(no subject)

[sythyry]

On this branch, wintertime brings three or four ice storms, about one a week and an extra one if all the children are good. I don't know if they were this year; we've had three icestorms so far and we've still got four days of winter to go. (Oh, and for the benefit of the monsters, I don't think that the air elementals really pay attention to how good the Orren children are, but I suppose they could do).

In the city, people scrape ice off of boardwalks afterwards, and off of the sides of buildings, and thwack the trees with long poles to keep them from breaking. Or they use Aquador spells, those who have them. Never Pyrador, I hope -- that would be too dangerous even in wintertime. I doubt that so much as half the city is properly fireproofed.

In the country, there are more trees than people, and honestly the people are lazier. The Orren here only clean off their boardwalks, and I doubt they would do that if Riverred weren't using them.

Instead, they go sliding around outside, zooming downhill, clambering and scrabbling uphill again, hurtling down across the frozen edges of the river, splashing into the middle, coming up in waterform with fish in their mouths. I fly around a little, and sit on the chimney or in one of the fires. Iska hasn't been outdoors today.

And then they troop indoors to eat. There is: fish, shellfish, raw fish, roast fish, pondweed salad, frozen sliced-up fish with fermented pren-juice, more shellfish, simmered fish and fish soup for the chilly children, Zi Ri breath-grilled minnows for whoever feels like it, a bit of leftover pastry, very stale by now, and fish.

I can't really join in the ice games; I am too fragile for crashing around, too thin-scaled to enjoy the cold for long. So today is quiet for me, and perhaps a bit lonely.

That's all, for now.