Finding Contentus

Chapter 161: Going

...that I love her...

Urielle told Kakara to let loose. So she did, removing all restrictions, all troubles, all worries. It was like her feet had wings as she glided across the cloud-reflecting ice of Lake Sinemas in bladed boots. She might as well have been flying in the sky, transported to another realm where it was just her and the otherworldly sounds of the frozen water.

The biting gales blew through her hair and face as she pushed forward, flakes of snow sprinkling her as if she were a tough cookie. She moved her right foot, then her left foot, guided by momentum, skating at an unparalleled speed that made everything else fade away into something meaningless.

It was magic. Just like her hum. She could skate and hum forever without having to catch her breath. She could dance to the otherworldly tune of contentment without ever breaking a sweat. She could go the distance without having to rest at a fixed destination.

Her head was floating, her breath was misting, her legs were burning, her adrenaline was surging, her skin was freezing, her arms were moving in and out, up and down, directing her entire body in a mesmerising dance like an elegant bird performing aerial ballet for a transfixed audience of murmuring starlings. In fact, a flock of starlings made turning, twisting, spiralling and swooping patterns in the sky, casting breathtaking shapes, wings beating together like a joint formation of mysterious music.

Kakara wasn't much of an artist compared to the rest of her family, but when she skated, the metal blades beneath her boots carved in cursive handwriting, creating lines of poetry she would never read. She looped shapes and symbols she would never draw. She scribbled messages she would never send. She sculpted figurines she would never play with. She bust out rhymes she would never say. She dotted down lyrics she would never sing.

Urielle was with her, too, adrift in her own world where nothing but the next glide, the next smooth turn, the next jump, the next spin, the next landing and the next propulsion mattered. Watching her cousin in action was like witnessing a swan dancing elegantly across the ice, using body language alone to express the emotions she smothered to death.

Kakara was used to seeing Urielle conducting skating classes with the schools of children, but to actually learn from her, and skate with her, was another level of fulfilment she never knew she needed.

It wasn't all cherries and cream at first. Hell, it was crap. Kakara fell. Then she fell some more, and more, and more, and more. It didn't help since it looked like she wet herself whenever she got up, making the little ones stare, mouths twitching slightly in containing their giggles. She eventually got so fed up with the piss poor performance that she murdered falling altogether, correcting her centre of gravity and working on her balance.

Urielle, along with the children, made skating look so easy that once Kakara focused on miming them, it quickly clicked. Then again, her cousin had called her a natural. What took Kakara mere days to learn took others weeks of practice.

Kakara closed her eyes, pulled her right leg from behind, bringing it over her head. She arched her back and grabbed the skate with both hands, holding the position while her left leg kept her in motion, spinning all the while like a whirlpool that drew in fresh fish.

"A bloodbath is coming," Urielle said over the harsh winds.

She was right. A bloodbath was coming, uglier than decaying corpses. Hellish howls made the hairs on Kakara's neck stand. The primals were chasing after them, hateful eyes glowing. Despite their classless form, they always managed to keep up, some running on two legs, four legs, six legs, hell, eight legs too at extra speed like oversized centipedes.

The more the merrier. Kakara dropped her right leg, opened her eyes and stepped into her element. She bent down extremely low, feeling her quads burn as she ducked underneath a full row of primals, swiping to decapitate her with pangas for claws. She stabbed the ice with her G sword and turned around, straightening back up to deliver clean swipes of her N sword, separating necks from their heads and coming back around to cut through the heads with her metal blades.