Gold, love and mint tea (Yuzuru Hanyu )

32 - Anticipation

"Sooooo... Misha, how old are you? Because if we're celebrating your birthday, we should probably know..." I say, pushing around the remainder of the food on my plate in an effort to keep some space for the birthday cake.

"That's for me to know and for you not to know!"

"How eloquent..." Chris drawls, making Roman snigger behind his hand before abruptly stoping when our coach's scrutinizing glare turns on him.

"Well let's just say that at my last birthday the candles cost more than the cake... So this year I decided to settle on one candle!" Misha deadpans making all of us erupt in a fit of giggles as we toasted one last time in his honor. It's been a week since we came back from Spain and after a day or two of feeling residual effects of the utter bliss I felt while we were there, I fell back into my old routine, dividing my time between the rink and my home.

We were now having dinner with the team at one of the nicer restaurants in town, a surprise birthday dinner for Misha who pretended to be very surprised. I'm not sure he was really fooling anyone though because this was sort of an annual thing so it would make sense that he would expect it already. I stop listening to the conversation for a while, my mind quickly drifting towards my apprehension for the upcoming season and most importantly the Olympics.

After we came back from Spain Misha and Sveta summoned me into the office and strictly forbade me from skating on my own and from attempting my triple axel again, instead Misha was making me focus on skating skills and difficult entries for my jumps while Sveta had me work on improving my spins. I guess Chris was right, Misha really does know everything that goes on at that rink.

After countless run throughs of my short program I could pretty much do it in my sleep but I still haven't started working on a new free program which was starting to worry me. Even though Misha assured me we would take care of it soon I still had my doubts, it had to be absolutely phenomenal. Worthy of an Olympic gold. I'm pulled out of my reverie when Chris pokes my side with her elbow, urging me to pay attention to the current discussion, so I tune into what Misha was saying missing the first half of the sentence.

"...and I thought a lot about where I could send you guys while I'm away-"

"Away?" I interrupt, my eyes bulging out of their sockets "How can y-you go... away!?"

"Well everyone needs a vacation from time to time Darianka... Myself included" Misha smiles reassuringly at me before turning back to the rest of the group "As I was saying, I thought a lot about it and I decided to send you to train with an old friend of mine for three weeks. Now I know some of you have training camps organized by your federations coming up starting next week so you won't all be going."

This comment earned a few grunts from the group of skaters, mostly those who didn't have very effective federations in their countries but still insisted on organizing these pretty useless training camps anyway. Luckily I was not amongst those unfortunate few since my grandfather had connections in the Ukrainian federation, having been its president for almost twenty years before switching to the ISU.

"Those of you who are not going to those sort of camps..." he goes on, his eyes lingering on Chris and I "...and who are over 18 are going to go to train in Canada. You'll be alone there for a week before I join you with the rest of our group for the remaining two."

Well that explain everything, looks like Chris and I are one of the few that qualify along with some older German girls that we don't really talk to much but they would probably be going to Oberstdorf for the yearly summer camp. So Chris and I will be doing to Canada together, which is cool and Roman would probably be there too, since team Canada always gathers in Toronto so with a bit of luck- wait... CANADA!?