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shall we do today?” Tove asked.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “What are you in the mood for?”
    “How about a snowball fight?” he asked with a wicked grin.
    Using only his mind, he threw four snowballs at me. I held
up my hands, pushing them back with my own telekinesis, and they shattered into
puffs of snow from the force. It was my turn to sling a few back at him, but he
stopped them just as easily as I did.
    He returned fire, this time with even more snowballs, and
while I stopped most of them, one of them slipped by and nicked me in the leg.
I ran back, hiding behind a tree to make my counterattack.
    Tove and I played around, throwing snow at one another, but
it became increasingly hard as it went on. It all looked like games, and it was
fun, but it was more than that. Stopping a slew of snowballs helped me learn to
quickly stop multiple attacks from different directions. I tried to return fire
even before I stopped the snowball, and that helped me learn how to fight back
while stopping something.
    Those were two completely different tasks, and they were
difficult to master. I’d been working on this for a while, but couldn’t get it
down. In my defense, neither could Tove, but he didn’t really think it was
possible. My mind would have to be able to hold something and throw something
at the same, which it could do, but starting and stopping things at the exact
same time was the impossible part.
    When we were both sufficiently frozen and exhausted, I
collapsed back in the snow. I’d worn pants and a sweater today because I knew
we were training, but all that exertion always left me overheated, so the snow
felt good.
    “Is that a truce then?” Tove asked, panting as he lay down
in the snow next to me.
    “Truce,” I said, laughing a little.
    We both lay back, our arms spread out wide as if we meant to
make snow angels, but neither of us did. Catching our breath, we stared up at
the clouds moving above us.
    “If this is what our marriage will be like, it won’t be so
bad, will it?” Tove asked, and it was an honest question.
    “No, it won’t be so bad,” I agreed. “Snowball fights I can
handle.”
    “Are you nervous?” he asked.
    “A little.” I turned my head to
face him, pressing my cheek into the snow. “Are you?”
    “Yeah, I am.” He furrowed his brow, staring thoughtfully at
the sky. “I think I’m most scared of the kiss. It will be our first time, and
in front of all those people.”
    “Yeah,” I said, and my stomach twisted at the thought. “But
you can’t really mess up a kiss.”
    “Do you think we should?” Tove asked, and he looked over at
me.
    “Kiss?” I asked. “You mean when we get married? I think we kind of have to.”
    “No, I mean, do you think we should now ?” Tove sat up, propping himself up with his arms behind him.
“Maybe it will make it a bit easier tomorrow.”
    “Do you think we should?” I asked, sitting too. “Do you want
to?”
    “I feel like we’re in the third grade right now.” He sighed
and brushed snow off his pants. “But you’re going to be my wife. We’ll have to
kiss.”
    “Yeah, we will.”
    “Okay. Let’s do it.” He smiled thinly at me. “Let’s just
kiss.”
    “Okay.”
    I swallowed hard and leaned forward. I closed my eyes, since
it felt less embarrassing if I didn’t have to see him. His lips were cold, and
the kiss was chaste. It only lasted a moment, and my stomach swirled with
nerves, but not the pleasurable kind.
    “Well?” Tove asked, sitting up straighter.
    “It was alright,” I nodded, more to convince myself than
him.
    “Yeah, it was good.” He licked his lips and looked away from
me. “We can do this. Right?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “Of course we can. If anybody can, it’s us.
We’re like the most powerful Trylle ever. And we’re neat people. We can handle
spending the rest of our lives with each other.”
    “Yeah,” Tove said, sounding more encouraged by the prospect.
“In fact, I’m looking