Cold

Early Autumn

It was a somewhat warm fall day. The first day of fall, in fact. The summer breeze was beginning to turn icy and the beautiful green leaves began to turn brown and yellow and red.

The water of Misty Lake was rippling and swaying, filled with life.
A small little blue haired fairy sat on the edge of the grass with her tiny feet barely grazing the surface of the water. The water under her feet were turned to thick sheets of ice on the surface.
She blinked as she stared off into the sunset, where the afternoon was turning into the evening.
She sighed as she waited for her best friend to arrive.

"Cirno! Cirno! Here I am!"
A lime green haired fairy came flying at her full speed towards the ice fairy. She planted her feet on the ground and skid to a halt right behind Cirno.

"I-I'm sorry I'm late! I was busy.."
Cirno looked over her shoulder at the breathless fairy.
"Dai, there you are! I was starting to think I was waiting here for nobody," the ice fairy smiled as she pat the ground on her left side.

"C'mon and sit down. The water's nice."
The grass underneath of Cirno's hand went cold, and began to freeze. She sighed and pointed at her right side.
Daiyousei sat down at Cirno's right, keeping a short distance between them. She was holding a basket, so she put it down in her lap and opened it up.
The contents of the basket let out a beautiful, perfume-like scent.

"Ooooh, what's that?" Cirno looked over at her.
"Rumia and I baked some sweets together so I thought I'd share some with ya! She wanted to mix humans into the batter, but we settled on sugar."
"A lot of sugar?" The blue fairy grinned.
Daiyousei nodded. "Just how we like it!"
The greater fairy held a small cookie out to Cirno. The cookie had a pretty cherry jelly center on it, and it was starting to fall apart between Daiyousei's two fingers.

The blue fairy carefully took the cookie, making sure not to graze her friend's hand in the process.
"Looks good. It better be," Cirno stared at the cookie and took a bite out of it.
The green fairy smiled when her friend's face lit up. "Do you like it?" she asked.
In a split second, Cirno scoffed down the entire cookie in one bite.
"I'll take that as a yes," Dai nodded. She stood up and brushed off her long blue dress.

"Sorry, I'm gonna have to go now."
"What?!" Cirno's eyes widened as she wiped the crumbs away from her mouth.
"You were here for like five minutes!" she wailed. "I planned this entire thing for us--"
"Sorry," Daiyousei frowned. "I came here to drop off the pastries that we made," she began, "because I thought you'd like them. I have to go to the human village with Rumia and Mystia and Wriggle."

"S-so you all are just going somewhere without me?!" Cirno was astonished. She'd never had this happen to her before, where her friends were hanging out somewhere all together without her.
"It's not that we want to, Cirno. We've got business to do there. It's not that fun." Daiyousei put down the basket right beside Cirno.
The ice fairy was on the verge of tears, but she wasn't going to let Daiyousei see that.

"Please don't leave me, Dai. I don't care if it's not fun! I want to come with you! As a group! As friends!"
"I'm sorry Cirno. I've said it once and I'll say it again. I've got to go," the greater fairy mumbled as she began to walk away.
"Please.." Cirno blinked tears out of her eyes.
Before she could say anything else, her "friend" was gone.

At least she still had the little basket of friendly intentional avoiding in her possession.
Cirno ended up eating all the contents of that basket within an hour. Not like she had anything better to do.