Secrets of Midguard and guest, thanks so much for your reviews! I do intend to keep this series going; I have planned at least eleven "tableaux", so to speak, ranging from Astrid at age 6 to 21.

Stand Up

The Vikings of Berk, as a general rule, were not very patient people. They knew their routines and jobs - after all, their village had existed for more than seven generations - and they disliked anything that slowed down or impeded them. And that background impatience could easily be exacerbated by clumsiness or incessant curiosity or nonconformity. Unfortunately for Hiccup, even at age seven, he had already proven himself to possess all three of these traits in spades. No one complained in front of Stoick, but the boy's constant questions and rampant klutziness made him rather the opposite of the village's favorite son. That title belonged to Snotlout, Hiccup's cousin. As far as the teenagers and adults were concerned, Snotlout was loud, big for his age, strong, and stubborn. That was everything that made a good Viking and nothing else. Astrid strongly disagreed.

First, Snotlout was a Jorgenson. His tribe and hers, the Hoffersons, had been quietly feuding for time out of mind. That had been made a thousand times worse when her uncle, Fearless Finn, had been killed by the Flightmare dragon three years ago. Overnight, Vikings began calling him Frozen Finn, and Astrid knew it was the Jorgensons who had started it. Second, Snotlout liked nothing better than teaming up with the silly, dirty, crazy Thorston twins and picking on people or animals who were smaller than him.

Case in point, as Astrid rounded the corner of the biggest sheep pen on the far side of the village, she saw the three bullies laughing as Snotlout shoved Hiccup into a patch of what she hoped was mud. The smaller boy's spindly limbs waved wildly as he fell, like a turtle that couldn't right itself. This only made his tormentors laugh harder.

"Aw, poor Hic!" Tuffnut chortled. "Awe you huwt, poor baby? Did you fall down, go boom?" As Hiccup struggled to his feet, Tuffnut simply pushed him back in.

"If I'm the baby, how come you're the one who can't talk?" Hiccup retorted. His words were brave, but his tone revealed that he wanted to cry.

"You think you're so smart, don't you, runt?" Snotlout jeered, kicking more of the black-brown dirt in his cousin's face. "You're not. If you were, your dad would be proud of you, like mine is."

Hiccup's face under all the muck went pale with anger and shame. Astrid's face, on the other hand, went the shade of a Monstrous Nightmare on fire. "Leave him alone!" she screamed, rushing up and putting her hands on her hips defiantly.

"Oh, look; it's a Frozen Hofferson!" Ruffnut yelled in mock terror. "Run for your lives!"

Snotlout folded his big arms across his thick chest. "Whatcha gonna do, Hofferson? Cry like a baby?"

"Why don't you put your muscle where your mouth is, you slobbering, mangy, barnacle-eating half-troll?" she taunted, slyly slipping her right foot into a ready stance. If there was one thing Astrid was talented at, it was insults. She had heard a lot of them in the past three years, and unlike Hiccup, her father's standing in the community did nothing to protect her from them.

"Get her, Snot!" Tuffnut urged, bending down to rub more "dirt" into Hiccup's hair as he watched.

"Yeah, get the little runt!" Ruffnut agreed.

"I can pin her with one arm," Snotlout boasted.

Astrid frowned sharply. "So do it, you greasy Saxon pig!"

At that, Snotlout launched himself at her. While they were both eight years old, Snotlout already towered over her and was at least twenty pounds heavier. Everyone expected her to go down hard. Hiccup closed his eyes. Astrid bit her tongue in disappointment. Even he expected her to lose. Well, I'll show them all! she decided.

Snotlout's first charge was easy to dance away from; she spun to the left and laughed. "Missed!" Growling like a bear, he got up and tried to pounce on her, but she ducked under his grip and landed a short, sharp punch on his stomach as she waltzed past.

"Hey, no fair, Astrid!" Ruffnut whined. "You're not fighting like a Viking!" She and her brother were using Hiccup as a (very bony) bench to sit on.

"Yeah! Man up and grapple!" Tuffnut added, earning him a hard knock from his twin on his forehead. "I mean, uh, wo-man up?"

Astrid stuck out her tongue at the twins as she somersaulted away from another grab. "I am a Viking, so this is how we fight!" she yelled.

Truly frustrated at being unable to catch her, Snotlout tried to trip her as she ran past, but she jumped over his foot and used his moment of poor balance to hook her own foot around his other ankle. He went down hard on the wet ground and she sprang onto him, digging her knees into his chest and giving him a savage punch in the face. That'll bruise later, she thought proudly.

"Give up!" she demanded, holding her fist above his other eye.

Ordinarily, Snotlout was not a coward. But being beaten up by a tiny slip of a girl who moved like a sharp class dragon and had the tongue of an old barmaid was not an experience life had prepared him for. "Okay, okay! Get off me!" he cringed.

"Get lost," she replied with extreme contempt, kicking him in the ribs as she got up. The twins stood up silently from their makeshift seat and stared at the blonde. "Did she just-" "What just happened?" they asked each other so quickly that it was impossible to determine who said what.

Astrid dropped back into her ready stance, grinning. "You want some, you cowardly idiot spoiled yak custards?"

They shook their heads rapidly, and somehow in perfect synchronization.

"Then go back to your mama," she spat. "Unless she finally tells you you're actually adopted snot-faced Norns."

Behind her, Snotlout had gotten to his feet, and the shame of losing had penetrated his thick skull. He lunged at her from behind and she only managed to turn halfway before he knocked her to the ground sharply, all of his weight keeping her down. "Ha! Now who's the man?" he cried proudly.

Astrid, inwardly berating herself for letting her guard down, wriggled her right leg free enough to deliver a hard half-kick, kneeing Snotlout in the groin. He crumpled up in pain and she rolled with his motion to get out from under him.

"Not fair! Not fair!" he whimpered in a very un-Snotlout tone.

She stuck her chin out proudly as she got to her feet. "I only fight dirty against worthless, sickly, fat, stupid dragon hatchlings like you." She pointed to the village. "Get out of here, all of you!"

They did not disobey a second time, and she was careful to keep all three enemies in her sight lines until they disappeared back into the town. Never making that mistake again, she told herself. She turned as Hiccup wearily pulled himself out of the mud pit. He looked like some kind of spindly slime monster; he was covered from head to boot in the nasty stuff. "You okay?" she asked in a much gentler voice.

Hiccup blinked. "Oh, no, no, I'm good. Yeah, I love getting a bath in a nice mix of mud, sheep dung, and fresh grass."

Astrid rolled her eyes. "You shouldn't let them pick on you, Hiccup."

He stared at her for a moment. "You're right; totally my fault. What was I thinking?"

"Ugh," she groaned. "Do you want help or not?"

He glanced down at himself, then back up at her, and for the first time, she saw his lip quiver a little. She relaxed. Bravado was something she understood. He had to be sarcastic and mean or he'd cry. "Well, if you're offering," he quipped.

"Then come on. I know where my mom keeps the soap." She turned and started walking towards her house, going slowly enough that he could keep up. "You know," she said after a minute, "I'm just as small as you." The words hung between them in the air for a minute as he processed them. Astrid shot him a small smile, trying to make him understand.

"That doesn't mean I'm like you," he replied in a quiet voice.

"No," she agreed. "But it does mean you can fight back. You gotta stand up for yourself. They won't leave you alone until you do."

She was facing forward, eyes peeled for a return of Snoutlout and the twins. So she missed the sideways look of glowing admiration from the dirty boy next to her.