The World Looks Glorious in the Snow

Chapter 5: "tell me"

The cold on her face was not unpleasant this time, but refreshing; with her core protected by her new coat and her feet snugly insulated by her boots, she could enjoy the freshness of the frigid air, the spicy scent of the evergreens, the glistening quality of the snow as each tiny shard refracted the sunlight into thousands of glittering flashes. And of course, she couldn't help but smile at the children's infectious laughter. While their pestering sometimes annoyed her, they were simply too cute for her to stay mad at them.

Once the entire party of six—Lumine, Cassandra, Anthon, Teucer, Childe, and Paimon—were outdoors, they immediately set to work on Teucer's Mr. Cyclops. They started by forming two viable snowballs that they later began to roll, gradually increasing their size. The snow was the perfect consistency today, soft and sticky, but hard enough to stay intact. Lumine couldn't remember the last time she'd played in the snow, and she wasn't used to the way the frozen substance would bite at her fingers through her gloves (also Cassandra's) which made it difficult to hold snow for a substantial amount of time. Childe and his siblings were much more experienced. Still, she played her part, and eventually found herself in the stick-finding role; they needed four especially curved sticks that they could arrange on the face of Mr. Snowclops—as Teucer now called him—to form the characteristic circle. They also needed other, straighter sticks to make the four triangles sticking out of the circle like a compass. Lumine must have inspected every stick on the premises before she brought back her assortment of perfect ones, which Cassandra neatly placed onto the face with her delicate but steady fingers.

"Yay, Mr. Snowclops!" Teucer was beside himself with joy. Archons, he is so ridiculously cute.

"Nice job on the face," said Lumine to Cassandra.

"Thanks. I don't normally consider myself an artist, but I'd say this turned out pretty decent."

Childe had been right: Cassandra and Lumine did get along. The cold and sarcastic impression she first gave was nothing like the serious but friendly manner she displayed later on. She was still not fond of her brother, though, which Lumine found rather amusing. She promised herself to join forces with Cassandra at some point to tease Childe—in a friendly but relentless manner, of course.

Suddenly, something struck her hard in the shoulder. Lumine yelped, whirled around, and saw Childe cackling wickedly. "Did...did you just throw a snowball at me?" He made no reply, only laughed until he was out of breath. "You're going to pay for that." Lumine bent over and gathered snow in her hands, compressing it into a ball. As she reared back her hand, ready to strike, she saw that Childe had already chucked a new snowball straight at her. With a squeal and a hop, Lumine narrowly dodged the icy bullet and swung her own back at him as hard as she could. It struck him right in the face and slapped the laughter out of him. But when he wiped off the snow, his arm lifted to reveal a sinister smirk.

Oh, it's on.

Lumine scrambled to form another snowball, but she had barely gathered the stuff in her hands before she was struck by another bundle of ice. She forced the snow into a shape and whipped it at Childe in retaliation, only to find that she wasn't the only one pelting him with snow. His siblings (and Paimon) had joined in, and Lumine realized that she was sorely outmatched: the four experienced Snezhnayans crafted perfect spheres within seconds and hurled them at each other with such speed and precision that the victims would fall over just from trying to dodge. Paimon, for her part, was small and could float, which meant she was harder to hit, and she could attack from a higher vantage point. While they were distracted with each other, Lumine decided to stock up on snowballs, making as many as she could before someone noticed her again. Then she gathered them in one arm and jumped back into the fray.