If Thor had taken the throne with Asgard still at its height, there's little chance he would have ever known all of his subjects by name. There would have been little need, with tens of thousands of Asgardians under his rule, never mind the ten trillion other souls across the Nine Realms. But with a village less than a thousand, and after the censuses they've taken after each massacre, Thor has read the list of survivors enough times to have at least a passing familiarity with those that still live.

"He's... he's a good kid." Never mind that Vidar is only a handful of centuries younger than Thor; there are so few elders left that everyone in the village seems too young for this life. Even Thor himself is only fifteen hundred, give or take a few years. These days, he feels much older than he is. He wouldn't be surprised to find his growing hair coming in silver, one of these days. Then he'd really start to look like his father. Thor shakes himself free of that line of thought, however, and musters up a small smile. "Maybe he'll be the village alchemist, after all this."

His gaze follows her gesture to the garden, and his cheeks flush, self-conscious. "Oh, this is..." It is exactly what it looks like, of course, but thousands of years of cultural gender norms are not so easily shaken off, no matter how little sense they make at this stage. "It's fertility magic," he says instead, as if saying it out loud might make it easier. "I haven't used it this much in a long time."