Wings of Fire: Dragons, Steel, and Pom-Poms

XX - Scavenger Hunt

>Somewhere at the edges of the Mud Kingdom_

Muskeg didn't much like water.

"Just a little farther, now!" He heard Grouse's deep voice bellow out.

Water was cold and wet. It covered you all over and made you feel heavy. It chilled you and made you feel empty. Running water, just like this, was particularly bad. Always moving, always rushing, always cold.

Mud, though, that was great. Mud was thick and full. So full of stuff! It felt great to wallow in, never making a dragon feel empty and cold like simple water always did.

Muskeg wished he was napping in a mud pool right about now. All his siblings probably did. Any reasonable MudWing, even unsibs, would. Unfortunately, that wasn't something that they could be doing right now.

Well, they probably could, but it wouldn't be a very good idea.

Officially, they were supposed to be tramping around near the beach, making sure no SeaWings were trying to come out of the water to attack them again. But they hadn't done that in like... forever. Grouse, their bigwings, didn't really care for doing those boring laps all the time anymore. None of them did.

So instead, they were going out to go find some food. Muskeg was absolutely starving. It felt like he hadn't eaten in a whole day! It had gotten really hard to find decent prey around the area of the swamps they were in, probably something to do with all the other soldier dragons that were there these days. The area they were hunting in was close enough to their usual worn patrol paths that they could get away with it; and it wasn't as though their superiors would really check hard enough to know they had gone off-route, anyway. They never did.

The small troop of MudWings lethargically waded to the other side of the river, and slowly climbed onto the dry soil. They could have just flown over- they could just be flying around in general. But flying was tiring. Tiring was hungrier-ing. They also ran the risk of being spotted by 'friendly' SkyWings or higher-ranking troops farther back if they took to the air, who would suddenly be a lot less friendly if they saw a bunch of MudWings going off patrol. Likewise, if any unsib troops were stalking around the area and saw them flying in the sky, but his troop didn't see them on the ground; they could go back and snitch his troop out. That would be bad.

Oh, there was also the chance that SeaWings, their actual enemies now, might see them from the water. For all that would accomplish them.

"Hey, you guys smell that?" Muskeg heard Drizzle, their light-brown sister, call out once she got ashore.

"Huh?" Several other dragons responded, all dripping water.

"I think I smell scavengers! There must be some around here!"

"Well, of course there are." Limpkin, a tall dark-green remarked. "This area is infested by them. There's a big scavenger den around here, don't you remember? Of course their smell would be all over the place."

"You think we might be able to find any of them?" Fungus, a small greenish piped up.

"Moons, I hope so." Muskeg replied. "I'm hungry. Feels like we haven't eaten anything in forever."

"Scavengers are kinda rare, these days..." Drizzle said. "They're worth a lot, at least compared to other prey. It could take a while to find any, even over here."

Hmph, that's annoying.

Muskeg huffed, "Maybe if we find a bunch, we can bring some back; win some favor with the superiors. Maybe even some SkyWing commander. We could get a promotion above running these stupid patrol routes all the time. Do something interesting for once."