The snow globe shook, and dazzled with snow, the clearcut glass flakes falling to their feet, adorned with skates. The sharp blades that had cut the ice like an injury, and Sonic sat apprehensive of the pond, wondering whether it would keep still while they danced, or it would break, trapped underneath the sheets, freezing and tumbling towards hypothermia.
Shadow had strapped his feet to the skates, and he lifted him up, seeing worry in his face.
"Sonic…what's the matter? Are you…scared of ice skating?"
He wasn't sure how people even stood still on the skates. He tried a single row of wheels on rollerskates before, and could never properly stand up. He looked at the blades, wondering if anyone in hockey had stabbed anyone with them. He felt even standing, he could cut himself on them.
They would be dancing on pale white skin, hashing out each clear cut and letting their own worries show through. Bleeding it out.
Shadow held his hand. He skit across what looked like a frozen ocean, and he spun around, like a tortillon, blending all the shades in this canvas into something special, something special for them to remember, in their many years of being together.
The ice, how smooth it felt when he sliced across it! He was only an amateur pastel painter, trying to blend all the wrong colors. Shadow had shown him the moves, but the spinning, he could never get it down! He still was terrified of the ice buckling underneath them, plummeting towards a watery, icy hell, and he thought it belonged to the Eighth Circle of Hell, where some of the most notorious villains had lived. Had he belonged there? Was he about to join the same chasm as Hitler, as…as…
"The ice isn't going to break, Sonic. I promise you. You will be alright."
The canvas, he knew, was prepared to rip and tear any time. The bottom was a table, a solid surface, but he couldn't imagine sleeping down in the arctic glacial sea…
The cuts became more defined, as if they were butchers cutting steaks. The ice could be splitting apart with our power, he believed, but Shadow held his hand, showing him the way.
The snow had howled and ached around them! He felt cold, his scarf and ear-muffs nearly not enough! His skin was as blue as him, with the tundra wind, with the sea ready to eat him whole, the world prepared to crack like a kitchen egg on a smooth tiled floor, down below…
"You'll be okay," he kept repeating.
They sounded monotonous, his words, his efforts to calm him.
His heart had raced when Shadow had lift him high, seeing the moon so placent, so asleep like a little silver infant in God's womb, and he soon had recounted the experience as they both laid in bed, Shadow telling him that, after all, it wasn't so bad.
As he turned in his sleep, his eyes became red, bloody and tired. He wondered if his hands were shaking, if he was having nightmares again, of the ocean that once swallowed him up with its great big blue throat, so long ago…