27. Snowsfall V: Home for the Holidays I.

“Do ye think I be rememberin’ every piece of plunder I come across?!” Cain yelled as he steered his sledding team of the dead. 

“THESE should stand out!” Winn yelled, shaking the bag that held the two idols. “We fought over them on Masaka Isle and they look exactly like your crewmates, yet you just forgot about them entirely?”

“I be havin’ more important things ta focus on instead of some cursed figurines!”  

“You even commented about it last time! ‘Yaargh, ye overcame quite tha figure, yaaargh,’” the skunk mocked. She had an eye squinting and a finger curled, giving the impression of an eyepatch and a hooked hand, two piratey things Cain did not have. 

“That was a pretty good impression!” Tawny smiled. 

Winn smiled. “You really think so?” 

“Mhm! But we should really go easy on him, Winn. The cold’s making his exposed brain shrivel up, it’s a miracle he can remember anything still…” the jester chuckled. 

“Shut yer traps!” Cain snapped.

There was a period of silence afterwards, with nothing in the air but the various groans of Cain’s undead mushees and the crunching of snow.

The skeleton muttered something unintelligible underneath his (figurative) breath.

Winn scoffed. “Oh, what now?”

“I think it be interesting that ye act like ye be tha victim of this circumstance, yet ye two haven’t shivered since it happened!”

“You’re framing this as a favor?!” she yelled. 

“Weeell…” Tawny squeaked.

The skunk threw her hands in the air in defeat. “And you’re agreeing with him!”  

“Listen, it’s not permanent, it’s making this sleigh a lot more comfortable, and yeah, it’s keeping me warm,” the jester listed. “We’ll have to go back to Leonard’s come next year, but in the meantime, I’m not gonna let it ruin my Snowsfall! And besides, everybody puts on a few during the holidays… well, except Bones over here…” 

Cain shook his head. “Never when I was alive has that happened to me.”

There was silence again.

Winn leaned back into her seat and pouted. “Imbéciles…!” 

BANG, BANG, BANG!

An aproned D’anna looked up from the cookies she had been meticulously icing. Somebody was at the door—somebody extremely rude, from the sound of it. It must be… 

“They’re here!” she squeaked to herself. Both her body and her ears shot up. “Ohmigod, they’re here, they’re here, they’re here!” she repeated in quick succession, making sure to take the turkey out of the oven before rushing to the farmhouse’s front door. 

She turned its knob with a mitted hand. Standing across the doorway was a tall, skinny, silhouette of a man. He wore a black coat with the collar perked up, partially covering his bandaged face. He glared at her through thick goggles, their lenses so dark that D’anna couldn’t see any glare of eyes behind them.

“C-can I help you?” she asked, white-nuckling the knob in fear.

“Aye! Ye could let us in already,” the tall man said in a gruff voice. 

D’anna’s eyebrows raised in surprise hearing the man’s unique way of saying things. “Oh, Captain!” she weakly laughed. “I-I couldn’t even tell it was you!” 

“That be the point! Ye think these Veridian hillbillies’ll take kindly to a monster the likes of I?” the skeleton asked as he barged through the doorway. Winn and Tawny followed closely behind, snowflakes peppering their large clothes and equally large hair. 

“Tawny, Winn, welcome, welcome!” D’anna smiled, wondering what the heck happened since the last time they met. “Did you two have a nice trip?”

“Uhh… sure,” the jester lied. 

“Majel! The guests are here!” the elf called out as she helped her guests in the farmhouse’s front room. Cain sat on a pillow atop a milk crate—something D’anna constituted as a “chair.” 

“If I knew yer furniture situation, elf, I would’ve gotten ye a different present…”

Remembering an important aspect of being a good hostess, D’anna outstretched her arms. “Oh, may I take your coats?” she asked.

“Nay,” Cain said.

“Uh, Winn? Tawny? Coats?” 

“Please,” Winn said before she and Tawny began to unbutton. A burden (as well as several pounds) were lifted off their shoulders as they could finally take off their coats for the first time since leaving for Veridia.

Majel walked into the room, carrying two bottles of rum—one for her, the other one for everybody else. She nearly dropped both when she saw Tawny and Winn in their current states.

“What the hell happened to you two?!” she yelled.

“Majel…” D’anna reprimanded through gritted teeth.

“You want to know what happened?! It was those stupid, stupid id—” Winn yelled before she almost spoiled their gifts. “Uh, bakeries… that opened up. At Saint Khan’s.”

“The ones across Fontaine’s, you’ve seen them before!” Tawny added. She was a pro at improv, always knowing when to step in when her partner was struggling. “I guess the two of us have eaten so many eclairs since then that we just… ended up as one!” 

There was an awkward silence. 

“Well,” Majel said before gesturing with one of the bottles, “I’m gonna go get something to put this in. You… have glasses, don’t you, D’anna?”

“Check the cupboard,” the elf said as she hung up two very, very thick coats on a measly little rack before grabbing her own. 

The cat opened up a cupboard and was nearly blinded by the collection of glimmering, golden chalices inside—all of them “souvenirs" from previous pillages. She grabbed a handful and waddled back into what was “the living room,” making sure to not drop anything. (As thick as her boots were, she didn’t want to nurse a broken foot for the rest of the winter because of some stupid, solid gold chalice.)  

D’anna passed her by, adjusting her scarf. “Hey, Majel? I’m going to check up on the cows real quick while everyone settles in. Could you please make sure nothing’s burning while I’m gone?” 

“Sure thing! But… uh… you’d better hurry,” the cat said before hiccuping, “this… this isn’t my first bottle of the evening…”

The elf nodded and slipped out the back door. 

She shivered as she stomped towards town, wading through knee-high snow and the never-ending gusts of flurry winter wind. 

“No, no, no! Tha best way ta kill someone is a stab through tha lungs!” Cain yelled. “All the blood and air run out of ‘em like ye be squeezin’ a sponge.” 

“But what about the ribcage?” Tawny pointed out. “Even if you hit your mark, it’s still like a fifty-fifty chance that you’ll go deep enough to cause something beyond flesh wound.”

“Not to defend Cain, but how strong do you think ribcages are?” Majel asked. “Because with the fight pumping through you, driving steel through bone isn’t hard at all.”

“Well, that’s just because you and Cain are savage brutes,” Winn rebutted while regally twirling her chalice. “Get with the times, guns are the most effective in terms of fatality.”

“Says tha person that has a sword on her person this very moment!” Cain scoffed. 

“Please, it takes like fifteen minutes to reload one of those things! You’re better off just wheeling a cannon around…” Majel said before taking another swig of rum. 

“It’s like fifteen seconds!” Winn said. “It takes you fifteen minutes because you don’t have any depth perception anymore…” 

“Hey! Keep talking like that and you’re not gonna have any either in a second!” Majel hissed.  

“Does anyone know where D’anna’s at?” Tawny asked in an attempt to deflate things.

“She’s checking on her cows,” Majel muttered, setting her empty rum bottle next to her. 

“Still?” the jester asked. 

Majel shrugged. “She spends a lot of time with those things. Too much time, in my opinion…” 

“The storm’s getting really bad, I think someone should just… y’know, go outside and check up on her real quick…” Tawny suggested. 

The three girls slowly turned to the only person in the room still wearing a coat.

Cain cursed to himself as he rose from his “chair.” “Ye three be lucky that I be tha only one here anymore what can stand up without any assistance. Where be tha door?” 

“Across the kitchen, next to the Bama,” Majel said. As he walked outside, cursing to himself, she stole the pillow from his seat. 

A minute later, the skeleton came back covered in jagged specks of white. “Everyone get dressed! Majel, does D’anna have any shovels?” 

“Yes, I think she shovels cowshit with it. What happened, Sawyer? Is she out there?” 

The skeleton shook his skull.