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Winter was Susie’s least favorite season. This was just because of the weather--mostly. She didn’t mind the barren trees, the seasonal foods, and she only slightly loathed the happy, upper-middle class nuclear family propaganda that was propagated around the holiday season. Maybe slightly was an underexaggeration. In any case, the real issue was the cold.
She’d pressed her mattress up against the radiator and curled around it, hooking her arm about the backside and pressing her knees into the grooves. It was less than safe, but it kept her warm. But she still couldn’t sleep.
Kris had been different lately. It was pissing her off majorly because it meant she had one less friend to hang out with all the time. That left Susie with exactly 1 friend left, and Susie couldn’t even see Ralsei all the time. She grunted. The loneliness only stung worse after having gotten a taste of friendship
She rolled onto her back, keeping her palm on the radiator. A shiver rippled through her body. She thought it might be helpful to get her blood moving. It wasn’t as though she was going to get any sleep, anyway.
She bundled up in her own jacket along with a hat, scarf, and gloves that Ms. Toriel had let her pocket. Her nose was pressed into the gray, heavily pilled and heavily loved scarf. It smelled like cinnamon and baked goods. And that pissed her off.
She started walking aimlessly through hometown. A soft fuschia flashed against the muddy snow that crusted the grass: The neon sign from Sans’s shop. It still showed his face. She didn’t know how he’d managed to get one like that unless he had just been storing a neon sign of his own face for some reason. She wouldn’t hold it against him because, frankly, that shit’s awesome. Susie contemplated a neon sign of her own face. She didn’t know where she’d put it. She’d prefer one of Ralsei or Kris. And that pissed her off.
It was a pretty night. Even Susie could see that. She’d never really been one to contemplate beauty; introspection was not part of the niche she filled. But the whitish tree branches above her were stretched out over an indigo abyss with such contrast that it seemed like a real cinematic shot. And the forests looked like tangled hair, like if mother nature had a really bad outgrown buzzcut-- or something. She kicked a rock and almost slipped on the ice. Whatever.
Susie loosened the scarf. The smell was really bumming her out and she probably didn’t actually need her snout to be protected from the cold anyway.
What was nice was the quiet. For fucks sake, everything was so loud all the time. There wasn’t a place she could go that wasn’t filled with tapping, chewing, or other dumbass ambient noise that was just totally fucking annoying and overstimulating and Susie hated it. But now, it was the dead of night, and the only person making noise was Jack Frost, idly swirling the atmosphere in lieu of snow. Heh, lieu. Susie didn’t know where she learned that word but it made her feel smart.
She caught herself approaching the Holiday household. Noelle was cool as hell. A couple weeks ago, Susie wouldn’t have been able to see herself even spending more than 10 minutes with someone that preppy and sugary-sweet. Susie would’ve been too jealous to even let herself see how cool she was. She worries whether or not she’ll ever be able to not be jealous of Noelle. It feels like some part of her is predisposed to anger.
As she approached, she watched the speckles of light reflecting off of the brass gates shift upward. Damn, those gates must’ve been something like 15 feet tall. Wasn’t that a little overkill? Sure, monsters grew to be pretty big, but even Susie’s old man was maxed out at just a little over 9 feet. Susie scooped up some snow in her gloves and tossed it at the bars, watching them slice through the sludgy ball and come out looking shinier. She didn’t know what she expected to happen.
Just then, fuckass Jack Frost blew away the scarf, sucking it into Mother Nature’s chopped fade.
“Fuck!” Susie mumbled under her breath. She chased after it, bounding past the Holiday gate and into the neighboring forest.
Luckily, with all the foliage gone, a lot of moonlight was shed on the forest which, also luckily, didn’t have a lot of underbrush preventing travel. The scarf got pinned against a particularly thick branch, but when Susie approached it, the wind blew it in another direction. She growled, once again following the movement as it dove deeper and deeper into the dark.
She began to get nervous. I mean, even for someone as strong and scary as Susie, being lost in the woods in the middle of the night was less than fantastic, especially considering that Susie was a heat-lubbing reptile who was now missing a piece of winter gear. When she finally found the scarf again, she was quick to snatch it and shake off whatever flakes of snow and grime had gotten stuck in the fuzz. She wound it tightly around her neck, but before starting back towards the direction she came, she heard something. Someone.
She whipped around, heart racing, but was met with a stone-brick wall that was about her height. She stepped back to look over it and found herself peering into the back of Noelle’s house. And there was Noelle, leaning on her balcony, looking up at the sky.
It was hard to really make out what exactly it was that she was doing, but Susie caught the way her lacy white nightgown whipped around in the wind, catching rays moonlight like a net. Her antlers reflected it better, though, like chrome. She looked like she was made out of silver.
Fuck, was it creepy to be watching her? Well, yes, duh, but… Well, whatever. Susie was curious and bored. Besides, what Noelle didn’t know couldn’t hurt her! Susie leaned in so she could hear better, but even then, she only heard fragments of Noelle’s mumblings.
“That… And please… even if just for a second… Or… don’t judge me, okay? Fahaha!”
Noelle buried her head in her hands while she laughed, taking a deep breath as her teeth chattered to regain her composure. Then she began to whisper again.
“...Really like…mistletoe? Ack-- I don’t know…expert, anyway………for everything. Amen.”
Oh, she was praying. Yeah, Susie definitely should not have been spying on her, holy shit.
She started to walk away, but in a comically cruel turn of events, she stepped on a branch and it snapped. Loudly. Now, maybe the trudging around in the dirt and slush could’ve been mistaken for a wild animal, but few animals out here were heavy enough to snap branches. Susie’s eyes darted to Noelle who, sure enough, was now examining the forest with morbid curiosity.
“...Hello?” She called, voice still soft. “Who’s there?”
“Shiiiitttt,” Susie whispered.
“We have a katana,” Noelle called, a little louder now. Susie’s eyes widened. “We’re not afraid to use it!”
Well fuck. Her dignity wasn’t worth her life. She waved her arms wildly so that Noelle would see her, “Hey, uh, it’s just me! You don’t need to get a katana or… anything.”
Based on the body language that Susie could make out at such a distance, Noelle did not appear to be relieved. “Is that… Susie?!”
“Mhm!” Fuck. This was so embarrassing.
Noelle paused, taking a deep breath, “What… What’re you doing back there? It’s 2 AM…”
“Lost my scarf. But I found it. So I’m… Uh…. gonna go now,” Susie cleared her throat, tracing the fence with her eyes so she could follow it back to the road.
“W-Wait! Are you going for a walk?” Noelle blurted.
Susie blinked, “Uh, yeah.”
“...Do you want company?”
Noelle met her by the gate. She had a much more refined winter getup, fur-trimmed soft leather coat and whatever plus earmuffs that looked really comfortable.
“Hi, Susie,” She said, gently closing the gate behind her as she pocketed the key.
“Hey.” Susie sized her up before glancing into the shadow-veiled gardens of the Holiday estate. “Are your parents cool with you sneaking out to walk around like this?”
“Er… No. They’re really going to kill me for this, fahaha. Like, a lot.” Noelle buried the lower half of her face in a chunky knit scarf of her own.
Susie looked back at the house, then back at Noelle. “...We’ll be back before they’re awake.”
It would be inaccurate to say that Susie missed getting to monologue as she walked alone, but it would also be inaccurate to say that the experience of this midnight excursion was improved by Noelle’s company. She was quiet, following about a pace behind Susie at her side, saying nothing else but “look!” intermittently as they passed particularly gnarly trees or otherwise interesting oddities. Susie marched on, nodding in response each time, sometimes gracing her with a “cool.” The failure of this hangout was probably Susie’s fault.
“So, why are you out tonight?” Noelle asked eventually.
Susie shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. Thought if I tired myself out a little it might help.”
Noelle nodded, her bobbing antlers cutting through Susie’s peripheral vision. “Nice.”
“What about you? What were you, uh, praying about, up there?” She volleyed.
Susie caught how the sidewalk glowed a pale pink when Noelle’s nose lit up. “Nothing in particular! Just-- friendship and… things.”
“Berdly causing issues?”
“Fahahaha! Not more than usual, no!” Noelle giggled. She had a cute laugh. Susie turned her face away. “I don’t know… Kris has been distant lately. I kinda miss when they were being super-duper social all the time, y’know?” She sighed, her voice dropped a few pitches.
“I feel you. I dunno what’s up with them. They won’t talk to me when I try to bring it up.” She glared at the cracks in the pavement as she stepped over them.
“Sounds like Kris..!” Noelle smiled weakly.
They kept on.
“What are your holiday plans?” Noelle asked sweetly.
“Uhhmm, I dunno. My mom might try to do something but I think I’m gonna try and make Ms. Toriel have me over instead,” she sighed. Her mom’s Christmas celebrations never had any heart. They both knew she was just going through the motions, and barely even that. Neither of them were festive enough to make an effort.
“O-Oh! That’s fun! Um, when our families used to do Christmas together, Toriel baked the best holiday pies! We’d do karaoke and watch the Santa Tracker and Kris and I would sleep on the rug in my room together because we both fell asleep trying to catch him,” She looked up at the stars while lost in nostalgia. “And Azzy and Dess would make everyone uncomfortable by flirting the whole time. My mom hated it, fahahaha!” She sighed. Susie looked over at her.
Her eyelashes really looked great in this dim lighting, so did her fur, and her eyes, and her hair. Even when squished by a hat, her hair still looked great. It was so shiny. Susie liked her rugged hair situation as-is, but even still, she wanted to feel Noelle’s curls, to see if it was as soft as it looked. That wasn’t a weird thing to think, right?
“Wow. Sounds fun,” Susie didn’t know what else to say, but she really meant what she said. She was sad to have missed it.
“Yeah,” Noelle sighed again, wistfully, casting her gaze down at the sidewalk.
A moment passed quietly. “Dess… You never talk about her.”
Noelle paused, “Yeah. Uh, I don’t like to, usually. It’s… um… Kinda traumatic.”
Oh, fuck. “Oh, I’m sorry, you don’t have to--”
“No, no, it’s fine. It’s nice to talk to someone that doesn’t remember her by the bad stuff,” Noelle laughed weakly. “Dess was my best friend.”
Susie slowed her pace marginally so that she could walk side by side with Noelle and attempt a comforting gaze if the situation called for it.
“She was really smart, like my mom, but also absolutely nothing like my mom,” She smiled softly, not for anyone. “She hated my mom, actually. She liked punk-rock and death metal. She cut her own bangs and smoked and wore thick eyeliner… She snuck out just about every night and deliberately failed English,” Noelle laughed, looking out at the distance. Her voice was soft as snowfall, dripping with love and implacable melancholy. “She couldn’t be contained. She couldn’t be defined. She was so herself that it… I dunno. I really looked up to her.”
Susie’s eyebrows knitted together. “I’m sorry, Noelle,” she put a hand on Noelle’s shoulder making her jump.
“Oh, it’s okay. I- I appreciate you letting me talk about this. Most people get weirded out,” Noelle’s nose flared bright red as she tucked a strand of hair back into her hat.
“No, yeah, it’s nice. It sounds like she was a badass,” She tried to introduce some more levity.
“I think you really would’ve liked her.”
Susie rolled Noelle’s words around in her mind like a marble in her mouth.--Was that simile too niche? No, no, Susie was pretty sure most people had put marbles in their mouth at least once. Anyway, what Noelle had said stuck with her. She couldn’t be contained, she couldn’t be defined. What a pretty way to put that.
“‘She couldn’t be defined,’” Susie repeated, mumbling. “That’s nice.”
Noelle nodded, “Thanks.”
“Do you write?” Susie queried.
Noelle looked at her, surprised, “Oh! No, I-- Well, not really. I’ve written a few short stories. Nothing academic or shareable, though, fahehehe…”
“Like what?”
Noelle pressed her lips into a thin line, sinking into her scarf to hide her nose, “Uh, usually romance.”
Susie grinned toothily. Well, well, well! Who knew! “Oh, hell yeah. Pitch me your favorite.”
“Ahh! You wouldn’t like it!” She squeaked.
“No, I’m interested! For real!”
Noelle sighed, “Okay, well, I wrote a version of Romeo and Juliette, but instead of being from competing families, it’s a dystopian sci-fi future with competing classes; So this aristocrat girl living off of Martian oil-mining money falls for a lowly merchant monster and… Y’know, Romeo and Juliette. But they don’t die in the end. They run away and live on a farm together.”
Susie nodded, “Sick.”
“You don’t have to lie! I know it’s silly,” Noelle whined, curling in on herself. “I just really like a happy ending.” She looked really, really soft. Maybe it was her coat, or her fur, or her hair, but… Holy shit, get a grip, Suz’.
“No, it’s cool, it’s cool!” She said reassuringly. “...I didn’t expect you to write that kinda thing, though, to be real,” Susie laughed, elbowing Noelle gently. Noelle stumbled anyway. Oops.
“Fahaha! Yeah, well, my mom doesn’t expect it either. She thinks I'm going to be a chemist or something,” Noelle looked down.
“...But you want to be a writer?” They approached the lake which was fully iced over.
“Yeah.”
“Fuck it, then! Whatever happened to not being contained?” Susie leaned on the railing, looking long and hard at the ice below.
Noelle laughed politely, “Mhm… But it’s not that simple.”
“Yeah, because of jobs or some bullshit?” Susie glanced at Noelle, who joined Susie at the railing, eyes trained on the ice. Onionsan was down there somewhere. “I think the world’s a lot simpler than you think. At the end of the day, if you’ve got food and somewhere to sleep, you don’t need a whole lot else. Maybe some company, and you’ve already got that,” Susie elbowed her significantly softer this time.
“...Right.”
Susie sighed. The idea didn’t seem to take. “Can I get real with you, for a second?”
Noelle’s head whipped around, “O-of course!”
Susie propped her head up with her arm, “I won’t be the first to tell ya’ I’m messed up. And I won’t be the last. I mean, it’s not like I’m suddenly going to get good at school anytime soon,” She flashed a toothy grin at Noelle, who didn’t seem to share her humor. “But there are still people in this world that like me, I think, and that’s enough. People like you too, Noelle.”
The wind plaited her hair messily, but the feeling of her own hair dancing on her neck made her feel alive, even as she could barely feel her skin. Susie wondered if this sudden turmoil meant that a storm was coming on. She watched a branch break off of a trunk distantly, crashing into the icy lake. And although there was little other sound that night, it was still muffled. She frowned.
“You’ve probably heard about who I was before coming here.” Susie adjusted her posture, leaning all the way on the railing to stretch her spine. She hadn’t been able to talk about this to anyone else and, suddenly, it all came spilling out. “But Kris and… uh, and you, I guess, kinda showed me that I didn’t need to be good at things to be good. Cuz’ somehow I got you guys to like me while still being the fuck-up that I am.” The words, self-deprecating as they were, fell out of her mouth easily. It wasn’t a deep-dark secret, especially not to Noelle, who was just leagues above her by almost every measure. Even so, she smiled without having to tell herself to. That was an experience unique to her time in Hometown.
The cold was biting; it stung against the flesh hiding beneath her scales, but even then, a completely unexplainable gratitude washed over her. Thank god she got to be here, somewhere far different than the places she’d grown up, to be cold for once. Thank god she was alive to feel her body retaliate against the temperature. What a weird thing to think.
When she remembered that she was mid-monologue, she blinked and looked back at Noelle, “What I’m tryna say is, if I can be fulfilled without possessing any kind of crazy skills, then you can be fulfilled even if you’re not a scientist or some bullshit. Writing seems fun, anyway.”
Noelle shook her head slowly, a grave and solemn frown frozen on her face. “Susie, that’s not true.” Susie looked at her. Had she seriously not picked up on Susie’s point?
“...Sorry?”
“You’re not a fuck-up,” Noelle mumbled.
Susie laughed sardonically. That wasn’t the point of what she was talking about at all. Fuck, maybe Noelle wasn’t as smart as Susie thought she was.
“You’re not!” Noelle cried, searching for the horizon between the black sky and black lake. “What-- what you just said, Susie, it’s intelligent,” Noelle glared out at the water, instinctively putting her hand over Susie’s, which was warm and comforting. Her fur bristled against her knuckles like a comb. Susie didn’t realize she’d wanted to be comforted. “You’re a good, smart person, Susie. You’re not a fuck-up. A-And, I want to find the people that told you that you are and--and hurt them.”
Susie blinked, “Wh-what?”
Noelle snapped out of her solemn trance and glanced at Susie nervously, nose glowing bright, “Um! I’ve been watching a lot of scary movies recently, sorry if that was… Sorry. But it makes me really upset that you believe you don’t have any skills.” She frowned, running her thumb over the backs of Susie’s knuckles absentmindedly.
Susie scratched the back of her neck, “Not to, like, upset you or anything, but in what way ‘fuck-up’ innacurate?” She searched Noelle’s face for any clarifying expressions.
Noelle shrugged, “I think you’ve got a lot more figured out than most of us.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that. She let her eyes rest on the branch as it slowly sank to the depths of the lake. She enjoyed the sound of wind blowing past her face and the scratching of Noelle’s fur against her scales.
Susie glanced down at their hands, finally drawing attention to it. Noelle, also realizing what she’d been doing, ripped her hand away quickly, “Oh! Jiminy Christmas-- I’m sorry.” She hid her face in her mittens.
Susie laughed, coaxing warmth into her cheeks. It felt nice. She sighed. “It’s good. I could use the heat, anyway.”
The other untangled herself in shock, “Right! Of course, you’re mostly ectothermic, right? You need to get back home--I think it’s going to snow.”
Susie turned around at Noelle’s urging and began the trek home. Noelle trotted at her side, hands fidgeting with her mittens. Susie’s eyes fixed on the line between the silvery snow and the dark undergrowth, unmoving as her mind droned on.
It was true she had some stuff figured out. She had some strong convictions and life skills that not everybody else had figured out. But she was surprised that Noelle recognized it.
Susie had been a shallow brute for 17 years, too crass to say anything intelligent, claws too big for piano. Maybe Kris was able to see past that after however many hours of fighting for their lives in the Dark World. But, even with so much less time together, Noelle seemed to see something that most others don’t. Something about those big, brown eyes was surprisingly piercing.
“Hey, so, tell me more about your story. Are they gonna be called Romeo and Juliette too?” Susie turned her head to Noelle, watching her breath freeze as she walked into it.
Noelle hummed bashfully, “Ah, no. I was thinking something more spacey, like Estelle and Callisto.”
Susie clicked her tongue, “Cal-ih-stooohh. I like it. It has a ring.”
“Fahehehe, thanks!”
Noelle had to have been a foot or two shorter than Susie, at least. A stronger breeze could’ve blown her away with the rest of the snow bluff. Suddenly, Susie felt as though she should be holding her hand in case a particularly strong gust of wind tried to take her out.
“Is there gonna still be poison and all of that…stuff?” Susie struggled to remember the plot of Romeo and Juliette for a couple different reasons.
Noelle bit her lip and lolled her head to the side in thought. “Uhm, something similar, yeah.”
A streak of lamplight glinted in Noelle’s eye from under her dark eyelashes. Susie ripped her eyes away and gulped. “Tell me about it.”
Noelle took a deep breath, hands swinging up from her sides to move animatedly as she spoke. “Okay, so the idea is that during the settling phase of Mars, food was so scarce that when someone died, they were eaten by their loved ones instead of buried. A-and even though the story takes place like, a bajillion years afterwards, that piece of Martian culture is still really strong! So When Estelle fakes her death, Callisto steals her body away from her family so that she can cannibalize her instead because she’s like ‘i loved her more than her family ever did!! ahhhh!’ And right when she’s about to, Estelle wakes up and is like ‘omg you saved me!’ And they run away together and elope!”
Susie stared at her, eyebrows knit together. Noelle attempted to look in Susie’s direction following her refusal to respond, only to abruptly look back at the road, nose glowing wildly.
“Is it too gross?!” Noelle squealed, mittens flying up to her face to hide away in. “I’ve just been seeing all this stuff online about ‘cannibalism as a metaphor for love’ and I thought--”
“It’s kick-ass, Noelle.” Susie nodded sagely, dropping a hand on her shoulder. Noelle jumped.
“...Really?”
“Deadass.”
Noelle sputtered as she looked for a good response. Eventually, she managed to quietly say “Thank you,” and elbow Susie in the bicep.
Susie let her hand linger on Noelle’s shoulder, soaking up the heat as though she was curled around her radiator again. When she finally pulled her hand away, she realized that her teeth had been chattering.
A vague idea occurred to her where, maybe, one day, if she and Noelle ever got closer, they could just curl around each other instead. And when the implication of that thought set in, Susie cleared her throat and watched her boots slam into the road-sludge, suddenly hot enough to not worry about the cold at all.
A distinct popping sound drew her attention back to the forest beyond the streets: ice splintering off the branches as they bent. Susie squinted, watching the black figures sway in the increasingly snow-dense sky.
“Do you ever think that the trees look like someone’s hair? Someone with really gnarly split ends?” She waved her hands above her head.
Noelle squinted at the treetops for a second, lips pursed in thought. “Huh. You’re totally right! Reminds me of Kris’s hair,” she snickered.
Susie feigned sternness, “Hey, back off. I love Kris’s split ends.”
Noelle laughed airily. “Me too.”
Soon enough, they arrived at the Holiday Estate. Even if Susie was far from being a ‘gentleman,’ she at least knew that pretty girls get home first. Noelle initially protested, but was forced to relent to Susie’s ceaseless standing at the gate.
Susie looked the rungs up and down, whatever shiny parts had existed before were now frosted over and powdered by snowdrift. She wrapped a hand around one and cleaned off a little circle with her thumb, coaxing light onto the metal.
Noelle fumbled in her pocket for her key. Even once it sat in the palm of her hand, she made no effort to put it in the lock.
“Hey, Susie,” she said with the same hushedness that she had when they first set out.
Susie looked back at her and stuffed her hand in her pocket, rubbing the frost into the lining. She found herself whispering too. “What’s up?”
“This was really fun. Thanks for letting me come with you,” Noelle continued. Her nose continued to glow faintly. “Can we hang out more often?”
Susie grinned, baring her teeth and tasting the snow on her gums. “Yeah, obviously.”
Noelle flashed a smile before ducking her head. She plunged the key into the gate’s lock and turned with a few clicks. She carefully pushed the gate open, letting the slow creak of its hinges fade into the sound of wind whining through the forest. But before going through, she looked at Susie again, speaking softly. “Thanks. Goodnight, Susie..!”
Susie shot back a two fingered salute. She watched Noelle close the gate and lock it, half cloaked in darkness. With settling melancholy, she watched Noelle mosey down the path to the front door and out of view.
Then, with confidence that surprised her, she called as loud as she could while still whispering. “Noelle?”
Noelle’s boots clicked on the cobblestone as she trotted back into the light, eyes shining from behind the gate.“Yeah?”
“Can you send me your story? I’d love to read it some time.” She cleared her throat, hands playing with balls of lint inside of her coatpockets. She felt somehow sweaty.
Noelle blinked a couple times, “Oh, um, yeah.”
The wind strewed her curls across her face. Susie, without thinking, reached through the bars and moved a ringlet to the side of her jaw. It was just as soft as she imagined, like lace.
“Sick. Thanks,” Susie whispered, turning away and marching homeward before Noelle could see her face.
“A-And Susie!?” Noelle called from the gate behind her, probably much louder than she had meant to be.
Susie cringed and squeezed her eyes shut, slowing to a stop. Then she turned back.
Noelle leaned into the gate, hands wrapped around the rungs to brace herself. She opened her mouth, but it was a few seconds before any words escaped. “Can you… Write something? I think--” Noelle blushed, then continued in a gentler tone, “I think that you’d be good at it.”
Susie looked her up and down. At her winter set, with no rips or stains anywhere to be seen on her boots, coat, or mittens; at her healthy hair and pretty eyes; at the short puffs of anxious breath carried away on the breeze. A couple of weeks ago, Susie would’ve resented all of it. She would’ve seen someone softened by privilege, gluttoned on superiority, and tuned her out entirely. But now all she wanted to do was listen.
“O-Okay!” Susie called back, probably also much louder than she had ought to be.
“Okay! Goodnight!” Noelle stuck her mittened-hand through the gate to wave.
“Goodnight!” Susie put her hand up to wave woodenly, and Noelle, equal parts desperate to slink away and desperate to stay around, slowly retreated to the front door.
Susie saw the light slip off of her, listened to the sound of her boots clicking against the cobblestone, and one by one, every clue that she had been there at all was devoured by darkness, back into the enigma. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Noelle’s image was seared into Susie’s mind, she might not have known who she was.
Then Susie shuddered, breathed a nervous laugh, and returned to her radiator.