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An eager academy student rushed to her chromebook and opened her laptop. She had finally finished her Holiday Cookie exam--she'd have to do it this time! She had failed and failed, time and time again. She felt like her heart was digging out of her chest as she went into her emails. Her stomach dropped when she saw the words, "We're sorry." She opened the email, and one of the associates of Snowbell Holiday Academy had said they are sorry to say that she had failed the test, again. She welled up into tears, flopping down onto her bed. "No, no! This is wrong! How could I let this happen?!" Her light teal hair was all frizzed up and in her face, and her clothes were dirty, but she didn't care about how she looked.
A Cookie had walked into her room, where her door was wide open. "...Did you fail again?" He stood at the door, his fluffy ears bent downward, like a moping dog. "Leave me alone, Strawberry Cream Cookie! You won't understand how important this was to me!" She was in a screaming and crying mess, rolling from side to side like she had centipedes crawling all over her body. "...You know, if you fail, you can just try aga--" He was cut off. "Screw trying again! I've tried, and tried, and tried! How much more until they've made me crumble?! This feels like they're jingling my hopes and dreams right in my face!" Strawberry Cream Cookie clamped his black gloves together, dodging his eyes to a random corner. "...Stollen Cookie, I know this is a big deal to you, but maybe you could find a way to... try again? I heard you say that this is your last chance before you'd have to go home, so please, at least find another way." His voice was weak, but still in a calm state. Stollen Cookie had calmed down a bit, but still hadn't recovered from her soggy, ill-tempered face. "...I hope! I swear, if they fail me again, I will quit! I'll go back to... working with Pizza Cookie! Yeah--I'll have to drive endlessly delivering pizzas nonstop, over and o--" She was in a fit of sobs, but was stopped from her mindless rambling. "It won't end up like that if you don't give up!" Strawberry Cream Cookie replied, trying to replenish her a hopeful look. She sighed. Maybe it was a time to try--to try something different. To try harder. To try her hardest.
{I had just gotten the wrong test. Don't worry, I'll take care of it!} She sent the text message to her worrying mom, who had sent her at least 5 messages before. Stollen Cookie set down her phone, getting ready to go to sleep. She prepped her bed, layered her blankets and pillows just right, and laid on of them. She couldn't go to sleep--she had the fire inside of her to study. She told herself to try her hardest--might as well embrace it!
She slumped over her textbook, an Energy Soda in hand, the other hoisting her tired head from reading so many words over and over again. Test retakes were in just 2 weeks--she was lucky that she could even access them. So, she decided that she had to get the best grade possible! Her eyes were heavy and her hand could barely hold her drink or even hold her head. She groaned, setting off studying for the night and bundling up in her blankets and almost immediately dreaming away.
Stollen Cookie woke up to a knock on her door. It was her academy partner again. "Stollen Cookie! Wake up, it's almost time for the lectures." She immediately shot up, putting on a simple outfit, brushed her hair, and dipped. Thankfully, she arrived just in time. "...You look tired. Are you okay?" The lean Cookie asked, finding the page the teacher asked them
to locate. "Yeah..! Just stayed up for a little bit." That "little bit" was nonstop reading for at least 3 hours, including rereading every bit that her foggy, somnolent brain couldn't understand. "...Wow, you already filled in today's notes." Strawberry Cream Cookie's eyes gleamed, admiring her somewhat sloppy work. "...It's nothing. I just wanted to get as much info as possible today. I promised myself to try my hardest." Stollen Cookie wiped her eyes, eating a small snack that she got in-between her rush. "I've had those before. But they crumble very easily." The wolflike cookie cupped his hands under the snack, hoping that the crumbs didn't fall on the ground or else he and Stollen Cookie would be doing cleaning at the end of the day. The bell had rung, engaging the first lesson of the day. They shot up in their desks, listening to the professor squabble momentarily.
After a few long sessions, it was already lunch time. Stollen Cookie usually talked with her Holiday Cookie Partner about school, but this time she kept to herself and decided to study more. She wanted to be the best--she wanted to make up for all those times she'd failed her parents. She always tried to be the best in school seeing how successful her parents were, but usually overworked herself to exhaustion and forgot important portions to excel on tests and finals. Not this time. She was a young adult, and she was old and mature enough to manage herself, right? Excluding the meltdown she had the previous night.
"You're studying a whole lot. Did you get your lunch?" Strawberry Cream Cookie sat at the picnic table surrounded by snow, inching closer to her. "I don't want to fail myself or my parents again." His upbeat emotion wilted with Stollen Cookie's response. "Don't overwork yourself." She promised herself to listen to him, even when her mind was prone to deceiving her that she even made that promise. "I'll try--no, I will." She continued to study. Stollen Cookie realized that she had been writing a whole lot and decided to review her notes.
And so, she had written and reviewed bit by bit, hour by hour, night by night. She started to feel cold, and also suspected that she was reviewing the textbook and other sources more than her teacher's lectures. She really wanted the job as a train conductor. She had asked Tiramisu Cookie, a train conductor himself so many questions to fill into her notes--which by this point, were in bundles. Yet, it didn't feel enough. She liked studying--but also, she felt hollow and mindless at the same time. She tried her best to push through--she had hope.
Strawberry Cream Cookie sat at the same picnic table that he had told her the promise that she should've kept, waiting for her arrival. He was relieved that she had came back--she had refused to go to lunch for so many days, and he felt lonely. So lonely--he even got the chance to hang out with his Arctic friends in the woods. "Stollen Cookie! Where have you been?" He inspected that she looked tired and pale, but she was still happy to see Strawberry Cream Cookie. "Hi! I was just a little busy. Not like it wasn't too important. I assume that you were fine without me..?" She said unaccented, despite being completely shocked that he had noticed her decline in physical and mental health. She noticed his worried look, his ears covered by his winter hat slightly downturned. She did, in fact, look pale and tired. She had also gone a bit thin. "...Are you okay? You didn't overwork yourself, did you?" She had completely forgotten what he had told her, since she was so obsessed and indulged into her studies for the big exam. It was just 6 days until the exam, and she had studied a little over halfway of what she was planning to finish studying. "I'm fine, thank you." Truthfully, she had only fed off little snack jellies, whenever she felt like her stomach had punched a hole in itself. When this test was all over, she promised herself that she would get better. But, she had promised herself to restrengthen herself several times--after this amount of studying--after I finish this--yet she keeps deceiving herself that any amount of studying was efficient to take a break. She couldn't control herself.
Three days until the exam. Stollen Cookie's dreary eyes deepened with the gaze of an undead ant controlled by the unfortunate encounter of a fungal parasite stared at the words on the textbook. Did it say gift or give? Does she gift herself a break or give herself a second chance at getting her dream occupation that she had wanted for so many years, working endlessly to catch up? Was it all just a dream on a stick, jingling right in her face like a cat being taunted with a toy it can't even catch? She was bony and frail, barely being able to stay awake or pay attention in class. She felt colder the last time she checked herself. She hadn't eaten in a few days, yet she had only drank a small bottle of water today to sustain herself. More tears had been spewed than she had even supplied herself with water. She truly did overwork herself again. Stollen Cookie slumped over her desk invaded with the collection of mindless, studies and useless reviewing she had done, grabbing a sticky note. She wrote something on it--was it an encouragement to herself, or someone else? Could she encourage herself, or would she pass her mistakes and knowledge toward someone else? She let herself fall out of her chair, onto the floor. She hadn't slept for a while. She couldn't even count her hours of slumber anymore. Tears streamed down her face as she laid motionless on the floor, yet still alive. She was surviving--not living, even when she had the friends and family to support her and promise her a future. Yet she blew it all away by taking a misstep. Ever since she was promised a great future by working hard in school, Stollen Cookie has tried her best to work efficiently, but sometimes she chewed off more than she could swallow. She did it this time. How foolish. Trying to indulge so much information at once. What a foolish little girl--How dare you overwork yourself? Those were the words her mind kept repeating to her like a wailing alarm alerting her about something crucial. My hands are cold, she thought. My body feels cold. It's like a bird in the snow. She thought she felt comfort in the softness of the snow--the reassuring feeling that she was studying well enough, but she felt too cold to get up. Get up--get up! She told herself, yet she couldn't even lift her arm halfway. How dare you run so far into the snow you don't know where you are even going anymore! How dare you! How dare you! The words echoed in her mind like a scream in a giant hall full of hollow void.
Stollen Cookie was at her worst. Her body felt like the bird that got stuck in a snowstorm. Not only did she feel cold, she couldn't get up. Get up! Get up! She couldn't get up. She couldn't try again. The affirmations of failure kept rushing into her mind like the worthless paragraphs she jotted on her notebook. Her parents would be so disappointed if she was in a state like this. She felt like this was their last straw on her unreachable dream, or else they'd give up on her. They gave her food and somewhere to sleep--and she couldn't give those things to herself because of how forgetful she was! Becoming a train conductor was a wild goose chase at this point. She finally decided that she would get some sleep--even if she was in immense pain from starvation. She couldn't get up anyway. It was so painful to give up because her body had given her everything she needed to keep having the will and strength to study, but she never gave her body anything back.
The picnic table stood alone today. Stollen Cookie must be busy again, Strawberry Cream Cookie thought. He was very suspicious on her wellbeing, so he went to her room. Her room was oddly cold--it was peculiar, since she usually turned up the AC in the morning, just so she could feel the warmth in the abrasively cold morning. She liked doing that, yet she didn't do it today. His heart was banging on his chest like an abysmally maddened dog trying to break out of a cage.
He gently opened the door. She looked like she had nodded off on the floor. However, something was off. He saw that her chest wasn't doing its normal breathing movements. It was frozen in motion. His stomach dropped, when he saw a small sticky note placed right next to herself, barely readable since the handwriting was all squiggly. It read, "Please let me give you my knowledge. Learn from my mistake, and excel." She signed it off herself in her faint but not so illegible handwriting. Strawberry Cream Cookie dropped to his knees, his entire body shivering with pure horror. "No! This isn't fair! How could I let this happen?!" He yelled, hyperventilating from feeling a hollow, cadaverous corpse that was one of his closest friends, right in his selfish and unthoughtful hands. He couldn't take this pain. She had been so nice to him--even when he had misunderstood texts and questions time and time again. He clawed at his arms, piercing his skin. He did not know how to handle the death of a best friend--of a colleague. He held in a sob as he turned her head, heavy of the fact that Stollen Cookie could not keep her head up even though she had done so for so many months, time and time again. The only exception of anything being light was her motionless face--no smiling, not even a sign of life. It wasn't even light. It was a trivial amount of any part left of her. He dropped her head in shock, making a big thump on the floor. He felt even worse for dropping her head like that. Like as if she were something, someone of little worth to him. He was in a full state of derealization. He kept pinching himself with his sharp, untamed claws to make sure he wasn't dreaming. Everything felt so unreal, yet it simultaneously felt like life had thrown itself at full force, straight at him. Every time he tried to calm himself down, a whisper isolated himself inside a cage of guilt and desolation. Stollen Cookie was stone cold, but Strawberry Cream Cookie felt like he was in a ring of flames, shifting from side to side. This couldn't be it. This couldn't be true, no! He was uncontrollably sobbing and wailing, so harshly, it thrashed the halls decorated with rather pretty decorations. Another Cookie came running down the hallway, feeling weak when she saw that Stollen Cookie's body had given up. Strawberry Cream Cookie turned around, a lump dropping in his chest when he realized it was his other friend, Peppercorn Cookie.
The Artic wolflike Cookie sat in silence, holding in sobs. Strawberry Cream Cookie was directly facing the opposite of the one Cookie that helped him most. He looked at a reflection somewhere on the room, and he saw that his eyes had gone a little red from crying so hard. It only resumed when he had gone back to reality: Stollen Cookie was dead. There was no bringing her back, no bringing her with his friend group to go on whimsy little adventures. It was all over--all gone. He felt empty inside. He never knew how much he needed someone until they disappeared for good. He decided to take her wisdom by note, embracing her passion for trains and learn from all the times she did wrongly.
A stone had been placed in a bundle of stone. "The girl who believed she could, so she did." There were many chestnuts, forest nuts, and flowers adorning the coffin. There he was, lying by the coffin. "She was a great friend. We may've not talked as much as you two did, but I enjoyed going camping with her." A calm, forthcoming Cookie spoke, sitting criss-cross and parallel to Strawberry Cream Cookie. "S'more Cookie, I can show you all of her studies. I have tried my best to decipher them ever since her demise, but maybe you could help me?" S'more Cookie nodded at his request, holding his hand as he was guided to a picnic table. And in the middle of the table, was a small decoration resembling a stollen jelly. Even though her demise was so painful toward Strawberry Cream Cookie for several months, he could still recall all the good memories that she had obtained within her lifetime. And it was as simple as when she had first found she had a dream--when Stollen Cookie, his best friend, had caught a cold watching a train fly by. Hypothetically, it was as whimsical as her dream to pursue and her fight to succeed.