Lucy

My ankles wobbled on the slick ice, the cold seeped through my layers like water, and I couldn’t help but smile. She stood there dressed in yellow from her snow pants to her hat, and I watched her eyes, fearless and bright, as I urged her onto the ice. She ran towards it like a firework to the night sky, skidding and shaking and then smacking the surface like that final grand pop of color. She sprawled all fours out and didn’t make a sound.
“Lucy!” I slid my way across the ice, my hands waving in the air trying to keep my balance. When I reached her I frantically shook her shoulder, trying to bring her back to consciousness. Then I heard that infamous giggle and saw her face widen with a grin.
“Gotcha!” she said, as she reached her yellow-mitten hands up to me. I ground my teeth and laughed along with her.
“You know that really wasn’t funny, Lucy.”
She raised her eyebrows and grinned a little more, “Then why’d you laugh?” I just shook my head as I grabbed hold of her hands and lifted her to her feet.
She looked at me with those fearless and bright eyes, “Danielle?”
“Yeah, Luce?”
“Do you know how to skate?”
I smirked a little, “No, not really.”
She giggled and shook her head at that, “Yeah, me neither.” Then she wiped the ice and wetness off of her snow pants, and when she started to wobble she reached out her hands and clung to me. It threw off my balance, but I had I recover it fast so that neither of us would fall. As we weaved our way across the ice, I could tell she was getting the hang of it, and I was too. Whenever she felt uneasy or off balance, she would grab onto me and after a second or two she would let go of me to skate on her own. Each time she did that, she got better and better until eventually the both of us were gliding with ease. We skated all around until the sun started to go down.
She made her way over to me, till she was skating along side me, “Danielle?”
“Yes, Luce?”
“Do you know how to skate now?”
“I’d say so, yeah. Do you know how to skate now?”
She giggled at this, “Of course I do, Danie—”
In the middle of the sentence, as quickly as she started to wobble, she smacked the ice yet again.
“Ow…” she said as with a sigh.
I cringed at the sound, “Guess you don’t know how, huh, Luce?”
She raised an eyebrow at me, popped right back up without any help, and effortlessly glided into the distance. Lucy cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted into them with the intensity of a firework shooting up towards the sky, “Just cause I fell down doesn’t mean I can’t skate, it just means I’m learning how, Danielle!!” The phrase exploded into the hills surrounding us and the colors of it sank into my mind like it would into the blackness of the sky.
I smiled at her and shouted, “You’re right, Lucy. You’re right.” Because she was. I had never heard a truth as simple and forward as that. And from that night on, sparks flew in my mind as I remember that whenever I fell, I knew it wasn’t because I was incapable of doing something, but rather because I was still learning how.