6th December

The girls had forgotten about the bunny already. During the night it had snowed a bit more and Jake and Sophie proposed to get the sleds from the storage and conquer the hill today.

Jen had been very excited, because she never had seen snow before, let alone using sleds to slide down the hill.

She still had problems to adjust to the cold weather and even though she liked the snow, she had two layers of pullovers, her thick tights and the woolen skirt under her jacket.

Even though it was very uncomfortable, she even pulled the second pullover over her wings, turning it the wrong way so the openings for the wings were at her front, to feel warm.

Jake seemed to be more used to the cold weather, but even he protected himself against the wind and freezing air with thick clothes.

He had a special pullover and jacket on today, which had extra applications for his wings, so he could hold them warm but still move them freely.

Jen never had seen such clothes before, but she was jealous about them instantly. While she felt her wings starting to hurt after an hour, Jake flapped a bit with them every now and then and else held them relaxed behind his back.

But the fun of sliding down the hill soon made Jen forget about the pain in her wings and she did not even notice, when they started to fall asleep and went numb from the blocked circulation of blood.

"Slide with me!" shouted Lisa, who was pulling the two-seater sled up the hill. Jen laughed and grabbed the rope on the sled to help Lisa with transporting it up the hill.

When they arrived at the top, the turned the sled around and Lisa took the front seat, while Jen started to push her with the sled to give them the initial momentum.

Lisa already had quite some speed, when Jen jumped on the second seat behind her and put her feet on the runners and put her arms around Lisa for additional balance.

Both girls started to scream in joy and squeaked with high pitches. Jen looked over the shoulder of Lisa and squinnied her eyes to protect them from the cold wind. She could only see a few dark silhouettes in the white world in front of them.

The sled gained more and more speed and they were not even halfway down the hill. They went over a small hump and the sled lifted off and floated a few meters, before it crashed hard into the snow.

The screams of the girls turned from joy into fear when the sled started to slinger and they tried all they could to get it stable again.

Jen reinforced the grip around Lisa, and she could feel the muscles of Lisa working hard under her jacket to balance the wavering tool under them.

Another hump was there demise and Jen felt how the sled under her bottom twisted and threw them off like a bucking feral horse and then she felt no ground under her feet or bottom anymore.

The girls flew. Instinctively Jen tried to open her wings to balance out the fall and glide to the ground, but her clothes restricted the movement and the sudden movement was too much for the wings in their numb state. She felt a ripping pain in her left wing and groaned loud.

Jen opened her eyes in shock and saw that the ground was getting closer. In the last second, she used her tail to spin around to not fall on Lisa, which she still had in a tight hug, and then she hit the ground with her shoulder.

The snow cushioned a bit of the fall and Jen pressed Lisa hard against her while the force made her roll on her back.

The big barrier of her wings under the jacket prevented her from rolling around, but the force pulled on her numb wings, putting additional force on them and Jen screamed in pain from her left wing being crushed under their weight. Headfirst, Jen slid further down the hill with Lisa still on her belly.

The lioness was as much in shock and clawed herself into the arms of Jen, that locked the girl in the hug.

After a while, where Jen clenched her eyes shut, they came to a halt and Jen finally let go of Lisa, who giggled and crawled out of her embrace. The lioness seemed to have got over her shock and found the fall funny now.

Lisa stopped giggling when she looked down on Jen and when Jen opened her eyes to look what happened, her vision was blurry. The dragoness hadn't noticed that she started to cry from the pain.

"Is everything okay?" Sophia sounded concerned and Jen saw a shadow bow over her, but because of the tears in her eyes she could not see who it was.

"Did you hurt yourself?" the caretaker asked and Jen felt a paw in her back trying to help her get up but when she cried of in pain, because Sophia pulled on her left side and crushed her hurt wing, the snow leopard let her go.

"My wing!" she just groaned, and more tears ran down her face. She shivered and her eyes felt hot, even though her cheeks were ice cold.

"I will have a look." This was the voice of Jake. Jen felt hands that picked her up carefully at the shoulders and then a hand that gripped under her hind to hold her up, while her upper body was leaned against a warm body.

"I will bring her into the infirmary and look at the wings. Can you manage the rest here?" Jen did not hear the answer but just felt a soft rocking that she realized was the just the steps of the person who carried her.

The infirmary was warm, and Jake sat her on the plank bed. She felt her mantle being untied and opened and a hiss from Jake. Because she still shed a few tears, her vision was still a bit blurry.

"This was just asking to hurt yourself. You crushed your wings far too strong with the clothes." Jake complained and started to carefully peel the upper pullover from her body.

Jen wailed in pain because he could not do so without touching her wing or putting some additional strain on it.

The pain loosened up after the pullover was gone and her wings were able to unfold themselves. Jen did not have any strength left and just let them relax and unfold themselves slowly.

Jake touched her right wing with soft hands and massaged it. Jen could feel the prickling of thousand needles when the blood was rushing back into the wing. She groaned in discomfort, but this prickling felt much better than the pain before and it even was welcome, because it distracted Jen from the throbbing pain in her left wing a bit.

Jake carefully pulled the wing open and massaged every scale to the tips to bring back the flow of blood in them. Then he left it extended and softly placed on the edge of the plank bed and turned towards the left wing.

After a fist groan, when he touched the muscle of the wing that extended from behind her shoulder, he went on a bit more careful. He caressed the base of the wing and put a bit more pressure on it when he went on to feel where the pain originated.

Soon he massaged her left wing the same way and always returned to the base to, starting softly and increasing the pressure, massage it as well.

At first it still hurt, even though the prickling also sneaked through her left wing now, but over time the pain dulled more and more and under his massage it finally went away mostly and was just a slight dragging pain.

Jen stopped to shed tears and sighed when he finally let go of her wing and it sank down relaxed behind her back.

"Feeling better now?" he asked, and Jen nodded. Now, that the pain was mostly gone, she took a quick look around and then felt the blood rush into her head, which felt hot all of the sudden.

Jen just noticed, that she was alone with Jake and that he had softly caressed and massaged her wings for a while. She tried to estimate how long they had been together.

Her heart was beating hard and fast. She felt happy and embarrassed at the same time to be alone with Jake and that he had touched her wings, which after all were a very sensitive and private part for a dragon.

"You should stop pushing your clothes over the wings like that." Jen looked up and noticed that Jake turned around to put away some lotion that he apparently used for the massage. Jen was a bit happy that he was looking away, because this way she could take a few deep breaths to calm down.

"You will need proper clothes for this weather. If you continue to crush your wings just to get the mantle or even the pullover over them, you might hurt them even more next time, even without crashing with the sled." His voice sounded concerned and Jen lowered her head ashamed.

Jake put a hand on her head and caressed it. When Jen looked up to him, he had turned around again and smiled.

"It is not your fault, so I am not blaming you. You never were around such a cold weather before, right?" she nodded silently, looking down again.

"I will try to get some better suited clothes for you." He told her and threw a blanket over her shoulders and pushed her the jacket and the pullover into the hands.

Then he pulled up her head by the chin and grinned. "Don't be sad princess. All will be good in a few hours." And to Jen's surprise, the placed a soft kiss on her forehead and then picked her up under her legs and behind her back and held her in front of him, with the blanked wrapped around her loosely.

"You should rest a bit." He told her and opened the door to carry her over to the girls' house.

Even the cold wind did nothing in her face, because she felt like it was burning from the blood that rushed into it when he kissed her.

She felt like in the stories she always admired so much, where a prince rescued a princess and carried her home. Like all the other girls she had a secret crush on Jake and having her dream prince kiss her and carry her like that was so embarrassing and at the same time exciting, that her heart did not stop hammering in her chest and she closed her eyes to enjoy this moment in his arms.

The moment was over far too soon, when he put her down on her bed. "You should not lay on your left wing for now." Jake mentioned. "I will be back in a minute." And he went out of the house.

Jen did not even have the time to lay down. Jake came back shortly after with a measuring tape and started to measure her wings, the height and even her width. She felt a bit embarrassed about it, but she was still too flustered to ask or push him away. She realized embarrassed that she actually loved the moments when his hand touched her shoulder or wings every now and then.

"You rest now, and I will make sure to get you some more fitting clothes." He mentioned and then he was out.

Jen dropped on her right side on the bed and like in trance touched the spot where his lips had touched her forehead. A giggle welled up inside her and at the same time tears flew down her cheeks. The feelings all overwhelmed her, and she did not know what of this was real or a dream.

She pulled the cover over her body and even over her head to shield herself from any eyes that might watch her.

Deep inside her heart she felt happy and warm and soon after she fell asleep.

The other girls looked after her, but Jen slept already, and they did not want to wake her up. Only when it was time for the dinner, Lisa woke her up and asked if she wanted to eat with everyone else.

The other kids were very nice and asked her how she was feeling, after, with a blanked again, Jen walked over to the dining hall and ate with everyone else.

Jake was still in the city, but Sophie was very caring with Jen and made sure that she was not in pain anymore. She told Jen to go to bed right after the Dinner, while the other kids prepared to play a few more board games in the dining room.

Jen would have loved to play with the others, but she also still felt very tired and so she allowed Lisa to bring her back and soon fell asleep again. She did not even notice, when the other girls came back into their house.