Page 10 of Fire Dancing For Icey Dragons

"You need to hold it differently," Blaze says. "May I?"

I nod and hold the baton out to him, but he has something different in mind. Carefully, he reaches out and puts his hand over mine, moving it into a different position. He's so close that I can hear his heart beating and I can smell the detergent he uses for his washing along with the fresh sweat from workingconstantly for the past hour. It's not an unpleasant smell, in fact, I kind of like it. I just hope he feels the same about me now that we're so close.

"All right, now try," he says, his breath brushing against my cheek.

I clear my throat and step away. I swing the baton around, finding that he's right and it's a lot easier to do now that he's helped me with the position of my hand.

"Want it lighting?" he asks.

"I can do it," I respond, stopping the twirl and holding the baton to my mouth. I call forth my dragon magic and breathe out some flames, lighting the top of it a cold blue. They flicker over Blaze's face, casting shadows and making his features sharper.

Surprise fills his eyes. "You'rea dragon."

"Mmhmm." I start twirling the baton again, enjoying how the flames dance through the air while I do.

"And a powerful one if you can breathe fire in human form."

"Like you can talk, you can change your eyes," I point out.

"Fair. Why don't you try throwing it to me?" he suggests.

"Sure." I take a step back and give myself a moment to make sure I know what I'm trying to aim for. I count to five and throw it through the air.

Blaze reaches out with a slow confidence that I'm not sure I can have when it comes to throwing fire around, even if Iama dragon. He catches it with ease, spinning it around far faster than I can. "Want me to throw it back?"

"You can try." I'm a bit worried about what will happen if I don't catch it, but I suppose he'll have thought of that.

He throws it towards me and I reach out, catching hold of the baton near the end. It nearly slips through my fingers and falls to the ground, but I manage to stop it at the last moment.

"Impressive considering you've had about two minutes of practice."

I snort. "It helps when you're not scared of getting burned." I flip the baton around in my hand. "Not to mention years of cheer practice, gymnastics, and dance lessons. It makes it easier to pick up stuff like this."

He lights a second baton and hands it to me. "Try two."

"You're just asking for trouble."

Blaze raises an eyebrow. "Are you saying the formidable cheer captain isn't confident enough to deal with two flaming batons at once?"

"Oh, she is." I take it from him and start swinging them both around. It's awkward at first, but that's mostly because I'm holding it wrong. Once I fix that, it's much easier to move them.

"You're good at this. if you ever move on from the Sapphire Sparks, the Flame Tumblers could use you."

I snort. "I doubt I'm that good."

"Maybe not yet, but a bit more practice and I bet you'd be running circles around me," he jokes.

"Mmm." I extinguish the batons in the sand like he did earlier and hand them back to him. "I think I'm happy being a cheerleader." I grab my bottle of water and take a few sips, studying the practice ground and working out what needs tidying away. Technically, this is our assigned space and I could leave it between practices, but I know what students are like and there's always a chance that things will go missing if I leave them here.

I go get some of the cones that have been used as markers and start stacking them over the metal holder. To my surprise, Blaze goes to the other side of the practice area and starts picking them up too.

"So, what made you become a cheerleader?" he asks, sliding some of his cones onto the holder.

"My mum," I respond. "She was the captain of the Sapphire Sparks when she was here at the academy, and she was alwaysmy hero. Apparently, I used to go into her boxes and take out her pom-poms to shake them." I smile at the memory of being told that, wishing I remembered it myself. I do have memories of Mum, but not as many as I'd like.

"Did she push you towards it?" he asks as he collects more cones.

"No. But she was happy that I was interested and encouraged me. What about you? How did you get into fire dancing?"

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