Chapter 16 Rivven #2
It was easy. So easy that my breath shot out of me on a great, happily surprised gust. I started off slowly, getting used to the new skates on the surface of the pond.
I also noticed, after a few strides, that it felt different to skate with only one hand.
Plus I was overall larger, heavier, stronger than I’d been as a boy.
But my body adjusted quickly, and soon enough I was moving with comfortable competence, speeding up, slowing down, stopping with ice spraying like a frothy wave from the sides of the blades.
“Oh dear. Ah!”
I spun at once at the sound of Shiloh’s voice. She’d stepped out onto the ice and appeared to have immediately frozen, frightened by how slippery it was. She teetered, her arms outstretched, her knees locked tight.
Her eyes had panic in them. And they sought out me and me alone. Even though the others were closer.
I shot across the pond to her, catching her around the waist first with my tail, then with my arms when I fully reached her.
“You made it look so easy,” she said between shaky laughs. Her face was at my chest. Her warm, misting breath skimmed my skin.
I held her like that. For a moment. Probably for too long. I just could not quite seem to make my arms let go.
It was the sound of the other two venturing onto the ice that finally distracted me enough to pull away from the embrace. I’d almost entirely forgotten Xennet and Dorn were here.
“Blast,” Dorn growled, his thick legs straining to maintain his balance on the ice. “Blast it all, Rivven. It’s slipperier than a water ardu’s belly out here!”
“Do not try to walk!” Xennet advised brightly. “We must do as Rivven does. And glide along!” He demonstrated this, doing a reasonably good job of sliding across the ice in his boots.
Dorn attempted to do the same, but ended up sort of shuffling along instead, his face screwed up with concentration. It wasn’t anything close to skating, but it was good enough to keep him from falling for now, and I turned my attention back to Shiloh.
“You just hold onto me now,” I told her for the third time that day. I’d remind her as many times as I needed to. That I was here.
Here for her.
“Got it,” she said. She scooted around to my side and looped her arm with mine. I kept my tail wrapped possessively around her waist, telling myself it was for safety’s sake when really, I knew that it was not.
I began to move, drawing her with me. The sound of delighted shock that came from her as she began to slide along beside me made me feel as if my bones were made of sunlight.
I felt light, warm, and more alive than I had in cycles.
The sounds of the other two sliding – and, in Dorn’s case stumbling and swearing – fell away, until all I was aware of was the rhythmic mingling of our misty breath. The quiet, cutting swish of the skates.
If I could have chosen a moment, a single moment, in which to live out the rest of my days…
It would have been this one.
Eventually, Shiloh’s confidence grew, and she made some tentative moves of her own instead of letting me simply drag her around.
“That’s it,” I murmured encouragingly, pleased and so cursedly impressed with her. “That’s so, so good.”
Beautiful and kind and a brilliant painter, and now look at her. Being so brave.
“Ha! I’m not sure I’d go that far,” she replied, her cheeks stretched with a big smile. “We’ll have to practise more!”
Another comment that told me she wanted to stay here.
Maybe she didn’t want a husband. But by the empire, I would make her a home.
We continued skating for quite some time.
I worried that Xennet and Dorn would demand a turn on Shiloh’s arm.
I would not have let them. Dorn had already fallen multiple times, and I would not allow his big body to take Shiloh’s down with him.
Xennet was faring a little better, though he, too, had his stumbling moments.
He seemed to constantly want to go faster than the soles of his boots would allow for, which often left him careening chaotically around the pond.
At one point, he decided that launching himself into a snowbank was the best course of action to recover from a particularly reckless skid.
It seemed that they both realized they were not skilled enough to safely support my Shiloh on the ice, and the argument did not come up.
I’d never heard Shiloh giggle and cry out with such abandon the way she did that morning. It was entirely addictive. Every sound that came from her sent hot energy slicing up my spine. Her arm in mine was perfection.
She was perfection.
But she was also getting cold. I could feel it in the renewed tension in her arm – no longer from a fear of falling, but from her muscles clenching. Her blunt teeth knocked against each other, making tiny little chattering sounds.
“Let’s go back,” I said, bringing us both to a stop.
“No!” she said at once, with an adamance that made satisfaction in me surge. “I want to stay!”
“You’re cold.” I drew my knuckles across the surface of her cheek. Her skin was chilled from the air. “We can come back. We can always come back. Always.”
There was a promise in my reply.
In that final word.
Always.
Maybe she sensed it. That I really, truly meant it.
Or maybe, now that we’d stopped, she was finally realizing just how cold she had become.
She agreed, and we all returned to the saloon.