Chapter 4: Snow Bunnies

It was a cold, sunny morning, and there was a commotion in front of the Merlin Dorm.

To be fair, it was only a small commotion, relatively speaking. A mere speed bump on the roadmap for a meaningful day. You couldn’t just take a collection of prospective mages, most of whom were young and ambitious and whose blood alcohol content was still perilously high from the night before, put them into the same building using the same washing machine, and then expect there not to be the occasional commotion. Sometimes things worked the way they were meant to, and sometimes everything was on fire and gravity didn’t work quite right. It was fine. It built character.

Today’s commotion was that the path leading to and from the dorms was completely encased in ice. Ice was not a particularly uncommon sight in Belsev. The country was known as ‘The Great White Expanse’ for a reason, and that was because the sky hurled down snow wherever it liked and whenever it pleased. Belsev was a land of grit and warm britches, and if you didn’t have one or the other you generally wouldn’t last long.

But the other dorms – Nimue, Rasputin, Crowley and Alhazred – had just that: snow. Soft, white, fluffy powder. They were in need of shovelling, but far from the arctic wasteland that Merlin Dorm had become.

It was a disaster. But it was only a small disaster, and so the faculty had elected to ignore it. So had most of the students, who simply slithered and skidded their way across the ice and hoped it would conveniently disappear before their classes were complete. In fact, only two people had stayed to tackle the situation.

The first was a rabbit girl called Alice. She was tall and willowy, with an elegant posture and dignified bearing; her eyes were set far away on some distant horizon, her mind occupied by an unknowable dream. She wore a heavy red shawl over a white turtleneck and a high-waisted skirt that flared out at the knee, with calf-length black boots that emphasised the length of her legs. Delicate was a fine way to describe her appearance; considerably less delicate was the way she was attacking the ice with a shovel, smashing chips from the surface with the metal edge.

Labouring alongside her was Tiffany, her sister. While they were definitely siblings, an uninformed onlooker could be forgiven for believing otherwise; Tiffany was easily a head or two shorter, and lacked her sister’s long legs and limber physique. She had also missed out on the genetic bounty that was her sister’s bust. Instead, she had two things that Alice lacked: the first was a perfectly contoured ass deliberately emphasised with sleek black leggings, and the second was a robust vocabulary of curse words, all of which she deployed as she hammered ineffectually at the sheet ice.

Their morning had begun like any other. Alice got up first, although getting up and waking up were entirely different things as far as she was concerned. The first hour of Alice’s day was generally spent shuffling around, yawning, and eating toast spread with potted jam (of which she was beginning to amass quite a selection). Sometimes she read a book between bites, although she often had to reread it later to fully take it in. She was, in short, one of nature’s potterers, slowly ambling through her routines until her mind was fully refreshed and invigorated.

As a rule, Tiffany woke later and faster. She ate quickly, slapped together an outfit and makeup in twenty minutes flat. The world was full of things she wanted to do, and the quicker she got out of her pyjamas the quicker she could get around to doing them. That wasn’t to say she neglected her appearance; she simply made her decisions quickly enough that she was usually ready to go faster than her sister, with an outfit just as flattering.

Today was no different, and Tiffany was leaving the dorm a full fifteen minutes before Alice’s brain would be in peak operating condition. She had seen the snow piled up on the path, which none of the other members of the dorm had bothered to shovel, and it had irritated her. So she decided to do something about it. But she was a small girl (‘petite’ was the phrase she preferred, although most contended that petite and her rear should not fall within the same sentence), and working up a sweat with a shovel was not her idea of fun.

So, what was a student of magic to do when faced with a potential obstacle? Hit it with a spell, obviously. And if you were using magic, then obviously melting the snow with a little fire was the way to go, right? It stood to reason. That was just what you did in a situation like this. Anybody would agree.

“...so when the snow melted, it became groundwater, but since the fire was only very brief, the temperature in the surrounding area hadn’t gone up that much. So it froze back straight away, but as actual ice this time,” Alice explained patiently. “I bet that’s why none of the seniors did anything about it.”

“They didn’t do anything about it because they were too lazy. Can’t we just leave it to melt by itself?” Tiffany groused.

“Hm…” Alice murmured, putting a finger to her cheek in thought. “It probably would melt eventually, but the more ice you have in one place, the colder it keeps the surrounding area and the harder it is to melt it. Especially since it reflects the sunlight. In the meantime, people might slip and fall, or we might get more snow, so it’s better to at least break it up a bit.”

Tiffany sucked her teeth and gave the ice a particularly vicious smack. Breaking this kind of ice with a shovel was going to take forever. Really they needed a sledgehammer or a pickaxe, or one of those strange hoe-like prying things the locals used. But the dorms didn’t have those things. They had shovels, because they expected the students to have to shovel snow from the pathway rather than melting it all with an improvised magical flamethrower and accidentally flash-freezing the whole place.

“Sis, why don’t you go on ahead?” she said. “You’re already late for that bullshit student counselling thing they suckered you into.”

The University expected its students to pick up side jobs, whether on or off the campus – especially for international students like Alice and Tiffany. A job let them develop ties in the local community, experience the culture, and more importantly made it less likely that they would leave and take all their hard earned knowledge back to their home country. Alice had been approached early on with a student counselling position, in which she made cups of tea and listened attentively to people complaining about things she could do nothing about. People seemed to enjoy it; Alice had a talent for looking like she was listening even when she was occupied with daydreams or magical theory. As long as they didn’t expect her to talk back, she could just smile her gentle smile and nod along until they exhausted themselves.

“Oh, Tiff. I’m not about to leave my sister to deal with this herself. With both of us, we’ll probably be done within the hour.”

Alice swung her shovel down again, making no visible impact on the ice. If she’d have just taken the bait, Tiffany had had every intention of just slyly making an exit when her sister wasn’t around to see, but that didn’t seem to be in the cards. Typical. Sometimes too much kindness was a cruelty.

As they hacked away, they drew the occasional spectator. Most simply grinned and shook their heads, remembering similar misadventures earlier in their scholarly career; a good portion just dropped by to stare at Tiffany’s ass while she worked, which let her cultivate a certain sense of smugness. Unlike boobs, which just sat there and did nothing, a good butt truly shone when it was in motion. She gave hers a wiggle as a treat for the crowd and carried on working.

Eventually, though, lectures called and the spectators invariably floated away to their regular lot in life. None of them, Tiffany noted, had actually gotten out a shovel and helped the two struggling sisters. Typical.

It was at that point that somebody sighed loudly, and far closer to her ear than she was expecting. Tiffany did the only sensible thing and jumped halfway out of her skin; she also cleared the ice patch in one giant leap. Common wisdom was never to underestimate the motive force of a surprised bunny.

“There’s always something going on in this place,” the intruder said morosely, shaking his head. “Never a peaceful day. It’s bad for the heart.”

He was a fair bit taller than Tiffany was, but still a lot shorter than Alice. She couldn’t tell much about his build because he was wrapped in a heavy, if slightly worn, winter coat. He had the same stout boots that the locals seemed to favour, and calluses on his hands. If anything stood out about him – aside from the way he’d been able to sneak his way into her blind spot without her noticing – it was his sharp, pointed pair of wolf ears and the steadiness of his gaze.

As startled as Tiffany had been, Alice seemed to be worse. She could be awfully shy around new people, and she had stock still, staring at him with big, astonished eyes. She probably wouldn’t be much good on the diplomatic front.

“Yeah, so? What’s it to you? What do you want, bub?” Tiffany asked, arching an eyebrow. She didn’t particularly mind men staring at her, but she preferred that they look from a distance. Where she could see them, ideally. As far as she was concerned, this guy had already got off on the wrong foot.

“I wanted to know if you had a third shovel,” he answered, with an easy shrug. “At this rate, you’ll be out here until the next snow tomorrow morning.”

“...H-huh?” Alice squeaked. It was rare to hear such a high pitched sound from such a tall girl. “Y-you mean you want to help us? O-oh! No, we couldn’t possibly…”

“We absolutely can!” Tiffany hissed, pouncing towards her sister. She dropped her voice, and angrily switched back to their native tongue. “What are you playing at? He obviously just wants to show off his muscles to some cute girls or whatever, so why not let him? We get to go to the classes we’re freaking paying for, and he gets to vent all that dumb macho shit out of his system. It’s perfect!”

“But, Tiff…” Alice said, biting her lip and throwing a worried glance at the wolf boy. “It’s not right to take advantage of him like that, when it was our mistake in the first place…”

“Who cares?! Everybody wins! Nobody loses! Maybe it’s not super morally correct, but all that matters is that everyone’s happy at the end of the day, right?”

The wolf raised his hand, his brow furrowed. “I am sorry. I am not so good at speaking this language and I do not know about any ‘macho shit’, but it is fine. I offered to help, so I will help. Here, we have a saying: the winter eats the lonely first. This is not a land where you can live without relying on other people, I think.”

His accent was thick, but it was unmistakeably the language of Tiffany and Alice’s homeland. Alice clapped her hands to her mouth, and even Tiffany found her cheeks burning in shame.

“Oh, my goodness. I’m so sorry. Please don’t take what my sister said to heart. She can get a little carried away when she talks, and…” the taller rabbit said.

“It is fine,” he said, waving his hand as if dismissing an annoying fly. “She is spirited. If she is as spirited with her shovel as she is with her mouth, then we may not be here so very long.”

“Gosh… You’re still willing to help us? That’s so kind of you. And I think you speak very well. Much better than I speak the local tongue.”

“When I was young, I had a babysitter from Astrolibert. Different accent, but same language,” he shrugged. “You speak well, too. Better than most of the students here.”

Tiffany watched as her sister got him a shovel and the conversation continued. It was… pleasantries, mainly, interspersed with the wolf wedging the blade of the shovel under the ice and prying up great chunks of it at once, letting it crack under its own weight before throwing the pieces aside.

It really was nothing special. Where are you from? How did you grow up? Do rabbits really have big families? Things like that. But her sister was answering. Instead of freezing up and retreating back into her shell, she was being drawn out.

To be honest, it pissed her off, and she didn’t know why. It almost seemed like they’d forgotten she was there. Alice was usually in a world of her own anyway, but apparently she’d deigned to squeeze him in as well.

She took her frustrations out on the ice, and before long, the path was clearing.

“Hm. That will do. The rest will melt on its own,” the wolf said, nodding. He slung the shovel over his shoulder, and wiped his brow; there was a slight sheen of sweat, but he didn’t seem out of breath.

“Thank you so much.” Alice, meanwhile, seemed a little breathless and flushed. She went so far as to loosen her collar, ever so slightly, to cool herself off. “Might I ask for your name? Do you work at the university, or are you a student?”

“I am Ivan. Right now, I am… between jobs, but I found some items the professors here are interested in, and so I came to sell them.” He shrugged, grinning wryly. “They were saying to me that perhaps they will find an opportunity for me, but I am not so sure.”

“Oh…” Alice’s voice was soft. Disappointed. “I don’t suppose we’ll run into each other again, then?”

“Who can say? Strange things are always happening in this place, so nothing can be ruled out.” He gave her a wolfish grin, and then, irritatingly, cast his gaze to Tiffany – after completely ignoring her for most of the conversation, she might add. “But it is cold, and you are late for your classes. Be careful of ice when you are living here. You will not always have someone full of macho shit to help, yes?”

He grinned even as Tiffany puffed her cheeks and started to cuss him, before going on his way. The snow crunched underfoot as he left, his tail wagging ever so slightly. Alice’s gaze lingered on his back until he was out of sight – and even a little while after he was gone.

“C’mon, sis. Get that dreamy look off your face. We have lectures,” Tiffany said grumpily.

Alice didn’t reply, but held her scarf up to cover her cheeks, which were reddening in the winter air.

From that day onward, Tiffany never used magic to melt the snow again. After all, you never knew what weirdoes it might attract.