As it would seem, apparently I’m really bad at puzzling…

When Em and Karin returned with the jigsaw puzzle box, we cleared off the table and put some hot drinks like tea and hot chocolate on a small coffee table next to one of the sofas. After that we started puzzling, and I got to say, I don’t remember puzzling being this hard. The puzzle was about this one well-known German castle named Altegänsesteinburg, one of the castles I’d really like to visit in person one day. I thought that would give me an edge over the others as I knew what it looked like without looking at the box, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. The puzzle consisted of 1000 pieces, which, according to Emma, were even bigger pieces than they normally were. But still, I found it really hard to find any matching pieces. I just couldn’t see the trees through the wood anymore. All the puzzle pieces strewn over the table… It was utter chaos. Although I do have to say that I did enjoy my time puzzling, even though I sucked balls at it. It was more of a social occurrence than an actual task that had to be perfectly completed. Plus, it was actually pretty rewarding to finally get a string of puzzle pieces to attach to each other.

Ria and Em on the other hand were doing a lot better with puzzling, but best of all were Karin and her mom, who’d actually managed to get almost the entire frame done already and in not that much time at all.

“I hope you are enjoying yourselves.” Em’s mom smiled at Ria and me.

“Oh, yes, definitely.” I nodded. “Don’t let my weak puzzling fool you. I’m having fun.”

She giggled back. “It’s good to hear that.”

“It’s nice to just be around people you love.” Ria replied with the unmistakable truth.

“Awh.” Em’s mom brought her hand to her chest. “I couldn’t have said it better.” She then took her cup of tea and drank from it. From where I was sitting, I could just see she’d emptied it.

“Would you like another cup of tea?” I asked.

“Yes, that’d be lovely.” She smiled and gave me a slight nod.

“Alright.” I got up. “Does anyone need anything else?” I looked over at the other cups, they were all pretty much full, except for Em’s who’d started drinking from her tea the moment I’d asked her mother.

“Mine’s empty too.” Em said. “I’ll come with you.”

We walked out of the living room and into the kitchen, the chef had already left for the day. To save on the heating, they’d turned it off because no one was supposed to be in here for that long. It was great for the environment but that did result in a slightly chilly kitchen.

“I could’ve set your tea myself, y’know.” I smiled at my girlfriend, who rinsed out her cup real fast with some water.

“I’m concerned about mom…” Em said without looking at me. “She still gets tired so fast...”

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Em.” I replied. “Sure, her constitution isn’t the best. And it might not get better. But that just means we need to help her, doesn’t it?”

“When you put it like that…” She put her cup down on the cabinet. “It’s just… scary…”

I put down my cup as well. “Come here you.” Em needed a hug, so I was going to give her one.

She came into my embrace and hugged me close.

“I know it’s scary. You love your mom a lot, and so do I. Having your loved ones be hurt or sick… Well… we both know what happened with Ria…”

“Mhmm.” She nodded on my shoulder.

“But as I said, we can only help your mom as much as possible. We can all do the heavy lifting so she doesn’t have to.”

“Yeah.” Em nodded again.

“Let’s start to worry when she gets worse at puzzling than I am.”

“Auro… I’m pretty sure Shima could puzzle better than you. Just by picking puzzle pieces purely by chance.”

“Cats are dexterous fuckers, that comparison isn’t fair.” I chuckled.

Em started to laugh as well.

“Now let’s get this tea done so your mom doesn’t think we started making out in the kitchen.”

“Good point.” Em giggled and let me go. “I’ll boil the water, you can get the tea leaves ready.

“Aye aye.” I saluted her and gave her a wink.

We rejoined our happy puzzlers and I delivered the tea to Em’s mom. She didn’t immediately drink from it as both her, Karin and Ria were bent over the table, looking way more focussed than before we left.

“Is… something wrong?” Em asked.

“We’re looking for the last corner piece, but we can’t seem to find it.” Em’s mom replied.

“Oh…” Em glanced over the table as well. All the pieces had been spread out so we could see all their individual shapes. It shouldn’t be too hard to find a corner piece, even I knew that. And looking at the frame, it was the last puzzle piece they needed to complete it.

“Are you sure it’s on the table?” I asked and got on my knees so I could quickly scan the floor for fallen pieces. “Maybe it fell on the floor while getting it out of the box?”

“We already looked for it.” Karin replied.

“Did you look with a flashlight?” I took out my phone. Theoretically, I didn’t need it because I can see pretty well in the dark. But I wanted to avoid my eyes lighting up like a christmas tree so I put on my torch instead.

“I did, Rora.” Ria replied but got on her knees anyway to help me look.

I scanned under the sofas but couldn’t see anything. “Hmmm.” I straightened my back again and was just about to turn off my phone’s flashlight, when I spotted something matte black on the black carpet, a couple of meters away from where we were. “Is that it?” I pointed the light directly at it and pointed my finger at it as well.

“Where?” Em walked over in the distance of where I was pointing.

“There, it’s on the carpet.”

Em bent down and took something off the carpet. “Wait, how did it get here?” She held the puzzle piece in front of her so we could see.

“Aurora, you are truly our hero.” Em’s mom happily clapped her hands once.

Em came over to me and handed me the puzzle piece. “There you go, since you found it, you might as well do the honors.”

“But I didn’t spend that long looking for it.” I tried to offer the piece to Ria and then Em’s mom and Karin, but all of them refused.

“No, you should do it, Aurora.” Ilse smiled.

“Alrighty then.” I went to the table and placed the puzzle piece in the open corner slot. Thus completing the entire edge. It was a lot more satisfying than I thought it would be.

“Yay!” Ria called out. “Now we can start filling it out!”

Karin almost immediately placed two pieces the second I’d completed the puzzle.

I chuckled to myself. -She should’ve just laid those down while they were looking for the corner piece.-

An hour or so later and the puzzle had progressed a bit further, but it was still quite far from being complete. That said, it was getting quite late and I noticed Em’s mom slowly dozing off.

“Miss M, shouldn’t you go to bed?”

Em’s mom giggled. “That would probably not be the worst idea.”

“Shall we help you to bed, mom?” Em asked, looking at her sister.

“That’d be nice.” She smiled at her daughter and then looked at Ria and I. “Good night girls.”

“Good night!” Ria replied and I wished her a good night as well shortly after.

Karin and Em then helped their mother go to her bedroom, while Ria and I stayed behind.

Ria stretched her back and gave out a small moan.

“Do you want to go to bed too, Ria?”

“Not yet.” She shook her head and then shuffled over closer to me. “I kind of want to go outside to take a walk through the snow…”

I looked outside, the snowfall had calmed down a little, but it was definitely still coming down relatively hard. But then again, walking through that kind of weather did have its charms as well. Luckily, I had taken along some pretty warm clothes and so had Ria. “Could be fun.” I nodded. “Let’s wait for Em to decide, okay?”

Ria nodded and laid her head on my shoulder. “Sitting here next to the fire wouldn’t be so bad either.”

I smiled. “That’s true.”

Em came back a couple of minutes later with Karin close in tow.

“Got your mom in bed?”

“Mhmm.” Em nodded. “She was really happy we spent the evening together like this.”

“That much was obvious.” I replied. “Your mom is quite the cinnamon roll, too.”

“She is!” Ria agreed with my statement.

“Thank you for being so nice to our mom.” Karin said.

“You don’t need to thank us, Karin. Your mom has always been super kind to us, too.”

Ria nodded.

“Thanks anyway.”

“No problem.” I smiled. “Aside from that, would you two be interested in a little stroll through the snow? Ria proposed it.”

Em looked outside, just as I had done earlier. “Uh, yeah, sure. Let me go take my jacket, some mittens and a shawl. What about you, sis?”

“I’ll come as well.” Karin agreed.

-Sounds like our little winter evening walk is a go.-