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“Would you be interested in ice skating in the holosuites sometime?” Deanna asked her girlfriend.
“Uh, sure, it’s just that...”
“Let me guess… you’ve never tried ice skating before?” Tasha nodded. “That’s all right, everyone has to start somewhere. I can teach you if you’d like.”
“That would be… pretty good. When, and which holodeck?”
“Let’s do holodeck three, 1700 hours.”
“That works for me.”
When they met up, they each were wearing a jacket and had a pair of skates slung over their shoulders. They entered the holodeck, and Deanna put her skates on with ease. As she finished tying them up, she saw that Tasha was struggling, and went over to her. “Need some help?” Deanna asked.
“Sure,” Tasha said with a nod.She took her hands away from the skates and allowed Deanna to tie the laces up. Deanna then offered an arm, which Tasha grabbed hold of and used to help her stand up. Tasha wobbled and put her weight on Deanna.
“So, the first thing you need to do is to get yourself comfortable with gliding on the ice. You can use the fence to help you, or a stand if you’d prefer.”
“I’ll go for the wall.”
“Good.” She helped Tasha skate over to the fence that surrounded the rink and get a grip on it. She then paused, trying to think of what to do next. Although she was fairly good at skating, teaching someone else to do it was slightly outside her area of expertise.
“Now, keeping your hand on the fence, just try walking. It’ll seem a bit strange at first, but as long as you don’t feel like you’re going to fall right away or anything like that, you’re probably fine.”
Tasha began to move as Deanna had instructed her to do. She was fairly unsteady, and after a few strokes she turned to Deanna and asked, “Could you hold my hand and help me balance?”
“Of course.” Deanna smilied and did as Tasha had asked her to. Tasha resumed her efforts at skating. At first she was unsteady, but after a lap or two around the rink she began to get the hang of it. After several more, she was gliding across fairly smoothly.
“Do you think you’re ready to try doing this on your own?” asked Danna.
“Sure,” replied Tasha. Deanna let go of Tasha’s hand, but stayed near her in case she fell. Tasha began another lap around the rink, less steady than she had been during the last lap that she had done with Deanna, but more steady than she had been during their first lap. She began carefully doing a few laps. Like the first time around, she was slow at first, but then became faster and smoother as she went on. Suddenly, at around the seventh or eighth lap, she let go of the railing entirely, and began to skate without any support. She grinned and laughed a little, then skated for a couple meters until she fell down. Deanna glided over.
“That was great!”
“Thanks.” Tasha sounded a little winded and surprised. She offered a hand to Deanna. “Help me up?”
Deanna helped her up.“Do you want to try and skate some more, or would you rather take a break?”