Boo and her mother were home from their shopping trip finally. Mommy was making tea and Boo was sliding on the wooden floor in a pair of woolly socks.
‘Look Mommy, I’m ice skating’
Boo’s mother watched as she performed complicated pirouettes and little jumps as she slid across polished surface.
‘Very clever sweetie, but be careful of the…’
With a huge crash, Boo collided with a small side table, knocking the china vase onto the floor and causing it to explode into a million tiny pieces.
‘….table’
‘Sorry Mommy’, I was just trying to learn to skate before Emma’s party tomorrow. I’ve never been skating and Emma told me that its really easy, you just push and glide, push and glide….’ She demonstrated the push and slide action and came perilously close to the second small table.
Boo’s mommy handed her a dust pan and a brush, ‘Here, clear up the mess, we can check youtube to see if there are any guides to learning how to skate in 20 hours or less.’
Boo swept the remnants of the vase up, threw the pieces away and took off the woolen socks so she could walk across the floor without slipping around too much.
Together they checked for lessons, but then got fixated on Torvill and Dean’s perfect performance at the 1984 Olympics to Boléro. Boo was especially impressed and wanted to try out a few moves in her socks on the wooden floor again, but Mommy, having already lost one vase was not sure that the furniture would stand up to much more floor skating, so she suggested that they should go to the ice rink and practice. ‘After all’, said mommy, ‘a little revision before a test is never a bad thing’.
Boo rolled her eyes, her mommy said the strangest things at times, it was not an test tomorrow, she just wanted to look great on the ice.
Boo positively skipped to her room, as usual the dragon was curled up on her bed and as usual he was hungry. Boo fed him three protein bars and two bars of chocolate, told him that she was going ice-skating and that she would be back in a few hours. ‘Oh, and please be careful when you leave, old Mrs Jones next door was complaining about dents and scratches in the roof of her new car and they definitely seem to match your claws.’
The dragon smiled, this is always a slightly scary sight and Boo instinctively took a step back.
‘I’ll wait for you and we can go on adventure later if you are not too tired’.
Boo smiled, lent forwards and then kissed her dragon on the snout, ‘I’d like that, see you soon, behave.’.
Boo and her mother arrived at the ice rink a short while later. Boo rented some skates and her mother was on hot-chocolate and photography duty as it was important that Boo could see how she looked so that she could refine her technique.
To say it went badly is an understatement, Boo, despite being tall and strong simply found ice skating way too unnatural. He ankles hurt, her knees hurt and she had all of the grace and poise of a giddy giraffe on the ice. Despite the pain, she skated in circles for almost an hour. This hour included multiple crashes and much sliding along on her bottom.
The hot chocolate helped, but the video of Torvill and Dean on you tube via mommies phone certainly didn’t. Emma’s party was going to be terrible, utterly, utterly terrible. All the girls would laugh at her and none of the boys would want to hold her hand. She pouted.
Disgruntled, Boo and her mother left the rink and stopped of for dinner at mommies favorite Thai place. by way of consolation they had Mee Krob, Panang and Pla Song Krueng, which always made them happy and thirsty, they finished off their meal with ice-cream, obviously.
When they got home, Boo declared herself to be too tired to worry and went to her room. The dragon sniffed at her and asked if she had brought him any Panang, explaining that it is one of his favourites and he can smell it several miles away. Silly dragon.
Boo explained that just how disastrously the ice-skating had gone and almost pleaded for help.
‘Dragons can ice-skate’. He looked proud, ‘dragons are actually really good at skating, lets go back to the rink and I’ll teach you, its really easy you just….’
‘Push and glide, yeah I know’
‘Yes, push and glide and try not to wobble too much.’
Boo grabbed her backpack, made sure her pigtails were nicely secure, jammed a bobble hat on her head and the borrowed sunglasses on her nose, pausing only to grab a thick pair of socks and to make sure the window was open, she jumped on the dragon’s back and they left the room with a SCHROOOOOOSH.
Moments later they were back at the rink, luckily someone had left a window open, so the dragon flew straight in without having to punch a hole in the wall.
As it was now getting later in the evening, the rink was almost deserted, Boo once more hired some skates and under the dragons direction did them up extra super tight over her extra thick socks. ‘This helps, trust me’. Keeping her bobble hat on, but putting her sunglasses in her bag she stepped tentatively out onto the ice.
The dragon followed, somehow he was balancing on his razor sharp claws and somehow he was gliding around the ice almost magically. Once more, nobody noticed him, which Boo thought was really odd as a ten foot tall dragon was not the sort of thing that was easy to miss. Worse a ten foot tall dragon that was ice-skating, was surely incredibly difficult to miss. But the other skaters did not seem to notice at all.
As the dragon completed his first lap he slowed down and joined Boo at the side of the rink. He grabbed her hands and skating backwards he pulled her along, letting her get the feeling of how to glide without the actually pushing bit. Boo suddenly realized that the tighter boots and assistance reduced the number of things she had to think about and she could concentrate on gliding.
The dragon pulled her along, then let her go, allowing her to glide, building up her confidence, then he swept around and pushed her with the edge of his wing, showing her that speed on ice is fun.
After just half an hour of this Boo was giggling and had already learned how to cross her feet in corners and was starting to try little jumps and hops. After an hour her legs were tired, but she had even mastered skating backwards at great speed.
‘I’m tired and you look hungry’, she had noticed the glint in his eye again. So she skated with real skill and purpose towards the rink exit so that she could get her bag and hence a dragon snack.
The dragon however had noticed a slightly plump lady with a very wobbly bottom getting on the ice. She had a big fur jacket on that made her look a lot like a sheep, and we are all aware just how much dragons love sheep.
Before Boo could even shout out a warning the dragon had hurtled around the rink in pursuit of her, closing every second, ten meters, 5 meters, 2 meters, the dragon sniffed the air…
Then a lot happened in a very, very short time.
At the very moment that the dragon leaped into the air, the lady who was completely oblivious to him sprayed some perfume behind her ears as she skated. The dragon paused, mid-pounce almost as though he had changed his mind, then in an instant he turned bright green, then bright red then a beautiful shade of aquamarine like a very rapidly changing chameleon. He wrinkled his nose and then sneezed out an enormous fire-ball missing the lady by fractions of a millimeter.
The fire-ball hit the ice though and the entire surface of the skating rink simply vanished and was replaced by an indoor ocean in an instant.
Boo, luckily, was half off the ice and was able to scramble to safety.
Half a dozen skaters where not so lucky, they made an instant transition from skater to swimmer in a lovely warm pool that was about a meter deep.
Shouts of surprise and amazement rang out and the dragon, who was still airborne at the time sneezed a second time, this time the fireball was much smaller and luckily it flew perfectly out of the open window.
The dragon, still looking somewhat blue flew over to Boo, who quickly gave him three packets of smokey bacon crisps. ‘What on earth happened there’ she asked him.
‘Well ice-skating makes dragons hungry and I thought that she was a sheep, sheep are my favorite, did I tell you ?’
‘Only a few times, but the fireballs ?
‘I sneezed, I am highly allergic to Chanel perfumes and that lady’, he pointed to a somewhat bedraggled lady emerging from the steaming swimming pool on the opposite side, ‘she caught me in both nostrils, a full blast’.
‘I think we had better leave, I’m sure that we are going to be in trouble if we stay’. Boo grabbed her backpack, made sure her hat was secure and once more jumped onto the dragon’s back.
A few moments later they were back home safe and sound.
Boo decided that after all that ice skating she needed a peanut butter and jam sandwich. On the way to the kitchen she noticed that her mommy was watching the news.
‘Police are investigating the source of a fireball that swept across the country earlier this evening, prompting hundreds of reports of UFO’s. A second fireball appears to have hit a local ice-rink. Nobody was injured but several people did get an early bath. The operators of the rink are happy to report that they should be back to ice rather than the current jacuzzi by the morning.’
‘Sounds like the sort of thing you could probably put down to dragons’, said mommy as she noticed Boo.
‘Oh no mummy, I’m sure that dragons cannot ice skate.’