Disclaimer: I own Snow and her obscure little thoughts.

Snow Falls

Chapter Three

The inventing room was marvelous, to say the least, and Snow, quite honestly, had not expected anything less. She brought with her a drawing pad and a small array of pencils, in case something were to catch her fancy (other than, of course, the creator of this magnificent wonderland). And while her cousin and his employer set up their latest experiment, she set herself up in a rather comfortable wheeled chair and began to sketch.

She drew just about anything that caught her eye, from what she would later find out was called the Everlasting Gobstopper tank (which was doing some humorous things indeed, shooting brightly-colored spheres of candy every which way), to an Oompa-Loompa whose history was explained to her by Mr. Wonka after she gasped profusely at the little man. She also spent some time befriending said little man, and he came to sit near her as he took his break for lunch.

Together, the two of them studied Snow's sketches, and the Oompa-Loompa would make silent yet truthful suggestions as to where they needed correction. In all honesty, those corrections did not occur often. And when the Oompa-Loompa left, Snow resumed her solitary ways, happy as ever.

This was perhaps the first similarity Willy Wonka noticed between himself and Snow. They both seemed equally happy in their solitude, but were not opposed to work with one other person, as long as the other person didn't try to take over the whole project. They were each open to other people's ideas, but they were usually the creative geniuses of the operation. The chocolatier's heart practically soared at this revelation, and he didn't seem to notice when his formula unexpectedly burned a sizable hole through his second layer of gloves.

After that small, undocumented incident, Charlie sighed and called out, "Snow, would you come over here?" Willy froze.

Snow looked up, hair falling at such an angle that it almost completely covered one of her icy eyes. Her eyebrows arched in curiosity, and perhaps apprehension? "Why?" she asked after a moment.

"I need your help," Charlie said.

Tentatively, Snow set her drawing implements on the floor and pushed off of a nearby wall, sending the chair whizzing over to the small table at which her cousin and the candy man worked. She bumped up against it as she stopped and nearly knocked over a beaker full of something, causing Willy Wonka to gasp in his way and grab it as though it were the most precious thing in the world. "Sorry," she said meekly, and allowed her eyes to drift to the floor. But then she asked her cousin, "What did you want me to help you with, oh, master of candy?"

Charlie smiled and said, "I'm only the apprentice of the master of candy, but what I need you to do is smack the real master of candy on the head and tell him to pay attention."

Willy Wonka was not sure what bothered him more; the boy's request or how he spoke it as though the "master of candy" was not even present. But Snow took a different view, and shrugged at the request, saying, "All right." Then she got out of the chair, faced Willy Wonka, and narrowed her eyes at him a moment. She realized, with some triumphant feeling in her stomach, that his fidgeting was a sign of how uncomfortable her gaze made him. But she didn't bask in it for long, for no sooner had she realized this than her palm collided roughly with the side of his head and she yelled, "Pay attention, ya jackass!"

With a smile on her face, she watched as Willy Wonka knelt down and indignantly grabbed his hat, placing it upon his head with a scowl upon his lips. But it was only cause for her smile to widen, and Charlie did not help matters by saying, "Thanks, Snow."

"Aucun probleme," she said, and pushed off from the table.

After a time, both males present noticed with different reactions that Snow's chair was scooting ever closer to their table. For Willy Wonka, it was a mix of apprehension and delight that he felt as Snow approached; for Charlie, it was that almost smug feeling that one gets when one knows that someone is sneaking where they oughtn't, but the smug one in this case didn't really mind. He was glad Snow was showing an interest in his work.

Not that Snow didn't find it interesting anyway, but Mr. Wonka was confusing her. Damn it, he was a strange bugger. Half the time, Snow felt that this silent little battle of wills they were fighting was dominated by him, then a quarter of the time by her, and then the final quarter was just some confusion in which no one could clearly triumph. But she found it a challenge, and that was, perhaps, her incentive to figure him out.

Then she took into consideration the fact that they'd only known one another for less than a day, and it irked her a bit that she was so intensely interested in him. She blamed it, more than once, on the fact that he was such a priceless artistic subject, and ran through his list of features again and again. But if it were merely that, should she have felt at all the pull she felt, like some magnetic force drawing her towards him? No, something was up here, something obscure yet alluring, something that she was bound and determined to find out.

At the same time, as Willy tried desperately to focus on whatever he was supposed to be doing under Charlie's watchful eye, he pondered the reasons Snow affected him the way she did. He supposed, in some deep, dark corner of himself, that he had always taken better to the company of children than adults. Perhaps it was because they believed more readily in his ideas, his crazy theories, his dreams. But children didn't seem to stay children for very long much anymore, so perhaps his insane interest in Snow was really him trying to catch one last glimpse of childhood in the outside world. It was certainly some place Charlie would never experience again.

But it wasn't as though the boy was completely blind to the two people around him. From the instant Willy Wonka had laid eyes on Snow, his whole demeanor had changed. Charlie couldn't quite name what his employer had become, but he wasn't extremely fond of it. Oh, he would tolerate it, yes, and sometimes the way Snow and Willy Wonka acted around one another was simply too precious to miss. They seemed like a couple of schoolchildren, deadlocked in some nameless argument, with Charlie as the peacemaker and authoritative figure. While they had not openly argued (and why would they, when they had only known one another such a short while?), there seemed to be something bubbling just underneath the surfaces of both of them, and Charlie knew it was up to him to make sure those bubbles did not burst.

"What's this?"

Boy and man both looked up to see girl sitting cross-legged in her mobile chair and leaning on the table for support, a small midnight blue orb between her right index finger and thumb. She gazed upon it curiously, swirling it around and around in inspection.

Charlie furrowed his brow at it, but Willy Wonka said, "It's hair gum, inspired by hair toffee."

Snow gave him a strange look and repeated, "Hair gum? Hair toffee? What the hell is all that?"

For the first time in some hours, Charlie saw a small shadow of pre-Snow Willy Wonka. He launched energetically into his enthusiastic spiel about the many wonders of hair toffee. He then went on to explain, "And hair gum makes your hair the color of the gum ball."

Snow glanced at the gum ball, then at him, then at Charlie, then at Mr. Wonka again. Slowly, almost seductively, the gum ball disappeared betwixt her wine-colored lips and she began to chew. She chewed and chewed and chewed for some moments before the slightest hint of blue began to peek through the raven tresses. Slowly, the color spread out until it reached the very tips of the hairs, and her head was the color of late evening. "Did it work?" she asked after a time.

Both males nodded and Willy Wonka asked, "Wanna see?" Snow, too, gave a nod, and Mr. Wonka pulled from one of his pockets a small hand held mirror. He handed it to Snow, their fingertips brushing ever so briefly (but enough to make both of them turn slightly crimson), and the girl gazed at herself.

Her hair had indeed gone blue. The violet highlights that had previously sparkled amongst her ebony locks were no more, as the midnight blanket had covered them completely. She smiled at her reflection, then gazed up at Mr. Wonka. "I think you might be ready to mass produce this baby," she said to him. And at the time, it did indeed appear that way. But later, Snow would discover that the hair on her head was not the only hair that had turned blue. The hair on her arms and legs, and even her dark pubic hair, had all turned blue. She just didn't know it yet.

Forgive me for the whole hair gum thing. But, hey, cut me a break. It was about three in the morning when I wrote this. Anyway, the blood is the life, Sikerra.