Driving Needs, part fifteen

Ice skating didn't terrify him, but Chris was more than willing to admit that he wasn't any good at it. He wobbled out onto the ice, struggling desperately to keep his balance and held upright mainly by the fact that the rented skates were laced as tightly as he could manage. Antoinette glided past him, then turned in place and continued moving backwards so she could look him in the face. 

"Well?" asked Elyssa lightly. "Are you terrified?"

"No," Chris answered firmly. "Awkward, unbalanced, and--" He tried to extend a leg and propel himself forward, wobbled, and promptly fell on his ass instead. "--And a little bit sore," he admitted, then set about the task of getting back upright. 

Two years earlier, he would never have gone out on the ice like this. He would have expressed disinterest and avoided it. Now, after the Incident at Pettibone -- which was how the Magi apparently all referred to it -- he cared less, about his dignity and about everything else. And he was supposed to be just a wolf, so he was supposed to be beholden to his magus, even if this wasn't strictly a situation where she was giving orders. He knew Antoinette wouldn't press the issue if he really refused, and that made him perversely more willing to go along with what she wanted. Was that how teams were formed? 

He tried again, and this time he went further before he had to reach for the wall and steady himself. Elyssa was more certain on her skates; she didn't skate backwards, but she seemed perfectly in control of her starts and stops, her turns and sweeps. Was this something that wolves learned when they grew up out in the Grey? Was he giving himself away by not knowing this already?

If so, the damage was already done. The knowledge was thin consolation, but he held to it anyway. And while this might disprove Grundus' theory -- that he was an older, more powerful wolf pretending to be young and inexperienced -- it would also lend weight to Magus Frummelt's theory that he was a wolf who had been raised in the Mundus, by magi; possibly even a halfbreed. 

"You're getting better," Antoinette said, coming up beside him. "You're nearly all the way around now."

A small child swept past him and he flinched, stumbled, and went down again. "Better isn't good," he said. 

"Maybe not," Antoinette admitted as she helped him back up, "but it's a lot better than worse."