Lemon Sorbet

by Annuska

Date #3 [PPS]

For all the years she’d lived as a human, there were still a surprising amount of things Sonata Dusk had yet to experience.

Which wasn’t to say that there weren’t a lot of things she had experienced – and she had. There were things that she never got tired of experiencing, no matter how much or how little they stayed the same over time; there were things that changed just enough to stay interesting; and there were things she’d experienced so many times, she grew bored waiting for someone to make a new advancement, technological or otherwise, so that those things would become fun again.

Lately, though, she was becoming much more aware of things she hadn’t experienced.

Silly things that had never really seemed all that meaningful before, like seeing everyday objects that reminded her of someone, but accompanied with a bursting feeling inside that made her giddy, like the crash of a wave – or thinking of that specific person almost constantly, wondering how she was doing, what she was doing. It wasn’t unlike her to grab an item off a shelf at a store and grin at Aria or Adagio as she told either of the two that it was so them, and she rarely had to wonder about how or what they were doing given how close the three of them stuck together.

Questionable things like taking off without giving her fellow sirens any information about where she was going or evading their questions when she did return home. She’d never even thought to do anything so reckless, contrary to what one might believe by looking at her.

Exciting things like going on dates: real, actual dates! She’d spent hours at an arcade with someone before, but she’d never given all her ticket winnings away for the sake of that person – and she’d never been surprised with a starlight picnic in the park – and she’d definitely never been ice skating before.

“I think you’re gonna suuuupeeer loooooveeeee thiiiiis!”

Pinkie’s enthused, sing-song voice broke Sonata from her thoughts, and she turned her gaze away from the skaters out on the rink to look down at her companion. Pinkie was leaning down from the bench they sat on, presumably tying the laces on her skates, face obscured by pink curls. Smiling slightly to herself, Sonata slipped her canvas sneakers off and exchanged them for her own set of skates.

“It doesn’t look too hard,” she said with a shrug, pulling the laces on the first skate taut.

Pinkie sat up and pulled some hair out of her face as she turned to look at Sonata. “It’s not, really!” she exclaimed – then paused – then continued. “But it does take a little practise. Don’t worry, I’ll help you get the hang of it! It’ll kinda be like taking the training wheels off a bike and like I’m holding onto the bike until you get going and then let go and you don’t even notice and — bam! — you’re doing it all by yourself!”

Sonata sat up and stared at Pinkie plainly. “But I’ve never ridden a bike, either.”

“Really?”

“No. Not really.” Sonata giggled, leaning back down to tie her second skate. “I’m like, totally ace at riding a bike. Like, so ace, I can cruise without holding onto the handlebars.”

Pinkie laughed in kind. “Then this shouldn’t be that hard for you! I mean, it’s not exaaactly the same, but I bet you’ll be a natural!”

She stood and put their shoes and coats inside a cubby, then turned and offered her hands to help Sonata stand. Standing on her own, even with the skates, didn’t seem that difficult to Sonata, but she wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to take Pinkie’s hand (or hands, in this case), and so with a firm grip, she let Pinkie pull her to her feet and guide her just outside the rink’s entrance.

“Okay, first, you should try and balance here on the mats,” Pinkie instructed, still holding Sonata’s hands tightly. “Skating is all about balance, and balance is all about relaxation, and if you get tense, you’re more likely to lose your balance, and then you’ll be more likely to fall!”

Sonata nodded.

“So try and take a few steps here before we get out on the ice.”

Sonata nodded again, smiling as she loosened her own grasp on Pinkie’s hands – and after a moment, broke into a laugh. “You’ve gotta like, let go of me first.”

“Ohhh, yeah,” Pinkie giggled, opening her palms and pulling her arms away.

The action was carried out a bit too quickly, and the second that her support had gone, Sonata found herself all but flailing to keep standing upright. With a sheepish ‘oops!’, Pinkie grabbed Sonata’s hands again and laughed quickly. “Uh, let’s try again.”

This time, Pinkie lowered Sonata’s arms down into a position better suited for balancing solo, and eased her hands away from Sonata slowly enough to ensure minimal loss of balance on Sonata’s part. With a bit of readjustment to her stance, Sonata found herself standing fairly solidly all on her own, and grinned at Pinkie.

“Totally easy!”

After taking a few steps around on the mat and receiving a crash course from Pinkie on proper posture for skating and proper braking technique, Sonata declared she was ready to take on the ice, and so they entered the rink.

“Okay, so, what you wanna keep in mind,” Pinkie said, continuing with her lesson while Sonata tried her best to balance on her feet and not look like she had no idea what she was doing, “is to start with something basic, like walking, then you can work your way up to the actual skating and fun things like gliding and jumps and spins! Well, probably not jumps and spins yet. Maaaybe gliding. Anyway, it’s good to start out holding onto the edge of the rink. And remember, relaaaaax!”

“I’m completely relaxed,” Sonata insisted, holding onto the edge of the rink with both hands. Her declaration reminded her to actually loosen her grip on the wall. “See?”

Pinkie giggled, but neither contested nor confirmed the statement. Instead, she skated just in front of Sonata and spun to face her. “Let’s do this: you start out walking toward me, and once you have that down, I’ll skate a little faster and you can follow after!”

Well, that sounded easy enough.

Ignoring the slight envy that came with watching Pinkie skate backwards so effortlessly, Sonata set one skate in front of the other a bit more clunkily than she would have liked, trying to remember all the tips Pinkie had bombarded her with some minutes ago: pick up your feet; focus on a central point with your eyes (Pinkie, in this case); try not to make sudden, rough movements; make sure your blades are level with the ice or you’ll trip easily.

The first lap around the rink was about as ungraceful and slow-moving as possible, but halfway through the second, Sonata found herself naturally pulling one hand away from the wall and just barely holding on with the first.

“You’re getting the hang of it!” Pinkie beamed, folding her arms behind her. “Now try and balance without holding on and without stopping!”

Ever so cautiously, Sonata lifted her lone remaining hand up off the rink wall and the giddiness of her resulting laughter was enough to nearly knock her off her newly-achieved balance. She rediscovered equilibrium and looked back toward Pinkie with a huge grin. “I’m doing it!”

“And doing super great at it, too! Ready to try going even faster now?”

Nodding, Sonata eased her arms down and again ran through her mental list of tips. The glee and newfound confidence from actually skating on her own was enough to keep her from thinking too much about the amount of practise and skill that must have gone into Pinkie being able to skate backwards with her arms folded behind her back, and was probably best left that way. Even knowing they weren’t going all that fast didn’t deter her from feeling absolutely great about herself and her progress, a feeling only magnified when Pinkie led her away from the wall closer to the centre of the rink.

After a few laps, Pinkie took a sharp increase in speed and spun around before slowing and falling parallel to Sonata once more. Now skating alongside her, Pinkie tilted her head toward Sonata, as if trying to nudge her with her hair. “Sooo . . . like learning to ride without training wheels, right?”

“Yeah! And I’m gonna be totally ace at this, too!” Sonata began to giggle — and that’s when she lost her balance.

Reflexively, Sonata threw her arms out to try and regain the balance she was losing control of, and when that failed, she grabbed onto Pinkie’s arm for support. Pinkie made a valiant effort to keep both herself and Sonata upright, but within seconds, the two of them had plummeted down, Pinkie falling first and Sonata tumbling over top of her.

Sonata distinctively remembered Pinkie telling her not to stay down on the ice too long when falling— but unfortunately, she was too shocked to process that advice into actual action. All she could do was look wide-eyed at Pinkie – who suddenly burst into laughter.

Despite all her warnings and horror stories about what happened when skaters got too close to people who stayed down on the ice too long, Pinkie let her head fall back and laughed so deeply that it shook Sonata, who was still leaning on top of her, out of her stupor.

“Oops,” Sonata finally said, sheepishly. She sat up on her knees, watching Pinkie continue to quake, and quickly found herself falling victim to Pinkie’s infectious laughter, the two of them laughing so loudly that it would have been hard for any other skaters not to notice them there in the middle of the rink.

When she’d gotten enough of her giggles out, Pinkie sat up, stood on her skates, and helped her date up as well.

“You okay?” she asked with a smile.

Sonata brushed the front of her jeans off with her hands, but found the ice shavings to have already melted. “I guess I kinda got ahead of myself.”

“Everyone falls a few times. Or a lot of times.” Pinkie shrugged dismissively. “Falling can be fun, anyway!” She offered her hand to Sonata, and Sonata took it gladly, perfectly content to be done with speed training for the night.

“Yeah,” Sonata said, glancing briefly at their interlocked fingers before looking forward and smiling to herself as they skated along leisurely. “Falling can be fun.”

Author's Note:

I've always thought a lot about this particular date that didn't make it into the final cut of Pinkie Pie Swear. For a quick refresher, this takes place between chapters 2 and 3.

(Official Date #2 was at an arcade and #4 a movie, for the record.)

Comments

[Misago]

God, those two adorable dorks.

[ForSpite]

I still hope to see a scene of the other Rainbooms finding out Sonata is Pinkie Pie's current and ex girlfriend in this universe.