“Hey, Cold, you mind giving me a hand? This needs a temporary bracing!” called out Graham from underneath a tentpole. Cold ran over and spread out an icy platform at the base of the pole, steadying it with her hands at the same time. Graham proceeded to set up the rest of the framework around the central tentpole, hammering the slots into place and making sure they were steady before giving Cold the go-ahead to release her ice.

  As other workers came forward to drape the tentcloth over the poles, Cold dusted off her hands with a nod. The festival’s preparations were coming along nicely- the cooks were working up a storm, but Heat had finished her shift and decided to nap in headspace; Cold meanwhile was more than happy to help set things up.

  Sally walked up nearby and let down the bundle of tent poles she was carrying, giving Cold a small hug before going off to continue working. That was another good part of helping with setup, Cold thought to herself.

  “Damn, this one is warped. Do we have a woodcarver mage?” called out one of the workers. Cold prodded Heat awake in headspace, filling her in on the situation; Heat walked over to the workers and ran her hand over the warp in the pole, leaving behind a scorch mark from the heat, but it let them work together to bend it straight again. Heat gave them a nod as they thanked her, running up to Sally as she came back with more tents and giving her a kiss. The people working nearby gave a small cheer, and Heat simply rolled her eyes and wrapped her arms around her girlfriend.

  As the two took off, Sally’s shift over and Cold done volunteering for the day, they explored the city, Sally acting as a tour guide. Cold had seen some of it, had explored it, and yet being shown it all over from Sally’s perspective was dazzling… though Cold was, of course, biased. Sally pointed out a neighboring area’s dining hall where they were really good at preparing meat, and a woodcarver over there who liked to make small wooden toys for children during his downtime.

  “Heat! Hide me!” cried a familiar voice as Madeline came rushing through, her wooden bucket held tightly. As she dashed to hide behind Heat and Sally, they saw a man rushing towards them, itching furiously at his scalp.

  “What did you do, Madeline?” Cold asked, her voice heavy with exasperation.

  “I helped him!” the girl replied. “He had lice, and I got them off and all the eggs too.”

  “Liar!” the man cried, his hands itching away. “You gave me lice and now you’re trying to cover it up!”

  “But they’re all in here,” said Madeline. “I got rid of them, you’re just itching because they bit you a few times when leaving!”

  The man took a step forwards, his fists shaking in rage, and Cold stood tall, staring him in the eyes.

  “I won’t let you hurt her,” she said, her hands balled at her sides and her spine ramrod straight. The man took another step forwards, and Cold held up a hand before making it explode in icicle spikes; the man reconsidered after that and backed off, cursing Madeline all the while as he left.

  Once he was gone, Cold picked up Madeline by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes. “Did you even ask for permission before you cleaned the bugs off of him?”

  Madeline avoided Cold’s gaze.

  “You can’t just do that without asking, no wonder he thought you were agitating them!” Cold cried.

  “But they were really bad, and he was risking making an infestation across the town!” Madeline responded.

  “Yes, that’s why you have to actually tell him that so he can make an informed decision. And so he doesn’t freak out when you clean him of bugs.”

  Madeline nodded and wriggled her way out of Cold’s grasp, dashing off with her bucket. “That girl is a good kid, but she can be a pain sometimes,” muttered Cold. Sally kissed her forehead, and Cold couldn’t help but blush again. Madeline quickly dashed back after a few minutes however, hugging Cold from behind.

  “Hey there, Maddy. You put away the lice somewhere safe?” Cold asked, awkwardly reaching behind her to pat the girl on the head.

  “Can I stay with you for a while?” Madeline asked, her voice muffled thanks to her face being pressed against Cold’s back.

  “I’d want to ask your parents first to make sure they’re okay with it, but I don’t mind. Do you, Sally?” asked Cold, only for Sally to shuffle awkwardly.

  Madeline spoke up. “I… don’t have any parents. I lost them a few years ago, when we were trying to make it to Last Stand. Most people aren’t… they don’t want to spend time with me because I’m just a kid, or because I’m creepy. And because I can work, I do that most of the time.”

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  Cold pulled Madeline over to a nearby bench and pulled her into a hug, and the girl let out a few tears of sadness and joy combined.

  “She reminds me a lot of myself as a child,” Sally quietly muttered. Cold looked up at her curiously and she continued: “I wasn’t fully aware of how much I scared people after I developed my magic. I was so eager to prove myself that I ended up ‘freaking out’ people, as you put it, tossing logs like toys… it’s why I ended up gaining a berserk state.”

  Cold hugged her tightly, and Sally returned the affection. “With any luck, Madeline won’t have to deal with that. She’s a good kid, she just needs someone to help her out occasionally. Come on, let’s go spar- I want to try something new.”

  As the two entered the sparring ring, Madeline watching from the sidelines, Cold’s circlet of ice began to shimmer, picking up an aura of fire that orbited the ice like a heat haze. In their headspace, Heat was subsumed into Cold, the two merging together. When they spoke, there were two voices overlaid on top of one another, slightly out of sync.

  “This is uncomfortable, almost painful, being like this. I don’t know how long we can keep this up, but it was an idea Cold had to boost our fighting technique. Please, let us test ourselves.”

  Sally looked slightly uncomfortable but still nodded. The two got into their respective fighting stances, and Cold struck out with a high kick aimed at Sally’s midsection. Sally blocked it, but before she could counter, a gust of wind lashed out like a strike, hitting her in the midsection with the force of a heavy strike. Sally grunted and lashed out with a punch but Cold wove around it with ease, her hand hammering Sally in the gut with that strange double-strike. Sally replied with a headbutt, forcing Cold to back away, only for Cold to dive in again with a low punch, frost starting to form around her hand. The wind was starting to die down, and Sally grabbed Cold’s arm and pulled her into a headlock. Cold struggled against it but couldn’t escape the larger woman’s mighty grasp. With three taps against Sally’s thigh, she gave up- and when Sally pulled her up to talk to her, the circlet was gone, leaving behind an empty body with glazed-over eyes.

  “Why didn’t it work? Why can’t I be better?!” cried Cold, her icy soul whipping around in a frenzy like a winter storm. Heat tried to power through it and comfort her sister, but the wind blew her away. Heat took a deep breath and shifted, her headspace form changing from human to phoenix, her great wings releasing a gust of flame with every flap. She powered through the storm with a shrill cry, zeroing in on the thrashing ice wyrm and diving down, down, down towards her sister, landing on her and wrapping her in her feathery embrace.

  The two’s forms began to shimmer in headspace, their conceptual both human and beast at the same time, overlapping.

  “I can’t ever get better,” said Cold with a whimper. “No matter how hard I try, I can’t improve, I can’t get more creative, I can’t come up with anything cool and useful like you do. I get rough with people who don’t deserve it, I’m… I’m cold. Nothing I do is right. Nothing I do is worthwhile. I wish I could be more like you…”

  Heat didn’t speak up for a little bit, getting her words right first. “You’re stubborn.” As Cold started to protest, Heat shushed her. “I mean it, you’re always turning inward and blaming yourself when something goes wrong. And you push yourself so hard to be better… you know how I come up with new ideas? I steal them. I took Anders’s ranged attacks with my flame blasts, I stole the heat aura idea from a cartoon for goodness sake. You always try to do everything yourself, and the one time you wanted to rely on someone else for help, you didn’t make it equal, you just overruled me. I’m okay with helping you, but you need to let me instead of forcing your way or else. You need to rely on others- this isn’t one-way, it’s give-and-take. There’s two of us now… we can afford to help each other. And fuck knows Sally would be willing to listen to you, too- you probably worried her sick, ducking in here!”

  Cold sniffled a little, another tear falling from her face that her hand/claw moved up to wipe away. “But what if I screw it up again? What if I never get any better?”

  “Then you’ll still be my kickass awesome wonderful sister, and you’ll still have everyone care about you.”

  The winds died down, and Heat was in her human form once more... and Cold’s scales glittered with her tears, her hands more like claws and a thick reptilian tail spreading out from behind her. She experimentally tested it, waving it back and forth, and let out a giggle.

  “It figures it took a breakdown for me to get something new,” she muttered. Heat just hugged her tightly.

  As Cold took control of their shared body once more, Heat popping out of her shoulder to check on everything and their butt a little sore from sitting on a wooden bench, Sally jumped up with a start, her hands and eyes checking their body for injuries. Cold leaned in to give her a kiss, and when their lips parted, a wisp of frost slowly drifted away from their mouth.

  “You’re so cold, but it’s nice. Like swimming in a river in the summer, or drinking something chilled when you’re hot from working too hard,” the giantess muttered. Cold wrapped her tail around Sally, and the two startled a little before realizing what they were looking at. It wasn’t made of flesh but of snow and ice, glittering in the late autumn light.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” muttered Cold. Heat rubbed Cold’s face with a wing as Sally hugged them both, planting a kiss on Heat for good measure. “I have… insecurities, ones that carried over from before. About not being good enough, about always having to do and be more. And sometimes they get to me. I.. I understand if you don’t want to be with me after that.”

  Sally shook her head vigorously. “Why would I want to break up with you? Everyone has their troubles. But you two saw me as a woman worthy of loving instead of a statue or a workhorse, you take care of Madeline when no one else will, and I don’t want to give that up, not without a fight.” At that, Sally lightly bonked her head against Cold’s.

  Madeline finally ran up to Cold and grabbed her tail, hugging it tightly. “That was really scary, please don’t do it again!” she cried. Cold pulled her into a hug between herself and Sally, the three taking comfort in the moment.

  The first snow of the year began to fall, gentle snowflakes floating down on the wind, but none of them were uncomfortable in the chill.

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