Ice is Nice

Cera furrowed her brows as she turned the chunk of ice over in her hands.

Amanda had insisted that she needed to take a break after she sprained her hoof trying to see if she’d be able to break the ice with that alone. She was pretty sure that she’d be just fine even if she kept at it, but bickering would get them nowhere… so now, she was resigned to a “physical and mental health break” by making ice sculptures.

Although she wasn’t a big fan of artistic endeavors when compared to collecting data or finding just the right tool for a medicinal procedure, she had to admit that she was quite good at 3d arts. Amanda said that it was because Cera’s work with anatomy naturally helped her with visualization, but Cera didn’t think that was quite true. Regardless, she had to admit that she did have some skill.

She usually worked in making small wooden sculptures, though, so trying to carve something out of ice would be more difficult. Wood would split and carve clean under a knife, which was a tool she had already mastered. This ice cube, however, would fracture apart if chipped in the wrong place, and the chisel she was holding felt unfamiliar in her grip.

Her feathers bristled as she tried chipping a small piece off from the block, only for a third of it to shatter and flake away. At the very least, it would pose a challenge for her. Yes— if she tried thinking of this as a skill to master rather than making a type of artwork, and instead just let the ice become something on its own accord. Maybe just making a triangle would be a good starting point…

She turned the ice over in one hand, feeling how cold it was to her fingertips, as she tried adjusting the position of her chisel. Maybe learning how the ice broke off from this perspective could help her learn more about how to break it for the Nimare… perhaps larger chisels could be used to break the lake’s ice?

More thoughts began to swirl in her mind as she put herself to the test - her first step may be just a simple triangle, but eventually, that would become the entire lake.