Inside Out reImagined

Skating Troubles

The enthusiasm of the girl in the skull tee did not wane, one bit, even as she was taking Riley to a place unfamiliar to herself. Yet, even though Disgust admitted it, they phrased it quite differently: "This couldn't be more appropriate for an executioner taking us straight to our death."

"It's a skating rink! What's the worst that has happened to us in a skating rink?" Joy rhetorically asked.

No doubt, Fear had lots to recall. Yet, Anger spoke first, pointing out: "Right. And have we established that Zhou Shilan can skate, at all?"

Of course, Fear still stepped in, regardless, exclaiming: "What if she falls over and is injured on the ice?"

This was the perfect opportunity for Disgust to add their own two cents: "And then, either she or any superiors blame us, because we can handle ourselves better on the ice, and therefore, are supposed to know better!"

"Which we absolutely are, by the way." Anger noted.

Yet, Joy was undeterred. "And we do know better! Good enough to teach, probably, if I'm being honest. After all, we introduced Meg to hockey! The Prairie Dogs only got their start from Meg and Riley, don't you remember?"

"And how much did we teach her, given that we were still a child back then?" Anger asked.

For whatever reason, as of recently, he really took interest in just stabbing Joy with her words, over and over, and got her to think. The best way to counter, of course, would have been to recount a more recent example, perhaps only a year or two ago, of Riley taking a friend who didn't know hockey and turning them into a worthwhile Prairie Dogs teammate.

Yet, the more she thought on what to attempt to recall, the more she realized that, in fact, the established Prairie Dogs were Riley's closest friends. She had a pretty decent group of people who respected her at school — one of them even wanted Riley to expand her cause to also talk about environmental issues, where she herself couldn't — but those weren't really friends; at least, not in the same way.

To put it in the most succinct way, school was where Riley worked, while the ice was where she lived.

By the time she had managed to come up with any rebuttal, Fear had already taken the conversation his way, recalling the many times — mostly consisting of purple and blue audiovisual memories, with the latter color continuing to be one that distracted Joy — that showed Meg falling over, even on her helmet on one occasion, and Riley being unable to do anything because she almost felt the same pain that Meg did.

Needless to say, this was not something Joy wanted to see, and for the rest of the trip to the Shanghai skating rink, she looked down, as if to play with her comms tablet, but really just wishing Riley would be on the ice, as soon as possible.

By the time Shilan opened the doors and graciously let Riley to go in first, though, all of Joy's worries were washed away, and not long afterwards, the others also stopped trying to rebut every single one of her points.

Most of Riley's memories on the ice took place outside, on frozen lakes — perhaps most notably, Spring Lake, where she learned to skate in the first place. The open area just gave Riley more freedom, and more freedom always meant more possible happiness to derive.

Yet, if she needed, she could also find the same, or at least comparable, kind of relaxation at indoor fields — of which there were many to be found in Minnesota, perhaps even more than in Canada. Throughout her life, Riley had gone to many of them, noted all the variations in structure that there could be, and therefore, even a skating field across the ocean brought her the same sense of familiarity.