by Oluse on January 5th, 2012, 3:50 am
He envied the grace and beauty the expert skaters displayed as they danced across mirror lake. He watched for nearly an entire ring when he first witnessed them. They reminded him of the ocean, water welling toward the shore, momentum fueling elegant splashes off rocks, ending in animated sprays of light foam. Even the ice here looked like water. All of this beauty inspired him to give it a try. After renting out a pair of skates (realizing that his feet were getting bigger!) he was on his way. Down.
Yes, down. If the native Vani were like rolling ocean waves, he was like a thick drop of falling rain. He hadn't considered how difficult it would be to modify the structure of his bipedal nature, by reducing the surface area of his feet about twenty times. Silly him. By the time he had learned to stay upright without something to hold onto he was well into the morning. He had to be impressed with his own consistency, however, he had found yet another thing to add to his very long list of activities he harnessed absolutely no natural aptitude for.
However, with perseverance he discovered a trick to staying upright, move. Turning still proved a challenge, but he figured if stability came with speed, turning must as well. He kept challenging himself for some time, trying to build up speed, and get over the very innate fear of capsizing. It was about noon by the time he had built up a little more confidence, mostly due to his relocation to a slightly quieter part of the lake, with as far as he could see no observers. A somewhat of a failed assumption at that. As he soon came to the crashing realization of.
He had quite a bit of speed going, his goal in fact. Now with what he felt must be a sufficient amount of speed he began to first real attempt to turn! Focusing his eyes before him he moved an arm to the right, nothing happened... He tried pushing it farther out, with still no results. He pondered the idea, as he huff and puff across the ice, that maybe he still didn't have enough speed! Which is the moment a very still figure at the base of the bank caught his eyes in the peripheral. He, without thinking, looked in that direction, his boding shifting slightly, and to his dismay and horror, his course began altering.
Eyes wide he stuck his arms far out in front of him, as if trying to push the bank he was steering toward away. Suddenly he began to tip backward, instincts took over and he counterbalanced forward into an expert crouch, giving him a last burst of speed as he practically drived toward the poor innocent by sitter.
The slick sound of blades against ice turned alarmingly into a shrill shout of warning only a mere moment before the impact.
The event was hard and fast, most definitely not how Oluse liked any aspect of his life. The collision placed his chest in direct alignment of Kanedall's own, his face only slightly to the left. Not a particularly light impact, he knew immediately there would be some bruising, and hoped nobody would come out with anything broken.
Several discomforts stood out to Oluse in the wake of the accident. First was the aching pain upon his left pectoral muscle, directly against where he kept his money pouch within his thick winter shirt. The second being vivid pain within his already overworked right ankle from its last moment turn before it left the ground. Lastly, and honestly most concerning to Oluse, was the warm body resting directly beneath him.
Following a hurried groan, he slurred toward Kandall,"Oh, ma'am! I'm so-sorry!" The Vani language taking on a heavy Denvali accent. Clumsily, still spinning from the sudden reunion with ground level he tried to push himself up, his hand awkwardly falling on Kandell's chest. He stopped at that point, and looked down, a really confused almost drunken look filling his face. His eyes then traveled to Kandalls face. "Oh. I'm sorry, Sir." He corrected himself, something itching annoyingly at the back of his mind as he wondered why he had made such a wrong assumption.
