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“Motherrrrrr,” Diana whined, “please just tell me what my Christmas gift is!”
She heard gentle laughter by her ear, followed by, “But then it's not a surprise, is it, Cabbage Patch?”
“I want to know nowww!” Maybe if Diana squirmed hard enough in her mother's grasp, she'd have to remove the mitten she'd placed over Diana's face, and she'd be able to see what this was about. Although it was nice and fuzzy and warm—but knowledge took priority! “I know we haven't left the manor grounds!”
Her plaintive cries were making most of the sound around her: the rest came from the crunching footfalls of her mother through fresh now, joined by another set of footfalls beside her from Anna. “My lady Cavendish,” Anna said, and Diana heard her footfalls come a little nearer, “might I persuade you to let me carry the young mistress Diana for you? Especially so soon after your return—”
“Anna,” Mother replied, with an airy tone, “if I'm well enough to be discharged, then I'm well enough to carry my little girl. It's not as if she's very heavy, after all.”
“If you insist, my lady.” Anna's footsteps drew away.
Diana snuggled a little closer against her mother's chest, a little angrily. She spent little enough time with Mother as it was! Anna was nice, but she'd take this little cubby against Mother's fur coat any day.
At long last, the walking came to a stop. “Are you ready?” Mother said, and Diana nodded frantically, feeling the woolen mitten rub against her face as she did so. Then, the mitten pulled away, and Mother said, “Open your eyes!”
When she did, she had to squint for a few seconds: the sun was so bright and there weren't any clouds after yesterday's snow. Finally, though, Diana was able to see where Mother had brought her. “The lake?” she said, seeing its wide treeless expanse before her—though it was difficult to make it out where it started exactly, under all the snow.
“And....”
Mother's voice was prompting. Diana looked down and saw a present in the snow, covered in shiny wrapping paper. Then, Mother let her down. “Open it up, Cabbage Patch,” she said, and Diana ran forward and got to work untying the ribbon. “It's okay to rip it, Diana,” her mother laughed.
At long last, Diana finished undoing the bright paper... carefully, no rips. Inside was a plain box with an easily removable lid, and once she'd yanked that off—“Are these ice skates?” She lifted them from the box by their shoelaces and frowned.
Mother smiled and reached into her coat pocket. “The gift isn't just ice skates.” She brought her wand out, held it up to her mouth, pointed it at the lake, and blew. It was like she was blowing bubbles, but the effect was enormous: a massive gust of sparkling wind rolled from her wand, sending snow flying, and Diana had to flinch and cover her face.
When the gale had settled, Diana looked back around and gasped: all the snow had been blown off the lake. “You see, Diana,” Mother said, twirling her wand above herself like the fairy godmother to let more sparkles fall down, “I'm going to be teaching you how to skate.” The sparkles gathered around Mother's shoes and flashed brilliant white, leaving Mother with her own pair of ice skates that looked like they were made of diamonds.
Diana nearly skipped to her mother, but managed to keep a little decorum as she walked instead. “Can you do the magic on me too? Yours are way prettier!”
“Until your magic comes in,” Mother said with a shake of her head, “we'll stay with a mundane pair. Come on, off we go. It's time for your first lesson!”
Diana ran forward through a path her mother's spell had blown into the snow, smiling without a care. When she reached the lake edge, she sat down, pulled off her boots, pulled on the ice skates, and tied them with a double bow that was very advanced for her age. And then she leaped to her feet, and promptly fell face-first into the snow.
“Careful, Diana!” She felt Mother's hand grabbing her coat and lifting her up to a stable position. “Hold onto my hand to start,” Mother said, and Diana grabbed it immediately, “and we'll begin by going around the lake a few times. Nice and easy.”
They stepped onto the ice and got started doing exactly that, Diana letting her mother tow her along. She didn't think about trying to propel herself, just about keeping her feet under her.
But it was good. Mother was with her, and she wasn't at the hospital, and she wasn't coughing, and it was Christmas. And Diana was smiling, and her cheeks felt warm despite the cold air. And after a few circuits, just before Diana realized she wasn't thinking about her balance anymore, her mother aimed her at the center of the lake and let go.
Diana pinwheeled her arms, and then, to her astonishment, remained standing. “I did it!” she yelled, throwing her hands up and still not falling down.
“Hooray for you!” said Mother, smiling so brightly the ice should have melted.
“Now teach me to do tricks!”
Mother shook her head, gliding toward Diana. “Now, now, Cabbage Patch. Skating's like magic. If you want to do the big things....” She stuck her leg out, glided backward, spun around a corner, jumped into the air, and did two whole spins before landing on one foot.
Diana's mouth fell open, but a few seconds later her mother glided to a stop near her, and Diana realized she was meant to finish the phrase. “You have to start with the little ones,” she admitted. “All right.” She nodded sharply. “What's the first thing, Mother?”
“So serious. The first thing is....”
And then her mother wobbled, and she fell over on her side.
Diana gasped and rushed forward, or at least tried to. “Mother!” she cried, flailing.
But Mother was laughing. “That was it!” she said, getting her feet back under her and pushing herself back upright. “You need to learn to fall—hey,” she said, gliding forward and catching Diana before she could faceplant again, “let me show you how first. Don't worry, I'm okay. It was on purpose.”
“Wait, really?” Diana stared up with wide eyes. “You need to fall on purpose? But I thought the point was not falling!”
Mother shook her head. “Diana, everyone falls. Even really good figure skaters fall sometimes. It's not scary, it's just part of the sport. You need to learn how to do it safely,” she said, drawing back a little and releasing Diana, “so you can know how to get back up again. Now watch.”
Diana watched. And when her mother fell this time, she realized that it wasn't as uncontrolled as it had looked at first glance. She bent her knees, she slid her feet to one side, and when she landed on her hip it was almost like reclining, thanks to her hands touching the ice first. “Did you see that?” Mother said, getting up carefully to show how that was done as well. “Let me show you again.”
She did it a few more times. Finally, Diana nodded. “I want to try!” And before her mother could respond, she bent down and kicked to the side and slapped her weight down on her hip. “Ow!”
“Good job!” Bernadette skated over, and the smile on her face made the pain in Diana's side vanish. “But be sure to put your hands down first, okay? Can you get up?”
Diana could, thank you very much! It was all about reversing the fall: getting her hands and legs back beneath her and pushing up. She had to pinwheel her arms a few times again, but she stayed up. “I did it again!” she said.
“You're a natural. Keep practicing!”
Diana turned away, skated a few steps forward, and then let herself fall left. She made sure to put her hands down quickly this time, so it didn't hurt at all. When she got back up onto the ice, she was smiling. She flung herself again, laughing as she did it, and pushed herself up once more. She skated a few feet more, and threw herself down—
There was a cracking noise.
Everything was freezing. Everything from her neck all the way down to her toes, frozen right through her coat and her shirt and all her layers. And she couldn't breathe, like her lungs had turned to ice and wouldn't move, and she was flailing, and trying to call for help, and her arms were slipping against the ice and she couldn't grab on and she couldn't pull herself out—
“Oh my god! Diana!”
She heard the voice distantly, and was kicking and crying, and she still couldn't breathe but she could cry, and then she heard more cracking and saw her mother approach, and—a force lifted her out of the water, and she saw sparkles surrounding her, and then glanced down to see the hole in the ice where she'd fallen through, just big enough for her body.
“Diana! I'm so sorry! Are you okay?”
Moving at incredible speed, with Diana trailing behind her like a balloon on a string, Mother skated off the lake. Only once she'd reached the edge did her mother draw Diana back into her arms, hugging her so tightly that even Diana's frozen sodden skin could feel it. “Anna!” her mother barked. “Get inside immediately and draw up a warm fire, and get plenty of blankets and a change of clothes. Do it!”
Diana shivered and whimpered and tried to hold Mother tight.
“Diana! I should have checked all of the ice, I shouldn't have assumed—are you all right?”
Diana looked up into her mother's face, filled with horror and worry, panting with effort. That, more than anything else, was what made her bury her face into her mother's coat and start to sob.
It was winter break of the second year at Luna Nova, and Diana would have been quite pleased to spend it beside a raging fire, with hot cocoa in her mug and a good textbook in her hand.
No such luck now that she was dating Akko Kagari. The girl had basically dragged her from her dorm room, which would have been bad enough, but Hannah and Barbara had helped her by providing the necessary winter clothes. Traitors. So now here she stood, foot-deep in snow, wondering when social protocol—not that she had any idea what social protocol governed these interactions—would allow her to excuse herself.
At least everyone else seemed to be having fun.
“A little more forward....” Amanda was waving her arms back and forth, like an airport worker directing a plane with batons. “A little more....” In this case, what she was directing was similarly massive: a house-sized ball of snow, steadily rolling toward her. “Aaaaaand stop!”
The ball stopped. Jasminka peeked out from behind it, with a questioning look, and Amanda responded with a thumbs-up and, “Perfect! I'll magic some more snow over and this'll be the best snowboard ramp Luna Nova's ever seen! I'm gonna do some crazy jumps off this thing!”
“Moron,” Hannah called from her seat on the sidelines, though the word didn't have the bite it once had. “It's all flat around here. How are you gonna get enough speed to go up the ramp?”
“Luckily for you, dear spectator, I am a genius.” Amanda raised her boot and then stuck it down into the snow, and a big snowboard sprung out as if she'd stepped on a rake. Of note were the attachments: two brooms, taped haphazardly to either side. “Feast your eyes on this!” Amanda said, brandishing it with one hand. “The world's first ever snowbroomboard!”
She paused. “Snowbroom? Broomboard? Whatever, the point is that it's awesome. Just stand on this....” She set it down in the snow, jumped on it, and yelled, “Tia freyre!” It rose beneath her feet. “Hah! I'll get so much air!”
“Cheating!” Hannah jeered.
Barbara, sitting beside her, jostled Hannah with an elbow. “No, let her do it. I wanna see how hard she falls on her face.”
“Girls,” Diana chided.
They looked at her in unison, and with similar timing said, “What?”
Diana rolled her eyes and turned her attention to other parts of the snowy landscape. The big snowball, soon to be a ramp, had been deposited next to a frozen river on the grounds, and Constanze was on the river. To be more precise, she was driving an ice resurfacer across said river, smoothing it out. Diana would have asked where Constanze had gotten such a thing, but she'd learned to stop asking questions about the girl's procurements somewhere around the time she'd seen Constanze's rocket launcher.
“You're doing great, Constanze!” Lotte said from a little ways away on the other side of the river. “Keep it up!”
“Lotte,” came an annoyed voice from below her, and Lotte looked down to see Sucy sprawled on the ground, waving her arms back and forth across the snow. “It happened again.” The girl was surrounded by the outline of her efforts, except that her 'snow angel' had acquired a pair of devil horns and a forked tail.
“Well....” Lotte grimaced. “Maybe you'll get it next time?” There were indeed a half-dozen other snow devils around the two of them.
“Mm.” Sucy pushed herself to vertical, looking very strange indeed in a winter coat and snow pants which proved, incontrovertibly, that she had both arms and legs.
“Does anyone have a carrot?” came the yell from a bit further afield, and Diana turned with a smile to see Akko. She was building a snowman, or rather snow-witch, because while Akko was wonderfully unpredictable in some ways, there were some things that would never change about her. So unless something very unusual was going on, the snow-witch she was building was definitely a facsimile of Shiny Chariot.
The supposition was confirmed when Akko called out, “Anyone? I need a Shiny Carrot for Snowy Chariot here!”
Diana sighed and trudged forward through the snow. “Let me help, Akko,” she said, and waved her wand to conjure something that wasn't strictly a carrot—it would be a bit too easy if witches could make food from nothing—but looked enough like one for snow-witch purposes. With a flick of her wand, the 'carrot' flew base-first into the center of Snowy Chariot's face and stuck there.
“Thanks, Diana!” Akko beamed, her face bright red with a chill she didn't seem to notice. “Want to help me finish her up?”
“Oh, all right.” To be honest, it wasn't a half bad sculpture. Akko hadn't settled for stacking spheres: her Snowy Chariot had legs, albeit thick ones to carry the weight of the snow, and her torso had defined details. Of course, some traditions of snowman building had to be respected, so her arms were just sticks and her facial features were mostly delineated by pebbles. The hat was a real hat, though.
“I'm just glad Professor Chariot isn't here to see this,” Diana said.
Akko looked at her. “Why?” she asked.
It occurred to Diana that her words had probably come out wrong. “Well, you know she gets around her old merchandise. She'd be mortified, precisely because it's such a good sculpture.”
Akko's concerned expression cleared up right away. “Oh, yeah! She'd be so embarrassed. She still gets awkward around the poster by my bed!”
“Well, you can nearly see her rear end on it.”
“Mm-hmm.” Akko nodded happily. “Now come on, let's finish this up.”
They kept at it for a few minutes, and Diana added most of the finishing touches: a bit more snow added here, a touch shaved off there. Once they were done, Snowy Chariot looked as authentic as she could, being a lifeless statue.
Akko and Diana stepped back. “Pretty cool, right?” Akko said, and then turned to the side and yelled, “Constanze! Take a picture!”
“I don't know.” Diana frowned. “I don't really feel like she's complete until she's in motion, do you?”
She pulled out her wand, and by the time Akko's eyes had started sparkling with anticipation, Diana had cast a spell upon the statue.
Immediately, Snowy Chariot leaped to life, spreading her arms like the real deal introducing her magic act. An icy cape flowed from the top of her back to the ground below, fluttering in a non-existent wind, as she reached her hand out. Akko laughed and reached back.
Then, Snowy Chariot jumped into the air, and a broom made of snow manifested beneath her, letting her fly around in an ascending helix. Once she reached the top, she stuck out a wand made from a rough branch and raised it high, and the broom exploded into falling snow. Chariot drifted to the ground amid the snowfall, made a deep bow, and then returned to her original pose. She was still once again.
“Wow.” Akko just stared up at the snowfall for a few seconds. “That was... amazing, Diana.”
“Well, um.” Diana sidled a little closer. “I'm glad you enjoyed that display of motivic magic. I thought it might complete your work.”
“It did.” As if she wasn't thinking about it—so unlike Diana—Akko moved closer as well, reaching her hand out to hold Diana's own gloved hand. “I love winter so much. Don't you?”
“Well....” Diana winced. “I suppose I would say—”
“Yo, lovebirds!”
Ah, and there was that infernal social awkwardness again. Without meaning to, Diana found herself releasing Akko's hand as the existence of other people in her vicinity made itself known. “What is it, O'Neill?”
“Taking bets for how much air I can get!” Amanda was waving her broom-augmented snowboard of indeterminate name around, standing next to the now-completed ramp. “Hannah says I'll barely make it past the river, but the smart money's on me getting all the way over to Luna Nova's front door.”
“Obviously the answer is 'infinite air'.” Diana scoffed as she walked toward Amanda, arms folded. “You're riding brooms.”
“Nah, nah, the rules are that I turn the brooms off just as I leave the ramp. I'm only using them for acceleration.” Amanda grinned, then set the snowboard down so she could put her boots into its bindings. “Come on, bet soon before you miss your chance.”
“I'll do you one better!” Akko rushed past Diana, running awkwardly through the thick snow. “I bet that when I go after you, I can get twice as much air as you manage!”
“Big talk from Miss 'I've only been flying a broom for six months', but whatever you say.” Amanda, now fully bound to the board, waddled away down the trail Jasminka's snowball-rolling had left. “All right, someone count me down!”
“Let me get over there first!”
Akko was still running forward, and with a horrible flash Diana realized that she was about to reach the frozen over river. “Akko,” she yelled, reaching out a hand, “be careful—!”
Akko reached the ice, slid over it, and continued without incident.
Diana sucked in a breath, finding that her heart had decided to shift into its top gear. How considerate of it. She metered her breathing for a few seconds, still walking forward as her expression returned to neutral. When she reached the ice, she took out her wand, cast a little spell, and made an invisible bridge over the treacherous patch.
“All right!” Amanda was at the end of her path. “Ready? Consey, stop riding that thing, the ice is fine! Watch me instead!”
Constanze, who had traveled quite a ways past Diana's crossing point, rolled her eyes but hopped off. For her, the snow approached waist height, so she had quite a bit of trouble wading to the crowd of spectators, but she made it eventually. “All right!” Amanda said, striking a pose. “Akko, count me down!”
“Five!” Akko shouted.
Amanda leaned forward and said, “Tia Freyre!” She started sliding forward without leaving he ground.
“Four! Three!”
She reached the ramp, still accelerating, and bent her knees as she started going up.
“Two! One!”
As Akko cheered out the final number, Amanda sailed off the end of the ramp and shouted, “Tia Fini!” With the brooms no longer active, all that kept her in the air was momentum, but she seemed determined to make the most of it. She bent her knees, grabbed her board behind her, and went into a tight spin—twice, three times, four times.
“She's really staying up there,” Sucy commented. “No, wait, there she goes.”
At last Amanda was falling to the ground, from a drop that had to be some fifty feet. Diana found herself freezing up, shouting internally at her arm to grab her wand and catch Amanda—but Amanda just let go of her board, put her arms behind her head, and fell flat into a pile of snow. It sent up a puff of snow around an Amanda-shaped hole, and for a moment everything was still.
Then Amanda sat up and whooped. “That was awesome!”
“That was incredibly irresponsible!” Diana blurted.
Amanda glared at her across the snow. “Chillax, Cavendish. I set up a bunch more powder in the landing zone. Tia freyre.” Her board rose from the snow, suspending her upside-down and carrying her back toward the group. “Honestly, for an ice queen, you don't seem to like winter that much.”
Diana didn't know what to say to that, but luckily she didn't have to: Hannah leaned forward with a snide expression on her face. “What was that about making it all the way to the castle, O'Neill?”
Amanda, still upside-down and floating toward them, crossed her arms. “And what was that about me barely making it over the river, England?”
“Don't try to distract from your failure.” Hannah smirked. “Looks like the money wasn't smart, but your mouth sure was.”
“Well, babe...” Amanda smiled. “If you don't wanna hear my smart mouth, I can think of one way for you to shut me up.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No no no,” Hannah said, smiling nervously.
“Oh, yeah, baby!” Amanda reached out with both hands, puckered up and floating toward Hannah with increasing speed. “Gimme some sugah!”
“Nooooo!” And Hannah ran away, laughing.
A pause, as the upside-down Amanda blew past them. Then Lotte leaned over to Barbara and whispered, “So, are they dating, or....”
Barbara shrugged. Behind Diana, Hannah's giggles reached a fever pitch of shrieking as, presumably, Amanda closed in on her. Diana didn't look around to confirm, because she was pretty sure her cheeks would combust if she tried.
Akko, on the other hand, had turned around already, and she was scowling. After a few seconds, she yelled, “Hey, lovebirds! I need that snowboard!”
“What?” Diana focused all her attention on Akko. “Akko, you can't!”
“Well, obviously I can't. Amanda's still hogging the board.”
“I mean it's too dangerous!” Diana got closer, trying to get Akko's attention away from Amanda and Hannah. “What if you land in some thin snow and get really hurt?”
“Okay, I'll just not do that, then.”
“It's not that simple!”
But Akko had returned her gaze to Amanda. “Hey, Amanda, are you gonna be... can I get the....” She raised her hand to wave, but gradually lowered it. “Okay, looks like that'll be going on for a while,” she grumbled.
“So they must be dating, right?” Lotte whispered.
Barbara winced. “I think it's more like... nemeses with benefits?”
Regardless, Diana was relieved... up until Akko's face brightened up, and she ran in the other direction. “Whatever! I can do other fun stuff while they're busy!” And Diana realized with a flash of horror what she was running at. “Metamorphie vestesse!” Akko shouted, finishing the spell with a running leap—and her boots changed into ice skates in mid-air, just as she landed on the frozen river.
Diana's breath froze.
Akko was sliding easily across the ice, turning forward and backward, reversing direction easily. She bent her knees, and leaped, and did a spin and three quarters, and landed badly—she was wobbling, about to fall—
“Paleis Capama!”
Diana didn't even realize she had her wand out, or that she was shouting the words, until the blast of light had struck Akko before she could fall. Now she was floating in a bubble, looking at Diana in confusion as she was floated off the ice to be deposited in the snow.
And after a moment, Diana realized that everyone else was looking at her too. Even Amanda and Hannah had stopped making sounds, and Diana dared to glance their way to see them sitting in the snow, staring at her.
Diana sucked in a breath, closing her eyes for a moment. “Thank you all for inviting me,” she said. “However, I believe I have some work to do. I shall see you all later.”
She turned and hurried away. With any luck, no one would follow—
She hadn't even made it to the castle when she heard hurried footsteps behind her, although they didn't sound human. She glanced around to see no one, and then glanced down to see Akko transformed into a snow rabbit, bounding over the snow with a grace her human form could never match. Diana stopped and let Akko round in front of her, bursting back into her human form with a puff of smoke.
Diana sighed, and awaited whatever the inevitable outburst would be. But Akko leaned forward and said, “Do you wanna talk about it?”
Diana let out a shaky sigh through gritted teeth, and looked to the side. “Okay,” Akko said. “Can I talk?” And Diana couldn't say no to that, so she just slumped her head.
“Okay, so when I was a kid, I used to live near a river that froze over in the winter. At least, sometimes it did. And my dad would take me out ice skating on the river, because he wanted me to learn. I never really got very good at it... which, I guess, mighta been because I only wanted to focus on magic.” Akko grinned and scratched her neck. “But it was fun! Until one day.”
Diana looked up, because Akko's tone had gotten dark. “I was just skating around,” she said, “and then I heard this crack. And before I knew it—fwoosh! I fell through the ice. And it was the coldest I've ever been in my life! My dad had to drag me out. It was awful.” Akko shivered, and took Diana's hands in her own, and Diana squeezed back in sympathy.
“And you know what we did after that?” Akko smiled. “As soon as it was really frozen, we went right back on the ice again.”
That got Diana to look her in the eyes. “What? But... you were hurt!”
“Yeah, so?” Akko shrugged. “Stuff happens.”
“But why did you go out right away?”
“I guess so I'd know not to be scared of the ice. And now I'm not!” Akko leaned in. “I don't know why you're so nervous, but I feel like it's kinda like what happened to me, except without the part where I went back.”
Diana bit her lip. “It... was when I was six. My mother never brought me back onto the lake again, before she....”
“If you really wanna go back inside, that's fine.” Akko reached up and cupped her cheek. “But the Diana I know wouldn't let a little fear stop her. Do you wanna give the ice another try?”
She was standing on the ice, trying not to hyperventilate. Akko had one hand tight around hers, and her skin thrilled at the contact though it was through two layers of gloves.
“All right?” Akko said. “Your skates are on right, right?”
“Right.”
“And you're really up for this.”
“Right.”
“Because if you're not then it's totally okay—”
“Akko let's do this before I have a panic attack—”
“Okay, get ready....” Akko bent down a little, like a runner preparing to jump from the blocks. “Let's go!”
And they were off, very slowly. Diana was able to keep her balance without thinking, which was good, because all of her thinking was going into controlling her breathing. So Akko was making the motion happen, and towing Diana along. They proceeded down the frozen river, Akko in the lead and Diana behind, and she couldn't help but feel like a child again.
Akko leaned forward and picked up a little more speed, and Diana sucked in breath. “It's okay,” Akko said. “If Constanze's Zamboni can go over this thing, we're definitely gonna be fine.”
“But what if we're not,” Diana managed to get out through the gaps in her gritted teeth.
“Huh.” Akko shrugged, spinning around so she was looking at Diana and skating backward. “Then I guess one of us might fall through the ice. And then the other one would get us out! Or one of them will,” she said, leaning her head at the spectators: the rest of the Red, Green, and Blue teams, who'd abandoned snowboarding and making out alike to watch their progress. As Diana glanced at them, Lotte offered a thumbs-up and a smile.
Yet the little, panicked Diana crying inside her refused to be convinced. “But Akko, what if—”
“No what ifs!” Akko grabbed Diana's other hand and torqued them, so that they were spinning around a central axis. Diana tried not to let her legs flail. “So what if something bad could happen? If you think like that all the time, when are you gonna let something good happen?”
Before Diana could summon up a response to that, Akko stopped their spin with another twist. “Try and keep up!” she called, and let go of Diana as she bent down and started pushing at the ice in earnest.
“Akko!”
“Keep your eyes on me!” Akko glanced backward at her, just long enough to grin.
“Akko, I swear—” Diana tried to lean forward, and tried to push off against the ice like Akko was doing, picking up speed—and, after a few seconds, she was surprised to find that it was working. She dared not look down, but she did seem to be accelerating, though not as much as Akko.
“Yeah, you're doing it!” Akko spun around, both arms up in a cheer, slowing down with the motion. “But I bet you can't catch up!”
Diana growled, and bent further forward, and ran.
Akko's eyes widened, and she turned around to gain ground, but Diana was on the warpath. She kept accelerating, kicking against the ice over and over again, and within only a few seconds she was right behind Akko, ready to crash into her.
Oh. Diana was going to crash into her.
Her eyes wide, Diana pinwheeled her arms. “Akko, look out!”
Akko didn't react in time to stop the collision. She did react in time to turn around, so that when Diana crashed into her, Akko fell on her back with a hand hastily slipped behind her head to stop it from hitting the ice. Diana landed on top of her, and oh, Beatrix, it was her nightmares all over again, and they were going to crash through the ice and freeze to death—
Akko was laughing.
Diana blinked. “Why are you laughing?”
“Because it's funny!” Akko pulled her hand out from behind her head, if only so she could spread her arms wide. “We fell!”
“Yes! We fell! That's bad!”
“If it's so bad, then why are we okay?”
Diana stopped. She looked around. There weren't any cracks in the ice. No one was falling through, and no one was freezing, and no one's mother was having to fish her out—it was okay. It was actually okay.
“Hey, Diana, look at me.” Akko was staring right at her, her face inches away from Diana's face. “You're okay. It's all fine. Are you with me?”
“I'm okay,” Diana breathed. Then she started shaking. It took her a moment to realize that they weren't sobs. “I'm okay,” she said again, and she was laughing. “I'm okay!”
“Yeah, you're okay!” Akko's smile froze on her face as Diana kept laughing. “All right, I didn't think it was that funny—”
At which point Diana grabbed her and pulled her in for a kiss.
It was short and it wasn't involved: chapped lips in the cold did not an enjoyable kiss make. But when it was done, Akko's face was red again, and not from the weather. “Okay,” she said. “That was pretty okay too.”
Diana smiled. “Thanks for skating with me, Akko.”
Akko smiled back. “Any time.”
There was a pause.
“So,” Akko said, still lying on top of her, “do you wanna get up so we can keep skating?”
“Not at all.”
Akko settled down a little closer to the ice. “Me neither.”