Elemental Powers: Fire and Water

Hunting

I walked out of the cave cautiously to a wonderful sunset, where the blue sky faded to purple, where the sun blazed, casting the rays across the trees. The blades of grass swayed like it was waving goodbye to the sun. Small Lightdots floated around peacefully, with fairies balanced on them-

Marsh bumped into me. "Come on! I want to go hunting. I'm hungry!" I growled softly. Can I get to admire the view for once in my life? Marsh trotted to the edge of the cliff, spread his wings and jumped right off.

I peered down the cliff, spotting a small pond at the feet of the cliff. The pond was surrounded by plains, and an immense clutter of purple flowers were sitting neatly in the grass. If you decided to walk fifteen claws away from the pond, you would meet a mass of trees.

I also jumped down after Marsh, landing and accidentally crushing half of the flowers. Marsh slapped his claw on his snout. "I spent so long growing that..." he complained.

"Oops, sorry." I muttered, looking down at the petals littered all over the earth.

"Took an entire ten seconds to grow that..." Marsh added.

"Okay. I'm not sorry anymore." I snapped. Marsh merely snorted and walked off to the forest, and the trees just bent away from him like he was the plague. I followed him to see Marsh on his hind legs, claws batting a large mango a squirrel was holding defiantly.

The moment the sound of hissing and rustling filled my ears, I turned around, trying my best to find the source of the noise. Then a boar tried to slip past me, a dying snake in it mouth as the yellow snake with black spots twisted in pain, struggling to escape the boar's clutches. I stayed still for a moment, then pounced on it. Although I tried to attack its underbelly like how I would attack a fellow dragon, but the wild pig swiftly dodged my claws, stamped on my tail, and escaped.

"That was more pathetic than Winter hunting. Actually, a stuffed monkey would have done better than you." Marsh managed to get the mango by offering a selection of walnuts, acorns, and hickory nuts, told me.

Restraining my urge to slap him in the snout, I demanded him to teach me how to hunt properly.

It was a joke, but Marsh took it seriously.

You have to apparently keep silent and try to camouflage into nature, Hydroblasts would hide in the water a attack animals that came to drink water, Earthbounds could hide anywhere, Skyclouds attack the birds in the sky, and Solarflares just burned everything.

"Now try." Marsh's uncharacteristically bossy voice went into my ear and passed right out through my other one as he leaned against a pile of dirt and almost fell over. Once the soft clopping of hooves sounded as a deer fled away from me, its ears flicking anxiously back and forth, Marsh swiped out a quick claw a caught it. Instead of killing it like a normal dragon would, Marsh set it back down on the ground and it ran off, snorting in fear.

"How?" I asked. No way that he's going to make me jump into the pool.

"Just jump in the pool. It's deep enough, Winter can fit in it."

I sighed. What have I gotten myself into?

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After fifteen minutes of sitting in the water, I began feeling bored. In the pond, the green water had some questionable things floating in it, mud was surrounding me and small fish darted around, diving into holes in the dirt. A frog was also giving me a strange look, like it was sure that a dragon wasn't in its habitat a second ago. Marsh had to literally dump me into the pond, telling me that he will give me a mango if I managed to caught something.

He was surprised that I wasn't interested in mangoes, insisting that it was an 'Earthbound treat'.

After my ears were talked off by him, I suddenly had stopped hearing his blabbering, and noticed a small disturbance in the water. I peered closer and spotted a crocodile drinking, causing ripples as it collected water in its jaws and gushed it down.

Okay. Whatever I do next may or may not earn me a mango.

I curled my claws in and steadied myself, balancing on my hind legs as I bent them, and when the crocodile's jaws sank under the water again, I sprung out of the water, grabbing its snout and clapping them sharp before it could turn its teeth on me. The crocodile struggled and thrashed, but I managed to keep it down.

"Nice!" Called Marsh. "Not perfect, but I guess we can work on it another day." He came out from a nook in the cliff that he would've needed real flexibility to wriggle himself into. "Time to let it go." He raised a claw, and taught me the easiest way to kill prey was usually the more painful ones, but there was a way out. Watching curiously, Marsh lowered it gently down to the animal's arm, and it stopped struggling, actually closed its eyes. Marsh muttered something else under his breath and quickly sliced a claw over the crocodile's neck. It stopped moving and blood seeped out of its wound from the both of us, the smell of blood and death smashed into my nose. It was the quickest and most painless way to kill an animal. No dawdling, no more pain should be given to the prey than necessary.

This method was called 'nature's way' where the dragon would tell the animal through the mind exactly what would happen, and promise that the death would be as fast and as painless as possible. Most dragons didn't really care, but Earthbounds were particular about respecting animals even at their death.

"Come on." Marsh lifted the crocodile onto his own back and tossed the mango he got from the squirrel to me. I sliced it open and sniffed it, its fruity smell relieving to me after the stench of the dead crocodile.

We spread our wings, mine dripping with water from the pond, and took flight. The moments of flying before we landed on the ground felt so free. As I climbed across the abyss, Marsh chatted with me about a shortcut only Ash knew that was death- free to get to the hideout, but didn't tell me what the shortcut was, because I slipped and almost fell into the pit.

Ash was waiting for us in the entrance cave, his wings folded neatly as he lit the fire globe hanging on the tree again. Sky was lying in the grass and looked around warily before narrowing her eyes at me before leaving to the sleeping cave to the right. She still hadn't really warmed up to me. Out of all of them, she was more quiet, and seemed like an actual wise and old dragon like Winter, but I knew she was pretty young. Marsh was full of wisdom but hid it behind a playful mask. Ash was just... figuring out how to fit into the community that hated Solarflares, but he seemed quite liked in this group. Ash turned his head when he heard the waterfall turn back into place, "Hey, you're back."

"Yeah. Also, apparently I'm the best teacher ever because Coral caught this! In fifteen minutes!" Marsh proclaimed, showing Ash the dead crocodile.

"But I can catch and kill a boar in five minutes." Ash deadpanned.

"You burn things when you want to kill prey, Ash. That's why some trees were covered in ash the other day." Winter pointed out. Ash shrugged and told me that I did pretty good, and left. Marsh and Winter exchanged glances.

I picked the crocodile up and took the left fork, which led me to the dark and quiet feeding cave. Walking on the stepping stones on arranged in a line to the end of the rocky chamber, I stepped onto a large stone in the corner.

"What are you doing here?" Fire glowed suddenly, illuminating Sky's snout and the cave.

"Just waiting for the others to come here." I muttered. "You?"

"Look," Sky burst out, "I'm sorry for being a jerk to you for the past two days. It was really..." She twined her tail around a piece of moss on her stone.

"Its okay. I kinda was the cause for you friend's death. I don't have stamina." I said in embarrassment and she laughed -laughed- and suggested, "I can help with your stamina. I also didn't have much when I was younger." We smiled for the first time we were together and it really did feel great.

Life was definitely much better when you had the people you worked with on your side.