Even if her parents had all but forgotten Christmas, they had still pulled through with the whole gift aspect of the holiday this year. Well, at least better than they had done in years before. It seemed that her mother had honestly been listening when she spoke about her growing love for ice skating, and so her parents spent who knows how much money and bought her a brand new pair of ice skates, as well as spending money on professional skating lessons.

Today was the first day of her lessons, and she really was excited. Now that she was at HITS, she didn’t have her cheerleading to worry about, and she missed that thrill, she missed the working out and the physical…aspect of everything. Sure, jumping around and stealing the energy of smelly homeless people provided her with some exercise…but it just wasn’t enough to make her feel good about everything.

The blonde made her way to the skating rink, then went inside, frowning as she saw quite a large group of…well. Children. What kind of a skating lesson was this going to be? Why were there little kids here?

Well, maybe not little kids, they looked to at least be over ten…and some of them seemed to really know what they were doing. She blinked as she saw one of the children perform quite a good jump and spin in the air. Well…maybe this would be a challenge after all

Raven walked over to the bleachers right by the rink and began to put her skates on, lacing them up good and tight, then pushed out onto the rink. The next two hours were full of jumping and gliding and falling. So much falling. At least for Raven. She wasn’t sure how many times she had messed up with a jump, landing on her rear end and making an awful face. She was lucky though, some of the others in the class didn’t seem to have much experience either, so they were falling over every few minutes as well.

A few of the ‘kids’ however…well, Raven would have liked to toss them into mirror space. What attitudes! Just because the hadn’t fallen over yet…that was no reason to act so stuck up and arrogant. Sheesh. One of the brats, a girl with shiny black hair, she kept talking about how she had been skating since she could walk, almost and had been in lessons since age five. Well. Sure, she was pretty good, but Raven was rather quick to point out that if she was so perfect, she wouldn’t need to still be taking beginners lessons.

That wasn’t the best plan in hindsight. Pretty soon, a good portion of the rest of the class was making snarky comments about the ‘old lady’ who was trying to learn how to skate.

By the end of the lesson, Raven was completely exhausted and made her way back to her car, sitting in it for a few minutes, just rubbing her feet. That had been fun, and now she had some good healthy competition back in her life. She would get better at skating then that prissy little preteen. That much was clear.

Short term goals were always a good thing to hold dear.