PV Guinevere Russetwood take me home where i belong (i can't take it anymore)

_{banner by Lily McCoire}

Evgenia snorted a bit at the older girl's question. "Well, until I can hit on a better system, what I've been doing will work for a bit longer." Truthfully, she suspected (and hoped) that at least a few of her classes would start to click in the next week or two. It was the much more magic-heavy classes that worried her - potions, charms, and Defense Against the Dark Arts, to name a few. Flying was odd, but at least she was halfway decent in it despite having only half an idea of what she was doing most days.
She shook Guinevere's hand, blinking hard at her full name. That's pretty. She'd never heard such a name before, and she quite liked the sound of it. "That is very pretty." But Guinevere's speech of figure skating quickly blew all thoughts of pretty names out of Evgenia's mind, and her hand tightened in their handshake involuntarily. "Not kidding!" she said proudly and excitedly. "I compete in local competitions, and I started competing as an advanced novice this past season!" Upon being asked which jumps she had, she began to list them rapid fire. "I have all of my singles and doubles, as well as triple loop, axel, and flip. When I left we were working on my triple Salchow." The words were full of pride and passion - never mind the fact that while she technically did have her triple axel, it was constantly underrotated and she fell on about a third of her attempts, give or take a few. Mama wasn't impressed with that, but Evgenia's coach was always pointing out that she was only eleven years old and the axel was the hardest jump in figure skating. "I've been practicing my needle spin a lot, too. My coach says I have an excellent Biellmann, but I want to be able to perform needles too. I'm almost there, I think."

_{@Guinevere Russetwood}

_{banner by Lily McCoire}

Evgenia beamed as Guinevere handed her the piece of paper, eyes sparkling. "Or we can do both!" She would love to be able to skate - though, if only she could figure out a way to do it year-round here. . . . "I mean, if you're talking about the triple axel - I can do it, it's just usually underrotated and ends up looking a little bit messy. My opinion is that I can do it better and I should have gotten it a long time ago, but my coach says I shouldn't expect to have a very decent one for a few years because I'm only eleven." That was absolute nonsense, in Evgenia's opinion. If there were fourteen-year-old Russian juniors jumping quads, eleven-year-old Zhenya could perfect her triple axel. "Well, I mean, not everyone is as naturally good at it as other people. I have to work way harder at toeloops than any of my other jumps, and harder than some other people who train at my rink. My toeloops are usually terrible." She wouldn't even mention the first time of two total that she had made an attempt at a triple toeloop. She'd fallen dramatically and uncontrollably and ended up bruising her entire left forearm so hard while catching herself that it was practically purple for almost a month. Of course, that hadn't deterred her from trying it again four days later. She'd failed, obviously, but not as horrifically. She'd gotten her triple flip ten minutes later, though, and that kept her preoccupied with triple flips and triple flip combinations for weeks to perfect the jump. Any thoughts of more triple toeloop attempts had been shoved to the side in the wake of that achievement.
Evgenia eyed the space in the center of the study room, then the space around that that she had to work with. She backed up, mentally calculating her distances so that she wouldn't slam into anything, then went for it.
The triple axel ended up underrotated, of course, but it wasn't her worst case of underrotation. She managed not to fall on her face, ending the jump in a low bow of sorts. Then, just because she could and she hadn't skated in days, Zhenya backed up and went for a double axel-triple loop combination. It definitely wasn't the prettiest ever accomplished, because she was off the ice and didn't have as much room as she usually did (and it was a pretty difficult jump combination to begin with), but it was done, and she grinned up at Guinevere. "You may call me Zhenya, if you want to. Some people find that easier than Evgenia."

_{@Guinevere Russetwood}

_{banner by Lily McCoire}

Zhenya beamed as Guinevere complimented her, eyes sparkling. "Thank you!! I used to spend hours and hours practicing only axels until my coach made me start focusing on flips. She told me I had probably landed more clean double axels than quads ever attempted, and I should switch my focus to learning things I didn't actually know yet." She still wasn't sure whether Coach Estrem had been joking about that. Zhenya was sure that there had been a lot of quads attempted in recent years, but she had spent a lot of time on her double and triple axels once she got her trixel.
She blinked at Guinevere's question. "Well, I don't really mind either, I guess. I usually just leave it up to other people to call me whichever one they prefer to. Some peoole think Zhenya is easier because it's not as many syllables and some people think Evgenia is easier because they can't pronounce the 'zh' sound very well. So it's really up to you." She didn't recall ever being asked that question before. "I have a question! I hear there's a lake around here. Are there freezing spell things in existence?" A mischievous yet innocent smile decorated Zhenya's face. "That could potentially freeze big things? Like bodies of water big?"

_{@Guinevere Russetwood}

Guinevere nodded her head up and down to express agreement with Zhenya. It was always easier, and frankly, more satisfying, to stick to doing something she knew very well how to do, like a double axel. “I suppose that’s true,” she said thoughtfully. “Even after I got the double axel, I still always jumped it a lot ‘cause it became so easy. But you probably feel that even more so, since you have a triple, right?” Being a skater without any ultra-C’s, it was always interesting to hear other skaters’ thoughts on them.

“Ah, right, right,” she said in response. Guinevere was alright with most names and languages, except for the fact that she was still learning how to pronounce the rolling ‘r’ sound without sounding strangled. “Zhenya it is, then. You can call me Guin, too, if you want. I don’t really care.” The thing about names was that one could respond to any name at all if they were used to it.

She laughed slightly at Zhenya’s next question. “Technically, you could have a hundred wizards and witches all gather by and cast Glacius, but there’s no need at all, unless you wanted to skate during the summer. The Great Lake—” she paused, rethinking her assumption that that was the body of water being referred to. “If that’s what you’re thinking of—it freezes over on its own in the winter, totally safe to skate on. Safe to fall on, too, if you’re wondering.”

@Evgenia Starkova