Wings of Fire - The IceWing Prince (2)

Prologue

It was one of those days so blue and sunny that you had to be flying. The sky reached in your window first thing in the morning and dragged you out, flinging you up and up and up into the beautiful wing-catching wind. You had to soar and spin and dive because a day this perfect might never come again. 

And sometimes you had to take your little brother with you, and sometimes you had to hurl his cautions tail into wonderful danger, because the wind was roaring and the sky was glorious and the sunlight promised that nothing bad could possibly happen. 

Hailstorm did a flip in the air, laughing. "The currents are mine to command!" he shouted. "Can you catch me? No, you cannot! No one can! I'm the commander of the sky!" 

"I think the SkyWings would disagree," Winter called. He twisted to scan the cloudless blue emptiness around them. 

"Stop worrying!" Hailstorm said, spinning into a dive. There weren't any dragons within flight-sight. It was a perfect day for Winter's first expedition into SkyWing territory, especially if he really wanted to find a scavenger. 

"This doesn't feel safe," Winter observed as they landed. His talons sunk into a pile of leaves and he jumped back, eyeing them with suspicion. "Yikes! What are all these flappy things on the ground?"

"They come from the trees," Hailstorm said, laughing. "No need to panic, little brother. We're here for your weird little obsession. So get excited!" He took a deep breath, inhaling the smells of the forest, and sneezed loudly. 

"SHHHH," Winter protested. "This is the Sky Kingdom! There could be enemy soldiers everywhere!"

"Lounging around in the woods near a scavenger den?" Hailstorm said skeptically. "Doubtful." He flicked his brother's wing with his tail. Winter was only three, but he was very amusing - a lot more fun to tease than their sister. He also tried so hard, and still had so much trouble with the rankings. Poor dragon. Hailstorm wished he could relax a little bit. Not everyone could be the best at everything, although it most likely didn't help that his big brother actually was.  

Despite his worry, Winter couldn't hide the excitement spilling over his face. "Is there really a scavenger den here?" He blinked at the trees, as if hoping a scavenger would suddenly fall out of one of them. 

"That's what the patrol reported," Hailstorm said with a shrug. "They said they saw at least five scavengers, and that many usually means a den nearby." 

Now that they were surrounded by trees, though, he had no idea how they were going to find one of the little creatures for Winter. Hailstorm had never actually seen one himself. There were hundreds of furry smells in the forest, but he couldn't even figure out which ones were scavengers and which ones were squirrels. The only thing he was sure of was that none of them were polar bears. 

"What are you going to do if we do catch one?" Hailstorm asked, turning over a fallen log and checking underneath. Nope. No scavengers there. "You know they can't survive in the Ice Kingdom. You won't be able to keep it."

"I just wanna look at it," Winter said. "Have you ever seen a scavenger up close? I read that they wear other animals' skins on top of their own skin. Isn't that bizarre? Why would they do that?"

"Same reason Mother has that necklace of SkyWing teeth," Hailstorm said authoritatively. "To make themselves seem more dangerous and scare off any possible predators. Obviously."

Winter glanced at the sky. "Speaking of SkyWings. . ."

"We're FINE," Hailstorm insisted, tempted to jab Winter's worrying snout with one of his claws. "We're several mountains away from Queen Scarlet's palace. No one is going to find us here."