Sword and Snow

A few days had passed after we returned and Stena started living with us. She was adjusting well, and unlike Cierra had taken to Emery and myself rather quickly. She was still a little suspicious of both Vale and Talya, but was slowly warming up to Talya.

I imagined it helped that she was often sticking to Cierra’s side, and Cierra was often helping Talya with normal household chores while Vale, Emery, and I stuck to more labor intensive jobs that she couldn’t really help with.

Emery and I had spent the day working on the farm, planting end-of-summer crops as the summer was rapidly approaching its end. The climate Array kept everything pretty hot all the way through the end of the summer months, which left us taking baths or rinsing our bodies often to wash off the sweat.

We were fresh out of a rinse when we came inside to find Talya, Cierra, and Stena all in the kitchen baking. There were all kinds of ingredients scattered around the kitchen haphazardly, so they must have been at it for a while.

Emery wasted no time creeping up behind Cierra and picking her up from behind. The girl yelped as she was lifted up off the ground. “What’cha making?” Emery asked as she brought Cierra in for a snuggle.

Talya looked over and answered while Cierra was giggling. “We’re baking some sugar cookies. We had an abundance of sugar to use since we rarely put it in our normal dishes, so I wanted to use some of it.” She explained. “I’m also making some bread dough, though I was going to let it sit for a while before I bake it yet.”

Emery and I nodded in approval. “That all sounds good to me.” I said, looking around the messy kitchen. “Need any help with anything?”

Talya glanced up and around from her cookie batter then nodded toward a bowl off to the side. “If you want to get started on the last bit of bread dough, that would be helpful. The cookies are almost ready to bake, but if you want to get a head start on it, that would be nice.”

“Sure.” I said with a nod as I walked over to the empty bowl and started prepping the ingredients for the bread dough.

Everything went well for a few more minutes. Stena hopped over to help me and together we got the bread dough prepped and were in the process of beating the dough before putting it away to sit and prove. Talya had gotten the batch of cookies in the heat Array, and they were baking nicely.

The problem came from Emery and Cierra, who were cleaning up some of the mess that had been moved on from.

Emery had walked away to throw something out and left Cierra trying to gather and clean up some of the flour from the prep area. She decided to sneak her way back quietly and with a sudden, loud ‘Boo!’ she grabbed Cierra from behind to scare her.

The girl, in turn, spun with a loud yelp and hit Emery square in the face with a handful of flour. There was a moment of silence, as Emery stood straight, blinked a few times, and coughed twice. Each cough sent a plume of flour into the air.

Cierra stood, staring dumbfounded at Emery and started to stammer an apology. But Emery just grinned deviously.

“Oh, you’re gonna get it now.” She said, and Cierra went almost as pale as the flour. She turned to dash toward me, but Emery’s arm shot out and caught the girl. She quickly pivoted toward the counter, picked up a handful of flour, and made a sizable cloud as she flung it at Cierra’s front. She avoided directly going for her face, which I thought was admirable.

Then she took a second handful and smeared it throughout Cierra’s hair. Talya stood and watched, a bit of amusement showing on her face, while Stena hid behind me.

I made the mistake of being the first to laugh.

“Think it’s funny, do you?” Emery said, eyeing me. I tried to stop laughing, but couldn’t get it under control before Emery scooped up another handful of flour and threw it at me. When I stared back, face as white as my hair, Emery broke out into more laughter and let Cierra down.

She regretted that almost immediately when Cierra lunged forward, grabbed an entire bag of flour, and jumped to pour the entire thing down the back of Emery’s loose robes.

After that, all hell broke loose. Flour was flung in every direction, and all five of us were all in on it. Within the short few minutes that the flour fight lasted, we managed to cover practically every inch of the kitchen in the white dust, and we were all coated in it. We had thrown almost all of the flour that was loose in the kitchen before we finally collapsed to the ground in laughter.

“Oh boy, this is going to be a nightmare to clean up.” Talya said between fits of giggles.

Emery just sprawled out on the floor still laughing. “Talya, I don’t want to think about that right now.”

“Agreed.” I said, as I shook my fingers through my hair trying to dislodge the flour. It fell out in waves. “I’m more concerned with cleaning ourselves at the moment. We can always clean up the flour here later. But we probably shouldn’t spend the rest of the day covered in it ourselves.”

“I guess we should try to clean ourselves off before we bathe, too.” Emery said. “Dipping ourselves in the water while covered in flour won’t be pleasant.”

I thought for a moment, then stood. “I think I can help with that. But we should go outside so we don’t make a bigger mess.” I bent down to pick up Stena who was nearest to me before offering Emery a hand to pull her up.

“Let’s go then.” She said while levering herself up.

Once we were all outside, I used a variation of my Blizzard Dragon technique to whip up some strong gusts. While I kept them concentrated, moving the gale closer to each of us in turn blew off a lot of the flour on our bodies and clothes. We had even gathered near the bathhouse and stripped because so much of it had gotten inside our clothing.

It took a little while to get us all to the point where we weren’t too worried about clogging up the bath by mixing the flour and water, but we did manage to get there. As a group, we moved inside the bathhouse and took to helping each other clean off all the flour. Thankfully, between some cloth and rinsing, we were able to all get reasonably clean in a relatively short amount of time.

It was a few minutes before we all slid into the large bath for a soak. Stena and Cierra were the first ones in the water, and they were happily doggy-paddling around in the middle of the extra large bath when Talya, Emery, and I slid into the water.

Talya took a spot a little to one side, watching the girls as they played. Emery, however, scooted right next to me and laid her head on my shoulder with a serene smile as she watched the girls kick and splash.

“Hi.” I said lamely, as I laid my head against hers.

“Hi.” She responded softly.

“I know you told Talya and Vale that we’re…whatever we are these days, but I’m not going to lie. I didn’t expect you would be such a cuddler.”

Emery laughed and moved in closer to prove my point, until we were touching from shoulder to ankle. She even went as far as wrapping her leg around mine so we locked ankles. “I didn’t realize it either.” She laughed. “But once we took the kids gloves off, I realized that I basically always want to touch you.”

I raised my eyebrow in a silent question at her wording and she laughed again. I could feel her whole body shake with it. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just find myself always craving hugs or cuddles. The little things just add up, I guess.”

I moved my head so I could plant a kiss on her wet hair. “They really do. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy moments like this.”

As if on queue, Emery and I suddenly got facefuls of water. We turned toward what we believed was the source - the two little girls playing in the middle of the bath - and stared daggers at them. They both tried to look innocent, and Cierra was pointing at Talya. Our gazes slid over to Emery’s sister, to find her looking skyward, eyes closed, whistling a light tune to herself.

“Y’all are gonna pay for that.” Emery said, her voice sounding almost demonic in its depth. But I could see her struggling to hold back laughter too. Her eyes narrowed, moving between the girls and her sister. Eventually, she settled on the girls. “You promise me it was her?” She said, jabbing a finger toward Talya.

Cierra and Stena nodded so fast I was worried for their necks. And in the next instant, Emery moved. She raised her arms as she cycled her Qi, and her blades began to manifest around her. However, she took an extra moment to focus and shift their shapes into that of floating buckets.

There were ten of them, all rather big, and they dipped down into the bath to fill themselves. Talya was still acting nonchalant about it all, as all ten buckets hovered about her with two of them poised to dump their water on her.

“Any last words, sister?” Emery asked, her voice dropping into some seriously sexy low tones.

Talya cracked an eye open and looked at Emery. “I thought you two could use some cooling off.”

“With hot bath water.” Emery stated flatly.

“I said what I said. With the way you two were looking at one another, I was worried what the children might see -” Having more or less said her piece, Talya was suddenly drenched in deluge of water from what was essentially a waterwheel of buckets, as all ten buckets rotated quickly filling themselves, then depositing their loads over Talya’s head.

It was long before Talya leapt to her feet and all but tackled Emery into the water and all hell broke loose for a second time that night. Talya and Emery spent half a minute trying to dunk each other and hold the other under the water for any significant period of time.

Thankfully, it was clearly play-fighting, as Emery and Talya kept trading positions. I was laughing when Emery reached out for me. I felt her grab my hand while she was being held under and I went to pull her up expecting her to be grabbing for help.

I didn’t expect the Sky Realm level strength she used to pull me completely under the water with her.

I fought back, my own body’s strength slowly ramping up to match hers as Talya scrambled away. When I finally got out of Emery’s hold, I grabbed her by the waist and practically lifted her into a suplex, dumping her in the water behind me. I laughed at how light she was.

Then I felt her grab my ankle; she swept me completely off my feet, and I went down into the water. As I tried to find purchase on anything, one of Emery’s buckets fit itself snugly over my head blocking my sight.

I quickly let my Qi and Domain out to get some semblance of senses back. I could tell Talya was ushering the kids out of the water and getting clear of the bath. She redoubled her speed when she felt my Qi leak out, and I smiled under the water as everyone except Emery and I left the water.

Which suddenly wasn’t water anymore, but ice. The struggle suddenly ceased, as I melted the ice near me so I could get my head above the water and pull off the bucket on my head. I let the ice everywhere else melt shortly thereafter, leaving a freezing Emery shivering in the ice-cold bath water.

“Oooh.” She said through chattering teeth. “You’re gonna regret that one, Ri.”

“Am I?” I asked innocently, going as far to tauntingly bat my eyelashes at her. “Whatever will you do to me?”

Her Qi flexed again, and I suddenly found myself boxed in by her floating buckets as she slowly approached me, a menacing air surrounding her. When she was a few steps away she lunged at me. I tried to dodge her, but the buckets got in my way and cut off my escape.

Emery grappled me like a pro, and began to try to tickle me anywhere she thought might be effective. My sides, underarms, stomach, behind my knees; I was assaulted everywhere. She twisted me around in the water trying to get to my feet - which are very ticklish - when I panicked.

I stomped to try to get her to leave my feet alone. And I did it just a bit too hard. The stonework of the bottom of the bath cracked when I stomped, with a whole web of cracked stone spreading out from me.

Emery and I both stopped dead where we were when we felt it happen, the only sounds in the bathhouse were Cierra and Stena laughing hysterically and a great sigh from Talya.

Emery and I glanced at each other and laughed.

At least until we heard Vale shouting from the house. He sounded angry.