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A wooden cane banged on the edge of the old brewery building, and a long evening shadow cast its way down the alleyway, upon a sea of dark eyes, sooty cheeks, and tattered hats.
“Get outta here! Damned kids… don’t you hooligans know how late it is? On Christmas Eve, no less! Pickpockets, the lot of you!”
A chorus of tiny giggles erupted, a few metal cannikins being clinked by one another between the children, coins within chiming noisily. Some were sitting on or leaning against trash cans, another three cozied up on an old bench to stay warm, and most of them were just crouched on the ground, a little peeved that their game of jacks had been interrupted. None of them looked like they had any intention of moving from their spot, but a few of the smaller ones grouped up closer to their older friends.
“Do any of you lot of bumpkins even speak English?” the man growled, stamping a foot on the ground. “You’re disturbing the peace. I’d have half a mind to call a policeman from down the lane and get you all locked up for the night! Why, I really ought to…”
“Do it, then,” one young boy piped up. “Nobody ought to listen to some geezer raving on about us. After all, it is Christmas. If you were really in the spirit, you’d be the one lining our pockets!”
More hoots and hollers sounded, with at least one “Hear, hear!” from an older child. There was plenty more noisemaking, up until somebody bunched up and threw one single snowball. It whizzed through the air, striking the man square in the jaw. The alley went completely quiet, the group of children looking on in shock. One could only hear the whistling of the cold wind down the alley. As the man started to go red, everybody once again broke out in laughter.
“That’s what you get!”
“Late Chanukkah gift from us all!”
“¡Feliz Navidad!”
“Nice aim, Eddie!”
They grew louder and louder, and the man gritted his teeth and wiped the flecks of snow off his face. He drew back his cane, pulling the nearest child by the wrist. The boy screamed and tried to yank his hand away, but just as it seemed as things were about to take a turn for the violent, he stopped. A young teen with long, curly pigtails had given him a good kick in the back of the shin, pulling his arm back and forcing him to stumble backwards.
“Willow!” the other boy called out.
“Get out of here,” she said softly. “I can take care of this.”
She was bit taller than all of the other children, but she was far and away the sootiest and the scruffiest, her dark gray eyes staring daggers into him as the larger man looked back. The man was about to turn onto her and strike in much the same manner. She only smirked, holding tightly onto a lift-arm lighter with a floral pattern to it, along with a small bottle full of clear fluid.
“Now, hold it right there! Sir, I’m guessing—heh—I mean, I’m guessing you might wanna take a look at that fancy coat of yours,” Willow started, barely able to keep her laughter contained. “It burns pretty well!’
The scent of burning furs filled the narrow alley, as the man looked back and realized that the back of his rather luxurious coat had caught fire. Looking over his shoulder, he noticed such and immediately began trying to pat it out, barking out swear after swear as he started running about wildly, going nowhere in particular. The flames only leapt higher up his back as he panicked, leading him to start shouting even more incoherently.
“Fire marshal! Somebody alert the fire marshal! Fetch water, a fire extinguisher, something, anything!” he bellowed, before leaping into a large pile of snow, rolling about frantically and finally managing to extinguish the flames.
Meanwhile, as he had left the scene, the remaining children had scattered and regrouped some ways away, inside an abandoned old house. Amongst dreary, moldy rubble, they were all gathered around Willow, praising her and hugging her and still giving little hoots and encouragements.
“Willow, was that really okay? Are we going to get into trouble?” asked one.
“Well, yes,” she replied. “But, only if he can find us. That guy didn’t look all that bright, but we should stay on the move.”
“He looked kind of bright to me, burning like that!” quipped a different girl.
“Heh, good one!” Willow giggled. “Say, Andrew, are you hurt?”
“Nope! It’s just a little scraped up from his gross nails.”
“Still, let me take a look- I think I’ve got bandages in my scout pack! They feel a little gross, too, but I promise they’re nowhere near as gross as that!”
“Aww, no…” he muttered, wincing as Willow moved to dab clean and wrap the scratch, diligently as ever.
Another older teen looked on from near the door. “Really, Willow,” he chided. “You could have gotten badly hurt! That was reckless of you!”
Willow only laughed again, leaning back against an old staircase with her hands behind her head. “Reckless could be my middle name, at this point! I’m not gonna just stare like a caught rabbit while my friends get beaten by some fossil out there!”
“… Don’t you think he had a point, though?” he asked, looking distressed. “About nobody wanting us around and all. Christmas comes, year after year, and we’re stuck with nothing. It’s all one big, fat reminder of how stuck we are. I’m lucky if I get a bar of chocolate.”
“Eh,” said Willow, shrugging. “I don’t know. Christmas doesn’t mean much to me, any longer. For the most part, it’s only freaks like you guys that keep my attention around this time of year. It’s all just cold and wet and miserable, otherwise.”
“Willow, you more than anyone else here… don’t you want to experience a real holiday, one of these years? With gifts, or a tree, or a family of your own?”
That made her freeze up, just a bit. “I-I mean. I guess. If by some miracle the offer came about, it’s not like I’d turn it down or anything.”
“But you might burn it down!”
“You’re really keeping them coming tonight, Agnes! But, yeah, that’s all there is to it. I don’t really care for the holidays, one way or the other.”
“Miss Willow strikes me as the kind of person who probably cares for the holidays more than anybody else,” he repeated to himself for the umpteenth time. “And I suppose there’s nothing that helps others with winter’s despair than a gift.”
Winter in the Constant could be described in a multitude of ways, none of them pleasant. Certainly, one could call it uncompromising. A frigid north wind had struck the entirety of the island, dropping perceived temperatures far below zero. The heavy snowfall had been equally vexing, with even great beasts having difficulty slogging through areas that hadn’t been partially protected by forest. Even most plants had been virtually flash-frozen by wind and pelting, frozen rain; saplings, bushes, and even entire patches of grass and heather covered in a thin film of rime that made them appear akin to beautiful, bluish ice sculptures- they sparkled in the faint moonlight, but they would be of no use as kindling or supplies.
A singular, golden glow illuminated a lone outcropping in the middle of the barren birch woods. All was quiet, aside from the bonfire’s steady crackling. That is, if one didn’t account for the crunching of snow-muted footsteps just a short way off, between the trees. A figure could be seen holding a dim lantern, barely keeping the darkness at bay.
Wilson shuddered in the cold, the gas lantern creaking as he adjusted a small knob on the side. It hardly brightened at all, making slightly more audible, yet still soft, flickering buzz. Wondering just how much longer the light would hold, he decided to proceed on further, plodding onwards in spite of the wind and snowfall picking up. Procuring the materials he’d be needing for this gift would be nothing, if not difficult. He adjusted his hat over his ears once more- if he wasn’t careful, frostbite could hurt him just as badly as any monster.
He came to an iced-over headstone jutting out from a thick mound of snow, rubbing away some of the frost with one hand, able to make out a vague, weathered “HERE LIES W--”. He sighed heavily, taking a cobbled-together shovel out of his pack. He began to dig down. His shovel moved the snow quickly enough, but the frozen earth below would be a completely different story.
Willow stirred from a frightening dream, tossing over in the furry bedroll and shivering enough to shake the entire tent. As she blinked awake, she realized that she could barely feel her fingers- she tucked one hand back under the fluffy blanket, and with the other she reached into her threadbare pocket and pulled out her lighter. Flicking it open, she could suddenly see puffs of her own breath in front of her. As she moved it from side to side, checking the tent, she realized that she was completely alone in camp.
Where was Wilson?
She peeked her nose just outside. Sure enough, even with the snow obscuring her vision, she could hear no footsteps, nor the reassuring sound of somebody tinkering at the workbench or messing around with some bubbly solution or other. But… no, that wasn’t quite right. Something had to have happened.
Pulling on a rabbit-fur cloak, she stepped out into the cold, immediately clearing away the snow with her own shovel and putting some fresh kindling into the fire pit, lighting it up. The new blaze revealed nothing- just a cold, empty camp, devoid of any other life. The snow was piling up quickly. She checked the icebox- no provisions had been taken. The tool chest, then? Well… no. Nothing had been touched.
“Wilson!” she called aloud, but her call was swallowed up by the howling wind. This was troubling, to say the least of it. Generally, the pair would tell each other about expected midnight excursions into the woods. Having him up and vanish like this was cause for alarm.
“Th-this isn’t funny! If… if y-you’re just outside camp or something, get back here! Y-you’re going to freeze your butt off out there!” What could be so important that he’d up and leave in the middle of the night? This was dangerous- he could get attacked by hounds, he could run out of lamp oil and end up lost or worse in the darkness, or even just succumb to the cold and wind up--… no! No, no. She couldn’t let herself get lost along that line of thought. She had to find him- after all, she had plenty of lights, she was healthy and warm enough (all things considered), and she had to hand it to herself- she was the more skilled fighter of the two.
“Really? We’re gonna do this now? In the dead of night? In winter, no less…?” she muttered, grabbing for an extra torch, a pouch of food and kindling, and her spear, just in case things got a little hairy. The wind picked up, blowing snow into Willow’s face. She grimaced, shielding her brow with her forearm. Shutting the gate to camp behind her and latching it, she began trundling through the deep snow. She wasn’t about to let her best friend end up frozen out in this wasteland.
Wilson was breathing heavily- his hands felt completely numb and his upper arms were simultaneously limp and sorely taut, like they’d catch fire if he put any more pressure on them. A pile of rock-hard dirt and a large cavity in the ground were all that were left where he had recovered his previously-hidden spoils. That, and a (probably) human skeleton. Wilson told himself that it certainly hadn’t looked at all like it was pointing at him accusingly, its finger cocked out of the earth to menace him. That would be ridiculous. The dead can’t accuse, they don’t have any brains! Much less point, lacking muscles, of course. That was fine. It would be fine!
Dragging his shovel behind him, he believed had come quite far. He checked his map, and saw another black “X” scrawled in a location that should have been nearby. Looking around in the woods, it was hard to discern any landmarks, especially with everything covered in snow. Regardless, he could still guess at his location from the density of trees- this outcropping, as unfamiliar as it looked in this weather, was probably the same one he had drawn on here all those weeks ago. He looked behind him, noticing that the trail his shovel and footprints were leaving was swiftly being covered once again. That was a little bit disconcerting. A small, hastily-scrawled note was attached to the map:
- red gemstones
- wood from the tree with a face (creepy, maybe save for last)
- lots of rope ✓
- candles (blue and white, make blue dye at some point or another) ✓
- various festive things (e.g.- colored paper, hot meal for two, holly wreath for gate, even more candles) ✓ (sort of, close enough)
He put a messy checkmark with a piece of charcoal next to the “gemstones” bullet, but he still had much work to do. Fortunately, this would be the last very difficult thing to get. As he reached the edge of the forest clearing, he noticed a great, bare tree, bark curling from its trunk with age. From this angle, you couldn’t see the more horrific part of it He had described it in his field notes as “a very weird oak”, but its having distinct eye holes and a gaping maw of splintered wood made “weird” kind of a moot descriptor. Getting out his shoddily roped-together axe from the strap on his backpack, he shook out his right arm and tried to muster some extra strength. It was standard at this point, but he still tried not to think too hard about how in blazes a tree could manage to scream in pain. Maxwell had been getting his sick kicks in strange, strange ways. As he chopped, a quiet but rather defined moan exuded from its center. Why did it have to do that?
After finishing that ugly job, there then came the task of picking up and cutting some of that lumber. He could leave most of it, fairly assured that nothing would come to claim it (aside from the possibility of an unchecked wildfire, possibly due to Willow), but he chopped a few sturdy pieces of lumber. With faces. Eugh. The key to it was really not looking back; so long as one didn’t look directly at them, they could do a decent enough job of ignoring it. He arranged them into a rope-tied bundle, before hefting them onto his sore, sore back. Through all of this rather unscientific, infuriatingly common work, the one thing that really stuck out in his mind and kept him going was the persistent daydream of Willow’s lovely eyes lighting up, that wonderful smile, those rosy cheeks of hers, and perhaps—
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Through the snow, something was approaching. Wilson was immediately snapped out his sweet thoughts and into reality. Grasping for his spear, he realized suddenly that he had left it back in camp, by the tent. Improvising and raising his shovel, he turned around to strike whatever had followed him, before opening his eyes and realizing—
“Miaow?”
Two wide, shiny eyes were looking up at Wilson’s lantern, even at its low light. The baby catcoon was twitching in the cold, too exhausted to run any further. It could only keep meowing, almost as if to protest Wilson’s oncoming attack. He immediately lowered his shovel, putting his hand up to indicate that he wouldn’t hurt the little creature. Internally, he felt a mixture of relief and embarrassment- had he really been frightened that badly by something so pathetic? He really was about to lose his marbles out here.
“P-pardon me. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The kitten tiredly pawed over to Wilson’s leg, mushing its tiny face into him for all the warmth it could muster.
“No,” Wilson sighed, picking up his shovel. “No, no. Come now, I have places to be. What’s a baby like you doing out here in the cold? Where’s your mum? Don’t you have a family missing you out here”
The kitten mewled weakly in reply, nuzzling up between Wilson’s legs and pawing at his snow-covered feet.
“You too, huh? Poor thing,” he mused, seeming to be considering something wistfully. Before he could make a motion at the cat, his stomach cramped with hunger pangs- this whole idiotic quest was taking him longer than intended. “We really can’t afford any more mouths to feed right now. I don’t have anything for you, cat.”
As he turned away and started trudging through the snow back towards camp once again, he heard the same tiny crunching noise getting fainter and fainter. Cats didn’t understand English, but perhaps the little creature had gotten the memo and decided to crawl back to whatever little den it had emerged from in this heinous snowstorm.
The wind was picking up. Wilson needed to hurry back to camp before sunrise.
Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the sprawling forest, Willow guarded her torch with one hand. Where could he be? It would be mere hours before dawn- perhaps waiting until then, or at least until the weather tided over, would have been more rational, but Willow was not the best at thinking rationally when she had a friend to rescue. Every now and again she’d call out for him, but the wind whisked away her voice.
She continued along, but her search so far was looking grim. The snow piled on higher and higher, and if he had been here recently, any trace of him was well-hidden. The wind echoed through the branches of the evergreens, howling. Once again, Willow wondered why it had to be tonight. For the morning, she had prepared a surprise for him and everything- a gift to commemorate making it a second cycle of seasons out in this wasteland together. Why did the one non-survival-related nice thing she had been able to commit to have to be squandered like this? She had just wanted to tell him how much all this was worth. Not every “wake-up” left them fortunate to find anyone else at all, but she and him specifically had forged a strong friendship over the time period within which they had met one another, multiple “wake-ups” and all. They had managed to triumph over Maxwell, over the elements, and in some cases, over their own fears. They’d certainly be able to find and release the Queen, no matter how difficult the task seemed.
She didn’t have a revival device at the ready! They had been fine! What if he was gone and she couldn’t get an amulet or something together in time? If she was to lose him this time around, too, she didn’t know what she was going to do. Well… untrue, really, she’d do her best to survive on her own, regardless, but there was a special kind of warmth that came with having a partner that made the lonesome nights bearable. She could find him. She had to find him.
But, there was no time. She started hurrying herself along, and she grabbed tightly to her pack of medical supplies. If she couldn’t immediately find him, it didn’t matter- for now, what was important was trying to find him if he was still alive and on his feet out here in no man’s land. Easier said than done- this was like finding a needle in a pile of fire ants!
“Cold…” she mused simply, pulling up her muffler. It didn’t do much. She couldn’t stand this awful loss of feeling. Numbness was just like your limbs dying while you were still alive.
Wilson could see camp. Pulling his hat down over his brow, he grinned. There was something so reassuring about seeing everything intact after such an arduous night. Even in this awful weather, perhaps he could make something out of nothing and give tomorrow just a spritz of magic.
Science! He meant science, of course.
Clearing snow from around base with his shovel, he set to work quickly, restarting the bonfire, taking off his gloves, and putting some sensation back into his fingers.. He made his way to the workbench. From a compartment in one of the machines, he took a small, weathered little notebook. Now, where was the page where he had written about staves? Ah, yes, if you wanted the best result, you’d need to fix the gem atop a piece of Living Wood, easy enough. The wood would channel the energy from the gem and allow a “circuit” of heat energy without burning or overheating in one’s hands. A little bit of rope, cut the stone like a spearhead, save the shards for some other project… position it correctly, fix it in place with rope, it had to be straight or it might fire all off-kilter… a few drops of Nightmare Fuel from a dangerous encounter to coat the wood, and voila! He supposed one could call such an implement a “flame-thrower”! Then again… perhaps not.
From his satchel, he pulled an array of multi-colored candles. These would do nicely. Holly boughs with berries, neatly folded into a circular wreath. Wilson almost scoffed a little- he hadn’t much to do with the holidays over the course of his relatively short life, and here he was decorating their makeshift home like some kind of nutcase. He supposed he was one, deep down. It had been over ten years since he had felt anything but apathy for the holiday, and as he set a slab of ham into the cooking pot, the scent that filled the air gave him some nostalgia for a time before all of this. There were faint, fading memories of senseless, boring New Year’s Eve parties during his early college years and downing alcohol to numb the feelings of bitterness and resentment towards his family, but also of pleasant Chanukkah nights and warm Christmases long before even all of that with his siblings and childhood friends, eating rich food and playing about with train sets.
Miss Willow… she wouldn’t be too upset with him, would she? This had been an impulsive decision, and he could have been badly hurt if he had gotten himself lost. He had wanted to make her happy, but especially if he had been wrong in his assumption, he might just end up with a well-deserved smack upside the head. Hmm.
Wait just a moment. Where was Willow? Out of the corner of his eye, Wilson had noticed that she wasn’t on her bedroll. Had she stirred?
He walked over to inspect the tent. Sure enough, there was no sign of Willow, nor her pack… and he certainly hadn’t seen her on the way back. He would have noticed her, right?
“Miss Willow?” he called, using his hands to amplify his voice. “Miss Willow, are you there?”
There came no reply. Wilson’s expression was pained, concerned… and grew only more so as another thought entered his mind: was this his fault?
“Oh, no… no, no, no, no!”
How could he have been so stupid? All that secretiveness, and for what? Some dumb presents that would mean nothing out here in the harsh wilderness of the Constant. Now she could be out there, alone, in the grueling wilderness… and it was all his own doing. His heart had fallen into his stomach, as he raced around to grab the completed fire staff. He’d have to arm himself, this time. And just as suddenly, he started to hear:
Grrr… rowf! Rowf, rowf! GRRRRrrr…
Willow stopped dead in her tracks.
Hounds.
The hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and not just from the cold. She was stuck out here, and so was Wilson, most likely, and they were going to have to deal with hounds. Their packs had been getting larger and larger with every new “wave” of them that had appeared, and she didn’t know if either of them could take these things alone, in the middle of a snowstorm.
No, that couldn’t be true. She had to try to make something out of this. How far was she from camp? Could she make it back in time? In camp, the palisades could serve as a line of defense. She could have the upper ground against those mutts- once she could get them to trickle one at a time and force them into a small place instead of out here in the open, in their territory, she could take them. She was handier with a spear than Maxwell had been expecting, for sure, and she’d show whoever this Charlie lady was that she had been informed about that she could put up just as good a fight.
She was mustering all her energy and sprinting, now, back towards camp. Stealth wasn’t an option. In rain, in high winds, or in the dead of winter, those monsters could still sniff a person out and tear them limb from limb, if they weren’t prepared. She checked her map- if she cut through this part of the woods, past the spot with the tree that had a face, she’d be able to make it back to camp in a relatively short span. Willow wasn’t an especially religious young woman, but she was praying to whatever would listen that she and Wilson would make it out of this mess in one piece.
Wilson shuddered, gripping the staff tightly in both hands and looking frantically from side to side. Where were they? He knew he heard hounds. It wasn’t just his head messing with him, was it? He had his makeshift armor on him, he was ready for a bout, but where were they? The growling and the howling had gotten closer and closer… but now it was coming a little from the right. Why weren’t they coming this way?
Unless…
“Willow?” he murmured, eyes wide. “Willow!”
Dropping all pretenses of preparation and confidence, he threw the gate open and dashed right back out into the woods.
And from the edge of camp, there came a tiny “Miaow?”
Willow dashed forwards, but the hounds were in hot pursuit. She didn’t dare look back- that was just an invitation to get run down and torn to pieces. The faint glow of camp—wait, shouldn’t that have been put out by the wind hours ago? — could be seen very faintly in the distance. Just a few hundred more feet, and
“Willow!”
“Wilson?!” she blurted out in surprise. She couldn’t feel anything about this whole debacle outside of absolute shock, and slowed down, skimming to a halt on the frosty ground. She couldn’t see where he was. “Wilson, what the hell were you—”
She turned, only to see a pure white hound leaping out at her from the woods, its hungry, fang-filled maw agape as it pounced. It could have well been the end if not for the fact that Wilson emerged from the brush clutching a fire staff, high on adrenaline, tackling the hound and striking it onto the ground with his free arm.
The hound struggled, biting into Wilson’s arm and drawing blood as he wrestled with the creature, striking it square in the snout. He winced in pain, but managed to toss the staff to Willow.
“Take it and—take it and run!” he stammered out, taking his axe and plunging the sharpened edge into the hound’s neck.
“Are you okay?! There’s gotta be a dozen of those creeps!”
“I’ll be fine! Just get yourself to safety!” he urged.
Willow frowned, glaring at him. “Are you stupid? There’s no way I’m going to up and leave you for the vultures!”
Wilson stood, cradling his injury. “You’re always like this, aren’t you?”
“That’s right! Now, take my spear! We’re going to show these glorified coyotes what we’re made of!” Willow exclaimed, just as another hound rushed at Wilson. Guarding the blow and jamming the spear between its teeth, he kicked it aside, giving Willow a clear shot of crackling sparks at the hound’s underbelly. Willow smirked gleefully, readying the staff once again.
“Wow, I could absolutely get used to having one of these to swing around.”
A fireball shot through the air, hitting a hound square in the muzzle. Willow shot again, engulfing another one completely in flames and nearly incinerating it. Wilson followed up, spearing another hound directly through its heart and tossing yet another above and behind him with a well-timed parry. Both managed to land their shots on a great number of hounds, at least five more being scorched in a massive, beautiful plume of flames, even more being completely skewered with the surprisingly sturdy spear. Willow and Wilson both took injuries throughout the fight, trading blows with polearms and wolf teeth, but Wilson took a good deal more of the damage thanks to fighting at a much closer range.
“And stay out!” Willow shouted, dispersing whatever remained of the pack back into the forest with another wave of the glowing staff. As soon as the adrenaline started to tone itself down, Willow had to clutch her head with one hand. Something about using magical attacks always gave her the worst headaches.
Shaking herself back awake, she noticed Wilson across from her, leaning on his spear. He could barely keep his balance. Walking over to him, she took hold of his shoulders.
“Ugh… M-Miss Willow, I’m deeply sorry about all that. I didn’t mean to act so bull-headedly out there. I just wanted to ensure you’d have a nice…” he groaned, shaking his head.
“Wilson? You… oh, jeez, some of that is your blood. Ow, that looks…” she said, going over his injuries with a concerned look, just before he completely collapsed into her arms. “Wilson? H-hey, now… wake up! Now isn’t the time to take a nap! Wake…--”
That was the last thing that Wilson remembered. Upon awakening, the sunlit tent seemed to spin as he shot up, catching his breath with a hand on his chest. That’s when he realized he was shirtless- through his clouded vision, he could see that joining with old scars, many of the new wounds sustained to his arms and chest had been patched up, the salve soothing the injuries underneath. He still felt terribly, terribly sore all over.
“M-Miss Willow?”
“Uh-huh?” she answered. She had been kneeling right beside him, getting more bandages out of the medical kit.
“Agh! Pardon, please allow me to become decent, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—”
“No ‘what happened?’ No ‘gee, Willow! Many thanks for saving my rear end with your amazing skills! My goose would’ve been really cooked if you hadn’t been there!’” she laughed. “Men are all the same, I swear. You’ll get your ratty old shirt back after I’m done treating you. Does that sound like a plan?” she said, before cheekily pressing a bandage onto the roughed-up bridge of his nose.
He looked down once more at his scars and looked back at Willow, kind of bewildered. “You… you still think I…” he started, before glancing outside. “It stopped snowing, did it?”
“You’re a regular genius, aren’t ya?”
“Hmph,” he grunted, blushing. “I just mean that quite some time must’ve passed. And, what I really wanted to say was, er…”
“Happy Winter’s Feast?” she guessed.
“Well, y-yes, I suppose. But, no, that’s not it,” he said, shaking his head. “Thank-you very much, Miss Willow. You’re right, I would have been done for.”
With a few more minutes of medicine application and some words exchanged between the pair, Willow tossed Wilson his clothes with a “Here, catch!” (right into his face), leaving the tent.
“Hold on a moment- don’t get up, now,” she said. “You need your rest, mister.”
Wilson curled up, looking a little bit dejected. All of the effort he had placed into making this a great day for Willow, and here she was taking care of him! None of this was very gentlemanly at all. He swatted back old gender norms from his mind, reminding himself that Willow was very capable and that she had told him multiple times that they were on even ground when it came to this sort of thing.
Willow came back into the tent with two wooden plates piled high with food.
“I’ve gotta hand it to ya, you did a pretty good job with the ham! Where were you hiding that, anyway? I think I know what you had in mind for breakfast, so I looked in the icebox, and it turns out we had plenty of stuff to use as garnishes! Fire-roasted, of course.”
The dish looked blackened in some places. And yet, it smelled nothing short of heavenly!
“May I?” asked Wilson, whose stomach had been growling aloud since even before he was awake.
“No, no you cannot,” Willow said sardonically, in her best impression of her own approximation of what Wilson’s mother had been like. “C’mon. Dig in, ya filthy animal.”
Wilson didn’t wait another second before taking a bite, his eyes lighting up. “Effs afshtounding!”
She laughed. “You really think so? I’m proud of it, too!”
After they had both finished their meals, Wilson looked up somewhat glumly at Willow. “Listen, Willow, I… I’m really, truly sorry.”
“About what?”
“You know. Winter’s Feast and all? We agreed last time around that this’d be our holiday sort of thing, so I tried to prepare something special for you,” he started, as Willow held up a broken, burnt-out fire staff with an eyebrow raised. “Yes, that. I wanted to make a display and give you a gift and all of that, but I was idiotic enough to leave camp without telling you in the middle of the night just to conform to stupid societal expectations of merriment when we’re out here in the literal middle of nowhere. And now, your gift was used up all in one go and you were the one who made me breakfast. I hate the holidays.”
“Me too.”
“Yes, and I—wait, what?”
“I never liked the holidays. I never had a family to celebrate them with. I was a regular Artful Dodger, you know?”
“O-oh. Oh, no, that just makes this all so much worse… I didn’t mean to dredge up any bad memories for you.”
“Don’t be stupid!” Willow said. “While it’s true that you were being a little bit of a blockhead…”
He sighed.
“And a dimwit…”
He winced.
“And if we’re really being honest here, your brains were totally out to lunch for all of this.”
Wilson had his head in his hands. Willow reached her own to his, tipping up his chin.
“But, if I’m still being fully honest here, that whole stunt with the fire staff and the ham and the candles and stuff? It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me for the holidays. Nobody ever cooks me dinner or gets me gifts… except for you, ya kook.”
She gave him a playful punch in the shoulder. At this point, he was blushing hard and choking on every word he tried to say in response.
“I-I, um, well… what I mean is… what I’m trying to say is… y-you’re… you’re welcome? I mean, it’s always very nice to know that your feelings are shared on a matter, especially intense hatred and especially when it comes to stuff regarding one’s own messy, messy young adulthood, and especially regarding something that it seems like almost everybody else enjoys. I’m blessed to kn-know you in the first place at all, let alone… let alone, you know, be your friend. If there’s anyone I’d like to be trapped in a desolate, shadowy wasteland with, it’s you. Not to say… not to say I like seeing you trapped out here in this desolate wasteland. I had no idea—er, that is to say, I couldn’t have known things would play out like this, and while I very much don’t think I deserve any of this praise or whatnot, I wanted to thank you again for all of this. And what I really think I want to say to you, Miss Willow, is—”
He was cut off when she pulled him close to her by the collar, giving him a once-over before then planting a kiss on his lips.
Wilson P. Higgsbury was rendered totally silent for the next few moments, dizzy with a mix of total shock and love-struck stupor.
“By the way, I was planning to give you this, but judging by the look on your face I think I know which part of today you’re gonna remember more.” Willow said, patting a bright green gemstone into his hands. “I found it in a statue, and it’s science-colored. You’re you, so I know you’re going to do something amazing with it. Good luck.”
Just as she was about to go on her proud way, Willow noticed a tiny mewling outside the tent. A long, long trail of paw prints led to the tent, from far out into the woods.
“Is that a kitten?!”
Wilson slapped himself into cognizance. “I… um, yes, actually. I think it may have followed me. It might have come here for warmth, if it truly has nowhere else to go.”
“Oh, Wilson, she’s so cute!” Willow remarked, picking up the tiny catcoon in her hands and lifting it gently. The kitten splayed its little legs like it was flying. “We need to get you some food! You’re far too skinny!”
“Er, Willow, I never checked whether it was male or female…”
“C’mon, help me give her a name! How about ‘Ashley’? Or ‘Cinders’! Maybe… ‘Bernadette’?”
“She kind of looks like more of a ‘Baroness Bernadette Bernice Blackstone’,” he said, before hastily adding: “The first.”
Willow rolled her eyes. “Bernadette it is,” she decided. “Bernadette, you’re the best gift I could have possibly gotten for Winter’s Feast… because you! Are! Just! That! Good! Yes, yes you are!”
The kitten nuzzled into Willow’s arms as she hugged it softly to her chest. For the first time in forever, with a partner and even a little pet, now, she finally felt as if she had something resembling a family. She swore on that day that she’d do whatever it took to protect that sense of family.