October 1989

Violet was super annoyed when the teacher lady for this year — Geiléis, the classes were mixed up and they had new teachers, but Violet was luckily still with Susan and Lasairín — insisted she join one of the club things where they actually did stuff. Like, physically, she meant, running around or playing a game or something active. But, she wasn't a super active type, she didn't think? The things she liked were mostly, like, art, and puzzles, and embroidery, not really big on running around and getting sweaty, and bleh. She would play with the neighbour kids sometimes, of course, but a lot of times she just felt kind of out of place, awkward, like she was doing it wrong.

Lasairín said that was silly, because you couldn't really do it wrong — and Violet knew that, just, she was just like this sometimes, she couldn't help it...

When she went home that afternoon, she complained to Mum about it, kind of working up to asking her to tell Geiléis she didn't have to? But before she could even get that far, Mum was agreeing that sounded like a good idea, so, Violet had to do a sport thing now, she guessed. She took couple weeks of school kind of drifting along between the different clubs, checking what they were like, before settling on one that was okay, she guessed.

Violet had seen people playing iomáint (or sometimes camánaíocht, for some reason) before, now and then — some of the older kids played around in the courtyard back home, they were actually at it that first time she and Mum visited the house. It was one of the more popular games in magical Britain, along with football (different rules than the muggle version) and a special magic one called quidditch. (And duelling, of course, but that wasn't a game, really.) Quidditch was harder for normal people to get into, since you needed flying broomsticks — which were a thing, and also expensive, hence the problem — and football was more something people did just to mess around, they didn't have so many proper games or anything. Well, they did have some, Violet heard, but there weren't as many as there were for iomáint — though there was actually a football league in the magical world, it just wasn't nearly as important as it was on the muggle side.

There was a league for iomáint too, Violet knew, for academy students, teenagers playing against other schools or local clubs, and also for adults, kind of an almost professional thing? but there wasn't as much money in it as there was in quidditch (or duelling), so iomáint players also normally had real jobs too. And it was an international league, but mostly just in northern Europe — Britain, France, a few German and Scandinavian countries, and a few more around the Baltic Sea. The story went that the game was invented by the Gaels in Ireland, a long long long time ago, and when the vikings came here they thought the game was fun, so they brought it home with them, and later spread it to other places they did viking stuff at. Though, the league didn't really start being a thing until after Grindelwald's war (for some reason), a few countries who didn't do it before joining in because they thought it was neat, so, Violet wasn't really sure how big it used to be before people started picking it up recently (for some reason).

Since the game supposedly started with the Gaels, it was probably biggest here, in Ireland and the Gaelic-speaking parts of Scotland, but it was also really popular in Scandinavia — the top-rated international teams were usually Gaelic or Scandinavian, but sometimes a Saxon or Lithuanian one got up there too. It was less common with the fancy rich noble types, since they had the money to play quidditch instead if they wanted to — flying broomsticks were seriously expensive, it was weird — but just walking around town or visiting more rural places now and then, Violet spotted people playing iomáint all the time. Síomha even brought her to a couple of the proper official games, if one was going on when Cassie was busy with something, it was a whole thing.

And, it wasn't so bad. As much as Violet hadn't really wanted to have to do a sporty club, it was kind of fun so far. She was even a little excited about their club time today — they were doing a proper game this time, instead of just playing around with the basics of how the stuff worked. She had no idea if she was really going to be any good, since she pretty quickly started tripping over herself just kicking around a football with the neighbour kids at home, but she was still looking forward to trying. Simmering with enough energy that she had trouble paying attention in class, honestly, wiggling in her chair and tapping her fingers, people hissed at her to stop making noise more than once, wasn't trying to...

Until the start of club time came, and Violet skipped out of the building, tailed by Lasairín — Susan just didn't have the energy for iomáint most days, thanks to her potions — and also Lasairín's cousin Éimhín, who was in their class this year and was also in the iomáint club with them. Lasairín and Éimhín were teasing, about making sure they were on opposite teams so they could beat each other, they were being very silly!

It was a little chilly out today, since it was October and everything, and a bit windy, but Violet was wearing leggings and a nice fuzzy jumper, so she'd be fine. (Lasairín pointed out earlier that playing iomáint in a skirt was maybe kind of silly, but Violet wasn't thinking about that when she was getting dressed this morning, oops.) They were so quick to leave the school building that they were some of the first kids to get to the pitch — sized for the academy students' game, a big open field with the goal posts set up at either end. It was big enough that they could only really fit one of them on the school's grounds, the different clubs and teams and stuff had to take turns using it. Since they were here early and had nothing better to do, they grabbed a sliotar and a camán each, playing around bopping and passing the ball back and forth while they waited.

Iomáint was kind of like hockey, she guessed? The sticks, called camáin, looked pretty close, a long stick with a blade on the end that hooked off at an angle — the name meant just crooked-thing — except the ones for iomáint the blade was a bit wider and flatter, the angle of the curve less, the sticks a little shorter maybe? (She wasn't sure, never played hockey, just seen it now and then.) The idea was to pass the ball around between people and put it in the other side's goal, like hockey.

Except the ball — called a sliotar, a little thing a couple inches wide, light, thin leather wrapped around a cork inside, giving it a nice springy bap when you hit it — spent a lot of time in the air. You could scoop it up off the ground with the end of the camán, and carry it around without the thing ever touching the ground, just bouncing it off the end of your stick as you ran along. You could even use your hands if you wanted to — you couldn't carry the sliotar for more than a few steps, and you couldn't pick it straight up off the ground, needed to use the camán to scoop it up, but you could catch a flying ball with your bare hand, or toss it so you could easily pull back and give it a good two-handed whack with the camán on the way down. (That was how most goals were made.) You could even just smack the ball with your bare hand for a gentler short-distance pass — only person to person, though, making a goal doing that was against the rules. Sometimes people would bounce the ball against the ground, or it'd get away from someone and go on its own for a little bit, but in most games — especially with grown-ups who knew what they were doing — the ball really spent very, very little time on the ground, either carried along on top of someone's camán or flying through the air.

Also? The game was kind of super violent. You weren't supposed to hit another person with your camán, but sticks could hit other sticks at any time — you could poke your camán in the way of a swing so the person missed a hit, or when they're rearing back to take a swing hook your blade on their blade and pull, screwing them up, or even just whack your sticks together, all kinds of things. And, sticks couldn't hit people, but people could hit people, they were shoving into each other all the time. You couldn't just, like, walk up and punch someone, but you could run into each other, shoulder to shoulder, or hook your elbow on them somehow — you couldn't grab them, but physically catching them in other ways was fine. It was pretty common for people to get kind of beat up in games, since they were always running into each other and stuff. The camáin were enchanted with safety spells, so accidental hits wouldn't hurt anyone too bad, but running into each other could still bruise you up a bit.

There was one exception to the no-sticks-touching-people rule: it was perfectly fine to hook someone's ankle with the blade and yank, tripping them. When you did it right they often ended up face-planting in the grass, which could hurt but mostly just looked really funny, embarrassing — when it happened in big proper games there was usually a lot of shouting and booing and laughing from the crowd. The game could be pretty rough on people, what with all the hitting, but also there was just a lot of running around? The adult pitch was huge, bigger than football, and a good smack with a camán sent the sliotar flying really really far, so people were always running to catch up, back and forth and back and forth. The proper adult games Violet had seen seemed exhausting.

She saw a couple of the teenagers' games at school over the last year, and their pitch was a bit smaller, and the game wasn't as fast, so they didn't run around quite as much. Their game in a few minutes here would have an even smaller play area — as Violet and Síomha and Éimhín played around and the other kids trickled in, Cainneach was setting up a third set of goal posts, right in the middle of the pitch, they must only be doing half — and she also had the feeling it was going to be kind of slow.

The other kids mostly had bad aim? She noticed this before, that people dropped the sliotar a lot. Like, you could grab the ball with your hand, but you couldn't just carry it for more than a few steps, so if you wanted to move with it you had to do something else with it. Sometimes people dribbled it on the ground, using the camán to push it along, but they never did that for very long in grown-up games, since you had to pick it up before doing a handpass or getting a good hit, wasted time. The other thing you could do was carry it on the blade of the camán, either bouncing it up and down or just holding it balanced there. Holding it was harder than it looked, since the blade was flat, had to hold it at a funny angle so it didn't get pushed off, and your steps could shake it up, Violet thought it was easier to bounce it along.

Other people didn't seem to though? People dropped the sliotar a lot, sliding off from where they were holding it or missing a bounce. All the time, when they were taking shots on the goals in practice, Violet saw people toss the ball up and take a swing...and completely miss, their camán whistling through the air and hitting nothing, the sliotar plopping back down into the grass. The other kids mostly preferred to dribble on or take shots from the ground, if they could, they were bad at guessing which way it would go in the air, and how to hit it to make it do what they wanted, took the slower safer way.

Lasairín and Éimhín and a few other kids — Morag and Tony and Fay from the Hogwarts club were also in the iomáint club, but Morag was almost as good at it as Violet was and didn't need the help — had asked Violet how she did it, and she didn't really know what to say. You just did? Things always fell the same way every time, that was how gravity worked, so if she saw how the sliotar was flying she always knew what path it was going to take. And, she knew what the shape of the camán was, and the ball was the same every time, so she knew how to swing to make it do what she wanted, just, muscle memory, she guessed? You know, like, kind of using different amounts of weight to make a pen or a brush do different things...but with a wider range, because obviously she would never put nearly as much force into a brushstroke as she might into a sliotar. It was the same idea, though?

She didn't know how to explain how she did it, she just did. You mean, you lot didn't immediately know where a thing in the air was going to land just looking at it? Weird...

(When Violet thought about it, maybe mages got so used to things that didn't fall down the way they were supposed to that the normal way things fell felt less natural to them. She didn't think that made much sense, but she couldn't think of a better idea. Or, maybe it was like maths, her brain just did it by itself without having to think about it that hard, and other people's didn't? She didn't know...)

Violet hadn't been very happy that she needed to do a sport thing, but she had a feeling she might actually be pretty good at this.

And it was kind of fun! As Cainneach was done setting stuff up, all the kids here now, Violet had their ball, the sliotar making funny little bap sounds as it bounced off the head of her camán, bap, bap, bap. Cainneach said it was time to get started now, everyone come over here — the game was only played with one ball, so they wouldn't need this one. Violet caught the ball with one hand, took a couple steps away from Lasairín and Éimhín. Then she tossed the sliotar into the air, her free hand jumping to the handle, rearing back, she took a hard and fast two-handed swing, the camán hitting it with a nice satisfying fwok noise. (The word in Gaelic for hitting the sliotar like this was poc, she could hear why.) The ball flew away from her, fwoosh! sailing across the pitch toward the goal posts...and passing through right between the posts, just under the crossbar.

She bounced on her toes a couple times, letting out a little hee hee just because — that was three points.

Anyway, Cainneach wanted them to go ahead and pick their teams. It was normal for girls' and boys' teams to play separate, but that would be a pain to set up — and it wasn't as important when they were still so little, Cainneach said — so go ahead and pick whoever you want for your teammates. Their group was big enough that they'd be splitting up into four teams, Cainneach would be watching both of them and— Oh! They were playing two games at once, one on each half of the pitch, right, that made sense. If they were having trouble deciding who should be on which team, Cainneach would split them up in a fair way, but—

"Willow's on my team!" Lasairín shouted, waving her camán over her head. She stomped up to Violet, linked her elbow through hers.

Éimhín whined, "Hey, that's not fair! How come you get Willow?"

"Best friend rights, so there." Scrunching up her nose, Lasairín stuck her tongue out at her cousin, with a funny little mleh noise.

...Violet didn't know they were best friends? She was pretty sure Susan was actually her best friend. But she thought Lasairín was just being silly, and her saying that (even just to tease Éimhín) was making Violet feel all warm and squishy, so she didn't argue.

(Besides, arguing with someone saying you're their best friend would be weird, and probably mean. And Violet tried not to be mean, especially on accident.)

It wasn't really a secret in the club that Violet was better at controlling the ball than most of them — she still didn't think she was doing anything special, but whatever — so a lot of people wanted to join their team. Violet let Lasairín pick people, because she didn't really care...and honestly, she didn't remember how good other people were very well. She knew how her friends did at it, but she didn't even remember most of the other children's names (which always made her feel bad when she forgot, but it was hard, she didn't know how other people did it), so, sorting out the people they wanted for their team was a better job for Lasairín. Eventually, the teams were mostly even, but there was still some arguing about who would be with who, so Cainneach jumped in and finished splitting them up.

For some reason, he didn't just split up the people who hadn't been picked by a team yet, but also split off some people who had been picked — their team lost Fay, who Lasairín had actually wanted on their team, because she was all sporty and stuff. (She was in one of the local children's quidditch clubs, even.) Violet wasn't sure why he did it that way, but adults had all kinds of reasons for doing stuff, so. Which meant Éimhín's team got Fay instead of them, and Morag was in a different team, and so was Aodhán (not the neighbour boy, who was older than Violet, common name), so it was probably more fair this way anyway.

Of course, Violet got that Lasairín didn't want it to be fair — she wanted to win. Because she could be silly about things like that sometimes, honestly Violet just hoped it was as fun as it looked...

Anyway, they had their teams, great, now where were they putting everyone? They had a couple people who volunteered to be on defence right away — she thought they thought there would be less running around — and Lasairín jumped up, raising a hand and everything, to say she was taking a midfielder spot. She then shouted over at Éimhín that she was in midfield, so he better be too, so she could beat him. (Lasairín really was being very silly.) Everyone was kind of assuming that Violet should be a forward, but actually she thought half-forward was maybe better? Since the pitch was big, iomáint actually had five rows of people, instead of the vague sort-of three that football had — midfielders, yeah, but defence and forwards were then split into two rows, so they could spread out and cover the field better. Violet could bat the sliotar far enough that she could still make goals from the half-forward line anyway, and she could join the forwards attacking the goal or move back to help the midfielders, whichever made sense at the time. Also, if the defenders sent the ball flying toward the opponents' side, Violet was more likely to be able to guess where it was going and catch it for their team, since everyone was bad at following where it was going for some reason. So, yeah, half-forward, she thought — everyone agreed that made sense, quickly went on filling the rest of the spots.

Violet honestly had no idea when she'd learned enough about iomáint to actually have an opinion about which position she should play. She'd only even seen a handful of games before...

Cainneach went through all the kids, conjuring flashy blue or red scarves for everyone, go ahead and tie those around your waists to mark which team you're on. (Only some of the teacher people at the craft school had wands, but Cainneach was one of the ones who did.) While doing hers (they were on a blue team), he offered to transfigure Violet's skirt into trousers or shorts or something, but no thanks, she was okay — besides, she was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to do that while she was wearing it. And she wasn't supposed to let other people transfigure her, and she was pretty sure that included clothes she was wearing? (She was randomly remembering something from the bad touching talk, but she wasn't sure if this sort of thing counted.) Whatever, it was fine.

Once they had that all figured out, they streamed onto the pitch, Éimhín's red team only a little bit behind them. Their goalkeeper took the nearer posts, so Violet skipped on toward the other side of the pitch — she passed the midline, but only went a little further before stopping, her skirt swishing around her legs. While they waited for everyone to catch up, Violet looked around, checked out who was defending for the red team. They had Tony up here — he wasn't super great at controlling the sliotar, but he was a pretty sporty boy, fast — and also a big kind of fat boy whose name Violet was blanking on at the moment. None of the rest really stuck out to Violet very much, she thought Éimhín's team had mostly put their bigger, slower people on defence, which made a kind of sense, but—

Oh jeez, Fay was a midfielder — she was going to be a problem.

Their teams were ready sooner, Cainneach came up to the midline, a sliotar in one hand. His voice magically loud, he reminded them that everything here was enchanted — there would be a glow and a buzz if they went wide or walked with the ball too far, the goals would keep score for them, and the sticks would glow and buzz if they hit a person. The wards meant he could keep an eye on both games pretty easy, everything was safe enough and they couldn't really hurt each other, but if they were being stubborn about not following the rules he might have to stop the game. He was willing to send people away if they couldn't play nice.

Everyone ready? Cool, have fun, then! Cainneach tossed the sliotar up in the middle of the field, Lasairín and Ithel and Éimhín and Fay all ran right for it, and the game was starting!

Cainneach threw the ball really high, all four of the midfielders ran up toward it. Ithel hung back a little, but Lasairín kept going, jumping into the air and swinging her camán over her head — probably hoping to whap it in Violet's direction — but Éimhín was kind of doing the same thing, without the jumping really high...and, their eyes on the sliotar, they ran right into each other, Lasairín tipping in mid air and Éimhín tripping, both of them falling on the ground. Violet bit her lip to keep herself from laughing out loud — it looked kind of funny, okay, they were both being so silly...

Fay swooped in while they were picking themselves up, snatching the ball out of the air with her free hand on the bounce, ran a couple steps toward the blue goal before dropping it, soloing it along on the ground. Ithel was coming in on her left, but when he got close Fay just stopped — the ball rolling along ahead of her for a bit — Ithel was taken by surprise and stumbled past in front of her, tried to take a swing at the sliotar but missed. Fay slipped up while he was still turning back around, wound up with both hands and gave the ball a good smack off the ground, sending it winging along deep into the blues' half.

Watching the blue defenders and red forwards close in on the ball, Violet bounced helplessly on her toes, come on, come on! The sliotar bounced between people a couple times, not going very far one way before being sent back the other. Eventually Hannah managed to get it — they were kind of friends (she was Susan's best friend before Seer stuff happened), so she ended up on Violet's team, but she wasn't so sporty and was super tall so she was way over there — she swung back to give it a good smack toward their side of the field, yes! but then a boy came up and hit Hannah's camán with hers, screwing up her shot, no! whapping the ball on to another of the reds, who dribbled it along for a little bit, before taking a swing at the goal...

...and it missed, going wide, oh good. Their goalkeeper ran off to get the ball, all the blue defenders and red forwards pulling back behind the near line — Violet noticed it was glowing a little, probably reminding them of the rules about putting the sliotar back into play. Standing in front of the posts, he tossed the ball up once, caught it when it came down, and again, caught it. Then the third time, he tossed it up and took a big swing at it — it was a pretty strong hit, but the angle wasn't great, not flying high enough. It zipped forward a bit, then bounced against the ground — probably actually went higher on the bounce than he hit it, must have hit a divot in the grass funny — one of the forwards made a swing at it but missed, it bounced off the ground a second time, and oh! Ithel let it bounce off his back, coming to a stop, Fay was running at him, he gave the sliotar a funny backwards shove, skimming along the ground to the side, where Lasairín caught it, scooped it up off the ground. She tossed it up, and missed her first swing at it, Éimhín was closing in on her, Violet running that way just in case, she caught the ball on the bounce, tossed it and swung again — and this time she hit it, the ball swinging up and over Violet's head, yes!

She started running back the other way, her knees making the hem of her skirt bounce funny, one of the reds caught the ball, tried to give it a good smack back away from their goal, but the sliotar flew low, actually smacked right into Tony, oops! But that meant he had possession of the ball now, Violet was still catching up (she was actually over the midline when Lasairín finally got it away), but another forward was coming in at Tony, but he sent the ball skimming along the ground before they caught up, the fat boy coming alongside it, kept soloing it along. Violet curved along the side to follow him, coming in at his right side, she saw Lasairín and Éimhín were still a little tangled up behind her, Ithel was the closest midfielder. Violet was catching up, but the fat boy was moving faster than she thought, she tried to turn in, but she wouldn't cut him off in time—

Leaning forward, holding her camán with both hands, she hooked the fat boy's ankle and pulled — trying to swing his foot back forward, the pull was pretty hard, Violet yanked forward and stumbling a little, but he went flopping against the grass, the ball sliding up away from him. And Ithel was right there, giving it a good hard smack off the ground before Fay could catch up, sending it back into the reds' side, yes!

Violet turned back that way, running, she saw Tony coming up on her right, trying to curve ahead of her to cut her off, she sped up and angled in ahead of him. There was a scrum around the ball ahead, someone fell over, the ball skimming across the ground to one of the blue forwards, but one of the defenders was right on her, instead she bopped the ball across the ground back — and straight toward Violet. She dipped a little as she got closer to it, so it would roll up onto the blade of her camán, flicked it up into the air. Bap, bap, bap, she cut a little to the left, Tony still following her — she couldn't run quite as fast while bouncing the ball along — the whole pack was running straight toward her, between her and the goal, but she could still—

Fwok! Violet dug in to take a hard swing, the sliotar sailing over the pack of defenders and forwards...and right between the posts, the ball halted with a little blue-white glow. There was a little bong noise, a big blue number one appearing in the air between the posts.

While the players sorted themselves out, pulling back to wait for the red goalkeeper to send the sliotar back into play, Violet couldn't help giggling to herself a little — bouncing on her toes, her fingers tapping on the smooth wood of the handle. She made the first point, so there.

The red goalkeeper actually got a pretty good hit out, flying up past Violet's head, Fay jumped up into the air to catch it with her bare hand. But Lasairín was right there, before Fay could smack it away toward the blue side Lasairín hit their sticks together, throwing off her swing, Lasairín turning around and smacking the ball toward the red side. Violet played out the curve it would fly along before she started running, awkwardly skipped around Alex — on the blue team, but in her way — glanced back over her shoulder, and...got it, Violet caught it out of the air, the leather smacking against her palm. Bap, bap, bap, bap, too many people were coming in at her, she didn't have time to make a good hit, she let the ball fall to the ground, wound up to send it over toward—

Something slammed into her from her left, knocking her off her feet, the pitch tilting dizzily around her, she thumped against the ground on her right side, hitting hard and then sliding to a stop on her back. She lay there for a second, catching her breath — it didn't hurt that bad, just took the wind out of her. What had... Oh, fat boy must have hit her, oops, lost track of him. She pushed up to a knee, where was her camán, she must have dropped— There it was! By the time she was back up the play was back behind her again, with the midfielders, but Ithel managed to give it a good smack, sending it back to their side, Violet ran toward fat b—

Eoin! She remembered now, his name was Eoin, honestly...

Anyway, Eoin had a couple other people on him — and now Violet was getting up too, helping box him in — he couldn't actually do anything. So he tossed the ball up and gave it a smack with his palm, sending it slowly sailing over in Tony's direction. It didn't quite reach him, he had to run to get it, and Lasairín was coming up, he tried to quick bat it off the ground, but it just bounced right off Lasairín, she nearly tripped changing directions quick enough to chase after it, and Tony and Éimhín were on her, they all reached the ball at more or less the same time, Violet couldn't see what was happening...

The ball went flying out in a random direction — she couldn't see what happened at all — Fay caught it, sent it off to the blues' side with a hard enough swing Violet could hear the fwok! from here. The blue defenders and red forwards all swooped in on the ball, it ended up bouncing back and forth, Violet heard clacks of sticks hitting each other, Hannah shouldered another girl hard enough she fell to the ground — not quite as hard as Violet, but still, ow. (Hannah hesitated right after, looking down at the other girl — someone coming in to steal the ball while she was distracted — Violet thought she almost stopped to apologise, because Hannah was nice like that.) One of their defenders managed to send it rolling back toward the red side, and Lasairín got to it first, flicking it up into the air and catching it, but Éimhín was rushing at her, she quick hand-passed it to Ithel, who nearly fumbled it, but then, fwok! the sliotar was flying over Violet's head deep into the red side.

Violet turned to follow — she'd drifted toward the middle again, and so had the other people in her row, it was only the back defenders and full forwards back there. Alex caught up with the ball first, rolling on the ground, she glanced around at the other players before digging in her heels, and taking a swing at the goal. The blade of her camán hit it at a funny angle, though, the shot went wide. The players who were too far forward went back behind the glowing line while the red goalkeeper retrieved the ball, Violet hanging a little bit back behind that, glancing around to see where everyone was — a little more this way, the field was emptier over here, if someone passed to her...

Fwok! The sliotar went sailing over the first line of people's heads — a couple of them jumped up and tried to take a swing at it as it passed, but they weren't even close — and then over Violet's line, toward the midfielders. Ithel caught up with it first this time, but he had Éimhín coming in at him, he quickly set up a shot, fwok! flying back into the reds' side, but his aim wasn't really anywhere, way over there to the left. Tony was actually closest, Violet was running, her breath thick and hot and her skin tingling (she might be changing something on accident, oops). Tony saw her coming, he scooped up the ball, readying a swing, putting his back to her — he was right-handed, she was coming at his left. She ran harder, leaning into it, Tony tossed the ball into the air, his left hand coming to the handle, swinging back, Violet jumped—

And she hit his back shoulder first, knocking him off balance — and messing up his swing, yes! The jump put her off-balance too, though, she stumbled, and then tripped over one of Tony's feet, both of them tumbling to the ground together, all knees and elbows, Tony's camán banged against the side of her head, ow!

"Oh, was that your head, I'm sorry!" Sitting up now, Tony's eyes had gone wide. He glanced at his camán — it wasn't glowing.

"It's fine," she said, rubbing her head with her left hand. "Accident." Probably why the enchantment on his camán hadn't gone off, but she didn't know they were that sensitive? Neat. She heard shouting, people running this way, oh the game! Where was the sliotar, it— When she saw the ball Violet lunged forward on her knees and one hand, giving it a wild swing, sending it rolling and bouncing over toward Lasairín right there before Eoin could catch up. (Which was the wrong way, but it was more important one of their people get the ball first.) Lasairín quick scooped it up and caught it, fwok! flying back over Violet's head the other way, she pushed herself back up to her feet, quick skipping away from Tony. Eoin was moving back toward the right side of the pitch, so if Violet stayed here on the left and moved a little ahead of Tony...

Their forwards lost the ball — one of the reds smacked someone's stick, screwing them up — and then it was flying back to the midline, but Ithel got it again, dipped around a tackle from Fay before sending it rolling over toward Alex. A quick glance, all the forwards and defenders were moving that way, she—

Leaving the space between Violet and the goal open.

"Alex! Here!" she yelled, waving her camán above her head. Alex looked her way, as the sliotar reached her skipped around and gave it a whack from the ground. It was still rolling forward when she hit it, sending her aim off, Violet ran forward, people were streaming this way again, the goalkeeper moving around, but there was still time. She caught up, scoop, catch, they were coming in from her right, she had like two seconds, she tossed the ball up, rearing back for a swing, fwok!

The defenders had been too slow, one of them leaned forward and stuck their stick out but they were nowhere close. The goalkeeper expected her to aim for the left side, but she angled it toward the right instead — he almost tripped over himself trying to turn around, but he was far too slow. The sliotar passed between the post and under the crossbar, there was another bong—

Violet spun around, bouncing up on her toes, letting out some kind of noise she wasn't sure what — she got it! That one was three points! Yay!

As the goalkeeper got the ball back, Violet skipped back across the pitch — way past the near line and more toward the middle, since the goalkeeper was going to fling it all the way over here anyway — feeling all light and bubbling, her skin tingling with energy, it'd be completely impossible to sit still, almost vibrating. Good thing she didn't have to sit still, iomáint involved a lot of running around and stuff, so that was just about perfect...

She slowed down around the midline, glancing over her shoulder — the goalkeeper was a little slow to get the ball for some reason, didn't know what was going on over there. (Seeing the big blue four hovering in the air, Violet couldn't help a little pleased wiggle.) She heard someone coming over, it was Lasairín. She kind of bumped into Violet, making her stagger a step, Lasairín's elbow hooking hers, jerking against Violet a little as she hopped in place, grinning at her. "Willow Willow! We're winning!"

Violet grinned back, waited a second so she could start hopping in time with Lasairín. "Yeah, we're winning!"

"You're great I love you, woo!"

She didn't know what to say to that, and the excitement bubbling in her chest was making it kind of hard to talk anyway — so she just giggled instead, feeling the grin pulling at her face. But they couldn't just stand here being silly, the goalkeeper got the ball back, the game was about to start up again...

Maybe sporty things weren't so bad? This was fun, actually? So, yeah.

(Violet guessed Mum and Geiléis were forgiven for making her do this in the first place.)

Short scene today...by my standards. Ha.

Iomáint is a real sport, by the way, called hurling in English. The rules on the magical side are slightly different — the official sport was formalised way after Secrecy — but I only changed a few minor things, it's extremely similar. Hurling is fucking wild, if you've never heard of it before look up some videos. I'm not a sports person, but that shit's crazy.