Ferinix the Night Fury

Chapter 2

On my first winter was the day my parents taught me to breath fire. I was so happy I pranced and pranced around the cave. I have watched my parents light the ground on fire on colder nights to help warm themselves up but they have never lectured me on how to do it.

It started out with my father telling me to "Start by opening your mouth and compressing your stomach" and I did and my mouth like there was wind in it but it didn't even feel slightly warm "Very good, now push you throat's sides into each other and blow like this" he said as he shot a small fireball and left a scorch mark on the cave wall. So I did what he said and I saw a flicker of purple flame come out of my mouth

I was so happy I was bouncing off the walls like a baby Speed Stinger ramped up on dragon nip!

For many months a perfected my fire breathing skill until I could shoot out a fireball as big as my head and hit a rock spot on from 40 feet away. I was so proud of myself and my parents were just as proud. I soon found out that if I retract my teeth that I could make bigger fireballs and aim them much better.

To practice hitting moving objects I tried to hit the moths and bats that flew around in my cave. Very shortly after I started shooting my blasts at them, I noticed that the moths went towards the light from the blast as I prepared to fire instead of away like the bats did. I used this to lure the moths out of their hiding places to use them for practice in aiming.

Not too long after that, my parents led me out to explore the small space outside the cave. I immediately trotted over to the cliff that my parents used as a landing pad. As soon as I saw the over two hundred foot drop, I scrambled back behind my mother. I had no idea that anything could be that tall! Yet alone something my parents jumped off every day!

"Its fine, you don't have to worry about the drop as long as I am here," she said "even if you do fall I can grab you before you get remotely close to the ground."

I gulped and crept back to the huge cliff and looked straight down. After getting over the fear, I saw many trees and some flowers poking out from the cracks in the stone. I also saw a couple of squirrels playing chase in a particularly large tree.

"See? Its okay" my mother said

"Can you teach me how to fly please?" I pleaded raising my ears.

"Eventually. But not this spring"

I exhaled my displeasure then sauntered back into the cave and hopped onto my favorite sleeping ledge. I looked up at the bats coming back from their nights hunt and finding a place to roost amongst the others. I watched them cuddle up with their young and groom themselves before snoozing the day away. I circled on my ledge lighting the ground on fire then laid down on the toasty warm scorch marks.

I looked back to the cave ceiling and saw a cave snake creeping towards the bats. It tried to get closer to the bats, flicking its tongue about. It extended its body and reached for a nearby crack so he could use that to get to a close ledge.

I set my head down on my forepaws as I have seen that this usually doesn't end well and fell asleep.