Snow eddies caught the sunbeams breaking through the heavy clouds overhead, glittering as the chilly winter breeze bore them away into the white landscape. Somewhere nearby, a group of kids squealed and laughed as they traded fire in the form of snowballs, ducking behind naked oaks and elms. Pinkie Pie grinned as she observed the chaos.
A snowball exploded against her head. Sputtering in shock, she wiped her face clear before whirling toward her girlfriend. “Is this a declaration of war?” she asked with a mischievous wiggle of her pink eyebrows.
Sonata Dusk giggled, her glossy lips slanting up one side. She wore dark raspberry snow gear, complete with cornflower blue earmuffs. Her pretty eyes were done up in their usual dark and heavy makeup, inappropriate for the setting but perfect on her. “If it was,” she said to Pinkie with a naughty wink, “I’d cream you.”
She stooped to gather some more, then mashed it into the sculpture taking shape next to her. It was serpentine and even had frills, though it still lacked a head. “That’d be kinda cool, though. To have my first snowball fight with you,” Sonata continued as she gathered a lot more snow and began to shape it into a ball. She glanced at Pinkie as she did so, her cheeks warming up.
Pinkie’s jaw dropped. She turned away from her own snow sculpture of a giant cupcake and pulled her knitted hat down against her head with a shriek. “You’ve never had a snowball fight before?!”
Sonata nodded with a small pout, her brows pushing together over her raspberry eyes. “Yeeeah,” she sighed, placing her round snowball on the neck of the serpentine creature she made. Her gaze ticked up in thought, just as the break in the clouds sealed and the beams of sunlight were snuffed out. “Though, there was this one time a few years ago when Adagio got hit by a snowball by accident. Some kids on our street were just playing and vwip-WHAM.” She shook her head with her eyes closed and held up her hands. “Baaaad news.”
“Uh oh,” Pinkie said with a hunch and a shiver. As much as she loved Sonata, the other Dazzlings still gave her the heebie-jeebies. “And what’d Adagio do?”
Her girlfriend shrugged as she gathered up some more snow, her two-toned blue ponytail sweeping down at her side. “Nothing serious,” she grunted. “She made me and Aria do a little breaking and entering to steal the kids’ bikes from their homes. Then we took them and threw them into the big pond nearby. They sank right to the bottom.” She actually snickered a little. Pinkie winced and turned back to her snow creation, digging the pebbles she’d gathered earlier out of her coat pocket. She loved Sonata, but sometimes her dark side still peeked out. It was always a little challenging trying to think of ways to compassionately say something about it.
“It was right before the big freeze,” Sonata went on, barely restrained laughter still evident in her taut voice, “So the next day the pond froze over! The looks on the kids’ faces when they realized what happened was price–!” she halted, staring wide-eyed at Pinkie, who gazed back at her with her lower lip pushed up and her brow creased. Pinkie liked a good prank as much as the next person, but this wasn’t that. Thinking about sad kids bummed her out.
Sonata paled to see the disapproving expression leveled her way, her gloved hands crushing the snow she was holding so that the frozen crystals spilled from the edges of her grip. “Oh! Crap! Sorry. That was an evil memory, wasn’t it? I should totally not be laughing!”
Pinkie shrugged, the tension melting away from her features to be replaced by a kind smile. She didn’t hold onto things, especially crud from the past. “Aw, it’s okay, babe,” she cooed at Sonata. “You’re doing so much better these days!” She dotted her cupcake with the pebbles, and her smile grew at the effect it created. Stony sprinkles!
The blush returned to Sonata’s face as her dark eyes tensed. “You think so?” Her mouth pinched as she gathered more snow to replenish what she’d lost. This she turned into a cylindrical shape that she then carefully added to her sculpture’s round head. She released a small sigh. “It still feels mega weird trying to be good and all. My sisters are a pain, but when I think of the mean stuff we used to do, I still kinda think it’s funny.” She curled her hands toward the sky and looked up with anguish. “Like, come on! Why are swirlies bad? I just don’t get it!”
When the heavens didn’t answer her, she hung her head. “Being good can be such a drag…” she mumbled woefully.
Pinkie chewed her lip and looked at her lover sideways. “Wanna know a secret?” she asked with a little wince.
Sonata blinked just as she pulled a small stick from her pocket. She’d found it earlier during their walk through the park. “Sure! I like secrets,” she answered.
Now Pinkie put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at her girlfriend. “You have to Pinkie Promise not to tell anyone, all right?”
A long sigh escaped Sonata. With lidded eyes, she crossed her heart and said with a flat voice that rivaled Maud’s, “Cross my heart,” she mimed flying through the air with her hand, “Hope to fly,” she covered one smokey eye. “Stick a cupcake in my eye.”
Smiling with relief, Pinkie sidled closer. Looking around nervously, she leaned in, pulled away one of Sonata’s ear muffs, and whispered sibilantly, “Sometimes, I laugh at mean things too!”
She carefully replaced the earmuff and sidled back to her snow cupcake. Sonata gazed at her with her mouth hung slightly open. “You? Really?”
Pinkie nodded with a pursed smile, and her eyes tensed with guilt. “Yeah. Like when someone walks into a door while carrying food and they get it all over themselves, or when someone is about to do a performance and their pants fall down, or like when a baby is put on a mall Santa’s lap for the first time and they just cry and cry.” Just saying this was enough to make her titter a little. She wheeled a hand through the air as her smile turned sheepish. “I never try to be mean to anyone, but sometimes when bad stuff happens to other people I can’t help cracking up!” She shrugged and winked. “I usually just apologize and help them after.”
“I think that’s totes normal,” Sonata reassured her with a little grin that clearly said, You think that’s mean? You’re freaking adorbs. She carefully carved the cylindrical part of her sculpture’s head. She shaped it to look like a muzzle with fangs. “That’s schnadenfrood, right? Everyone likes a good schnadenfrood.” Her lips puckered as she dug out two acorns from her pocket and shoved them into her sculpture’s head.
Pinkie tilted her head to the side as she patted a small snowball and placed it on the top of her cupcake. She stuck a droopy stick into the top of it, transforming it into her cupcake’s cherry. “Schna-den-frood?” Pinkie asked slowly. “What’s that?”
Sonata twirled a gloved finger through the air. “Y’know. Schnadenfrood!” She tapped her chin as she tried to think. “I saw it in a book once. I think it’s German?”
This required a full minute of frozen contemplation as Pinkie wracked her brain, trying to discern what her girlfriend meant. Finally, her eyes lit up and she beamed excitedly. “Oh, you mean schadenfreude!”
“Huh?” Sonata put her hands on her hips and frowned at her. “No, I meant schnadenfrood!”
“Babe, I think ‘schnadenfrood’ is actually pronounced ‘sha-den-froi-duh’.”
Sonata crossed her arms and puckered her lips, her eyes narrowing. Near them, there was a commotion as the kids squealed. A quick peek over her shoulder told Pinkie that the parents had joined the children’s snowball fight. She turned back to Sonata just in time to see her partner give a little shrug. “I don’t get it,” Sonata stated, her expression blissfully unruffled.
Pinkie giggled, one errant pink curl slipping free from her knit cap. “Nah, forget I said anything.”
They resumed their work quietly. Pinkie inhaled the frosty air, savoring the strange feeling of her throat and lungs chilling. She shrugged a little deeper into her puffy gray-blue winter jacket and sighed contentedly. She loved the holiday season. There was so much wonder and mischief and excitement. She didn’t mind the cold at all.
Pinkie looked up from carving swirls into the top of her snow cupcake to peer over at Sonata’s work. Her eyebrows lifted as she beheld her girlfriend’s creation. “Woaaah! Is that a siren?”
Sonata smirked, crossing her arms. “Sure is. It’s me.” Her smirk lessened. “Was me.”
Pinkie went to her side and pulled Sonata against her by the hip. Her blue eyes trailed over the almost dragon-like frills, the thick tail, the fearsome fangs… All somehow offset by the crooked acorn eyes set into the siren’s head.
Snickering, Pinkie pointed at the snow siren’s face. “So you had googly eyes?”
Sonata looked at her with a crossed gaze. “What do you mean?”
Pinkie snorted into laughter. Her humor came to a sputtering halt when Sonata mashed a new snowball into her face.
“What the wha-huh?!” Pinkie sputtered as she shook the snow away like a dog wagging to dry itself.
Sonata giggled as she danced out of Pinkie’s embrace to pull an eyelid down and stick her tongue out. “Nyah! You’re such an easy mark!”
Pinkie feigned outrage, though she couldn’t wipe the massive smile from her face. “Oooh, you’re gonna get it, Sonata!” she playfully fumed as she gathered up snow for a ball.
“I got a snowball with your name on it, Pinks!” Sonata taunted with a jagged smile as she ducked behind her snow siren to gather her own ammunition.
Pinkie giggled as she darted around the sculpture and let loose her snowball.
Sonata yelped when the snowball hit the front of her coat, but she quickly returned fire with a delighted yell. Pinkie practically swan-dived behind her snow cupcake and hurried to assemble her arsenal. If she could just get a good stockpile before–!
She squealed as Sonata leapfrogged over the snow cupcake and her, skillfully throwing a snowball between her split legs that hit Pinkie square in the chest. Her light and dark blue hair whipped through the air before she landed and rolled, like something straight out of the movies, facing her target with another snowball ready to throw.
Sonata froze, her face stretching as Pinkie stood up, her arms ladened with snowballs. A cat-like smile spread on her pink face as she idly tossed a ball into the air. “Oh, Sonataaaaa…”
Planting her feet wide, Pinkie let loose a barrage of blurring snowballs whistling through the air. Before Sonata could find cover, the snowballs struck her all over–her chest, head, legs, everywhere. She backpedaled, her hands held out in a vain attempt to block the attack, her blind retreat sending her on a beeline for her snow siren.
Pinkie’s arm halted, her eyes crowding her face as she dropped her snowballs and held out a hand. “Sonata, wait!”
Sonata just managed to wipe the snow from her eyes when her snowboot caught on a raised tuft of snow. Her arms wheeled through the air as she watched Pinkie charge at her, and with a grimace, she squeaked, “Oh boy!” before her girlfriend collided with her. They didn’t fall backward, though.
With her arms wrapped around Sonata’s torso, Pinkie dug her heel into the snow and wrenched them both to the side where they crashed into a soft bank. Pinkie blinked up at the gray sky, her hat askew as little flurries of snow they had kicked up descended like angelic down. The cold of the snow pressed in around them, but tangled up as they were, they had a core of warmth that kept the chill from seeping all the way in.
Sonata groaned on top of her, her head on Pinkie’s chest. Pinkie bit her lip as she hugged her girlfriend tighter, “You okay, babe?” She asked nervously. She lifted her head a little to peek at the snow siren nearby. “I think we managed to save your sculpture.”
Without moving or lifting her head, Sonata let her hand trail up to Pinkie’s face. She felt around a little, as if to make sure she’d actually found it, and Pinkie giggled with a squinted eye as Sonata’s gloved fingers pinched her cheek lightly.
“I can’t go on. I’m toast!” Sonata intoned.
Pinkie grinned as she poked the top of Sonata’s head. “It was just snow silly.” Her eyes tensed as a thought occurred to her. “Wait, there wasn’t a rock or something in one of the snowballs was there? Cuz I totally didn’t mean to hurt you!”
“Nah, you’re good,” the other girl reassured her in a normal voice before switching to a sudden weak rasp: “Pinkie, I have one last request!”
Pinkie nodded eagerly. “Oh, anything for you, Sonata!”
Sonata feigned a cough and shifted a little. “Please… tell Aria…”
“Yes?” Pinkie cocked an ear and tried to lean in. “Tell Aria what?”
“Tell her… that she’s…” Sonata tilted her face up with a dramatic grimace. “The worst!”
Pinkie blinked and arched an eyebrow. “Do…? Do I have to–ooooh no!” She broke off when Sonata let her head loll to the side and stuck her tongue out the corner of her mouth. Pinkie jostled her. “Sonata?” Her chin fake crumpled as she hugged Sonata hard. “Don’t worry, babe! I’ll tell her! I’ll tell Aria that she is the absolute worst!” She threw her head back and screamed, “WHYYYYYY!!”
Sonata pushed herself up onto an elbow and tossed a little bit of snow into Pinkie’s mouth. “Quiet, spaz. I’m trying to be dead over here.” Her ponytail spilled over her shoulder, though some of it gathered in the bend of her neck.
Pinkie licked the snow away with happy smacks of her lips. “Daww, but babe I gotta sell the performance!” she giggled.
“For who, the cheap seats?” Sonata teased with a grin. When Pinkie pouted at her, she cooed and scooted up, her other hand catching the back of Pinkie’s neck as she pulled her in for a kiss.
Pinkie blushed as she let her eyes slip closed. She loved it when Sonata kissed her this way. Deep and arresting, so that everything fell away, even the cold. Even so many layers of clothes couldn’t stop the excitement she felt, and the heat this produced boiled up her neck and into her head. Being with Sonata was like drinking hot cocoa with tons of gooey marshmallows and a candy cane to swirl it all with. Pinkie’s mouth became a happy squiggly line when Sonata pulled away.
“So how was your first snowball fight?” She asked, her voice woozy from all her saccharine feelings.
Sonata had a light blush on her cheeks as she shrugged. “It was fun, I guess.” She smiled happily. “The best part about it was you,” then she smirked and pushed Pinkie’s nose up so she looked like a pig. “Love you, dork.”
Pinkie grinned and sat up to peck Sonata’s lips one more time. “Love you too, babe,” she said with a happy giggle.
