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“Hurry up, Ib!”
“I’m stuck!”
Mary huffed— not out of frustration, but an inability to contain her excitement. She could see the thick pompoms of snow drifting past the window, clear even against the white sky. She could almost feel them against her cheek, could imagine them softly resting on her loose yellow hair. She and Ib and Garry were going to build a snowman and it would be such fun, but she had to get outside first! She whirled around Ib as fast as she could in snow-pants, snow boots, and a layered coat until she found the problem. Ib was trying to tug her hand through her sleeve, her big red eyes screwed up with effort, but the fabric wouldn’t budge. Mary reached her gloves inside the other end of the sleeve, attempting to pull Ib through that way. This did not help.
“Why’s your arm so big?” She asked.
“I put the mittens on first so the snow couldn’t get through. But it doesn’t fit...”
“Then take the mittens off, you dummy!”
“I don’t want to feel cold and wet.”
With a final tug, Ib’s mitten came off in Mary’s hands. Ib’s arm popped through her coat sleeve almost immediately. She didn’t look very happy about it though.
Mary wilted in sympathy. She knew how much Ib hated certain feelings. Being lost was the big one, after everything that happened at the Gallery, but she’d never enjoyed clamminess either. She didn’t want Ib to feel bad just so she could get in the snow sooner.
“Here.” Mary held Ib’s small hand in her smaller one and pulled the mitten on. Then she carefully tucked all the edges into the sleeve and smoothed them out as best she could.
Ib briefly blinked in surprise. Then, her mouth curved into a slight smile, and she blinked again, slowly like a cat. It was a sign that she was letting off some extra happiness.
Mary called another goodbye into the house before she and Ib, hand in hand, left into the wintry yard.
It was just as delightful as she had thought. Her boots instantly sunk into the snow, nearly to their brims. The trees at the edge of the property were heavy with crystal, enough to be beautiful but not enough to fall off yet— and exactly the perfect amount to shake onto somebody’s head when you hit the trunk. It was impossible to tell what was driveway and what was grass, except for the part where there was a car. And the rest of the world was marshmallows, except for an approaching spot of dark blue.
“Garry!” Ib called, pulling her scarf down to un-muffle her speech. Mary waved her hands in the air to draw his attention.
He broke into a jog until he reached the snow line, where he had to start awkwardly trudging along instead. The two kids ran to meet him.
His outfit didn’t have to be vetted by Mother, so he wasn’t quite as bundled up. He still had gloves, but they were thinner. His hat didn’t look especially warm. It didn’t even cover most of his fluffy hair, which, since he got his roots retouched, had been bright pink instead of purple. His coat was decent but clearly a little bit too small for him. It seemed the cold was affecting him— his ears were red and his face was a little tense— but when he reached his friends the expression naturally dissolved. He gave both of them tight hugs and warm greetings.
“Now we can make the best sculptures!” Mary exclaimed. She immediately dropped to her knees and began to pull together snow into a snowball. Then, once it was big enough, she started to roll it along the ground.
“Am I only here to carry things for you?” Garry joked as he sidestepped her.
Ib nodded and sympathetically patted him on the back before rolling up her own snowball.
He was, predictably, roped into pushing Mary’s snowball once it became too heavy for her to handle. She shepherded him past the uneven patch where remains of past snowmen were being covered up slowly, into the perfect position. Ib came rolling along next. She struggled to put the next snowball up, but with extra hands to help put it in position, she managed.
At the half-finished snowman, Mary practically squealed.
“You’re... very excited about this, considering that snow isn’t rare this time of year,” Garry remarked.
“But this one’s my first snow day!”
He didn’t have any comment to that.
“And now,” Mary said, “we just need a head. Ib?”
Ib was not standing right next to her anymore.
“...Ib?”
She was halfway across the yard, collecting snow in a truly massive pile. As she cupped her mittens and packed the sides in, the shape became more clear: a snow bunny at least half her height.
Mary crossed her arms. It was a little difficult with the way her coat’s fabric interacted with itself.
“Come on, Ib, we didn’t even finish the first one!”
Ib poked eyes into the bunny’s face area.
“It needed a friend,” she said.
“Well it can’t see its friend if it doesn’t have a head. It can’t pet its friend if it doesn’t have hands!”
Garry stifled a laugh. Both girls looked at him.
“Carry on,” he said, deliberately looking away and holding up his hands in surrender.
“Nuh-uh,” said Mary, shaking her head. She grabbed his sleeve suddenly and he made a small ‘eep’ of surprise.
“Ib won’t help,” she continued, “so you’ll have to do.”
“For you it’s worth it,” he said with a joking smile, and began packing together snow.
The two sculptures were finished at around the same time, Mary winding her scarf around the snowman’s neck as Ib perfectly rounded off the snow-bunny’s ears. The three headed back to the center of the yard, forming a little group again. Immediately, Mary’s mind bubbled with ideas of the next thing to do— making more snow angels, provoking her siblings into a snowball fight, burying herself in a snowbank...
But then she saw Ib curl into herself and shiver with her whole body, and she threw all of those ideas away.
“Now that we’re done, we should go inside,” she said, confidently.
“Really? Already?” Garry asked— but his surprise melted into understanding when he saw how grateful Ib looked. He took one of each girls’ hands in his own and began heading towards the door with them.
“Well, alright. I certainly won’t complain. Would you girls like to watch a movie?”
“The Nightmare Before Christmas!” Exclaimed Mary.
“Home alone,” Ib said.
He sighed. “Christmas was a month ago already. Aren’t you tired of it by now?”
“It’s a Halloween movie. And it’s cute!”
“...Home Alone is a scary movie, so it doesn’t count.”
Garry laughed at the both of them.
“We’ll decide when we get there, then?”
Mary nodded enthusiastically. “Race for it! And we can make hot chocolate too, right?”
“It wouldn’t be the same without it, would it?”
“With peppermint?”
“Of course.”
She smiled, happiness warming her face against the cold. It wasn’t the first of these days that she’d had, the ones where they played out in the snow for hours and ended up asleep on the couch in a cozy pile, curled up around long-empty mugs, the lights of rolling credits shining over them. The newness hadn’t worn off yet, and she hoped it never would.
Things weren’t perfect between her and Ib and Garry. Every passing day, thinking about what she tried to do back in the Gallery felt worse and worse. And she saw how, despite all of his denying it, and all of his genuine love and care, Garry still flinched away from her or instinctively tried to get between her and her sister sometimes. Things weren’t perfect but they were still so much better than they had been. And they were building a new gallery, together, out of the photos hung on the living room wall of the three of them: Ib and Mary posing at Christmas with their red and green Santa hats, their parents in the back, Garry behind the camera; The house decorated with cobwebs and skeletons, and, standing in front, Garry as a witch, Ib as a black cat, and Mary as an angel; a candid shot of them coming home from school, Mary hand-in-hand with Garry and Ib completely asleep on his back.
Mary didn’t have to be by herself anymore, talking to paintings who would never say anything back and pretending it was all she wanted in the world. She had a family, a real one. She would cherish it forever.