want to follow her. Sometimes in the dream he would let go of the sobbing Astrid and do just that, unable to handle any more crying. Aryila would always lead him through a forest, and down a winding path he had never seen before but felt like he remembered perfectly.
She was like a will o' wisp dancing just out of reach, her hair burning upwards towards the sky and her limbs twisting like the lapping flames of a fire. If he followed for long enough she would lead him to a wide open field that looked like a rock from the sky had fallen long ago turning the earth into a deep creator, surrounded by sharp jagged mountains with a massive pit in the middle.
But over time the earth had reclaimed this land, the bottom of the pit had become a lake, teaming with water dragons. The jagged mountains perfect perches for Monstrous Nightmares and Timber Jacks. In the field around the lake every kind of pasture dragon he could think of rolled in the tall dragon nip that filled the creator.
It was perfect. Then the sprite-like Aryila would whisper in a voice much higher than her real one "Come with me. Come here and rest". Dream Hiccup would follow her out into the dragon nip and they would lay there, staring at the dragon filled sky until he fell asleep.
Then Hiccup would wake up. On the nights that Hiccup followed Aryila, he would wake up feeling excited… until he recalled the situations he was in. On the nights that Hiccup stayed with Astrid, he would awaken shaking and in a cold sweat. He would feel sick for the rest of the day, and sometimes the day after.
There was no way to console dream Astrid. Nothing he said made her stop crying. But how was it any worse than real Astrid, who would yell at him for not answering or ignore him for days without telling him why. Even now Astrid was off on some island, probably the Edge, and he half wondered if she would ever come back.
Life would be better and easier if she could fly off to a distant island and come back with a better suitor. Someone more fitted to her warrior personality. A muscular viking riding a Catastrophic Quaken or something. She could come back and say "I'm done with you, I've found someone better." And Hiccup would be free.
He would be free to ask for Aryila's hand from Vorgon the Brutal, and bring her back to Berk as the Chieftains wife. They could invent things together and she could give him solutions before he even went to all the work of building a prototype!
The could fly to distant islands, and maybe one day they could find the island from his dream. The one so familiar he felt like he had always been there. He didn't want to compare them, but it really would be nice to have someone who cheered for him rather than yelling at him.
A/N: Hello my lovely flowers! I'm in the process of moving. I'll try to keep putting up chapters and answering my wonderful reviewers as much as I can! The Skrillrider, you always make me smile!