012

Snowed In

Vaughan descended the stairs to find Jeh sitting in a chair, reading a book. Blue wasn’t present—probably either in her lab or out back working on something, if Vaughan had to guess. That unicorn had an absurd work ethic.

“ ‘Morning,” Jeh greeted, turning a page. “I already had breakfast.”

“What was it?”

“Roast raccoon. Caught it last night.” She tapped the bone in her hair with a playful smirk. “They taste so much better and juicier when roasted.”

Vaughan decided not to comment on this, heading for the back door instead. He yawned as he moved—he was immensely tired. He’d stayed up extra late last night thinking of various things the members of the Wizard Space Program could do and was ready to give them their assignments today.

Later, of course. Once he was awake. He wouldn’t dare call the state he was in now “awake.” He reached the back door and opened it.

Suddenly, everything was white and cold. Coughing and sputtering, Vaughan dug himself out of the mound of snow, flopping unceremoniously onto his back.

“You okay?” Jeh ran over, stopping in her tracks at the monstrous mound of snow. “…Wow, yesterday it was barely a sprinkling.” She jumped onto the snowy mound and tried to dig her way out through the top of the doorway, only finding more snow. “...I want to say I’ve never seen snow this bad, but I probably just wasn’t conscious enough for it.”

Vaughan stood up, dusted the snow off his robes, and adjusted his hat indignantly. “This much snow is not unusual… for the middle of winter. It’s sure here early.”

“Gonna be a long winter?”

“Gonna be a long winter.”

Jeh tapped her feet a few times. “…Think we can get out one of the windows?”

“Probably. It’s never gotten high enough to bury the cabin.”

The two of them climbed the stairs and found that the snow didn’t even reach the second-story windows. Jeh pressed her face to the glass, staring in awe at the completely white and smooth landscape outside. All of the smaller plants and rocks were completely hidden, leaving only the trees themselves to life amidst the cold, and most of their branches were utterly filled with snow as well.

“I can’t believe I missed this every year…” Jeh said, mouth dropping open.

“It is amazing to look at—but it also causes problems.” Vaughan folded his arms. “It’s not going to be practical to get to Willow Hollow.”

“Oh.” Jeh blinked. “Can I still go outside?”

Vaughan scratched his beard. “If most people went out there they’d fall beneath the snow and freeze to death.” He patted Jeh on the shoulder. “So, in your case, just take some Red to keep your body heat up and bundle up so you don’t waste the crystals.”

Jeh saluted. “Got it!”

“I also hear it’s very easy to get lost in the snow. Probably not a good idea to leave sight range of the cabin. Your muscle memory of the forest will not work.”

Jeh nodded. “It’d take forever to get anywhere anyway.” She frowned. “I… can’t go visit anyone.”

“Quite.” Vaughan stretched himself out. “I’m going to go take stock of our food stores. We were prepared for an early winter, but now that it’s here… gotta be careful.”

Jeh raised a hand. “Starving doesn’t harm me. I—“

Vaughan raised a hand. “I made sure to store for three people. You can still eat.”

“Oh.” Jeh grinned. “Thanks, Vaughan! I’m going outside now!” She ran off to get more furs and some Red.

Vaughan chuckled to himself, left alone at the window surveying the new wintry landscape. It really was beautiful. If only it wasn’t such an annoying hindrance—getting to Willow Hollow wasn’t impossible, but it would require a lot of Red and waste time.

It was best to just… wait. Like everyone in Willow Hollow did. Winters were times of survival and patience, not immense work.

Jeh came back, thrust the window open, and jumped out into the snow—immediately vanishing into the ground with a comical “fwump” noise to go with it. “Wow! You were right!”

“Have fun!” Vaughan called. “Just come in if you get cold.” He closed the window but didn’t lock it. He descended the stairs, intending to make use of the couch to have a nice relaxing morning.

Then he saw the pile of snow in the doorway and remembered that he probably had to deal with that. With a sigh, he lifted up his scepter and used Orange to start putting the snow in a bucket. Using Red would just give the floor water damage.

“Vaughan!” Blue called from her lab. “Why is it getting so cold in here!?”

“Snowed in!” Vaughan called.

“Well, that’s annoying!” Blue said this rather dismissively. Given the following silence, she’d probably returned to her experiments or her calculations.

The girl was a genius, but Vaughan sometimes wondered if she locked herself up in that room too much.

~~~

The days were shorter and they passed by quicker. The temperature only dropped. For the most part, the level of snow didn’t increase; it merely remained the same. An expansive, white wonderland, always visible if anyone were willing to go to the second floor.

Jeh was always willing. Every day she woke up, suited herself up in extra thick furs, and took her Red outside. She always tried to jump into the same hole she made the first day, but her aim wasn’t always perfect; as a result, there were numerous other holes in the fluffy snow.

The main hole, however, led to ground level, since Jeh had intentionally dug it out. This deep into the snow the walls were like ice, smooth and melted together as a result of Jeh’s method of tunneling. Today, she was in the mood for making more tunnels, so she set out along her carved, winding paths, her only light coming from a small fire she created with her crystals. She found a spot where the snow was still relatively fluffy and hadn’t been melted into ice and set to work.

The idea was simple: melt the snow away. As it melted, it liquefied, flowing downward and quickly refreezing due to the temperature. This made Jeh’s tunnels unbelievably slippery, but it kept her from having to shovel snow out of them since ice was significantly denser than snow.

She decided she was going to carve a corkscrew tunnel up to the surface. A short ways in, she discovered that going up at an incline was a terrible idea; slanted ice could not be climbed. So she started trying to apply the heat in such a way as to shape the ice into stairs. Her end results were messy and uneven, but they were flat enough that she could stand on them and continue work.

At about the tenth stair she realized this was taking forever. Not because of her sense of time—that was absolutely terrible—but because her stomach was informing her of its desire for food. It was either lunchtime or close to it.

With a shrug, Jeh left the stairs for later. Descending them proved to be a challenge, but she only slipped on the last stair, planting her face into the dirt and ice at the lowest level. “Egh…”

She walked back down her tunnel to the “main area” she had created: a cave-like enclosure of ice the size of a living room. She found a small crate she had dragged down here and opened it, revealing a few bits of dried meat and fruit for her meal purposes.

Taking a seat in the center of the room, she started eating. The sounds of her chewing echoed throughout the icy cavern, and every time she opened her mouth fog would come out. Her little fire-light was keeping her warm enough, though.

She finished eating and then… didn’t move. She was still breathing and not in any danger of freezing solid, she just didn’t get up. The girl sat, alone, listening to the sounds of her ice cave.

It was slightly windy on the surface, so she could hear a slight howl in the distance, but it was significantly muffled this deep in her network. It was the only sound aside from her breathing.

On the first day, she’d found the sensation of silence amazing.

Now, she no longer cared for it.

With a drawn-out sigh, she flopped onto her back and let her fire go out, plunging everything into absolute darkness.

It’s really no different like this, she thought.

In the back of her mind, she still wondered if she could possibly make a tunnel all the way to Willow Hollow or Ashen so she could find her friends, but she knew how long it took. That would be a weeks’ long project, assuming the snow didn’t partially melt in the middle of it, which would ruin everything. Snow was never permanent enough to bother with such things.

Still… she wanted to do things. But Blue was always busy, and Vaughan wasn’t exactly the most physically oriented of people. He spent his days in comfortable chairs yawning a lot. He’d come out to look at her tunnels a few times, but never to do anything in them.

And that was it. It was just her, Blue, and Vaughan here.

Jeh wished Blue would hurry up with those calculations and “theory work” she was devoting so much time to. Jeh also wouldn’t have minded helping her, but it was all math. Math, math, math.

Jeh didn’t hate math but some of the things Blue did with numbers defied any explanation, at least as far as Jeh was concerned. Jeh was left in the dark, and no matter of trying to understand that mathematics book in the library gave Jeh any insight. What even was that ∑* symbol?

*Naturally, the symbol they use for “summation” is different from ours, as is the case with all their mathematical symbols. This is merely translated for our convenience.

Jeh had no idea how long she remained down there. It was enough that her leg started to go numb. She likely would have frozen down there had her ears not picked up something: ice cracking?

She sat up immediately, summoning the fire-light again. Was there someone down here with her? No—she’d have heard Blue and Vaughan stumbling around; anyone else would have to make a similar amount of noises. Some support or icewall somewhere in the tunnels must have cracked.

With a sigh, she stood up and set out to find the crack.

She searched the entire day and never found it.

It probably just fused back together, or something. Jeh yawned, noting that her Red crystal was getting rather small. Geez, it really does take a lot of energy to stay warm down here. That was as good enough a reason as any to go back to the cabin. Dinner would probably be soon. Maybe Blue would stop working long enough to eat it.

She climbed out of her snow-hole, leaving the chamber of her solitude behind.

~~~

In Willow Hollow, the story was slightly different. Work was largely put on hold by the massive snow, but it wasn’t impossible to traverse it and visit other people. The square was still cobbled and it was worthwhile to melt paths through the snow from building to building.

The hardest place to manage, however, was the Sanctuary. And it was the one place Lila would not let go unattended. Luckily, she had been prepared. Ever since the first winter where she worked her head off to keep the snow out of her precious Sanctuary, she always made sure to have three extra arcane heaters available to make sure everything within the stone walls was melted and that a path ran out to the rest of the buildings.

Lila’s single-minded determination to keep the Sanctuary in operation even in the midst of immense snow. She’d only actually closed services off when there was an actual danger, such as the blizzard two years back that threw icicles through the air. That had been an interesting day.

Curiously, this left the Sanctuary as the best place for the people of Willow Hollow to meet. Very few people were willing to put in the effort to leave their homes, so attendance was low, but those who did show up included all the new members of the Wizard Space Program.

The Sanctuary was unfortunately outdoors, so even the heaters couldn’t keep the natural chill away. Naturally, everyone was bundled up in coats and furs, even Lila herself—her Keeper robes just wouldn’t cut it right now. Still, she pressed on, guiding those who came through teaching, meditation, and at last the closing.

“Go forth to your homes, remembering what Dia has done for us in all creation. Wherever we go, She is with us, guiding us through our Choice, regardless of our limitations.”

Everyone nodded in agreement, and about half of the people there moved out, back into the snow to return to their aforementioned homes. Lila and her son Akri remained, obviously, to clean up anything that happened in the Sanctuary that day. The rest who remained were the Wizard Space Program: Krays, Big G, Mary, Seskii, and Suro.

Lila turned to her son. “Akri, you take care of the candles today. It appears as though I have a long conversation ahead of me.”

Akri nodded. “Of course, mum.” He walked to the central altar and opened it up, examining the seven differently-colored candles to make sure they were burning properly, taking the opportunity to clean the altar.

Lila jumped down to the ground of very dead but very wet grass. “So, business?”

Seskii shook her head. “I wanted to say that was a wonderful message today.”

“Everyone else is here for business,” Krays said, folding her arms.

“Don’t be disrespectful!” Mary huffed. “We are extremely lucky to have a Keeper like Lila.”

Krays tapped her head. “Obviously, who else would be on board with shooting children into space?”

Lila thought about this for a moment. “Keeper Ra’vani. But that’s neither here nor there—what is it?”

Suro brushed his tail up against his wife. “I think we all just want to know what to do while the snow’s piling up. We can’t get to our supplies or our brains.”

“I can get you a jar of replacement brain,” Seskii said.

“Could you really?” Mary asked.

Seskii shrugged and winked.

Lila chuckled at the antics before her. “Well, we can’t do any science or any launches, but we can come up with ideas. I’m considering a proposal for a place to launch spacecraft from. Make it a tourist location, give people dates for launches so they can schedule to watch… make it a community effort and event. The more popular it is, the more funding comes in, and the more work can be done—while also doing the most good for morale.” Lila turned to Big G. “I am sure you are aware of the negative effects long-term mining has on most people.”

“We weren’t meant to live underground,” Big G admitted.

“Shroomers… Xolotls…” Krays started counting races off on her fingers.

“You know what I mean.” Big G folded his arms. “This snow is actually good for my men, gives them a chance to see the sun more. Which is my idea. I can have miners work on menial construction tasks for the Program in shifts, give them all a chance to do something out of the ground more often.”

“What a brilliant idea!” Lila said. “However, how can we pay them? The Program currently does not bring in enough income to, well, pay people.” Lila flicked her tail. “All of us are doing this for free, all the funds go to Vaughan’s stores, and I’ve

examined the income: almost all of it is spent on more resources.”

“We aren’t doing this to get rich,” Mary pointed out. “We just… want to.”

“My boys need to be paid,” Big G said. “I’ll worry about that. The mine is my business.”

“We’ll need to hash out the details with Vaughan,” Lila said. “…Which is a problem, currently.”

“I’m a patient man.”

Lila had to admit, that was true. She turned to the others. “So, anything else?”

Mary shrugged. “Uh… I just feel like I need something to do? Frostweed doesn’t need much guidance to grow, so I’m not doing much right now. I wanted to help Blue with her botanical experiments, but…” She shrugged.

Suro nodded. “I know how you feel. I need designs from Vaughan if I want to make anything really new. I can’t even make another drive, I have to order the Magenta parts.”

“We can’t run any experiments, either,” Big G said. “Vaughan has all the equipment set up there.”

Krays snapped her fingers. “You’re wrong, we have our forge. Darmosil and I can surely cook some experiment up for you intellectuals.”

“What would we test, though?” Big G asked.

“Heat!” Krays folded her fingers together. “You go fast enough, you light on fire, right? We can run tests on those levels of heat in the forge. Eh? Eh?”

“Good start,” Lila said. “But we’ll need procedures, a goal in mind, and something to test.”

“I’ll think of something before any of you.”

Seskii tilted her hand back and forth. “She has a point. She’s the most likely to make a crazy breakthrough no one could think of.”

“Your subtlety could use work.”

“Only the best for you,” Seskii grinned. “Not that I could hold a candle to your husband.”

Krays laughed. “See? That’s why, you backed off. You’re too nice.”

Mary facepalmed. “For Dia’s sake—” She quickly put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Lila, I’m sorry!”

“I’m not the one you need to apologize to,” Lila said; though she spoke with no malice or judgment. “Now… I know you all have ideas and things you want to do, but the fact of the matter is I can’t even start making what I want in this snow. We can make plans right now, that is all. Unless Krays comes up with something.” Lila raised her ears high. “We just have to learn some patience. Wait for the snow to clear. It could be weeks, it could be months. But this does not mean we stop thinking. We are part of this Program now—we still think about what to do, consider our duties, and if we see something worthy of our attention we do it. So please…” She smirked. “Let’s keep meeting after service to discuss potential new ideas, sound good?”

The group nodded in unison.

“Great! Now… I have housekeeping here to take care of, so see you all tomorrow. Good luck with those snow tunnels, Big G.”

Big G nodded in respect to her before turning with the others to leave.

“Wow, mom,” Akri said, having finished with the altar. “You really do know how to manage them, huh?”

“You never forget how to be a captain, Akri.” A frown crossed over Lila’s features. “Never.” She sharply turned her ears to the side, listening carefully.

“Mom? What is it?”

“…Nothing, apparently.” Lila relaxed. “I must be stressed from all the snow.”

“I can take care of everything here if you need a break today.”

“No, no, ten minutes will do. Thank you, though.”

~~~

There were times when Blue really wished she could use magic effectively. Then she wouldn’t have to deal with the tedium of trying to calculate trajectories on paper. With Purple, a glowing three-dimensional animation could be constructed, which would make things much simpler. But Blue was a hopeless case and Vaughan wasn’t specialized in Purple, forcing Blue to resort to more inefficient methods.

Namely, drawing around a hundred different diagrams of the Ikyu-moon system and the position of a theoretical spacecraft. She had to make a lot of assumptions to even be able to make these diagrams. It took a lot of time to perform the raw calculation at every moment, predict how far the ship would go, examine its new location, perform the calculation again…

She had yet to find a feasible way to get to the moon without the celestial object slamming into the ship at high speeds—or the ship slamming into it, in some other ways. Going directly up was right out, always ended up being smashed to pieces. It was imperative that they were traveling at the moon’s speed when they arrived, but that required not going straight up. She wasn’t sure what it required yet but her ideas weren’t going anywhere very quickly.

The only way she’d gotten it to work was to fly the ship into space, accelerate it to the moon’s speed over a long period of time, and then move to where the moon would be. It functioned, but the issue was that in order to actually perform it they’d need to know exactly how long the maneuvers would take so they would be going the right speed and direction for where the moon was going to be when they arrived. Since the moon was going in a circular path, they needed to match the angle of its speed as well—which was very sensitive to timing. The issue was she couldn’t say with certainty what the exact rate of acceleration was for any given ship, she just had to guess, which meant none of the theory would have much practical application.

What they needed was a strategy with more room for error and gave them plenty of time to adjust if they were off. A slow approach—well, relative to the moon. That was the issue, in the end. They needed to go slow and they needed to go fast, which was giving Blue headaches. Lots of headaches.

So she’d started testing various strategies of motion in her calculations, hence the hundreds of drawings of the Ikyu-moon system. The vast majority of attempts ended in crashes. She did notice a pattern though: once far enough out from Ikyu, the tendency for things to fall to its center would make the flight path to the moon curve.

“Weird…” Blue said to herself, scratching her chin. “…I wonder if we can use that…”

There came a knock at the door.

“Yes?”

Jeh poked her head into the lab. “Uh… Blue? You busy?”

Blue set down the calculations she was working on, noting the mountains of paper surrounding her. “Um… yes. Why, what is it?”

“Oh… uh…” Jeh shuffled her feet awkwardly. “Nothing really, you’ve got work. Important work.”

Blue nodded. “Very. Trying to figure out how to get to the moon without crashing. It’s harder than it sounds.”

“Have… fun.”

Despite herself, Blue smiled. “I will! Thanks for checking up on me.”

“Don’t mention it.” Jeh closed the door and left Blue to her work.

Despite her complaints, Blue really did enjoy what she was doing. She was plumbing the depths of reality never before considered, so far as she knew. How to get to the moon, how to get to the moon…

There was another knock at the door. This one made Blue twitch—she’d just finished with Jeh, what now? “What?”

Vaughan opened the door, yawning. “Just coming to say good morning.”

Blue twitched. I forgot to sleep again. “Well, good morning. I’ll be getting back to this now.”

Vaughan looked around at all the papers strewn around and whistled. “You really are taking this seriously, aren’t you?”

“You claim that you have ‘no natural mathematical skills’ whatsoever, despite your ability to fine-tune Magenta conduits. So this falls to me, the mathy one.” She gestured at a page filled entirely with numbers and symbols. “This is very intensive and focus-demanding work.”

“Oh, I know.” He continued walking around the lab, leisurely examining the various papers everywhere. “Hmm…”

Blue told herself to just be quiet, to let it go, to wait for him to leave… but the longer he stood there, the less she could think about anything else aside from giving him her mind.

“Vaughan, what have you been working on?”

Vaughan shrugged. “We’re snowed in, Blue.”

“Ah, but look at this lab of work!” Blue gestured at all of the pages. “Couldn’t you get out of that dumb comfy chair of yours every now and then and, I dunno, design some crystal cores or something?”

Vaughan waved a dismissive hand. “It’s winter, Blue. Nobody has to do anything.”

“Th—that’s just lazy!” Blue blurted.

Vaughan turned to her, raising an eyebrow. “Lazy? Blue, are you not hearing me? Winter. The time of cold, rest, and beautiful hills of rolling snow.”

“And here I thought you wanted to go to space.”

“I do, bu—“

“But what?” Blue tilted her head. “Huh? What possible reason is there for you to be lazing around all day filling the house with your snores and not lifting a finger to do anything!?”

Vaughan’s expression darkened. “And you could stand to come out of this room every now and then. You aren’t even at breakfa—“

“Oh no you don’t!” Blue interrupted. “I’m not falling for the ‘whataboutisms,’ Vaughan. You criticize me after you realize what you’re doing. My actions are inconsequential to yours.”

“Hmph,” Vaughan folded his arms. “Clearly, you’re in a bad mood.”

“Actually, I was in a great mood until you walked in and reminded me how much nothing you’re doing.”

“That’s no way to talk to your supervisor.”

“Please,” Blue tossed her mane back, using her horn to gesture at her mountains of work. “You couldn’t do any of this without me and you know it. Or did you forget, we made the Wizard Space Program a democracy?”

“You’re still my apprentice.”

“And how much actual magic have you taught me, huh?” Blue tilted her head. “I’m still useless at casting spells, and you haven’t given me anything structured enough to assist in making crystal cores. I’m learning all that from your books!”

“That you don’t read because you’re always locked in here!”

“You just did it again!”

“It’s relevant!”

Blue threw a crumpled-up piece of paper at him. “Unless you want help, get out of my lab.”

“This is my cabin.”

“What are you going to do, throw me out into the snow?” She stood on the tips of her hooves and glared defiantly at him.

Vaughan’s face contorted in rage for a moment—but then it melted away. Without another word, he left the room, closing the door quietly.

“Uuugh…” Blue groaned, returning to her work. The math of the next few hours was marked by decidedly aggressive strokes that sometimes tore through the parchment.

~~~

At first, it had just been one snowman. Jeh cut through the ice in her central cavern and pulled packable snow inside and built one. She had to go to the surface to scrounge for some suitable sticks, but it was easy enough to get the three spheres on top of each other and a smile of rocks ready to greet her whenever she arrived.

The next day she started making another one. Then she made one with two heads. Then she made one that was huge but only a head. Finding snowmen to be boring, she invested in snow sculptures of bears, snakes, and many other animals she’d seen during her time in the forest, utterly filling her caverns with them.

She’d lost track of the days. All she knew was that the snow level was somehow even higher now and her caverns were likely to be around for a long, long time.

She eventually started talking to them.

“Y’know, Snowy—“ she was talking to the two-headed snowman. “—I don’t know why I do this. Make all of you. I mean…” She gestured at the small army she’d built from the frozen fluff. “What’s even the point? You’re just… fun to make. And then I don’t do anything, I just talk to you.”

She turned to a snow snake. “Yes, I talk to you too. Hmph! I talk to all of you. …I talk to you more than Blue or Vaughan.” She kicked the ground with her feet. “I miss Ashen… Rissy… Rona… Seskii…” She sat down in a snow throne and pulled her knees to her chest. “What’s wrong with me?”

The soft howling of distant wind was her only answer.

“I didn’t have any problems in the forest…” Jeh frowned. “I never talked. I didn’t know how. I just… was. And every day was great! I’d go out, fight a bear, win about half the time…” She giggled at the memory. “Then I’d just flop into the snow and pass out all winter instead of doing all this.” Closing her eyes, she folded her arms. “Why don’t I just do that? It’s not like anyone needs me right now. Blue’s always busy, Vaughan’s always napping…”

For a moment, she legitimately considered it. Dropping herself into a plane of snow and allowing herself to freeze there until spring. She’d done it before; it was just like an extra-long nap with a bit of discomfort at the ends of it. Heck, even when she’d been in situations she could have kept herself warm, she’d chosen to go out into the snow just to get the winter over with.

Why couldn’t she just let herself do that, now?

Why didn’t she want to?

Jeh looked up to Snowy. “I… what’s wrong with me, why can’t it be like it used to be?”

Snowy made no response, but Jeh answered her own question. The words and the connections. They meant something.

She wanted to talk.

And talking to Snowy wasn’t doing it for her; she needed someone to talk back. Someone… somehow…

Quickly, she stood up and dusted the snow off her furs. “I’m going to fix this, Snowy. You watch. I’ll… I don’t know, I’ll think of something.”

Snowy just kept smiling his eternal rocky smile as Jeh scrambled out of her caves.

~~~

“You said you have something for me?” Suro asked as he walked into Krays and Darmosil’s section of the shop. Somehow, the Sourdough twins had convinced him to buy four loaves of bread, all of which were stuffed in bags hanging from his back.

“Krays does,” Darmosil said as he sharpened a sword. “I don’t.”

“He speaks the truth in order to hide his shame,” Krays chuckled.

“Truth is truth.”

“But is it truthfully true?”

“That’s nonsense.”

“Actually, if you would have attended Lila’s service last week you would have heard all about how giving a blunt truth is not being true.”

“Ah, so a message directed at you.”

“Hypocritical tendencies are attractive right now.”

Suro held up a paw. “I know you two love your little game, but I would like to see what Krays has for me, yes?”

Krays rolled her eyes. “Oh, fine, you tar-furred mangy mongrel.”

“I don’t thi—“

Krays kicked the door into the back rooms open. “Come, I’ve got some experiments set up!”

Suro was admittedly rather curious about what exactly Krays had cooked up. She was very much not an experimentally driven person, one who lived by actions rather than deep thought.

So he wasn’t all that surprised when he found that her experiment had involved punching holes in various metal sheets rather destructively.

Krays picked up a decently sized chunk of Blue crystal. “Okay, watch this, it’s going to be fun.” She picked up something tiny and metallic off the ground, pulled her hand back, and threw it at an upright pane of metal. Her Blue crystal activated, increasing the already alarming speed of the tiny metal bit to something so fast it lit on fire and punched a hole clean through the metal panel. “Behold, armor testing.”

“You would enjoy seeing how hard it is to break things,” Suro mused.

“You bet your balding tail I do.” She dusted her hands off. “But I didn’t just set up this experiment. I found something. See, look at how thick this sheet of metal is.”

If Suro had to guess, it was about a centimeter. He nodded in understanding, gesturing for Krays to continue.

“Now, I have here two plates of metal that are half as thick.” She lifted the plates off the ground and set them up on a table about twenty centimeters apart. “Now watch this.” She pulled her hand back and threw the tiny rock again, accelerating it to absurd speeds. It punched a hole right through the first plane, but the second plane stopped it.

Suro blinked. “The… air provides protection?”

Krays grinned. “You’d think that, but no, increasing the distance it has to travel through the air does almost nothing. It’s the separation between the plates! Look…” She pointed at the second plate that stopped it. “Multiple impact craters. The first layer tore the offending invader to shreds—like it deserves for daring to attack our precious ship—and the second is strong enough to stop the smaller chunks.”

Suro blinked a few times. “This is very promising… But things could be going much, much faster out there than you can generate, even with all your focus on such a small area.”

“Just add more plates,” Krays said. “That way, anything large enough gets torn to bits again. Tah-dah, you could get hit by dozens of insignificant specks of violence and they become nothing more than a pathetic attempt at startling you with offensive noises. Yes!” She pumped her fist. “Armor!”

“Does this work for glass?” Suro asked.

Krays let out an undignified snort. “Glass is way too weak. Yes, it breaks up the offending attackers, but sometimes it just straight-up shatters.”

“Good to know…” Suro frowned. “This means the ship will have to be metal and have a lot of space in between the armor. That is going to make it big and heavy.”

“And that is not my problem!” Krays leaned in, grinning at the cat below her. “I’m sure the rest of you will think of something!”

“Yeah…” Suro flicked his ears back. “By the way, where did you learn the focus to accelerate tiny objects that fast?”

“It’s a signature move of Blue-reliant assassins,” Krays said.

“That explains nothing and in fact only makes me concerned.”

Krays shrugged. “You and Lila have your past. I have… well no I don’t really have a dark past. Pretty sure it was my aunt who was the assassin. Vanished one day without a trace somewhere up north.”

“I’m… so sorry.”

“Oh, she was a nasty piece of work let me tell you. See, this insult thing I do? She did it as well, but she also hated people on a deep level, like their existence was fundamentally insulting to the air she was breathing. She found it amusing to shoot at me with that spell, watch me freak out.” Krays flicked a metal bit into the air and shot it into the iron cube. “If she ever shows up, I freak her out now.”

Suro nodded. “I think I understand. If you ever need to talk… Lila and I have seen some things, we might be able to help.”

“Psh, help is for the weak, you should know better.” Krays’ expression softened slightly. “…But thanks.”

Suro knew exactly what she meant. “I try. Now, is there anything else?”

“Oh, yes, want the list of materials that are absolutely terrible for space armor?”

“Sure.”

“First of all: cheese. Cheese is perhaps the messiest of everything I tested.”

“…Why did you…?”

“Because I was hungry, shut up, I can’t insult you and the materials I experiment on at the same time very effectively. Too much diverting of attention.”

~~~

Blue marched up the stairs to the attic with the intent of using the telescope to look at the starry sky, but to her disdain, Vaughan was there.

She still didn’t want to talk to him after their impasse several days ago, so she quickly turned around to leave.

“Blue, come look at this.”

Blue stopped moving. “I don—“

“You can have the telescope, I’m not even using it. I just want you to look outside first.”

Blue weighed the options in her head and decided she might as well do what he wanted. She marched up to the window and looked down—surprised to find it well lit by a couple orbs of light dangling over the snow. She could clearly see Jeh prowling around, maintaining the light with both Purple and Red crystals that were stabbed through her arm to ensure contact while also giving her use of both her hands.

She was building with all the snow. Somehow she’d managed to get much of the surface snow into a solid form so falling into the depths no longer occurred. Atop of this, she was building amazing snow slides, crafting tables with multiple seats around them, and making sculptures.

The sculptures were a work in progress, but it was clearly a human, a unicorn, and a smaller human with bear ears represented by tiny snowballs.

The huge smiles were already on all three of them.

In a single moment, Blue suddenly felt like the worst person on the planet.

“There’s more to this than just the two of us,” Vaughan said, closing his eyes solemnly.

“I… oh, I’m so sorry…” Blue turned away from the window, shaking her head. “She… how many times did she ask me to go out with her? How many times did she want to ask?”

“At least she asked you.” Vaughan shook his head. “She… hasn’t talked to me, much.” He looked up, sighing. “I have spent the last few decades alone in this house during the winter with nothing to do. I had to learn to be okay with that. And now… I’m so comfortable with it I don’t want it to change. I want the nothing. I… have failed.”

“We… we ignored her.” Blue slammed her hoof into her face hard enough to hurt. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

“For once, I agree with you.” A slight smile crawled up his face. “What morons we are.”

“…Should we go out there? And… help?”

“I think she’s making it for us tomorrow, otherwise she’d be sleeping right now. It’s her way of talking.”

“…Neither of us are any good with her,” Blue sighed.

“What she needs are parents, but what she has is us.” Vaughan shook his head. “We’ll have to do.”

“I’m barely old enough to get married and I’m supposed to be a mother to her?” Blue tapped her hooves nervously. “I… I don’t…”

“We don’t have much of a choice, now, do we?”

Blue hung her head. “No… not really.”

Silence fell between the two of them.

“I’m sorry for exploding,” Blue said, suddenly.

“I feel much the same,” Vaughan admitted, leaning forward to the window. “To think, it was about the very things we were doing that alienated her. Blind as bats.”

“Morons, as we’ve already established.”

“Absolutely.”

Blue set her jaw and straightened her legs. “Tomorrow, it’s Jeh’s day. Not work day, not sleep day, Jeh’s day.”

Vaughan grinned. “I think that’s a perfect idea.”

“After that, we can figure out how much you need to work and how much I need to…” Blue shivered involuntarily. “Not work.”

“Is it really that horrible?”

“I don’t like leaving things half-finished! It bugs me like a gnat buzzing around in my head!” Blue shook her head. “But these things… they’re taking multiple days to work through. They can’t be done all at once.” She rubbed her head just beneath her horn. “Nothing is ever simple…”

“I may not be a mathematical savant, but I do know a thing or two. We really should be working together.”

“Good idea. Save it for after Jeh’s day, though. Right now, I need to sleep so I’m not a useless sack of potatoes. You… I don’t know, keep staring at the stars?”

Vaughan smiled. “Gladly. …Oh, wait, did you still want the telescope?”

Blue shook her head. “I was going to try to examine the moon, see if looking at it would give me any ideas. But that… can… wait.” She let out a slow, deep breath. “I’m going to go insane.”

“I thought we already were.”

“No, we were morons.”

“That was today, weren’t we insane a few weeks ago?”

Blue lifted up her hoof in the equivalent of a shrug. “I’m going to bed before this devolves into something even more pointless than it already is.”

Vaughan chuckled. “Good night, Blue.”

Blue smiled warmly. “…Good night, Vaughan.”

~~~

Jeh charged into the dining room where Vaughan was eating breakfast. “Hey, Vaughan! Do you think you can get Blue out of her lab juuuuust once? I have a surprise!”

Vaughan gestured at the spot Blue was sitting across the table. “A surprise?” Blue asked.

Jeh gasped. “Blue! You’re eating breakfast! With Vaughan! That never happens!”

“People aren’t always predictable,” Blue said as she took another spoonful of oatmeal. “So, surprise?”

Jeh nodded. “It’s outside! Both of you should get coats on so you don’t freeze to death or something. Oh, uh… uh… th-there’s no danger of freezing! It’s a fun surprise! Very fun. Please come out.” She gave both of them her best impression of a puppy’s big eyes.

Blue stood to all fours and grinned. “Of course we’ll come out.”

Jeh had expected that to take longer but she wasn’t about to complain. “Yes! Yes yes yes!” She jumped onto the table and pumped her fist into the air. “C’mon, let’s go! I already have your coats in the hall.” She tilted a door open, revealing the coats she had grabbed last night. “All ready for you! I even heated them up and cleaned them and everything. Oh, and Vaughan, there’s frostweed snacks outside just for you.”

“You really went above and beyond, didn’t you?” Blue asked.

“Oh, just you wait!” She all but threw their coats on them and dragged them outside through the second-story window.

What greeted them was nothing short of Jeh’s winter wonderland. In the light of the morning sun, it was brilliant: large structures of ice refracted the sun in brilliant ways, casting beautiful flecks onto the snowy structures. The slides dominated the scene, towering far above everything else. Around them, tables were set with the bright blue leaves of frostweed, ready to be eaten—there were also a few hidden leaf packs scattered around some of the abstract snow lumps littered around. There was even a little volcano built around the entrance to Jeh’s tunnels. However, the snow sculptures of the three of them were the most detailed of everything—Jeh had even bothered to give the Vaughan snowman as snow-scepter and a snow-beard.

“Wow…” Blue said, her breath condensing in front of her snout. “Jeh, you really know how to do something when you put your mind to it…”

“I am a bundle of determination!” Jeh declared with delight. “Now, let’s go have fun! Oh, uh, only go on the really tall slide if you’re looking for real excitement, it goes deep under the snow and it’s kind of dark down there.”

“Noted,” Blue said with a nod. “But before we do that…” She levitated some snow off the ground and packed it into a ball. “Snowball fight.” She pelted Jeh in the chest.

“Oh, you’ve done it now!” Jeh kicked what seemed like an ordinary pile of snow with her feet, revealing it to be hollow and containing dozens of already pre-made snowballs. She quickly grabbed two in her hands and started hurling them at Blue. The unicorn caught them in her telekinesis, though one did fly wide and hit Vaughan in the stomach.

Vaughan decided to retaliate by triggering a small explosion in the pile of snowballs, sending them flying in every direction. He successfully hit Jeh and Blue… and himself.

The three of them burst into laughter.

“Race you to the top of the slides!” Jeh called.

“You’re on!” Blue declared, running after her at high speed. As a messenger, she was used to moving quickly over cold and even icy terrain, so she did admirably. However, she was out of practice and Jeh had been out here for multiple weeks learning how to move on the ice and snow. She was at the top long before Blue got there.

“Wheeeee!” Jeh called, jumping on the largest slide and sliding down into the ground, out of sight. Blue decided to follow her—how bad could it be?

She hadn’t been paying enough attention to notice that a portion of the slide was upside-down. For a moment, she felt weightless as she slid through the air, landing rather painfully on another section of the slide before vanishing into the darkness under the surface. The slide didn’t end here, however—it corkscrewed around in a wide ark in complete darkness before depositing blue on a long, flat landing strip.

Jeh currently had a small light generated in front of her face with Purple. “Did you like it?”

“Jeh… that was amazing… but my heart… is going to burst…” Blue gasped for air.

“I did warn you.”

Blue started chuckling softly, but the moment she did, she signed herself over to fits of uncontrollable laughter—stopping only because her lungs demanded air be fed into them as fast as possible. She flopped onto her side and blinked a few times, a dumb smile on her face. “Ow…”

Jeh chuckled. “It must suck, to have laughing hurt.”

“Hey, you hurt too!”

“Oh, that’s right! Maybe you should just grow numb to the pain, like me!” Jeh broke out into laughter again.

The sound of Vaughan screaming in panic reached their ears.

“Incoming!” Blue shouted.

“Make way for the wizard!” Jeh added.

Vaughan came sliding down the tunnel flailing wildly until he came to a stop. His hat came after him, sliding to a rest at his feet.

“Did you like it?” Jeh asked.

“I have seen true terror…” Vaughan breathed.

“Glad you enjoyed!” Jeh giggled.

“So… what now?” Blue asked.

“Now we explore my tunnels! Come on, I’ve got a lot of strange snow friends I made to show you!”

~~~

Lila walked down the tunnel to the Mayor’s house. She’d set Big G on carving it—not as part of the Wizard Space Program, but as a service to the town. They couldn’t leave him disconnected. But she’d asked Big G not to open the door. That was for her to do.

Suro came with her. “Do you think…?”

“He’s fine,” Lila said. “…For now.”

Suro didn’t question her. “Are you sure I should be here?”

“Absolutely.” Lila nuzzled her husband. “You deserve to know, and to be at my side.”

“I still don’t like him for forcing it on you…”

“I’ve meditated on it. He… he is right about most of it.” She gave Suro a soft smile. “I was really good at leading, wasn’t I?”

“You always have been.”

“Let’s hope I don’t mess it up again.”

“Lila…” He stroked her with his tail. “You did exactly what was expected of you in that situation.”

“That… I was going to say it changes little, but it really does change so, so much.”

“Still learning lessons, after all these years?”

“Still learning lessons. It is the way of things.” She looked up. The light from the small Purple lamp they were using had revealed the Mayor’s door. “Well...” She knocked.

“Come in…” the Mayor said, his voice wavering, but still loud.

Lila creaked the door open with her paw, and the two plodded into the house. It was warm enough, but a bit colder than most people usually liked. They found the Mayor in his bed, mask still on his face, taking long, haggard breaths. Given the state of dust in the house, he hadn’t moved from there in several days. Dishes had accumulated at the base of the bed and a few uneaten bars of hover clover root were on his end table.

“Mayor…” Lila said, tearing up slightly.

“I’m not making it through the winter, obviously,” he said, trying to project his usual fire, but only barely managing the words. He coughed as he finished. “Come spring, it is yours.”

Lila nodded. “I understand. And I’ve come to accept it. …You were right to come to me with it early.”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? I’m always right…” He let out a deep groan. “Don’t touch it, Lila. Don’t let it ruin your life.”

“I know. We… will do all we can.” Lila placed her paw on his shoulder. “I am sorry for… all the disrespect you’ve been given by the people of this town.”

“Don’t apologize… it’s what I wanted.” He let out a bitter laugh. “Whole reason I came here... but… that’s not a story I’m willing to tell, and…” He coughed. “There’s not time anyway.”

Suro frowned. “If you want to see spring again, we might be able to use Green preservation…”

“No…” the Mayor said. “I’m done. You all know what to do.”

Lila nodded. “May Dia see you safely home.”

“Oh, you bet, I’ve got a few… questions for Her…”

“You may not care so much about answers once you arrive,” Lila said with a knowing smile.

“Bah, speculation.” He reached his hand over to Lila’s paw. “Take good care of these people. I came here… to use them. But they… you’ve seen their light. What lives in their hearts.”

Lila nodded. “I do.”

“Also, thank that Seskii for me. She visited me right before the snow came down. She… she’s something else. Knew exactly what to do and say.”

“That woman is full of surprises,” Suro chuckled.

The Mayor nodded. “Yes…” He let out a sigh. “You two… watch out for each other. Your bond is strong, one of the strongest in this town. Use it to bring us forward. To the depths of Ikyu or to the stars, I don’t care anymore. Just…” He let out an old, tired chuckle. “Why am I bothering? You… already know how to do it. Just do.”

LIla bowed her head. “I will do my best to help them remember you well.”

“Hah! Don’t bother, I’m perfectly fine being a historical footnote. It’s better that way…” He took a few moments to breathe. “Still, whatever you think is best… You’re the boss, now.”

Lila nodded solemnly.

“I… I tire,” the Mayor admitted to them. “Please… let me rest a while.”

Lila closed her eyes tight—but nodded. “Of course, Mayor.”

“Thank you… Mayor.”

~~~

The sun was starting to set. Jeh, Blue, and Vaughan had spent all day out in the snow with frostweed meals and Red to keep them warm. After they’d explored every nook and cranny of Jeh’s wonderland of ice and snow, they had worked together to build a large sled. The three of them were now sliding around the cabin on said sled, pushed by Vaughan’s Orange.

“You know, we could probably get to Willow Hollow like this,” Blue realized.

“It’s a bit uneven and easy to get lost,” Vaughan said. “And… well it’s not exactly easy to cont—“ He stopped pushing to keep from running into a tree. “See? This is no Skyseed.”

Jeh clapped her hands. “But the ‘danger’ is fun!”

“Yes, yes, it sure is.” Blue nuzzled Jeh and patted her on the head with her hoof. “Jeh, you know what? You’re a good kid. I don’t think most kids who spend their entire lives in the woods would end up like that. That must mean something.”

Jeh flushed in embarrassment. “B-blue…”

“She’s right!” Vaughan declared. “You are an example of someone better. A… I don’t know, I want to say something wise sounding but I realize I’m just repeating Blue.”

Jeh giggled. “You’re not half bad yourself, Vaughan!”

“Am I allowed to stop agreeing with Blue now?” Vaughan asked with the cheesiest of smiles.

“Hey, you’re the ones who tell me what to do, not the other way around.”

Blue shook her head. “You’re your own person, Jeh. You c—hold that thought, what’s that?”

Just ahead of them, near the buried front door of Vaughan’s cabin, was something leafy and green.

Nothing leafy should have still been green in this snow.

Vaughan steered the sled back to the cabin, where it became clear that the green thing was, in fact, a bunch of leaves.

Blue frowned, wrapping the leaves with her telekinesis and discovering them to be attached to an arm that ended with dainty green fingertips. Now alarmed, Blue tugged harder, pulling the entire being out of the snow.

A feminine form emerged—green, humanoid, slightly shorter than Vaughan, and covered with bushy leaves that had brown-gold veins in them. Her eyes were utterly massive and her pupils took up so much of them that there were almost no visible whites. Now that she was out of the snow, every part of her was shivering. Ice clung to various parts of her and several parts of her leaves were broken on the tips.

“A dryad!?” Blue blurted. “In the snow!?”

“We need to get her inside!” Vaughan shouted, putting his Orange back onto the sled so they could get to the unlocked window.

Blue set down the cold, shivering dryad onto the sled, between her and Jeh so they could help warm her up with their body heat.

“Hey, it’s going to be okay,” Blue said. “We’ve got you, the cabin’s warm, Vaughan’s a Red wizard. Okay?”

“O-okay…” the dryad managed weakly. “I… I’m Sandy… Thanks…”

Blue bit her lip. Sandy had been out here way too long. Since she was able to talk, chances were good she’d be able to live, but Blue didn’t want to think too hard about how unpleasant the recovery was going to be.

Restoring Sandy to health was her new mission.

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT

While the stuff Blue is doing with “curved paths” is interesting, we’ll wait to talk about that topic. Right now, Krays has something more interesting for us.

Spaceship armor.

It’s a thing you need to have on any spacecraft since you never know when something tiny and impossible to detect is going to slam into your hull. Barring fantastical “shielding” devices that may or may not be possible, the answer lies in protecting oneself with armor.

The simplest solution is just to make your ship walls really really thick, but that makes things really heavy, cumbersome, and problematic. Krays’ solution is one step up: take how much metal you were going to use and spread it out in layers. Multiple separate impacts will break up the incoming assault and distribute its destructive force over a larger area until one plate eventually stops it.

This is more or less how we do modern spacecraft shielding, though with much more precision. The idea is called the “Whipple Shield,” which originally was just an aluminum shell placed some distance away from the rest of the craft. The aluminum shell was sacrificial, but successfully broke up micrometeors on impact so they didn’t punch holes through the entire station.

Modern designs go a bit further, using bulletproof materials like Kevlar instead of air or empty space between the aluminum shell and the rest of the craft.

While this armor has gotten really good, it’s not perfect: over time, the integrity of the armor goes down. Eventually, it won’t be able to stop another one. Research is currently going into self-healing materials that might work as a new substitute.

However, an obvious thought is this: we don’t put aluminum shells in front of our windows. So how are they protected? Glass is terrible at blocking things. Well, first of all, many spacecraft windows aren’t even glass, they’re made of acrylic and other clear materials that aren’t prone to shattering.

Some are glass though, but they are treated in such a way to be bulletproof glass. The ones on the ISS’s Cupola are fused silica and borosilicate glass. Curiously, bulletproof glass works on a similar idea to the rest of the armor: it’s layering two different kinds of glass to keep it more resistant to projectiles.

Annoyingly, making space-worthy bulletproof glass adds a lot of weight to the problem, even more than the aluminum shell would. It makes it all quite expensive to get those big windows into orbit.

A curious note is that due to bulletproof glasses needing to alternate different types, the view through the glass can become distorted due to the different indexes of refraction. Light won’t always pass through in a straight line, much like how it does with a glass of water. It’s a continual headache for space window designers to try and make the light that comes through remain accurate since we do need to collect data through these things.