Young and in Love - Wenclair

Keep the Reindeer, My Heart Already Knows how to Fly

Wednesday felt like the day after a snowfall. When the temperatures are in the negative, and the top layer is frozen solid.
Salt will burn, but will not remedy the problem already formed.
If anything, it'll turn it to ice. It crunches and cracks underfoot. Trampled and pummelled, yet it does not turn it into a puddle.

Snow like that- compact and condense, is what Wednesdays felt like for 16 years. The blaze of summer won't thaw her. She just continues to pile on thick layer after thick layer of ice, similar to scar tissue on a wound, until there's nothing much left. But there's still, somewhere deep below the surface, that fluffy and unblemished snow people love. Kids play in, workers breathe a sigh of relief at the sight of in hope of a snow day.

Her palms are hot in the frigid temperature, her body working overtime to combat the air that tries so desperately to run her blood cold. Her heavy winter boots do little to warm her toes, bitten from the frost and no matter how deep she nuzzles into the fleece layer of her hoodie, her nose remains pink and a discomfort in the middle of her face.

It's a humanizing experience. To freeze, but have the warmth a few steps behind her. Knowing she con venture into the cozy recluse, but doesn't.

She looks to the sky, breathing out from her mouth as the moon, pregnant, stares back with one single star a dimple to its crescent smile.

"Come on, Wends!" Enid calls, and she looks to the makeshift ice rink. Grimacing when she shifts her weight, and the freezing extra fabric of her pants bundle at the knees.

The forest outside of Nevermore is decked out in string lights and has cardboard cut outs of candy canes and reindeer in the snow, a path cleared for the excited students to traverse their way to the pond, frozen over and the protective wooden and plastic casing surrounding it.

She steps on a chunk of snow, crushes it beneath a steel-toe boot. If she goes out into the ice and falls, not only would it be a highly depressing sight, but this time of year the attic dorm's pipes freeze over and only luke warm water comes out. Something not even someone of her intellect can fix.

Enid is gliding up to the divot of space used as a door of the rink, smiling. "Come on!"

Wednesday's jaw clenches. Blinking at the pink skates moving mindlessly. "I'm happier out here. On ground that will not crack and drag my hypothermic corpse to the floor."

Enid's pouting. "Oh, come on! It'll be fun and-" her eyebrows furrow, turning her head to look over her shoulder at the ice skaters behind her that Wednesday's watching warily. "You don't know how to skate, do you?"

Wednesday feels the pink in her face. "It was not a cardinal skill. Nor did it interest me." 

Enid doesn't look like she wants to make fun of her. She's smiling that soft smile reserved for Wednesday, and reaches out with hand-knitted mittens to take her hand. "I'll teach you. For me? Please?"

Wednesday wishes to say no. Feels the word in her throat as well as a myriad of colourful words, but doesn't. She nods, resignedly, walking the little bit of path she'd been stalling off to the side of.

She winces at the blood-curdling squeal the blonde lets out, hopping out of the rink and hobbling over to the desk clerk- a wooden shack sitting in a dugout of the snow. "Size 4!"

Wednesday blinks, trailing behind her. Chalks up the fact she naturally presses her front to Enid's back as a self-preservation instinct to not freeze to death. "It concerns me you know that."

"You have tiny feet. My shoes next to yours look like I room with a toddler."

Wednesday levels the guy behind the counter a glare over Enid's shoulder. He's batting his lashes at the blonde and practically falling over himself to get her what she needs.