{"id":29689,"date":"2015-12-02T03:19:57","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T08:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=29689"},"modified":"2015-12-02T03:19:57","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T08:19:57","slug":"half-time-ch10-ice-scream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=29689","title":{"rendered":"Half Time CH10: Ice Scream"},"content":{"rendered":"

In cheap novels and really good<\/em> ones, snow symbolizes new beginnings. It’s art imitating life; there’s a fresh snow on right now and I’m excited to see what kind of new start I’ll get without the use of any of my fingers and toes. Old people liked to talk about the sorts of snows you didn’t get anymore; well, this <\/em>is the sort of snow you don’t get anymore. I’m proactively nostalgic for carping on about this blizzard for the last few decades of my life.<\/p>\n

“And not only did it freeze my next two bowel movements solid, boy, you should have seen what it did to my team of halflings.”<\/p>\n

“What’s a halfling, grandad?”<\/p>\n

“Oh, you wouldn’t know about them. Half their species got wiped out when I tried to pit them against those amazons.”<\/p>\n

An amazon team is built to the same basic dimensions as an elf team: thrower, catchers, linemen, heavy hitters. The difference is that to an amazon team, hitting heavy is less of a trade and more of a lifestyle. A shoulder check from a careless amazon grandmother has the same stopping power as a plummeting elevator full of halflings, and about the same halfling survival rate.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For once, I keep my reservations about this match vis-a-vis the average amazon physiology, the rude assembly that is a halfling, to myself. Because Pervince has been talking with my boys, and man, have they been trying <\/em>lately. Training real hard. Eating strategically. Trying without shame, which is unfortunately more or less required. My boys haven’t lost their Eye of the Tiger, but that’s a lot less intimidating glowering six inches above the snow from either side of a set of Big Moot earmuffs. How was that going to work, anyhow?<\/p>\n

“What do you figure,” I say to my assistant coach, “that’s about two feet of snow out there?”<\/p>\n

“Oh, no, sir, not quite that much.”<\/p>\n

“Well, anyway–“<\/p>\n

“It’s technically more like 22 inches of snow and 2 inches of ice.”<\/p>\n

“Is there any way we can use that to our advantage?”<\/p>\n

“Oh, yes, absolutely. We take this as a sign from the Gods and resign immediately.”<\/p>\n

I rub the thin strip of nose-bridge between my scarf and hat. “Look–I know I make cynicism look fashionable, but you are talking to the man currently using the Clean Cup to mix dirty martinis. You really think we just <\/em>got lucky?”<\/p>\n

“Well. Yeah.”<\/p>\n

“…could you not<\/em>?”<\/p>\n

“But you do?”<\/p>\n

“Yeah, but I’m allowed. I have to. After all, I’m the one who…”<\/p>\n

The whistle blows. Oh, damn–I’m supposed to be watching this part.<\/p>\n

They’ve just kicked off. Pervince thrashes through the snow to the ball and has it up in his arms, and his legs pumping, like pudgy panting clockwork–and like an arboreal valet outside a tiresome party, the treeman is waiting for him. The net of eager amazon warriors doesn’t get time to cinch before he’s up and over into the blizzard. And then he’s tumbled to a flaky landing–he rolls out of the snowdrift, jukes the startled midfielder, and barrels for the end zone. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the little fat bastard had something to prove. And he does–something dark and intuitive and bitterly hilarious. Pervince hits a patch of ice and puts all of his accumulated momentum into the serious business of eating shit. An amazon thrower snatches the ball out of his stunned grasp.<\/p>\n

The rest of my team stuffs their lungs full of freezing air and starts trying to break around her defenders, but her tactics are changing up–now that she has the ball, a line of catches forms out of nowhere and presses through my sudden gaps. The thrower starts to run the ball–<\/p>\n

Pervince is up like last night’s Big Moot and hacks the thrower down into the snow. He grabs the ball back before anyone can sort out the physics and hobbles back over the line. So it’s a touchdown after all, earned by the skin of his piestained teeth. He gets up from the snow and trots by me, wiping something from his shiny beet-red face that could be sweat or blood–I can’t even tell.<\/p>\n

Well. That was a hell of a start, anyway–a halfling knocking an amazon on her ass. This was looking like it might be one of those surprising matches after all.<\/p>\n

Surprise! It wasn’t.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

“Halfling injury list?” The Anachronism Times <\/em>reporter cracked his hoarfrosted notes apart. “Yeah, let me see. By the end there was…three of ’em. What? No. I mean three of ’em not <\/em>carried off the field.”<\/p>\n

I’m sitting on the bench with a mug of hot chocolate–whoops, now it’s warm chocolate–brisk chocolate–colder than papa winter’s ass hairs chocolate. <\/em>Before me is an actual ice rink of halfling blood, and frozen onto and into <\/em>it is the majority of my team. Sancho. Milo. Dudo. Halfred.<\/p>\n

Pervince Potatoe.<\/em><\/p>\n

All of them went into one side of the Amazon team as halflings. They’ve come out the other side miniature paincicles. They’re all coated in ice, which is good, because I didn’t see much they didn’t need to put ice on. It’s one big benumbed moaning halfling sculpture.<\/p>\n

“If anyone can hear me,” I say, “we tied. Somehow.”<\/p>\n

There’s a sussuration of faint cheers, whimpers, and demands for figgy puddings.<\/p>\n

“Welcome to the bigger leagues, people. It’s going to get worse before it doesn’t get better. Just don’t learn to like it.”<\/p>\n

“We’ll win next time,” says Pervince. And you know–I think he mostly believes it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In cheap novels and really good ones, snow symbolizes new beginnings. It’s art imitating life; there’s a fresh snow on right now and I’m excited to see what kind of new start I’ll get without the use of any of my fingers and toes. Old people liked to talk about the sorts of snows you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}