For how Long will the Red Rose Grow

Winter's Jewel

Tails exhaled through his mouth as they soared over the wilderness below. Amy was silent in the seat behind him, likely playing with the strap of her seatbelt. Tails recalibrated the map on the Tornado's screen, glancing down at the coordinates he'd inputted in the GPS. The wind whistled around him, the only other sound he could hear besides the hum of the engine.

They had been flying for a few hours now, and the air around them had a bite to it. Frost clung to what moisture his biplane collected from the clouds, dusting the brilliant red with a thin film of white. The further they flew, the more overcast and heavy the clouds above became. Tails lowered in altitude, his gaze moving skyward as the wind picked up and the sky began to spit soft flurries around them.

Amy softly gasped in wonder, the first sound she had made since they left the workshop. Tails didn't even realize how far north these coordinates were taking them until he gazed down below. The lush deciduous forests had morphed into a thick evergreen landscape, painted a beautiful alabaster with the falling snow. Landing the Tornado in these conditions would be a trick.

The frozen area around them was practically devoid of life, wether human, Mobian, or animal. The needles of the pines whistled in the air, a sound so faint and haunting Tails almost missed it over the roar of the engine and the pounding of his own heart. The sensor in his console began pinging, the sound Tails's ears were aiming to hear. The Emerald was close by.

Tails pressed a few more buttons, recalibrating his controls as he scoured the forest below for clearance to land. As he spotted a place, he angled the biplane downwards, gliding over the picturesque ivory landscape and safely touching down in the clearing. The fox turned off the plane and pulled out his handheld  scanner, calibrating it to their location as he hopped out of the cockpit. His feet crunched in the snow, Amy's crunching along with him as she climbed out after him. Her hammer displaced some of the snow, knocking the powder against the wheel of the plane. It wouldn't be too hard to locate a glowing red gem in the pristine white snow. At least Tails hoped it wouldn't.

The ghostly whistling in the pines was louder now, more like a threatening howl than an ethereal whisper. The wind around them snarled with the same fervor, almost like it was both demanding they turn back but also pleading evilly for them to head deeper in. Tails felt a shiver wrack his spine as the snow and wind battered them and sunk through his thick coat of fur. The sensor was still beeping despite the certainly subzero temperature, egging them on to the dangers unknown.

"Tails!" Amy shouted, her voice nearly carried away by the harsh winds. "We can't keep searching in this! We'll freeze!"

"We have to find that Emerald!" The fox hollered back, taking a few steps out into the snow. The winds whipped around him, nearly dragging him off his feet. His sensor still beeped, as if trying to urge his feet to move just by its tantalizing sound. "Besides, I can't fly the Tornado out in this blizzard!"

Amy made what Tails thought was a disgruntled noise, but her protests were whisked away by the stirring gales. He could barely pick up the sound of her boots crunching the snow as she followed him closely. He felt her free hand on his shoulder, though he was unsure if she was grounding him or herself. They both trudged on through the knee-deep snow, following the teasing beep of the Chaos tracker in Tails's left hand.

The winds died back a little when they were in the cover of the trees, the thick curtain of snow and needles protecting them from most of the whiteout. Tails glanced back out into the clearing for his plane, though the Tornado's vibrant cherry red was almost completely blotted out in the blizzard around them. It was marginally warmer under the blanketing of the trees, and the further they trudged into the forest, the shallower the snow on the ground became.