A/N: Had some difficulty with the "offering" theme at first, since I had so many different ideas that could work at the time, but ended up writing this weird little fic in the end (sort of as a tribute to one of my first stories posted here). I was kinda thinking about what the Kappa in Mineral Town might do when the lake is frozen over, and I also wanted to go with something a little more atmospheric, if that makes any sense. Enjoy! -CCM
Under the Ice
The stars glitter coldly above the ragged blonde girl trudging through the snow, as though even those distant, twinkling astral bodies far above, clustered in their sparkling formations, are mocking her loneliness.
Alone, rejected; most likely the only young woman in all of Mineral Town without a date for the romantic Starry Night festival, she thinks bitterly. No social life. Her farm is still in shambles, nothing significant given in return for all the grueling work she endures; struggling to scrape by on her meager earnings from growing crops and foraging in the forest. Her life is pathetic, really.
She feels a heavy weight sink in her chest as she briefly remembers the pitying look on the young man's face as he interrupts her to affirm that she's too late, that he already has someone else on his mind who isn't a dirt-stained woebegone failure of a farmer with an eternally exhausted look in her eyes and messily tangled blonde hair.
Blinking away the tears, she pushes the unforgiving thoughts out of her mind for now, brushing them off into the cold winter air.
That wintry chill on the breeze is bitingly cold, nips at her fingers with icy teeth, but she continues to hold on to the one crop she's saved just for a moment like this. The only thing she has left; a pale green cucumber that she clutches tightly within her ungloved fingers. The bare skin of her fingertips brushes against the neat set of scratches she has etched into its surface, a single name carved into the thick emerald-colored rind of the vegetable: Claire.
She pauses when she comes to the edge of the water - or, more precisely, ice. They say a mythical green creature, a water spirit, lives in the lake here, somewhere in the watery depths below its currently solidified surface, and that it may grant a chosen human good fortune when bribed with its favored offering of choice, the cucumber. She was certainly in need of some good fortune, that was true; she has nothing to lose, and practically everything to gain. But... she's not a completely hopeless case just yet.
The Goddess wasn't answering her requests for help, but maybe this thing would.
Her fingers tightening their frozen grip with resolution, she steps onto the icy surface of the lake. Left, right. Slowly, she walks forward.
There's a sudden sharp cracking sound underfoot, but she feels sure that it's just thick enough to hold her weight; and even if it isn't, she doesn't really feel enough in her to truly care, one way or another.
She stops walking halfway between the lake shore and the small island at its center. After some hesitation, she stomps once, jabbing the heel of her boot into the weakened patch of ice right in front of her. It cracks enough to split in two just beneath her foot, creating a small jagged fissure that breaks through the once perfectly flat, pristine surface; but not enough for her to fall into the freezing water herself.
For a moment, she stands there, motionless on the thin ice covering the lake, and wonders where the creature goes when the lake is frozen over like this. Can it survive in such cold? Would it still be there, even in the middle of the harsh winter? Was it ever really there at all?
And if it was, could it be watching her right now?
She suppresses a shiver, and then frowns as she recalls how the other girls in town her age must all be enjoying their dates by now, romantic nights of stargazing followed by warm candlelit dinners, probably. Happy. And here she is, standing in the middle of a frozen lake, wasting away her own Starry Night alone but for some mystical water spirit somewhere under the ice that may or may not even be real.
She was ridiculous. Or perhaps merely desperate. But either way, she was already here.
Finally, she sighs, and releases her grip to drop her last cucumber directly into the crevice made in the ice. It hits the surface of the icy cold water with a splash, and she stares after it as it sinks into the depths of the lake until there is nothing more to see down there.
She turns away with a whisper, her lone plea; "Please help me, Kappa."
oOoOo
Beneath the silvery sheet of ice through which a small amount of wavering, distorted light still filters, a pair of eyes watches in interest as the lone cucumber, engraved with the name of one particular human girl, slowly drifts downward through the murky water toward the lake floor below.