Winter Waves
"Check out the window!" Lilith called out from the other side of the house.
"Okay!" Vergil answered, and he lifted the curtain and tried to peer into the darkness outside. He tried to judge how much snow had accumulated so far. "It's pretty dark," he said uncertainly. The window was half frosted over with ice, and pointed icicles hung from the overhang above it. There was no denying that it was a vicious storm, the wind swirling and tearing through the air with snow in its wake, upsetting the ground below it as well. The snow must have been at least two-three feet high at this point, and it kept coming, filling the front yard of Lilith's house and covering it completely. It would be a difficult to leave the house come morning, although Vergil didn't need to worry about that now. It was much safer here, on the inside, and for that he was thankful.
He let the window shade drop and he turned to face the kitchen. Inside it was the opposite; bright, cheery, and warm, Vigil would have no problem staying at his cousin's house until the storm passed over. Lilith walked in the door, and Vergil turned to face her.
"It's pretty nasty out there," he confirmed, folding his arms in the imagined coldness. Lilith walked across the kitchen floor with a pile of boxes in her arms. "What are we planning to do in the meantime?"
"We'll just have to wait it out," Lilith said, setting down the pile of board games on the table. "Parcheesi or Checkers?"
"How about Parcheesi?" he said, and Lilith nodded and put the other games to the side. Vergil looked at her, and at how the fur on her back was ruffled just the slightest bit. Lilith was a Papillion canine, a type of dog, brown-furred and tall, although she also sported some purple and white hair on the top of her head, around her eyes, on the front of her chest, and bunched up at the tip of her tail. Her ears were long and wavy, and her eyes gleamed bright and purple in the light of the room.
Vergil sat down at the table. To anyone else it would be hard to tell that they were from the same family. Where Lilith was a fluffy and brown dog, her cousin was a crisp cut, dark grey lunar wolf. His eyes gleamed red, although not in an unfriendly way, and his ears stood taut and alert on either side of the blue hair on his head, which flowed behind his neck. Red veins lead visibly from his heart, up his neck, down his arms, and down his legs to give him the appearance of a dangerous rogue. A mysterious moon-shaped necklace hung from around his neck, and large, purple wings sprouted from his back, twitching every now and then with impatience from being cooped up inside.
Lilith dropped two dice in front of him and pushed some of her purple hair out of her face. She grinned. "It's your turn." She was enjoying the time she got to spend with her cousin, and Vergil was doing the same. He picked up the dice and rolled them in his paws.
"A six to get out, right?" he asked, peering closely at the board and dropping the dice onto the table.
"Yeah. And doubles lets you move four times. But," Lilith laughed, pointing to the double four's on the table, "You can't do anything with those. You have no pieces out yet."
"Drat," Vergil said, and Lilith smiled. She picked up the dice and rolled a two and a four.
"Those add up to 6," she explained. "That means I get to take a piece out." Vergil nodded and Lilith did so. Vergil was about to make his next move when everything around him went black, a blanket of impenetrable darkness enveloping the table and the two furs sitting there. His fur bristled. He dropped the dice and immediately stood up. His eyes were already adjusting to the dark and he swung his head to each side, ready for danger, before he realized what had happened. This all happened in an instant. "Ahh!" Lilith exclaimed with mild alarm. "The power went out! That scared me!"
Vergil looked around for something to light the room. He rummaged through a cabinet and inside a drawer. "Do you have any candles?" he asked Lilith.
She nodded. "Under the cupboard. And there are matches by the stove."
Vergil went to retrieve these. He struck a match and lit two candles, and set them down on either side of the table. He sat down again and looked at Lilith uncertainly. "Should we keep playing?" he asked.
"We might as well," said Lilith, picking up the dice again. "It probably won't take long for the lights to come back on, and there's no point in wasting the night."
And so they continued to play their game by candlelight. It was pretty one-sided, as Lilith had two of her pieces in a cell blocking any of Vergil's moves for most of the game. She got a double-sixes, which turned out to be just enough for her to win. She laughed as Vergil's ears drooped slightly and she hugged him tightly. "Better luck next time," she said, and then she paused. "Oh Vergil, you're shivering!"
She held him at arm's length and looked at him sympathetically. Vergil was indeed shivering a little, although now he was trying to hide it. The house was cold in the darkness, and they had only now begun to notice it. Lilith went to check the heat.
"It should be 70 degrees in here," Lilith said. She shivered herself as she held a candle up to the numbers that read from the thermostat. "But it's only 55, and dropping. I think the heater went out. We should go somewhere warmer."
"How about the couch?" Vergil suggested. He got up from the table and moved the candles to the living room, leaving the Parcheesi board unattended at the kitchen table. Now that the two knew that the heat had definitely gone out, the house seemed much colder. Lilith sat on the couch too and Vergil wrapped a blanket around her. He sat beside her and folded a wing over her, keeping her warm.
"What about you?" Lilith asked with concern as Vergil sat beside her, completely exposed to the cold of the house.
"I'll be fine," Vergil assured her. "I'll just pretend it's the summer, and I'm at the beach. You know how much I love surfing." Lilith nodded and Vergil braced himself for the cold he knew was to come. He couldn't let Lilith see that it affected him anymore than he already had.
For a while they talked and entertained each other with stories, but eventually they ran out of stories to tell and just sat shivering in the night. The hours slowly ticked by, and the power didn't come back on. The house steadily grew colder and colder, but Lilith sat wrapped in her blanket and in Vergil's wings, and she was relatively comfortable. She could have fallen asleep in her little cocoon of warmth, but she wouldn't stop worrying about Vergil.
Vergil was a lunar wolf, and so she knew that he was could handle at least some degree of cold, but this wasn't just a chill. Her body was warm but her cheeks and the tip of her nose were not. She could tell that the cold was much worse outside her blankets. No matter how much she tried to convince Vergil to take the blankets, though, maybe to switch every now and then, he always refused. He wouldn't let his cousin suffer even the smallest amount of the cold. Vergil was too noble, and Lilith didn't like it.
As she sat there she thought of a way to keep Vergil from getting frostbite and becoming really sick. She could feel that Vergil was definitely shivering despite himself now, although he was trying so hard not to that he probably didn't even notice it. Lilith knew that she had to think of something quickly.
"Vergil?" she said slowly. "I'm hungry. Let me up so I can get something to eat."
Vergil hesitated. "You stay here," he said. "I'll get it for you. What do you want?"
"There are crackers in the cabinet," Lilith suggested hopefully.
"Okay. You wait here," Vergil padded out of the room.
As soon as he was gone, Lilith jumped up from the couch. She gasped as the wave of cold air hit her, and she stood shivering for a few moments before going to the cabinet and taking something out. She hopped back onto the couch and threw the covers over her as she could hear Vergil returning already.
"Are these alright?" he asked, walking through the door and showing Lilith the package.
Lilith nodded. "Those are perfect. Come sit down."
Vergil came towards her and handed her the package of crackers. Lilith took them and thanked him, and put them on the little table that stood next to the couch. Vergil sat down and then Lilith pointed an elaborate shrink gun at him, and pulled the trigger.
Vergil immediately began to shrink. His wings, now closed on open air, folded back to his sides and shrunk along with the rest of his body. The expression on his face was a puzzled one, not a frightened one, as he trusted his cousin completely, but as he shrank he realized that he would not be able to help her anymore and he felt bad. He looked up at her huge face.
"What did you do to me?" he asked her slowly, his voice small and quiet due to his size. "And why?"
Lilith busied herself over one of the crackers she'd taken out of the package. She broke it neatly in half and rounded the edges of it until it resembled a surfboard. Then she reached down and closed a paw around her cousin's still-confused body. She dropped him onto the surfboard and he shook himself once. She brought them up to her snout and smiled cross-eyed to her cousin. She opened her mouth a little and he understood.
"But you'll be left in the cold," Vergil said simply.
Lilith laughed. "You would have been even colder. This way we both get something out of it." Her red tongue unraveled slowly from her mouth and slanted upwards. She placed her cousin on the tip of it, wet and drooling with saliva, and he readied himself on the cracker snowboard, his little tail wagging now. "Ready to go surfing?" she asked, slurred her words a little with her tongue sticking out of her mouth. Vergil nodded. There was no arguing Lilith when she'd made up her mind like this, and so he prepared to enjoy himself like he was supposed to.
Lilith let go he began to "surf" down her massive tongue. The underside of the cracker was damp and made it easier for Vergil to keep himself from crashing and falling down her beckoning throat on his own, but he still needed considerable skill to avoid the many bumps and craters of the tongue, huge at this size. Vergil made his way to the back of her throat without wiping out and let out a whoop of joy at his success. He punched the uvula lightly, playfully, before he began his descent almost straight downwards into apparent darkness.
Lilith giggled a little when she felt this, but quickly stopped because she knew that it might mess up Vergil's fun. As it was, the throat pulsed and bounced around Vergil, even more so with small giggle, and made the ride insane for him. It was a surreal experience and he whooped with laughter again. His wings fluttered energetically behind him, finally free to the open air.
Sooner than he would've liked, the throat came to an end, although it was already open to the belly and for that he was thankful. He wouldn't have to cut his ride short on account of a dead end. He slid into the wide open space and continued to skate his way around, although by this point the cracker was almost totally disintegrated. He was only able to surf his way back and forth a few times more before his feet touched flesh and he went head over heels into the wet belly that even now was beginning to fill with fluid. He laughed and wagged his tail faster than ever. The cold of the house outside was completely gone, and was replaced with a soothing, comfortable warmth. He silently thanked his cousin for doing this, and for a split second worry filled him again as he thought of how cold she would be. But it was short-lived, as he knew that she was tougher than he gave her credit for. And anyway, this was what she wanted. He smiled as he began to go under, his consciousness quickly faded, and he knew he'd have to do something for her later on, maybe tomorrow, to thank her.
Lilith let out a small burp as her belly started to work on her cousin, and she covered her mouth quickly with a blush. She rubbed her belly, which, now active, was helping to keep her warm in and of itself. She snuggled up in her blankets, actively seeking warmth, and then she closed her eyes, ready to wait out the night. After a while her breathing grew soft and steady and she finally fell asleep. At some point the lights went back on and heat began to pour out of the heater into the house, but Lilith didn't open her eyes. She slept soundly and she would have been just as happy without it.