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“It’s so pretty…” Elaine mumbled as she looked out the window of the Aerie Palace. The strange and fantastical architecture of the palace had been painted white by the falling snow, as had the rest of the city. The cold didn’t bite into her hands, pressed against the window, the way that it had back home. An unexpected benefit of having feathers all the time.
“You know, you shouldn’t stare at your reflection for too long, it’ll make you vain. Trust me, I know,” Sebastian remarked from his place on a nearby sofa. He was sipping a cup of warm apple cider and sitting next to a roaring fire, which was pink for some reason. Elaine thought that it might have been created by magic, though it seemed silly to go to all that effort to have flames that match the aesthetic of the castle.
“Very funny. I’m looking at the snow outside.” She took a seat on the arm of the couch, looking back at the window she had just left.
“Do they not have that on your side of the wall?” He asked, confused.
“No, they do, it’s just that my mother never let me go outside to play in it when I was little. It always looked like so much fun, but she was too worried that I might lose my gloves on accident.”
“You play in snow on the other side of the wall? How?” Kieron asked, his beak in a book about Aerian etiquette that Sebastian had insisted he memorize. Despite it essentially being homework, Kieron did seem to be having fun with it.
“Well, you know, making snowmen, having snowball fights…” Sebastian gave her a look that, though eyeless, easily conveyed his confusion. “Rooks don’t do any of that?”
“We’re birds, we try to avoid the cold as much as possible.” He shrugged as if it was nothing, but it saddened Elaine. She had been hoping that she could finally participate in the winter traditions she had always read about in books or been told about by Isabella. But it seemed like this would be just another year of missing out.
Unless…
“Alright, let’s go then!” She said, walking over the nearby coat rack and putting on her scarf and her coat, the latter of which had been a gift from Kieron. It was stuffed with Rook feathers, which she felt was somewhat like wearing a shirt made of human hair, but apparently it was a common item of clothing, at least for featherless Rooks.
“Go where?” Sebastian asked, turning in her new direction but making no move to get up from his comfortable seat.
“Outside! I’ll show you what traditions are like where I come from.”
“In this weather?! We’ll both get hypothermia and die!”
“It’s not that bad, the sun’s still out,” She laughed at his overdramatics.
“I think it sounds like fun! Your traditions always seem so different from ours,” Kieron eagerly got up, not really needing to grab winter clothes; superior insulation and all.
“Well, the two of you have fun,” Sebastian brushed them off.
“Come on, Seb, if Kieron’s going, you have to as well! Unless the prince of Aerie is scared of a little snowfall?”
“I am not scared of the snow, Elaine. If anything, it should be scared of me,” He huffed.
“I guess you’ll have to prove it,” She smiled. Even after that, he seemed slightly unwilling, and so Elaine turned to her ultimate technique, the one that had managed to get her mother to allow her to attend more than a few balls. “Cmon, Seb, pleeease??” She begged.
He resisted for a moment, but then sighed. “Alright, then.” He snapped his fingers, instantly putting out the fire. Elaine cheered her victory, high-fiving Kieron. “But if it gets too cold, I’m sending Bartholemew back inside. He has a sensitive immune system.” He put on his own jacket— which was exactly as needlessly extravagant as the rest of his wardrobe— and pulled a tiny winter hat from his pocket, placing it on the little bird’s head.
“Let’s go then, before it gets any colder.” She grabbed his arm and the three of them made their way through the winding halls of the palace.
The snow wasn’t too high, coming about halfway up Elaine’s shins. There had been a few years back at home where the snow had trapped them inside entirely. Not that it had really changed anything about her situation, but when that would happen, her mother would make the two of them hot cocoa and they would sit close together, snuggled under a blanket. Those days had always felt the warmest, ironically.
“So what’s the first of these other-side traditions?” Sebastian asked, stroking Bartholomew with two fingers. The bird seemed perfectly fine, despite his oh-so fragile condition.
“We should make a snowman! Or, um… a snow Rook? We can give it feathers and stuff. We'll need to pack enough snow together until we have three large balls.”
“Seems easy enough.” Sebastian snapped his fingers and with a flourish of pink magic, the snow began to roll itself, making three perfectly spherical balls, in three different sizes.
“Sebastian, that’s cheating. You can’t use magic to do it, the labor is half the fun!” Elaine protested.
“Why would packing snow into spheres be fun?” Kieron asked, seeming truly curious.
“Well… I don’t really know. It’s just always part of the books that I read.”
“Do you want me to put them back?” Seb asked.
Elaine considered the idea of trying to do that again, with only her bare hands. Perhaps, sometimes, cheating was better. “No, it’s fine. Now we just have to…” She trailed off, stacking the balls on top of one another. The structural integrity was questionable, but it was going to melt eventually anyways, so Elaine didn’t see reason to worry about it. “Perfect, now it just needs a face and clothes.”
“Well, you can leave that last part to me,” Sebastian flipped his hair back with one hand. Elaine chuckled.
“Kieron, do you have anything that we can use to give it a face? Like buttons, or rocks?”
“Oh, sure, let me see!” He answered, digging into the bag he was carrying. “Hmm, hold this.” He handed her five empty salt and pepper shakers.
“Kieron what do you even have these for?” She asked.
“Might need them some day,” He shrugged. “Ooh, how about these?” He took back the salt shakers and handed a befuddled Elaine a handful of small to medium buttons, in various colors.
“These should do!” She replied. She stuck the two largest buttons as the snowman’s eyes, giving it a mismatched set of black and blue. Some medium buttons went in longways to form the closest thing to a beak that she could make, with a tiny button smile underneath, and other longways buttons placed along the face similar to Elaine’s own feathers. “Seb, have you picked out the clothes yet?” She looked over at him, to see that he was holding two sets of the magically shrunken clothes in his hands, Bartholemew chirping support from on his shoulder.
“Hmm… not yet, I’m still trying to decide which coat would go better with the color scheme,” He mumbled. “This really would be so much easier if I could see. Bartholemew isn’t very good at telling the difference between royal blue and cyan.”
“It's really not that important,” Elaine laughed. “You only really need to give it a hat and a scarf.”
“A hat and a scarf?! That’s not a complete ensemble at all!”
“Alright, alright, do you need more time to decide?”
“No, I think I’ll go with this one.” He held up one of the miniature coats, turning it person-sized with an elaborate swirl of buzzing pink magic. Elaine took the coat from him, draping it gently over the snow-rook’s… shoulders?
As she buttoned up the coat, Kieron placed a top hat on the snow-rook’s head— where he had gotten it from was a complete mystery— and Seb sized up a scarf, carefully tying it on and adjusting it. They all stepped back from their creation.
“Aw, it looks so cute!” Kieron cawed.
“It does, doesn’t it.” Elaine smiled, proud of herself. “Isabella would love to see this, she always wanted to play outside with me when we were little.”
“Well, who knows, maybe back on her side of the wall she’s making a snowman right now and thinking about you,” Kieron suggested.
“That’s really sweet, Kieron. You know, it still feels so odd to be away from home right now. I’ve never been away for the winter holidays before. Even when I was planning to marry Charles, I was still going to try and visit my mother as much as I could. Now I’ll probably never see her again.”
“Do you regret deciding to stay?” Sebastian asked, laying a concerned hand on her shoulder.
Elaine looked over her shoulder at him and Bart, then to Kieron and the little snow-rook. She could feel the harsh cold on her skin in a way that she never had, free and open to the world.
“The strange thing is that I don’t think that I do. I like spending the winter on this side of the wall,” She smiled.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” He smiled back, looking at her in a way that expressed his sincerity, even without eyes.
“Since it’s my first winter away from my family too, we can support each other through it,” Kieron added.
“Thank you, both of you,” She could feel tears forming, and she wiped them away before they could freeze her eyes shut.
“So now that the snow-subject is built, what do we do with it?” Sebastian asked.
“I think that we just leave it be, until it melts,” Elaine explained.
“What an odd way to spend one’s time.” He shook his head.
“We could have a snowball fight, I’ve always wanted to do one of those!” Elaine said.
“Oh I think I’ve been in one of those!” Kieron said.
“Really?” Elaine asked excitedly.
“Yeah, Kasper hit me with chunks of ice and snow one time when he was mad at me. It kinda hurt but at least there was already ice to help with the bruises.”
“I don’t think that what… anyways with a snowball fight, you make a bunch of really small balls of snow and throw them at people.”
“And the game ends when you’ve removed the other combatants?” Sebastian asked.
“Er— no, it just sort of goes on until everyone is too tired to continue, there’s not really any defined rules. At least I think so.”
“I want to try!” Kieron exclaimed, packing a ball in his hands. “Catch!” He threw the snowball, and…
…It hit Sebastian square in the face. Seb blinked in confusion and shock for a moment, and Elaine had to hold back a laugh at his confused state.
“Did you just assault a member of the royal family of Aerie?” His expression darkened as he frowned.
“Er— um, no— I mean… yes?” Kieron stuttered.
“This means war, I do hope that you know you brought this upon yourself.” He snapped his fingers and an army of hundreds of perfect snowballs rolled themselves up. “Elaine, would you care to help me get my revenge?” He smiled mischievously.
“I would love to, your highness,” She grinned back, leaning down to scoop up an armful of ammunition.
“Um, before anyone gets hurt, I really am sorry!” Kieron begged for mercy, but there was none to be found, for all is fair in love and snow-warfare.
“The time for apologies has passed,” Sebastian smiled.
“Just think of it as the authentic other-side experience, Kieron,” Elaine apologized in advance.
“Not again!” Kieron shouted as they pelted him with snowball upon snowball, until their stock of weaponry was out and they were all too breathless from laughter and flush with cold to continue.
And Elaine thought that even in such a strange land, this night might just be her favorite winter to date.