"I seriously can't believe you told Periwinkle we're dating."
"I didn't mean to! All I told her was we wanted to use some of her Found Things so that we could try using them on a date together. That's barely the same thing!"
"That's precisely the same thing."
"Even if it is, you explained everything to her afterwards so she wouldn't misunderstand! You're really good with words, you know, Spikey. I wish I was smart like you."
A smile cracked Spike's ill-set lips. "You're perfectly clever, Gliss. For one thing, you knew better than I did what the Keeper would say… but, uh, do go on."
"Go on? Doing what, complimenting you?"
"Why not? Otherwise I'll slip away into the throes of depression and all my frost will turn black. You know what a troubled soul I have."
"Oh no!" Gliss flew in quick circles around her with hands clasped tightly together, viewing her from head to toe. Spike tried to look confident yet aloof, like her friend's inspection wasn't really all that important to her, but there was just enough truth in her fanciful warnings of depression that she found herself feeling anxious anyway.
At last Gliss came to a halt a couple inches over Spike's head, and floated there thoughtfully with one hand out as she counted off points on her fingers. "Well, you're really loyal. I know you like to grumble and moan and be sassy—that's the perfect word for you, by the way!—but you never ever let me down and that's just so cool! And even your sassing is important, because sometimes you just have to sit on me and lecture me until I realize I'm getting carried away and should probably calm down."
"That was one time."
"But a fun time! Even if I bit you. Sorry. But my point is that you always want the best for me, and so I guess I want the best for you too, because what kind of friend would I be otherwise? Oh and you're cute! I know you're kinda trying to look uninteresting with your haircut and all, but you ended up with your ear sticking out and that's really cute, and your dress is shiny and stuff! Sometimes I want to touch it but that would probably be rude. I dunno. Should I keep going?"
"Uh." Spike had taken several steps backwards during Gliss's chattering, a little worried that any snow she stood in for too long would melt from the contact. She felt warm, but not warm like she had wandered into the wrong side of Pixie Hollow and her wings were melting. It was a good sort of warm… the kind that made her want to smile and laugh and also get away as quickly as possible because something was clearly very wrong with her. "No, uh, that was just fine. In fact, why don't we get started on our tracks? Extremely far away from each other?"
"Okay! Meet you back here in ten?"
"Fifteen. You can't rush art."
The Keeper's book was proving useful. The first couple of chapters had been about what you should look for in someone if you wanted to date them, but Gliss had skipped those because they felt too much like rules, and the next had been about how to ask someone on a date at all, but Gliss skipped that too because a) that part would come later and b) she'd already tried that with Qana and there'd been only one comparatively minor injury. Spike offered a few half-hearted pleas for reading the book in linear order, but Gliss had insisted her enthusiasm would see her through all that stuff, and Spike had relented—remarkably good-naturedly, at least in her own opinion.
Most of the rest of the book was about possible dating activities, ranging from the simplest to the most heavily romantic, and Gliss had told Spike to pick a page for her at random and they'd ended up picking golfing. Specifically miniature golfing, because the page had offered both possibilities but Spike had pointed out they were fairies and fairies were about as miniature as it got, even if Gliss was a little taller than her. On a good day. In the right shoes. Maybe.
"But I've never tried golf before," Gliss had said, and she'd stared at the book like it'd betrayed her and she didn't know what to think anymore. "What if I don't like it?!"
"The introduction says that doesn't matter." Spike had read the introduction; Gliss had not. "The activities are really just excuses to spend time with the fairy you love, and if you love them enough, that'll make up for anything boring that happens along the way."
"But I don't love anyone like that yet!" Gliss tossed the book away—Spike narrowly caught it before it was impaled on a briar plant—and flung herself bodily into the snow. "Don't you see, Spike? Somewhere out there is The One, and what if I ask her to go golfing with me and I don't have a good time but I blame it on her instead of on the golf? And then we never talk to each other again and I've lost my only chance for eternal happiness!"
"The introduction says that holding out for a one true love is a recipe for frustration and constant doubt…"
"Flaming ferrets, Spike, you can't learn love from a book." Gliss blew some of the snow away from her face, stared at the flakes while they settled elsewhere, and—much to Spike's relief—brightened. She'd had an idea again and wasn't looking so upset and cuddleworthy. "I've got it!"
Spike set the book aside and stretched her arms behind her back. "Enlighten me."
"I'll go on a golfing date with you first!"
Spike's arms froze in place. "…what?"
"It's perfect!" Gliss shot back into the air and shook herself, snow flying in every direction and just missing hitting Spike in the face. "I really like you and we know that already. So if there's anything in this book I'm not familiar with, we can just do it together so I can learn how I feel about it, and then I'll know what to do when dating other fairies and how much I'm reacting to how boring golf is and how much I'm just in love!"
Slowly, very slowly, Spike moved her arms back into place and looked into Gliss's delighted features. Her hair had gotten all messed up by her roll in the snow and made her look particularly adorable, and her solution did make a lot of sense. She allowed herself a grin. "So you want me for your control group."
"My what? No, I want you to be my practice date. You will, won't you? You're such a good friend!"
"I am a perfect friend." Unless, of course, she wasn't. "Fine, come on, I bet Periwinkle has some stuff we can use…"
And so they'd gone to Periwinkle's place and Spike had rummaged through her Found Things collection for a couple of beads they could use as golf balls, and Gliss had run off at the mouth until Periwinkle got entirely the wrong idea and squealed with delight and completely invaded Spike's personal space. So Spike had been forced to explain in great detail what was really going on, that they weren't in love in the slightest and they were only going on a date because they liked each other a lot and Gliss wanted to be able to do the same thing later with other fairies. Then if she didn't have as much fun with them as she'd had with Spike, it probably wouldn't work out, but if she had even more fun, maybe they could really have something.
And if she had exactly as much fun with another fairy as she'd had with Spike, what would that mean? Well, that would be Gliss's problem, not hers!
Spike took a step back and looked over her work. It was magnificent. Periwinkle's beads didn't roll well in snow, but the Keeper's book had recommended that a good frost fairy could be recruited to construct a track out of frost, and Spike had gone all out. A bead would start in the middle of a little circle of frost with edges tilted upward so that beads would roll back into the center. If you hit your bead hard enough up a forty-five-degree slope, it would sail over a wall, enter a pipe, and spiral down for several full rotations before emerging at the foot of a vast frost castle. A complicated stairway system, complete with regular points for the bead to stop while you waited for your opponent to take her turn, took the bead up to the top of the castle, where it would have to navigate a series of battlements and tiny ice archers before finally ending up in the hole, which she'd modeled after a cannon. Spike smiled. Her visits to the Mainland and its curious range of architecture had really paid off. There was no way Gliss could top her.
She was right. Gliss's track was far simpler, looking like a giant uppercase U with the beads starting at one end and the hole at the other. There was a small icebank blocking the hole from the easiest access, but most of the difficulty looked like it would come from the track's surface, which rose and fell in a highly irregular wave pattern. Spike raised an eyebrow at the sight, and Gliss sheepishly explained she'd been too excited to lay out a smoother floor.
Gliss took the first turn. She grabbed the thinnest twig she could find, took aim, and gave her bead a surprisingly gentle whack. Her bead sailed forwards, up and down along the track's bumpy surface before getting stuck between two particularly steep rises about halfway to the big curve. Gliss stuck out her tongue at the bead.
Spike hovered up to the starting point, placed her bead, readied her twig, and swung. Nothing happened. She looked down and found the bead exactly where she'd left it, showing no signs of movement. Again she swung, and there was no sound and no movement. By the fourth failed swing Gliss was starting to laugh, and Spike spun around to glare at her.
"What?!"
"You're holding it all wrong!" Gliss doubled over in midair for a moment. "You should see how silly you look."
"Well golly gee, maybe you could take another swing and show me how it's done."
"I can't, I can't, it's not my turn!" Gliss made a valiant effort to stop laughing, which Spike guessed she appreciated, angry though she was feeling at her stupid twig. "But I'll help you with your grip, okay?"
Just like that Gliss was floating at Spike's back with her arms around her, holding Spike's hands and moving them into a new position, and Spike was all warm again. She and Gliss had touched either other plenty of times before, and Spike had even carried her all the way home, but there was something awfully, well, intimate about this particular hold. Gliss's fingers were slipping over hers and bending them around the twig, and it felt good in ways Spike was afraid to understand.
"There. Try it now!"
"Thanks. You're, uh, good at this, you know. You should try it when you're on your real date…"
"Oh really? Thanks!" But even in Gliss's chirpy answer Spike thought she could hear a little anxiety. She shoved that thought aside, focused on the bead below her, drew back her twig, and swung. At last the twig hit the bead.
Unfortunately it hit much too hard, and the bead flew madly through the air and smashed right through the frosted curve of Gliss's track. It kept on flying after that, passing through the tops of several snowbanks before finally hitting the side of a tree, which shuddered from the impact and dropped a tangle of icicles on top of the bead. The fairies winced as one, and after several long seconds Gliss suggested they take a look at what Spike had made instead.
Spike was able to regain some of her smugness at the sight of Gliss, unnaturally speechless, flying around the castle and taking it in from all angles with a look of wonder. She peeked at the cannon, cooed over the little ice archers, even traced the beads' path up the staircase with one delighted finger. She looked enraptured when she returned, and Spike crossed her arms and waited for the inevitable praise.
"Oh, Spikey, this is beautiful!"
"I know.' Then because that didn't seem like quite enough to say, "So do you want to go first?"
"Go first…? Oh gosh, no, we can't!" Spike curled herself into a ball in midair, wings pumping madly, and pointed behind her. "What if we broke it?! I'm not nearly good enough to handle something like this, and if I'm not, neither are you."
That should have hurt, but Spike had to admit she was right. Her swings had after all been consistently terrible. "But it's right there!" she protested. "I made it for us!"
"I know! I can see it. But we're not ready yet. Something that amazing, that's for later."
"But we have something beautiful already." Spike chewed on her lip. "Does the future really need to be different?"
Gliss looked at her curiously. "Are you still talking about mini-golf?"
"I don't know."
"Oh. Okay!" Gliss shrugged and grabbed her arm. "Come on, let's go back to mine for now. I'm having fun so far, aren't you? We just need to get better!"
"…okay." She jumped into the air and followed Gliss among the trees. "We can fix that hole together, I guess. Um, do you want to help me with my grip again?"
"Sure!"
Then yes, Spike supposed she was having fun too.
