Tight Fit

The world came back through a fading curtain of darkness. “H-hey, you. You’re finally awake.” Tight’s voice was close by, accompanied by breath on her shoulder.

“Why is it so dark?” Rainbow croaked hoarsely. As her head cleared – and began to hurt – she heard a distant whistle of wind from somewhere.

His breath was ragged. “‘C-cause we’re in a t-tent,” Tight’s teeth were chattering. “Under a p-pile of… w-whatever I could get my hooves on.” He chuckled and coughed. “M-mostly c-c-c-cutoffs.”

“It’s pretty cozy,” Rainbow noted with surprise. The suit churned, and Tight chuckled again.

“G-good for y-you...”

Rainbow shifted. The cloth above her was heavy and warm. There was a bundle in front of her. She prodded it.

“Ouch,” Tight coughed again. “L-look, I’m f-freezing my flank off here. H-how about you don’t add insult to injury?”

“Freezing?” Rainbow asked again. “But it’s warm.”

“T-the suit’s warm!” he spat angrily, then took a deep breath. “S-sorry. You must have hit your head pretty hard. You were out cold, and everything.” Rainbow nodded, and her head swam a bit.

“I’ve had a few tumbles in my life,” she said.

For some reason, Tight chuckled again. She felt him shaking.

How are you keeping warm? she wanted to ask, but she felt like she knew the answer. He wasn’t.

“S-so,” the unicorn asked, “h-how about a little flying?” His chuckles were getting annoying, mostly because each of them sounded more and more desperate. “Y-you know, glide off of the mountain or s-something. M-maybe fly to s-some hot springs…?”

Rainbow nodded. “Sure, just wait here.”

“Y-yeah… T-take your t-time…”

She wriggled out of the covers and groped for the tent’s entrance. It took her a few moments to find the zipper. She did her best to slide out quickly, hind legs first, and stood up, squinting. Her goggles were long gone, and the immediate surroundings were awash with cold, piercing snow, seemingly flying sideways.

The tent was sitting half-collapsed and at an angle. A couple bundles were laying half-buried in snow around it. One of them, she noted, was sliced in half, with cans of mushroom stew strewn about.

She stretched her wings, gingerly. There was some pain, but surprisingly not that much. A bit of swelling, but she could move everything. The pegasus let out a relieved sigh. Not broken, she thought. Sprained, maybe. She really could glide down the mountain. Once the weather clears, that is.

Rainbow remembered that cloud front and imagined it washing up the mountain. How long will the storm last? A day? Two?

How long would the unicorn last?

She shook her head, and crawled back inside. “We’re getting snowed in,” she reported as her mind went back to Survival in All-Too-Probable Scenarios lessons. “We should make an igloo or something, maybe? Get a fire going.”

No response.

“Tight?”

“Hum?” Coughing. “S-sorry. M-must have d-dozed off.”

Shit.

“I f-feel pretty warm now, though,” he reported. "Could you help me get these off?"

Fuck!

“Right!” Rainbow tried to make her shaking voice sound resolute. “Tight! Tight Fit!”

“P-present…” he muttered.

Rainbow crawled under the blankets and grabbed him by the haunches. “Stay with me, buddy.” She shook him.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“The suit’s making me warm, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How can it make you warm?”

“I dunno, take it off and give it to me?” he chuckled again. “Sounds like a great idea to me. Especially the part where you take it off.”

She rolled her eyes. “You said there was some kind of magic gobbledygook that held the warmth or something?”

There was a pause. “Heat accumulator,” the unicorn’s indignant voice was clearer with each word. “Judging by the streak you made across the skies, it’ll probably be pleasantly warm for a week.”

“Will it work if it’s not connected to the suit?”

“Work?” He scoffed. “It accumulates and radiates heat. You could make it into powder and snort it and it’d still ‘work’. It’s just enchanted rock.”

“Mineral,” she corrected him absently. “Okay. Help me get this thing off.” He muttered something stupid, but Rainbow was already looking for the zipper on the top layer, then unpeeled herself down to her midsection. “Can you reach the accu– acc– the rocks?”

“M-minerals,” he corrected her. She felt his hooves reach around her barrel. They slid under the top layer of the suit and groped around.

Rainbow gasped. “H-higher, you dumbass…” she breathed.

“S-sorry.” Another one of those chuckles. “Hey, at least I’m not freezing to death without touching your flank.”

“You’re not freezing to death!” Rainbow snapped back. “Mind on the job! Can you pry the stupid thing off or something?”

“It’s sewn into the fabric,” Tight Fit huffed. “It’s like… a bag of beads. The capillaries go through around it and transport the heat…” his voice trailed off. “But hey, your sides are nice and warm, I guess.”

Rainbow cursed and thought. “Hold on.” She scrambled for the exit again. The unicorn said something, but she wasn’t keen on listening. She sprung out of the tent, and looked at her sides, and patted herself down. There was hardness there, for sure, but to get to it, she’d have to…

“Ah crap,” she realized, and thought. As she did, her eyes fell onto the eviscerated bag of cans. “The cans!” she gasped, and dug into the remains. The side pocket was still intact, and the utensils inside were still there. Along with that ugly pink knife.

“Okay, I can cut this off,” Rainbow told herself, fishing the serrated knife out. Yeah, and cut yourself into pieces, a voice in her head said. She inspected her sides as best as she could. The tubes entered a large pocket which held the firmness – the beads, no doubt. She nodded, and started breathing deeply. How long can you last? the same voice asked.

“I just need like, ten seconds, or something.”

The last bits of haze lifted from her mind as adrenaline started coursing through her veins.

“Now or never,” she stated, and tore the top, rubbery layer of the suit off. It flapped in the wind as she tossed it aside, and grabbed the second zipper. Before she could hesitate, her hoof already tore it open. Icy wind hit the bottom layer, but she was already stripping the suit off.

With shaky hooves, Rainbow pierced the cloth and sawed with desperate vigor, all the way around the pocket at the side of the suit. “D-don’t cut the s-seams,” she kept telling herself. The pipes cut surprisingly easily, spilling warm liquid all over her shaking hooves. Thankfully, she still had that last lay-text layer on.

Rainbow cursed, and continued cutting, ripped, and tore, until it was done. But when she tried to cut the other pocket off, she realized she couldn’t feel the tips of her hooves. She cursed again, and grabbed the heating pocket in her teeth, the cut-up suit in her hooves, and dove into the tent.

Luckily, she didn’t cut it up with the knife. Little miracles.

“H-hey,” Tight welcomed her. “H-how’s the weather?”

“K-kinda chilly,” she replied. “Y-you might wanna w-wear a h-hat.” She pushed the warm pocket against his chest. “H-hold onto this for me, will you?”

He didn’t say anything, but clutched the bag of warm beads desperately. Rainbow held onto the remnant of the suit until her hooves stopped being so numb. Then, with slow, measured strokes, she cut the warm patch off.

“I should have done this here in the first place,” she realized, and shrugged. “I’ll remember it next time I’m trapped on a mountain in a blizzard, trying to cut pockets of heated beads out of a prototype environment suit.”

The unicorn muttered something, and shifted as he clutched the warm bag of beads.

Finally, Rainbow was done. She tossed the cut-up suit to the corner of the collapsed tent, and slipped under the improvised covers. Her teeth chattered as she pressed against the warm bundle in front of her.

“H-hey, you,” Tight’s voice was clearer now. “Did you come to share the warmth?”

It was Rainbow’s turn to chuckle. “M-maybe? How much do ya got?”

“P-plenty, thanks to you,” the unicorn replied. “So w-what’s the plan?”

“We’ll wait until the storm passes,” Rainbow dug deeper under the covers, “and I’ll glide down the mountain. There’s enough snow to make water to drink, and I’m sure you can do something with your magic once your horn is not an icicle.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” Tight nodded. “How does the storm look?”

Rainbow thought, and sighed. “Not good. We could be here for a while.” She took a breath. “Why’s the thermal thing so cold?”

“It’s set to only go up to body temperature,” he explained apologetically. “It wouldn’t be much of a chiller otherwise.”

“Well, it’s too cold,” Rainbow complained. “I’ll freeze my ass off like this. Can’t you fix it? You enchanted it, didn't you?”

“Yeah, I did,” Fit huffed. “But I can't even feel my horn. Could you... I dunno, fix, like, one of those rainbow-pillars in Las Pegasus? Without using hooves?”

“...probably?”

“Ugh!”

Rainbow closed her eyes. “It’s gonna get cold,” she summarized. Another memory of Survival in All-Too-Probable Scenarios crawled into her mind, almost mockingly. She blushed and took a sharp breath.

“I... might have an idea how to stay warm...”