Ice Uprising

Chapter One

Shoved in the depths of some people's memories, lies something big. Something missing from their life. For one person, it may be an emotion. Maybe a goal or dream that they haven't quite found yet. Maybe an answer that they've been searching for.  But everyone has something waiting, a surprise, maybe a simple one, but a surprise nonetheless. And that was about to happen to me. 
In the back of my head, lay a memory of a man, or boy to be exact. He had long silver hair, just like the star he was. Dancing out on the ice, charming me every second he looked back at me fondly. For the life of me, I just couldn't recall his name, bugging me everyday and every night every since my huge failure at the Grand Prix Final, giving me amnesia. Of course, since then, I had been living with Aunt Serena, practicing every day to get back in the swing with skating. 
"Sweetheart, Lotta asked if you could skate with her earlier," Aunt Serena appeared in the doorway, knocking lightly on the frame. The scratch of my pen stopped, and I looked up, pulling off my purple glasses. 

"I didn't expect her to stop by, since she has ballet classes today," Rubbing the dark circles under my eyes, I tried to recall what time Lotta's ballet classes were, or if she even had them today. 
"She doesn't, sweetie. Now if you'll take a break from your animation class, you can go skating with her now," My aunt, a very prim and proper woman, strided into my room, turning off all of my computers. 

"Hey!" Slapping my aunt's hand away from the technology, I grumbled, standing up to grab my skating bag. "Fine." Aunt Serena gave me a sweet smile, turning on her heel and marching right out of the room, leaving me to get ready. As I walked to the front door, another simple memory slid itself to the very front of my brain, inducing me to stop right in front of Aunt Serena's study door. 
"Amazing! Watch me now!" Stepping onto the ice, I looked over at my silverette friend, grinning as I skated across the rink into a quadruple toe loop. 

Normally, memories weren't nearly this long, since it was usually just one sentence that I remembered at a time, slowly putting the fractured memories back together like a puzzle with lost pieces. Simply saying, I usually remembered small parts of the same memory. 

Anyways, when I snapped back into reality, Aunt Serena was staring worriedly at me from her desk, her orange glasses halfway down her nose. 

"Anything wrong, sweetie pie?" She asked, continuing to write on paper with her fountain pen. Violently shaking my head, I continued to walk towards the door, ignoring the worried stare I was still getting from my aunt. Aunt Serena wasn't actually my aunt, just a close friend of my mother's, who had died from childbirth. My father, in a state of depression and grief, committed suicide when I was two. So, it was left to Serena Ebony to take me in and raise me, due to the fact my mother was hated by her entire family, and my father's was dead. She used to have a husband, Rich Ebony, who was the nicest person I knew, who sadly died from a disease that had been passed around his work. Aunt Serena then went into a state of neglect, never opening doors, never eating, and never going outside. She's alright now, but still can't exactly bring up the subject of loving anyone ever again. A knock at the door brought my attention back to what I was doing. Opening the door and slipping on my sandals, I looked up to see Lotta, waiting patiently.
"Let's go, girl!" Lotta smiled at me, grabbing my wrist and pulling me off the porch onto the sidewalk. "We don't have all day, woman!" 

"Okay, lady!" I sarcastically replied, following boredly after her down the street. "We'll get there with plenty of time!" Lotta had always been the woman who worried, no matter how much time we had. And I was always the one who had to calm her down, especially when she started unintentionally hyperventilating. 

"Ms. Tania wasn't happy with us last time we got there as she was closing, so pick up the pace!" With her lips pursed, Lotta ran all the way to Ice Blade, the rink we always went to that was just downtown. Lotta pushed through the doors, saluting Ms. Tania proudly.

"We're closing in three hours, girls. I'm not waiting for you today," Miss Tania was like Aunt Serena in some ways, prim, proper, the need to be on time for everything. 

"Alright, Ms. Tania! We'll just stay for a bit!" I waved to her, taking my blade guards off and marching out onto the ice, Lotta in tow. 

"Watch this, Lotta!" I grabbed her shoulders tightly, turning around and skating top speed down the rink, jumping right into a quad toe loop, landing in a spiral. 

​​​​​​"Amazing! You should go back into the figure skating finals!" Lotta, a spunky, impatient girl, was still kind and supportive whenever I missed a landing or over-rotated, but she was also very picky, like a coach. Lotta was five years older than me, at age thirty. She was surprisingly still as flexible and energetic as when she was fifteen. 

"When does the season start?" I asked, coming up from a raised-arm sit-spin, furrowing my silver eyebrows.

"Well, the season's about to end, so why don't I take you to the Grand Prix Final?" This was why I loved Lotta. 

"Please! I'll try not to wander from you, though! I'll hurry and tell Aunt Serena!" Sliding right off the ice, I took off my skates, running out of Ice Blade.

"Hey! Wait up! Bye Ms. Tania!" Flashing the forty-year-old woman a smile, she chased after me down the street, running in her ice skates.

So I arrived ten minutes before Lotta. 

"Aunt Serena! Lotta and I are going to go watch the Grand Prix Final in Sochi, okay?" I called out into the house, furrowing my eyebrows. The only reson I had Aunt Serena still was to help me remember things, but I also got worried when she randomly left the house, because I didn't like being home alone.

"Whew! Girlfriend, how do you run that fast?" Clutching the doorknob was a panting Lotta, drenched in what I hoped was sweat.

"My Aunt isn't home. We oughtta get leaving now if we're to make it to Sochi in time," Let me hit the pause button right there, viewer. I'm from Wiamalu one of the cities on the Island of Honolulu. Our town is pretty small, and usually warm, but this year we got five inches of snow each month. So Lotta and I were gonna have to take a plane. 

"You're sure about this?" I asked Lotta as she discussed the flight plan with the receptionist, or whatever she was called. Flight attendant? 

"Of course, and we've gotta leave in ten minutes. Find hangar six for me, please." Lotta turned back towards the woman, smiling sweetly. You see, Lotta likes to flirt with literally everyone. I even once saw her giving a piece of bread a particularly seductive look.

"Alright," I sighed, slipping my phone out of my pocket to power it up. Notifications were covering my screen with worried texts from Aunt Serena. Ignoring them, I stood right in front of glass windows where a plane was taking off. After taking the selfie, I uploaded it to Instagram, noticing a picture of Sara, a former Italian rinkmate of mine. She was standing next to her brother at a woman's free skate competition in a sparkly black outfit. Hangar Six, I repeated in my head, drawing my eyes away from the phone screen, searching for hangar six as Lotta appeared beside me. 

"What's up, girl? Hangar six is right there!" Lotta elbowed me in the ribs, following my gaze to a sign of a silver-haired man in ice skates. "Oh, Viktor Nikiforov, Russia's Legend. We'll see him at the competition tomorrow!" Lotta grabbed my wrist, carrying our luggage in one hand behind her. Handing our tickets to the flight attendant, we sat down near one of the windows, Lotta closest to it. I was extremely afraid of heights. 

And soon enough, we were standing in front of the Grand Prix Final stadium in Sochi, Russia.