ORIGIN - [Winter in Polaris!] Unexpected

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The white dragon rarely left Monoceros, but the word of snow had her interest piqued. She'd only ever seen it in passing, in the distant tunnels; the idea that weather itself had changed in Polaris had finally drawn her out of the dry heat of her home.

She'd waddled heavily through the tunnels, but now at last as she entered Polaris proper, she lumbered back into true flight. Heavy wings swept at the cooling air, pale eyes picking at the distant whorl of ice and snow, its rotating shape a block to the northern end of the cave.

Puzzled, she drew closer, each thumping wing-beat echoing across the rock; she spared a glance toward the Spire, its glow flashing off her scales, and then turned her attention back to the snow.

"Hello?" she called out, softly; "Is anybody there?"

Svartis would love this, she thought to herself--Asimona too--but she wasn't sure if either of them were coming.

Bone swept closer to the snowstorm, flinching at the gales of wind that threatened to hurl back even her heavy body; at the driving snow that froze like ice-chips across her scales. It wasn't pleasant, but it was interesting. Closer, and closer... she hovered lower to the ground, squinting against the icy onslaught.

She took a breath, intending to exhale a blast of flame to light her way. Instead, fire boiled out slow and painful over her jaws. frothing down, across her teeth, her tongue-

With a pained roar the white dragon flew into the storm, snapping at the snow, trying desperately to cool the aching burns newly-scorching her mouth.

Bone forgot one other person who would love this... and who was already there.

Carja had buried herself under a drift and was digging through the snow, having already created what had to be a mile of tunnel underneath. She popped her head up to make sure she was going where she thought she was going, often appearing with a comical amount of snow piled up on her head, before continuing.

She heard the call of someone familiar and looked around, squinting. No one.

Then a hot lava-like substance dripped down beside her, and she looked up, brows furrowed. Oh! It was Bone!

She erupted from the snow in an explosion of wings, flinging it everywhere as she took flight, climbing up higher and higher before swooping down towards Bone, letting out a joyous roar.

"HI BONE!!", she cried out, in a yelling mood today.

It was just so exciting! There was so much you could do with snow! She went to conjure a bubble to throw at Bone, but nothing happened, her magic fizzling out. Aw...

"Are you okay?", she asked, swooping close to see what Bone was doing.

Her transparent wings held her steady in the onslaught of wind, barely even flapping as she hovered just above the bone(haha)-white dragon. She flapped occasionally to gain altitude, but she stayed relatively level.

@Bone

Bone blinked up as a response came: not only words, but a blue head bursting up from the snow. Carja (she recognized, after a moment) sounded happy, though, so Bone offered a forced, pained expression of greeting from where she'd flopped into the snow. Her own jaws were full of snow, still, steaming and hissing up around her.

"Ah'm ohfay," she started, quietly, blinking back the pain; after a moment she spat out some of the snow, testing (it still burned) and then speaking briefly. "Burnt my mouth."

She winced, and glanced around her. "Cold helps, but--do you know where it all came from? I don't remember there being this much," and though some of her words sounded tangled or slurred with the burns, she was clear enough to understand.

After speaking, she drove her jaws back into the snow, again, trying to seem unpained for Carja's sake (the other was still young, after all), but definitely appreciating the icy cold against her burns.

She saw... icy places. Snow. It wasn't clear, and wasn't particularly helpful, but... Looking around, comparing, it didn't look like here.

@Carja

Carja shook snow off her body and dropped down, landing like a cat, legs out and wings half-spread. She hissed softly in sympathy and patted Bone's shoulder.

"I hope you stop hurting soon," she said, "Um... I've only been running around and playing. I don't really know a lot about where this came from."

Balling up a bit of snow in her hand, she tossed it back and forth, eyes following it as it rose and fell, "Were you going to go figure it out? I flew over to where the wind's coming from and got blown into a snowdrift. It was fun but I doubt it's safe."

The dragonet fumbled with the ball and dropped it, pouting, before looking back at Bone and realizing that they hadn't interacted all that much. This could be her chance to get to know her sister!

@Bone

Bone shook her head, blinking a little to clear the images from her mind, as much as the snow from her eyes. "Oh, ahh--I just used my magic to try and see where it came from. It worked--I think?--but I don't recognize the place." Her voice was calm, warm, motherly; her tone gentle as she looked back to the younger dragon. "It looked cold--snowy, but larger than the tunnels. There was--err, rock. I'm aware that doesn't narrow it down," she added, with a self-deprecating little laugh.

She shook herself, then, taking a final mouthful of snow and standing, spines clattering quietly. "You're probably right that it isn't safe; I wonder what's caused the storm, to begin with?" Musing, she glanced off toward the heart of the snowstorm.

Interest drew her gaze, then, back toward Carja. She was having something of the same sorts of thoughts: she didn't know the younger dragon as well as she really should. In fact, she wasn't even sure what sort of dragon Carja was; in Bone's early experience, all dragons had been firmly settled into two categories. These had been, 'likes heat; breathes fire,' and 'likes cold; breathes frost.' The first two had included herself and Dread, the second, Svartis and Asimona, her mother. But then Blight had come into their lives, and he wasn't any of those things--neither was Carja, really. "So you, um--like the snow?" she hazarded--friendly, blinking tentatively at Carja, trying for conversation.

@Carja

Carja latched onto the conversation starter with her hooked claws, instantly perking up and nodding wildly, "I love snow!! Oh my gosh- if there's a whole snow cave then I'm gonna take a vacation or something and stay there with Svartis!"

She hopped forward and inhaled, puffing out her chest before trying to release a stream of bubbles. She'd found that they quickly turned into beautiful, icy crystalline orbs, which could be thrown and shattered with a lovely sound. After a moment, she exhaled, and then sneezed, only one teeny tiny bubble appearing, popping only seconds later. Well now she just looked rediculous.

Carja decided to make a snowball instead. It didn't make a, 'tinkly tinkly' sound like the frozen bubbles did, but they were really fun to throw. A toothy grin spread across her face, her throat wobbling as she struggled to keep in her laughter.

"SNOWBALL FIGHT!!", she yelled, and threw the first snowball, bursting into hysterical laughter.

@Bone

The so flippantly-offered potential farewell struck a somewhat different, bitter chord within this dragon. Carja was probably not wrong: if a snow cave did lie beyond (and she was fairly certain she had seen one), then Svartis very likely would leave.

Possibly forever.

This saddened her--she could visit, certainly, but ice and snow would never be her chosen domain, and she would miss her brother.

She put on a smiling face as best she could, though, and said to Carja only, "Well, I hope you aren't gone for too long."

All the talk of snow and ice--and thought of it--chilled her further, or so it seemed; and she turned, breathing a short wafting billow of superheated air across her own scales.

The small splash of snow striking her, and the crowing of SNOWBALL FIGHT, had Bone flinching, then blinking, smiling--still--quizzically. "Ahh, is that--a game?" she asked, tentatively. Her clawed right forelimb reached down into the snow, balling it in her taloned 'fist,' and then she looked to Carja. "-Like this?" she asked, offering it out for guidance.

@Carja

The idea of leaving for longer than maybe a week sounded preposterous, and she scrunched her nose, "I wouldn't dream of leaving you guys! You're my family! And I have these wings to fly and carry me places, I ought to use them once in a while, right? I can just fly back and forth when I want to."

Carja wasn't so sure of Svartis, though.

"He won't leave," she said confidently, though she wasn't, not at all, "Or at least, he'll come visit, since I don't think you and Dread can stay in the snow for long. And Lass, too!"

She craned her head to look at the snowball that Bone had made, and her grin returned, "Yeah!! Then you just... throw it! At each other! It's a game we play until we get tired or bored! You throw snowballs at each other, and whoever gives up first after being pelted loses!"

Carja quickly grabbed a handful of snow and started to make a pile of the things, carefully towering them up. She grabbed one off the top and held it up, teeth flashing in a brutish grin. She launched it is as hard as she could, but it fell apart mid-air and tumbled to the ground. She scrambled to get a new one, building up a wall to try and block any snowballs from Bone.

@Bone

Bone studied Carja, somewhat sadly.

She didn't think the smaller dragon realized exactly how hard it was for the larger ones to travel through the tunnels; Carja's wingspan was large, but theirs was dramatically wider. And wing-walking through tunnels was both taxing, and dangerous; they were exposed, without the ability to fly (arguably their main defense) the entire time. But... Bone wasn't about to say that. Carja's reassurances were kind, and she offered back only a smile, the pain tucked away behind it. As long as they're happy--we can always visit, sometimes, she assured herself, and spoke.

"I'll hold you to that, to visits. Now, what's this about snowball fights..." she half-repeated, playfully, looking down and re-forming the snowball in her claws.

Dragon arms--at least, Bone's--were not built for throwing. She couldn't rotate it up, and back, like a humanoid arm; hers remained below her, forward and back and little else. So after a moment's thought, she backed a good distance away from Carja, then lobbed it up and whipped her club tail around, the thick length aiming to strike the snowball toward her little family member something like a baseball with a bat.

She struck true, the (thankfully powdery) ball sailing in a fast arc toward Carja--something like a grin plastered on Bone's face.

@Carja

"I'm staying!", Carja said stubbornly, "You guys are my home. And I'll get really mad if Svartis leaves."

Very mad!! She'd just gotten Wyvern to come back, and she wasn't intent on herding more dragons back to the nest any time soon.

She was about to say something else before a snowball pelted her in the face, making her launch onto her haunches with a squeal before toppling over backwards with a whump into the snow. She poked her head up and shook it out, sneezing snow out of her nose.

"Hey!! I was still talking!", she whined, before snatching up a snowball and using her superior ball-joint shoulders to launch the thing.

Throwing up her arms in triumph, she did a little happy dance, her wings acting much like Svartis', touching on the ground to keep her heavy torso up as her arms waved back and forth like she was doing the Cha-Cha Slide.

@Bone

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