ice fishing

Life in Habari was slow and relaxing, faintly reminiscent of how growing up in Lirim was but without the whole, your-father-is-the-alpha thing. Eyrun having drug her into the ranks was another thing she'd never be able to properly thank her deceased friend for, along with having been patiently taught the basics of hunting and healing. It had been a year if not longer since she'd met the woman after a disastrous elk hunt, and today was Aryn's first solo re-do of that occasion - except, she was smart enough now to learn a wolf could not take down an elk on her own.

Rather then gamble another failed hunt, she set her sights upon something easy and attainable - and bloodless, to boot. Fishing. The ice made it a bit more tricky, but were you really improving your skills if you didn't challenge them? She wandered toward the stream that bordered the nook and carefully started work on carving out a hole in the thin area of ice large enough for her paw and forelimb to fit through. It took longer then she'd anticipated and by the end of it her pawpads felt frozen solid, but the job got done in the end and she placed herself atop the hole to stare down into the water and wait.

Waiting was a large part of fishing, Aryn quickly discovered. Glowing bits of fauna floated past beneath the ice, drawing her eye and attention and more than once she quickly lashed out at it, pulling up only glowing moss and weeds. She learned to be patient, as each failed slash of the water only directed the nearby fish further from her hole and prolonged her suffering upon the cold ice layer.

A flash of blue swam beneath her and for a moment, she assumed it was merely an odd plant like any other she'd seen today. It wasn't until the tell-tale fishy eye stared up at her as it passed by the hole that Aryn clued in, her paw lashing out frantically at it as it passed and thankfully catching it just upon the tail before it swam out of reach. She drew it backward toward the center of the hole where she could reach her jaws in and clamp down, heaving it out from the freezing cold water and with a toss of her head, chucking it onto the ice where it flopped, panicked and died. Success. A small victory was still a victory, right?

Word count: 412 [Using half-word-count-pass]