"Oooph!"
For the umpteenth time that hour the boy sat down hard on the ice as his wobbly legs seemed to twist in on themselves, sending him sprawling gracelessly backward. Feeling the little slivers of ice dig through his pants, only to melt on contact with his skin, Sanjouin Masato growled. He was cold, clammy, bruised and definitely not happy. He growled again at the sight of several of his so-called friends whizzing away, laughing and catcalling as they left him behind.
"Bakas," he snarled under his breath. "Jerks! We just weren't meant to balance on frozen water on a pair of razor blades. It's not natural.."
And to him it certainly wasn't. He didn't just feel as uncoordinated as a stumbling calf on the frozen rink…he actually was that bad. His arms and legs, which moved so well together in the dojo or on the playing field, turned into the clumsy wooden limbs of a marionette when he was on the ice. But some malevolent imp was pulling the strings in all directions except where he wanted to go.
"Are you okay? Are you hurt?" chirped a feminine voice.
"No," he grumbled testily. The inquiry, though, had him shoving the mass of longish nut brown hair –his strict grandfather was always riding him to cut it and he refused out of pure stubbornness– out of his face to glance upward. For a moment he saw nothing but the brightness of the overhead lights, gleaming like stars from the industrial mesh ceiling, but slowly a pair of bright glen green eyes, wide with concern for him and peering at him from beneath a heavy fringe of bangs, was revealed as his eyes adjusted to the light.
An unruly tangle of sorrel curls, held back by a bright teal blue knit headband, framed the small heart-shaped face. It was, he realized, a girl who had to be at least several years younger than himself, no more than seven or eight years of age, who was standing over him. He thought he'd seen her earlier, twirling in the center of the rink as confidently as if she owned it. She was, however, currently biting her lip and looking anxious.
"Do you need me to call the 'tendant, then?" she asked, looking still more worried and jerking her head toward the booth where the ice rink's teen ticket takers sat in heated comfort and did their best to ignore all happenings on the ice. "Did you hit your head?"
"NO!" he insisted, the retort coming out a good deal more heatedly than he intended. He only realized how gruff he must have sounded when the girl flinched and jerked backward, wobbling uncharacteristically on her own tightly laced white skates.
'Great,' Masato thought disgustedly, praying she wouldn't cry. 'I scared a little kid.'
"Sorry," he muttered, waving a hand, grateful at least to get it up off the ice since it was feeling more than a little chill. Unfortunately, so was his backside, which felt like it was going numb. "I didn't mean to… I'm just no good at this skating stuff is all."
A bit hesitantly, like a fawn scenting the air for danger, she glided cautiously forward. But when she was back at his side, she held out a hot-pink gloved hand for him to take and grinned, revealing an adorable gap-toothed smile which marked her as even younger than he'd first guessed.
She was stronger than she looked too, he realized, as he grabbed her hand and she tugged him up onto unsteady feet.
"I'll show you," she announced earnestly. "Take both my hands and follow me."
Not waiting for him to do so, she grabbed his other hand in her own and began gliding backward on the ice.
"Hey," Masato protested shakily, though he wouldn't let go, knowing that he'd be back sitting on the ice again in an instant if he did. "Waitaminute…"
"Don't worry, I won't let you fall." The little girl's face screwed up in an expression of disgust as she surveyed his efforts. "You're doing it wrong. No wonder you slipped. You're too stiff. Just let your ankles move a little. Do what I do." Still moving backward, she wove a wavy little pattern with her feet.
Clumsily, Masato tried to copy the girl, staring past the ruffled turquoise flare of her skating skirt toward her pristine, silver bladed white boots. His own clumsy brown rentals couldn't seem to quite manage it, and he heard her give an exasperated little sigh as she scolded him.
"Don't just try to walk on the ice, silly. You'll fall."
For reasons he couldn't explain Masato felt compelled to mumble an apology for disappointing her.
"You're thinking 'bout it too much," she chided. "Just glide…" Her voice had gained a certain dreamy quality, as if she was off in another world where he could not follow, no matter how he much he might wish to do so.
Unexpectedly, she gave his arm a tug and reeled him in as he all but fell forward. Steady and supportive as an oak, she drew him out away from the boards, bearing up his weight on her small yet sturdy shoulders. Almost in spite of himself, he glided, the blades of his skates carving a crisp white squiggle on the frozen surface beneath him. She grinned in triumph, revealing her missing top front teeth once again.
Slowly they found their rhythm and as a brisk cool breeze blew across his face, Masato started to understand why people might actually like to strap metal blades on their feet and head out across the frozen wastes. It was kind of exhilarating not to be falling constantly on his butt, even if it was also kind of embarrassing that a first grader could skate rings around him…and backward, no less. Still, she knew what she was doing and was keeping him safe enough and upright. If any of his friends gave him a hard time, he'd just claim to be looking after her instead. When she winked at him he colored, realizing to his chagrin that she seemed to know what he was thinking but didn't care.
"I saw you out there," muttered Masato, stunned he had, under her tutelage, somehow managed to both coordinate his feet and speak at the same time. "You're really good. You can jump and everything."
The little girl preened. "Thank you. I love skating. It's kind of like dancing sometimes…or maybe flying, I think, without wings."
Masato winced as his ankles quivered slightly under the strain of staying upright on the slick surface. "I think maybe I was meant to stay on the ground."
She giggled at that, and her fern colored eyes twinkled merrily. "You'll learn," she said with a comical sage manner completely unbefitting her youth. "Then you'll find your wings."
"Maybe," temporized Masato uncertainly. "But I don't think I'll ever be as good at it as you. I bet you could be in the Olympics one day. I can just picture you out there, your hair bouncing in a ponytail as you spin and jump and win a medal."
Makoto brightened, upping the wattage of her already brilliant smile. "That would be great. I bet I'd be able to do all kinds of triple 'an quad jumps, even though my silly coach," –she wrinkled her nose then, twitching the faint little cinnamon sprinkle of freckles there– "says girls can't 'cause we're too weak. But I'm strong and I just know I can."
She looked so determined, her jaw jutting out pugnaciously, that Masato grinned and risked letting go of her hand to reach out and tweak one of her coppery ringlets. "I bet you do it too. You're a live wire, you know."
"Papa says that too sometimes," the girl mused. "He says my coach is just unen…unenlightened. But Mama says he really came over with the last ice age instead," said Makoto in the surreptitious yet sing-song tones of a child repeating something she wasn't supposed to have overheard, but had. She swiveled her ankles in a quick modified figure eight and sighed. "I hope I get a new one soon."
"Come on, honey, it's time to go," called a woman's voice, which had his little friend's head whipping around. Masato followed the direction of the girl's gaze across the rink, his own finally coming to rest on a tall, pale lady with hair the color of a bright ten-yen piece pulled up in a topknot revealing ears which were slightly reddened from the cold.
He blinked owlishly as, for the barest fraction of an instant, he saw behind her the eerie image of a thickly branched evergreen tree, its dark boughs dripping sadly with blood colored berries, an hourglass nestled among its roots, its sands almost run out. Had he not been clinging to her child's hands, he would have rubbed his eyes. Somehow, in defiance of the arena's frigid air, he broke out in a sweat even as he shivered, not from the cold, but from a moment's total unease.
"Do I have to, Mama?" The barest hint of a whine tinged Makoto's tone and she had scrunched up her nose in distaste at the idea of leaving. "It can't be time yet…"
The petulant sound distracted Masato from his disturbing musings and the gloomy image shredded away. As he'd never seen anything quite like it before, he finally decided he must have been daydreaming. The fact he even could do that and still stay upright only increased his admiration of his young skating tutor.
"Yes, it is, and yes, you do. Say goodbye, sweetie," the woman was telling her little daughter with exaggerated patience, holding up a coat that sported a jaunty sailor collar which, to his admittedly limited fashion sense, seemed in some odd way to suit her much more than the high necked skating dress.
"We've spent enough time at the rink for today between your lesson and the free skate. We've got to pick up your father so we can get packed for our flight tonight and drop you at the Iansha's. Anyway, I know Shinozaki will be eager to see you. And his parents said they'd see you got to your skating lessons each day we're gone."
"Yay!" squealed Makoto, letting go of Masato's hands to clap her own and giving a happy little leap that made him sway drunkenly, yet he still grabbed for her instead of the railing. "I can't wait to show Zaki-kun how I can jump now." She turned back and smiled brightly at Masato, chattering her explanation breathlessly.
"Sorry, but Mama says I've got to go. She and Papa are flying to Hokkaido to check out a new coach for me and they can't be late. Keep pract'cing. Byeeeeeee!"
Without any further backward glance she spun away from him with a speed that had Masato gasping, and zoomed away across the ice like a bright blue-green butterfly in swift flight, her short skating skirt ruffling in the breeze. And then, like that very butterfly, just for the giddy thrill of it, she dug in a toe pick and made a graceful, soaring leap skyward. Masato watched in wonder as she whirled in space for a long moment, poetry in motion.
In the instant before his feet slid out from under him, dumping him alone on the hard ice once more, he breathed. "Even without wings, she really can fly…"
(Author's Note #1: The tree with the red berries that Masato (Nephrite) saw behind Mako's mother was a yew tree, an ancient symbol of death, as is the hourglass. A spooky start to the first hint of his seer powers in this life.)
(Author's Note #2: I like doing the mushy kid one shots. Next one up will probably be Rei and Jadeite's, inspired by the opening credits from the SuperS movie.)