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The sun silently beats down on the grounds, waves of heat radiating off of everything. But then, a soft rumble begins. It grows louder and louder, starting in the mountains and crashing down down down until a great roaring avalanche of snow arrives...

The calm returns but the blistering heat is gone. "How's that, Autor?" Mia asks.

The boy smiles shyly at her, his warm, knitted scarf demonstrating a clear gradient of skill from raw novice to advanced beginner. "It's lovely," he says, squeezing her fingers in his gloved ones. "Thank you, Mia." Releasing them, he turns and places a hand on his hip to watch the next step.

At the mouth of the inlet a narrow cliff juts out into the water, covered by a thin layer of soil to which a mat of short grass is clinging, littered with demon bunny droppings. On this ledge, Korra stands, her feet planted firmly against the ground. Starting with that wide stance, Korra moves a foot and then pushes her arms in front and up, causing the lake bed to shift, and the waters to part as a narrow ledge of earth divides a smaller pond away from the larger lake.

Turning into the inlet, she leaps onto the surface and slides out into the center on a shelf of ice that stretches out in larger and larger crystals as it thickens beneath her. In the center of what will be the ice rink, Korra stops, and takes one calm, centering breath.

And then with her eyes closed she moves again, this time much more fluid in her motions, turning a slow circle on the ice with her arms in front of her, swaying as her weight shifts from foot to foot. A bubble of water rises in front of her, and as she pushes out, the bubble expands, passing through Korra so she's standing in the center of an ever expanding air filled bubble of water, stretching further and further out so by the time it hits the shore any onlookers will feel the cool sensation of water vapor from a fountain. She shifts her movement again, and the snowflake patterns of ice crystals appear at the top and the spread around the bubble, crystallizing and solidifying in a lattice of clear ice.

Then Korra opens her eyes, and finishes the rink as she slides back to the shore. There, a further turn and a sweeping gesture towards one side shatters a large hole in the side, perfect for a double door.

"Neat trick, Avatar," Autor says, accompanied by a saucy grin and an informal salute. With a few simple words, Mia sets a flurry fluttering down in the dome.

Once the rink is complete, the boy heads off to help an industrious ten-year-old set up the food and drinks table. There are some things too heavy for Rae to lift.

[Credit to the respective muns for their pups' part in the EP! Standard party post rules apply, all tags welcome.]

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"Well, I do have a new partner." As he relaxes, she picks up speed. It's just no fun going slow!

"Urk!" he says, leaning forward to try and keep himself standing; his skates skitter over the ice more than glide. "And you can whatever you like because of him? Or despite him?"

She swoops around him, catching him around the shoulders and fixing his posture before his feet can slip away.

"Does it matter?"

The boy throws his arms out, trying to steady himself by grasping at the air. He draws greedy breaths in through his nose when she catches him, and glances back.

Not three months ago, I wouldn't let anyone touch me.

"No," he murmurs, breathless. Then he laughs. "I'm just trying to get to know you, I guess. I don't even know your name."

"Isn't a girl allowed a sense of mystery anymore?" Katya asks mournfully, making sure his balance is back over his skates to give them traction again.

"Would you prefer that I call you 'the witch woman'?" Autor asks, neutral in response to her mourning. Her attempts to keep him upright seem to be working, but he's still as wobbly as ever.

"It certainly seems to please you." She observes, "And your knees do tend to work better when you bend them now and again."

"All right then, Baba Yaga," he says, nodding as he tries to follow her directions. The windmills he's making probably aren't doing anything.

"No, that is my boss." Well, not her boss boss, since he's Boris - she had a different fairy-tale form him when she was younger.

"Wait, what?" the boy says, and shock cracks his voice. "Wha--OW!"

This time, he manages to stick the landing, but bites a chunk out of his lip when he jars his chin.

"Oww," he says, rolling over to sit up. "Your boss is really Baba Yaga? Really?"

Edited 2013-07-20 06:00 (UTC)

"You would have to ask her." If you can find her. And identify her. She tsks at the blood, shaking her head. "You really mustn't do that."

Autor tongues the cut. "Not like I wanted to," he says, successfully chastised and smarting more from that than... Well, all right, the bruises hurt, too, and he's rather cold. Such is ice skating!

"So, I was right, then," he says, dabbing at his mouth with a handkerchief. "You do have magic. Or, rather, there's more evidence towards it, given that I can't imagine someone who may or may not be Baba Yaga hiring a non-magical being."

There's enough happiness here, tastes of sweet peaches and candied apples, that it's the work of a moment and half a thought to dip into the Gloom, to weave back together such a minor injury. She does it with a deft enough hand that while he might feel a moment of lingering deeper cold, there isn't a visible flicker in her movements.

"You may believe what you wish, I suppose, I have no governance over your thoughts." She snickers, offering a hand up again.

Autor brushes his newly-knitted lip with a gloved thumb, and barks out a stunned laugh. "No," he says, grinning as he happily clutches her offered hand, "but you wouldn't have directed them with your actions if you didn't want to."

"You are terribly strange. I am merely attempting to teach you to skate, thankless task that it is." She points out drolly, hauling him back to his feet.

Autor snorts. "Is fixing my lip a part of that, Witch Woman?" he says, shuffling his feet. "Why'd you show me that I was right?"

"Fixing what, exactly?" She blinks at him in incomprehension. "Your lip is fine."

Autor licks his lip, and holds up the bloodied handkerchief. "Eight seconds ago, it was not."

She continues blinking blankly, clearly confused and humoring him.

"Did you hit your head? And whyever are you carrying around that nasty thing?"

"If I were to fall again," he says softly, tucking the handkerchief away, "would you fix it?"

"If you were to fall again, I may give up on you as a lost cause for any sort of skating prowess - I have warned you about your knees." She snorts, unimpressed with the threat.

Autor makes use of his perfectly healed lips to smile at her. "Hm! Right, right, keep them bent," he says, mimicking her glide across the ice.

"They provide shock absorption." She demonstrates, bunny-hopping across the ice as if she wasn't trusting her balance to two thin metal blades. "And are much more forgiving of shifts in balance than your hips."

Autor purses his lips. "Which is good," he says, watching the ice and trying to bend his knees. "I'm pretty bad at handling shock."

"Mmmhmm." She hums, clearly unconvinced on that score. "Now look up at where you're trying to go - looking down tilts your weight too far forward."

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