Wings of Fire Legends • The Blue Comet

Chapter Two

'Nother chapter for y'all!! I hope you enjoy ;)

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"Pass it here!"

     Chinstrap, with a flick of his tail, sent the puck to Lemming. His friend was ready and shot it into the opposing team's goal, sending it flying through the helpless IceWing's talons. The sphere of ice landed in the pit and Chinstrap spread his wings in celebration. "Another point for us!"

     Lemming grinned and the opposing team groaned.

     "It's getting late," Pasque said. "I want to go home."

     Surprised, Chinstrap turned to look at the sun. She was right: he could not find it. It was setting and had become hidden behind the jagged shapes of their icy houses, which were carved into any rock-and-ice spike that was large enough. The sunset turned the village into a beautiful pink and blue scene. Their Ice Tail arena was shrouded in shadow.

     "Aw, c'mon!" Lemming pleaded, "just one more round!"

     "No! I'm hungry and I don't want to postpone dinner just to get beaten by you guys again. See you tomorrow," grumbled Pasque. She spread her wings and waited for Beluga to join her.

     "See you," the IceWing bid them. Lemming rolled his eyes, but Chinstrap bid Beluga a friendlier goodbye as she and her sister left.

     "I'll beat you tomorrow," Beluga promised. Her deadly smile took his breath away and it was a moment before Lemming was able to gain Chinstrap's attention again.

     A clump of snow hit him in the face. "Ah!" he cried, wiping it off and staring at his friend. He spread a talon in exasperation. "What was that for?"

     "You mooning after her won't make her like you, y'know," Lemming said. "Besides: you and I can get some more practice in until it gets dark." He moved to the sisters' goal pit to see if the puck was retrievable. "I broke it again. How many do we have left?"

     The night before playing the friends would go down to the shore and gather slush to shape and freeze into balls. The next morning, they would retrieve them and bring them to the arena near the edge of the village. Chinstrap had woken up before the sun today to avoid hunting with his father, doing this task to keep himself busy. He had collected them and moved them to their usual place: a crevasse at the side of one of the neighbouring houses of the arena. Chinstrap walked up to it now and climbed up the bowl-shaped walls to look inside: only two ice balls were left.

     "Just two," he said, bringing them both out. "We'll have to be careful. Why don't we practice defending and attacking the pits?"

     In response, Lemming moved to the center of the arena and readied his tail. Chinstrap gently rolled a puck to him. Made of frozen sleet and snow, a correctly made puck could last for a day depending on how hard the players shot it. Seeing as they only had two, Lemming and Chinstrap would focus on aiming.

     Chinstrap kept his puck and slid into his pit. It was large enough to fit an adult dragon and deep enough that his chest up remained free. The pitkeeper could only use their arms or tail to defend. A high wall sat behind the pit to keep pucks from sailing into the open, as well as add another area for him to defend. If an attacker hit a puck on the wall, it could slide down and count as a goal.

     Official games in wealthier towns had all sorts of cool toys to add to the game. The most useful one Chinstrap had always wanted were the helmets; playing pitkeeper put you in greater danger of getting a puck to the snout. When he was two, he had gotten hit in the nose and everyone panicked at the idea of him returning home with blood leaking from it. Ptarmigan would raid the arena, sniff out whoever caused the accident, and tell their family before any of them could blink. He had tried to make a helmet, once, to avoid that sort of issue, but it broke the first day he used it. Ice was prone to breakage, after all.