Chapter Text
I REALLY, REALLY HATED HEIGHTS.
I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, seriously?! The great Typhoon Milk Cookie, defeated by some space between him and the ground?! You’ve got to be joking! You can fly, for Witches’ sake!” And I don’t care! I’m easily killable! And my levitation spell hardly works yet, anyways!!!
Fortunately, there are other, safer ways besides spells to get up to high heights. One of those is being baked with wings, like the Cookie currently sitting next to me. Another, and my usual choice, since I was not, in fact, baked with wings, was using Cookie-made things to gain some height.
Usually, it was the school I went to or an apartment building that a friend lived in. Sometimes, it was even a tree—I was pretty good at climbing, despite my rather frail dough. Today, though, at the insistence of my only enemy… I was on the Ferris wheel.
It had been some stupid dare at the start. He knew I was terrified of heights! He wanted to see just how far up we could get in the wobbly cars on the wheel before I chickened out. And he thought it would be funny when I realized I couldn’t really chicken out from the top of a giant spinning wheel. He made it very obvious that this was a setup for my suffering.
I agreed, of course. I’m not a coward.
Charred Vanilla Cookie, better known as the Truthless Recluse (a nickname he’d gotten from his rising popularity as the weird kid), was currently sitting on the bench, leaning lazily back against the car’s walls, while I sat on the floor, right in the middle, staring at my shoes and trying not to think about the windows, dark and sparkled with stars, so very near to me. We were already halfway to the top of the Ferris wheel, and I was not doing too well.
Charred Vanilla was smiling smugly down at me, occasionally peering out of the window behind him. Crossing one leg over the other, he closed his eyes and said, “Good luck at the top, Truthseeker.”
“Tch, I’ll do just fine at the top,” I scoffed, kicking him. It was, obviously, a lie. “You look bored out of your mind! I thought you wanted to come here.”
“Oh, you silly, silly, blueberry-flavoured loser,” Charred Vanilla sighed. “I only brought you here ‘cuz it’s all you would talk about! Being so sad about how you’re scared of heights… how you so badly want to be able to fly, like a certain extraordinarily talented demiavian…”
“Shut up,” I hissed. “I’m perfectly fine not being able to fly! You didn’t have to drag me here just to exposure-therapy me into liking heights!”
“Well, we’re here now, and we can’t get down,” the other grinned, a glint of malicious glee in his eyes.
Hmph! I’d show him! I wasn’t afraid! I scrambled up from the floor, sitting decidedly on one of the benches, and—
—I immediately dropped back down onto the ground, clutching the edge of the bench and breathing quickly. “I hate you,” I huffed, shaking slightly.
“No, really?” Charred Vanilla widened his eyes dramatically.
“Unbake yourself.”
We only stayed like that for a moment. I was perfectly fine with cowering half-under the bench until the car made it back down, but apparently, Charred Vanilla was not, and wouldn’t let me suffer in silence. He dragged me out from under the bench without much difficulty, seated me neatly out of his way, and climbed onto it, picking at something on the walls. Recovering from the rude shove I’d gotten, I looked up at what he was doing—
“ARE YOU OPENING THE DOOR?!?!” I shrieked, bolting to my feet.
“What? No,” he said innocently, prying the safety lock open with surprising speed.
“VANILLA!!!!!!” I grabbed him around the middle, bracing my feet against the bench he was kneeling on and trying to drag him away from the door. He grunted in surprise and annoyance, but held strong; instead of successfully pulling him away from the door, I pulled both him and the door away.
Luckily, Charred Vanilla hadn’t destroyed the door. It was still in good shape—but the lock was completely wrecked, and no matter how much I pushed it back against the wall, it didn’t close. “Ugh—! You—what were you thinking, you moron?!?” My heart was practically in my throat. What was wrong with him?!
“Not a lot, to be honest,” Charred Vanilla replied, standing in one smooth motion from where he’d fallen on the floor. He climbed back onto the bench, pushing me aside once again, and peered out of the door. “Look.”
“I’m not getting ANYWHERE near that door!!!” I screeched, pushing myself back up against the opposite wall.
“You were just near it.” He blinked in slight confusion, and I groaned. “And I thought you weren't scared.”
“Yeah, trying to close it! And I was lying!!! You know I was lying!!!"
“You are so boring!!!”
“I like LIVING, and that’s boring?!?”
“Just—look!” Charred Vanilla turned back to me, scowling. “When else will you get the chance to climb on top of a Ferris wheel?!”
“Never, hopefully!!!” I shouted.
Wait, what?
By the time I had registered what the idiot was saying, he was already clutching the outside of the car, balancing on the edge of the doorway. “Woah, we’re way far up,” he said casually, but I nearly didn’t hear it, since he was out there, and I was in here, where it was safe. “Okay, if I fall, I want you to record it.”
“What?!? Are you kidding me?!? You could crumble!!!” I shrieked, hurrying to him, but not grabbing him, for fear it would make him lose his grip. What the hell was he doing?! This was not safe! This was not smart!! This could kill him!!! (Not that I cared if he crumbled, but it would look bad for me to have been the only other Cookie here if it happened!)
“I have wings, stupid!” he called joyfully down to me, disappearing entirely. The car rocked for a moment before stabilizing, and I poked my head out to look at him in complete horror, while he grinned down at me in complete delight. “Seriously, you need to get up here, the view is legendary.”
“Me?!?!” I cried shrilly, nearly falling out anyways. “I’m not—”
Two minutes later, Charred Vanilla had pulled me up the side of the car and onto the roof. I was resigned to my fate as a blueberry-flavoured pancake on the ground below.
I hadn’t fallen yet, though. Neither of us had. I was as close to the center as I could get, clutching onto the mechanism that kept the car suspended in the air, while Charred Vanilla sat practically over the edge of the thing, staring out at Crispia City with his wings half-spread just in case.
“You are so lame,” he was sighing, casting a sideways glance at me. I could hardly see him besides his hair—the moon was low and dim, and he was wearing a dark leather jacket—but I could see the scorn in his eyes. “Just take one look. I promise it’s not as bad as it seems.”
“No way,” I gritted out, squeezing my eyes shut. I had been staring resolutely at the night sky, but looking at stupid Charred Vanilla had brought my attention to the rest of the city. “We’re twenty miles in the air and you want me to look at the ground!!!”
“Twenty miles? I thought you were smart,” Charred Vanilla chuckled. “Why are you so scared, anyways? Don’t you have a levitation spell?”
“No,” I muttered, regretting it as soon as the word came out of my mouth. “I mean—it’s not finished yet!! It’s not… good enough. I’d probably hit a building or something.”
My voice wavered slightly at the end, and I cursed myself silently. But Charred Vanilla, despite wearing a teasing smile (I had opened my eyes again, and was beginning to regret it already), didn’t immediately laugh, or say something rude, he just… blanked for a moment. “Oh,” he said. “I didn’t know. I thought you’d be fine if you fell.”
Huh. That might explain it.
“You’re such an idiot,” I groaned, dropping my head into the hand that wasn’t clutching the car’s mechanism. “How the hell do we even get back into the car from here?”
“My plan was just to wait until it got back down,” Charred Vanilla admitted. “Hey—look on the bright side! You’re safe!”
“I’m twenty miles in the air on the top of a Ferris wheel,” I mumbled, slouching even more.
“We already established that it’s not twenty miles,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “And if you fell, I’d save your pathetic ass.”
I was a little taken aback. That was the first time he’d actually… offered something to me. And it was to save my life. Even if he’d just called my ass pathetic.
“Uh.” I stared for a moment. He was looking at me without any of the usual evil in his eyes. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, no problem,” he shrugged. “I bet I could sue the Ferris wheel if we managed to get back in the car.”
“How do you sue a Ferris wheel??” I muttered without thinking.
“You—you know what I meant! The company or whatever.” Charred Vanilla scooted away from the edge and sat on the opposite side of the car’s mechanism from me.
I sighed. The night was cool, and somehow, talking to Charred Vanilla had calmed me down, despite him being literally the least calm Cookie I had ever met.
I peered over the edge of the car.
City lights sprawled out beneath us—the wheel was built on the hills just outside of it, which was why we were so far away. From up here, I could see all the way to the other end of it, and the ocean beyond—my eyes widened, and though my stomach was turning, I was entranced. It was beautiful.
Charred Vanilla made himself known with an unceremonious (and terrifying, since it shifted me to the side a good few inches) bump of his wing against me. “Told ya,” he said, giving me the smug grin from earlier.
I rolled my eyes and whacked his wing halfheartedly. “This was not worth it. Zero stars. Would not recommend.”
“Liiiiaaaaar,” he sang.
“We’re gonna be in so much trouble once we get down,” I huffed.