Page 14 of Arctic Panda's Secret Mate
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TRISTAN
The problem with making snowmen out of brown wood was that they all looked exactly like poop.
Part of it was that Tristan’s carving skills were a little on the rusty side, and the wood was not ideal for shaping, so his cuts were not as confident as he wished they were.
Part of it was that three tapering lumps just happened to look like the ubiquitous brown emoji, no matter how he tried to adjust them.
And part of it was that Tristan was frustrated and felt hopelessly outclassed, and he was sure that anything he managed to make would be appreciated about as much as a steaming pile of waste anyway.
Everyone at the chalet was exceedingly nice, welcoming him into whatever activities were happening without hesitation.
But they were each neatly paired up, and utterly, disgustingly besotted with their mates. There was no wheel that was not third when a good portion of any pursuit was spent gazing into eyes or fondly caressing.
(He wasn’t entirely sure if Breck’s light flirtations wereserious, but he was confident that Darla, for all of her mild manners, would happily scratch his eyes out if he acted on them. Tristan wasn’t particularly interested in men anyway.)
He helped shovel the parking lot, since that was a thing that they could do broken out in little individual parties, and he did the long driveway by himself, returning tired and snowy and hungry.
He tried to get into the garage to look for parts or inspiration for gifts. Not that he planned to steal anything, but he’d need some kind of string for hanging the ornaments, and maybe they’d look better if he found some yarn to wrap around them? Would they only be turds with scarfs?
The garage was locked tight.
He returned to the chalet and hung up his coat, stomping the snow from his boots.
“Tristan, you know why the wifi’s not working?”
Graham rarely said anything, though he seemed to have an entire language of grunts that he shared with Wrench, so Tristan was a little alarmed. “I could have a look at the router. Do you know where it is?”
Graham shrugged. “No one can find the welcome binder.”
The welcome binder, clearly written in the same hand as the rest of the notes in the chalet, had been as well-indexed as Chef’s precious recipes, and had the instructions for all the chalet’s systems and storage, as well as local suggestions for restaurants, shopping, and skiing.
“Gizelle, maybe?”
Gizelle read voraciously, and was constantly wandering off with shiny rocks and colorful flowers. Tristan was pretty sure that she was a few circuits short of a motherboard, but the entire staff adored her.
Graham narrowed his eyes and grunted and Tristan quickly added, “I’ll see if I can hunt down that router. It might just need a reset.”
Tristan was still trying to breathe warmth back into his fingers as he went hunting in the closets and utility rooms. The temperature had dropped as the sky cleared, and the gloves he’d chosen left his hands frigid after just an hour outside.
There was a closet at the end of the hallway beyond the dining room, past two locked doors, that seemed a likely place for electrical systems. Tristan’s panda bear wanted to try the same door they’d tried before.
“It’s locked, remember?” Tristan said out loud, resisting the urge to try it again.
Maybe it’s not now?his bear said hopefully.Maybe it’s fixed!
“Locked isn’t the same as broken. I’m sure that room has the owner’s things. We don’t need to pry.”
Fix it?his bear said plaintively.
“We’re fixing the wifi,” Tristan said patiently.
Sure enough, the router was in the closet, along with a selection of electrical replacement parts, power splitters, and general miscellanea.
Tristan did the IT standby, unplugging the router and then letting it reset. After a few moments, he plugged it back in and checked with his phone to see if his previous connection was restored.
It prompted him for a password, and Tristan typed in the one he remembered, mountainchalet. It wasn’t a secure password, but the chalet was isolated enough that they were too far away for anyone to be able to piggyback on it.
