No Light Banter Before Noon

It was one of those bright winter mornings in Snowdrift Bay that made the town look almost too picturesque to be trusted.

Frost clung to the edges of the cobblestones like careful decoration. The rooftops were powdered white. Shop windows glowed with warm light and seasonal displays that ranged from tasteful to emotionally overcommitted. Strings of holiday lights still hung across the square even though no one could quite agree whether the holiday in question had technically ended. The air smelled like pine, coffee, chimney smoke, and pastry.

Yorn liked mornings like this.

They made the town feel briefly calmer than it really was. People were still on their first errand, their first coffee, their first opinion. The day had not yet fully developed its personality. It was possible, for a little while, to walk through Snowdrift Bay and imagine things might proceed in a straightforward manner.

This, Yorn knew by now, was always a mistake.

Still, he was in good spirits as he crossed the square, hands in his coat pockets, breath clouding in the cold. He had nowhere urgent to be. He had slept well. He had already had coffee. The bakery was open. Nothing had yet gone wrong.

Then he saw them.

Standing near the entrance to Cobblestone Square Café, as if summoned by some malicious law of contrast, were Jeff and Whirly.

Jeff, the snowman from the DMV, stood rigid and compact with his scarf tucked tight and his coal eyes narrowed in what appeared to be his resting state. Everything about him suggested a man personally offended by forms, people, weather, and the fact that he had to go on participating in civilization.

Beside him loomed Whirly.

Whirly was, at first glance, exactly what he appeared to be: a full-sized waving tube person, the sort usually found outside car dealerships, tax offices, or temporary mattress liquidation events. He was all bright fabric, long flailing arms, and inflated cylindrical body, except unlike the ordinary kind, Whirly was sentient, articulate, and somehow employed as the town’s air traffic controller. No one Yorn had spoken to had ever explained how that had happened. They just said it the way Snowdrift Bay people said everything else unusual: flatly, as if that settled it.

Whirly was rude, loud, and seemed to regard every conversation as either a performance or a challenge. Even when standing still—which he technically never did—he radiated the chaotic arrogance of a man who had somehow become convinced that being deeply annoying was a form of authority.

The sight of him and Jeff together was unsettling.

Not impossible, exactly. Snowdrift Bay had long since passed the point where “unlikely pairing” meant anything useful. But there was something about the combination of Jeff’s concentrated bitterness and Whirly’s loud, flapping self-importance that made Yorn feel, instantly and irrationally, like he had stumbled onto a private alliance between two different kinds of nuisance.

They were talking.

Well—Jeff was talking the way Jeff always talked, which was like every word had to be kicked out of him against his will, and Whirly was swaying and punctuating things with aggressive tube-person emphasis. Neither looked especially pleased to be alive, which in Jeff’s case meant nothing, but in Whirly’s case suggested he was either angry or paying attention.

Yorn should have kept walking.

He knew Jeff well enough already, and he had seen enough of Whirly from a distance to understand that neither improved through surprise friendliness.

But it was a nice morning. He was in a good mood. And against his better judgment, he still retained some instinct to act like ordinary social behavior might work on people who clearly viewed it as a personal attack.

So he angled toward them and called out, “Morning, Whirly. Morning, Jeff.”

Both of them turned at once.

The effect was immediate and deeply unrewarding.

Whirly’s fabric body stiffened in the air in a way that should not have been structurally possible. Jeff’s expression remained almost exactly the same, but something about the angle of his coal eyes made it clear that his morning had worsened on contact.

Yorn kept going anyway.

“What are you two doing?” he asked, stopping near them with the casual friendliness of a man who had not yet grasped he was already in danger. “You look like the start of a very specific problem.”

This, to Yorn, was harmless.

Even affectionate, in a way.

To Jeff and Whirly, it landed like a brick through a church window.

Whirly’s long inflatable body whipped toward him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Yorn blinked. “What?”

Jeff folded his twig arms. “Yeah,” he said. “Go ahead. Walk us through it.”

There was a pause.

Yorn looked from one to the other.

Whirly’s tube-body gave a slow, dangerous sway. Jeff stared at him with the deadened hostility of a man who had been waiting for someone to disappoint him and felt mildly vindicated now that it had happened.

Yorn realized, with a sinking sensation, that he had walked into something fragile without knowing it.

“No, I didn’t mean it badly,” he said quickly. “I just meant you’re an unusual pair.”

Whirly let out a harsh, fluttering scoff. “An unusual pair.”

“That’s worse,” Jeff said.

“It is not worse,” Yorn said. “I mean— no, it’s not. I mean unusual in a neutral way.”

Whirly leaned toward him. “What’s a neutral way to call two people weird?”

“I didn’t call you weird.”

“You absolutely did.”

“I didn’t use the word.”

Jeff nodded. “Coward’s version.”

Yorn opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again.

“No. Listen. I just meant it’s not every day you see the DMV and the airport having coffee together.”

Whirly stared.

Jeff stared.

Whirly said, “You think we’re departments.”

Yorn blinked. “What?”

“You think we’re symbols,” Whirly said, voice rising. “You see me and don’t see a man. You see an airport.”

Jeff looked almost pleased now. “Actually, that’s pretty insulting.”

“That is not what I meant,” Yorn said. “I know you’re not departments.”

Whirly swung one arm out dramatically. “Then what am I.”

Yorn looked at him.

This was clearly a trap. Everything about the question was a trap.

He tried anyway.

“A person,” he said.

Whirly narrowed. “A person what.”

“I’m sorry?”

“What kind of person.”

Yorn stared. “A regular— no, not regular. That sounded bad. I just mean a full person. Obviously.”

Jeff gave a low grunt. “A full person. Good recovery.”

“It was not a recovery,” Yorn said. “It was clarification.”

Whirly’s fabric body rustled with contempt. “You had to clarify that I’m a full person.”

“I didn’t have to, you made me.”

Jeff said, “That’s not helping.”

Yorn pressed a hand to his forehead.

“Okay,” he said. “Let me start over.”

“Great,” Whirly said immediately. “I’m excited to see how much worse this gets.”

Yorn ignored that.

“I saw you two together,” he said slowly, “and I was surprised, because you seem very different from each other.”

Jeff looked at Whirly.
Whirly looked at Jeff.
Then they both looked back at Yorn with the united expression of men who had just found a shared hobby.

Jeff said, “So now we don’t seem compatible.”

“That is not what I said.”

“No, no,” said Whirly. “This is fascinating. Tell me more about why we, in your view, are such an impossible combination.”

“I didn’t say impossible!”

“You heavily suggested it,” Jeff said.

“I did not heavily suggest anything.”

“You came in hot with ‘specific problem,’” Whirly reminded him.

“That was a joke.”

Jeff’s coal eyes narrowed. “At whose expense.”

Yorn paused.

That was, unfortunately, a very bad pause to take.

Whirly pointed at him triumphantly. “There it is.”

“I just hesitated.”

“Because you realized the answer was ‘ours,’” Jeff said.

Yorn exhaled through his nose. “Fine. Fine. It was at your expense a little. But in a friendly way.”

Whirly barked a humorless laugh. “Oh, excellent. A little public belittling between colleagues.”

“Not belittling.”

Jeff tilted his head. “Then define it.”

“Light teasing.”

“From whom,” said Whirly, “to whom.”

Yorn stared at him. “Why are you both like this.”

“Because,” said Jeff, “you approached us.”

“And because,” Whirly added, “I have the entire morning free to ruin this.”

Several people near the café windows had begun to notice.

A woman carrying two coffees slowed visibly.
A man at an outdoor table lowered his newspaper.
Inside the café, Mitchell looked up from behind the counter with the expression of someone instantly recognizing that he was about to be forced into witnesshood.

Yorn saw the audience forming and tried, with increasing urgency, to salvage the thing.

“No, listen,” he said. “I think you’re both good at what you do.”

Whirly stared at him. “That came out like hostage negotiation.”

Jeff nodded. “Extremely compensatory.”

Yorn tried again, faster now.

“No, I mean it. Whirly, you control air traffic, which is insane but apparently true, and Jeff, you—”

He stopped.

Too late.

Jeff’s eyes narrowed. “I what.”

Yorn scrambled.

“You are… thorough.”

Jeff stared.

Whirly folded inward with glee. “Thorough.”

“At your job,” Yorn said.

“Mm-hm.”

“And efficient.”

Jeff’s expression did not improve.

“Because,” Yorn continued, digging faster, “you process things with a kind of relentless—”

“Say relentless,” Jeff said.

“—competence,” Yorn finished.

Whirly made a sound like a tarp being kicked by God.

“Oh, this is terrible,” he said. “He’s complimenting like an uncle at a sentencing.”

Yorn turned on him. “I am trying.”

“I can see that,” said Whirly. “That’s part of the fun.”

Yorn looked between them.

That was when it hit him fully: they were not trying to understand him. They were trying to watch him fail more specifically.

And because he had entered the conversation as a man in a good mood trying to be social, he had given them exactly what they needed.

Still, he made one last attempt.

“All right,” he said. “What I meant was: it’s nice to see the two of you talking.”

There.

Simple. Clean. Human.

Whirly immediately said, “Why.”

Yorn blinked. “What do you mean, why.”

“Why is it nice.”

Jeff added, “Yeah. What about this gives you pleasure.”

Yorn stared at both of them in stunned disbelief.

“Because,” he said, “people talking is generally considered healthy.”

Jeff shrugged. “Depends on the people.”

Whirly said, “And now we’re a civic wellness initiative.”

Yorn looked at the sky.

The sky, as usual, offered nothing.

He lowered his gaze and tried one final time, now with the hollow, measured tone of a man who had lost all expectation of dignity.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I made a casual remark. It landed badly. I was trying to be friendly, and instead I apparently implied that you two shouldn’t know each other, or aren’t people, or are municipal symbols, or whatever else you’ve decided happened. That was not my intention.”

A beat.

Then Whirly rocked back a little.

Jeff’s expression remained unpleasant, but a thin layer of satisfaction had settled over it like ice.

Whirly said, “That was better.”

Jeff nodded. “Much better.”

Neither sounded gracious about it.

Yorn nodded once, sharply.

“Good.”

He turned to leave.

Then Jeff, because he was Jeff, called after him.

“You should really work on your phrasing.”

Yorn stopped.

Slowly turned back.

And said, “You should work on being less like yourself.”

There was a collective little inhale from the nearest bystanders.

Whirly made a noise like a flag in a storm. Jeff’s expression went so flat it nearly became philosophical.

For one dangerous second, Yorn thought he might have to stay and finish this disaster.

Then Mitchell, from the café doorway, called out in the calm, dry tone of a man who had seen enough.

“Gentlemen. Take your feelings somewhere less visible.”

Silence.

A few people immediately pretended they had not been listening.

Yorn nodded to Mitchell in exhausted gratitude, then looked once more at Jeff and Whirly.

“All right,” he said. “Enjoy your very ordinary conversation.”

“That was sarcastic,” Whirly snapped.

“Yes,” Yorn said. “Goodbye.”

And this time he did walk away.

He crossed the square with measured dignity, which was difficult when he could still feel both of them radiating annoyance into his back like twin heatless suns.

By the time he reached the fountain, his good mood had been damaged beyond repair.

He stopped there, one hand on the cold stone edge, and replayed the exchange in his mind.

He had not meant to insult them.

That part was true.

But he had said something careless, and then he had sincerely, catastrophically tried to fix it, and Jeff and Whirly—being Jeff and Whirly—had responded like two men operating a public humiliation mill.

Which, he thought bitterly, they had probably enjoyed.

A child nearby laughed as a red balloon slipped free from his mittened hand and floated up into the bright winter sky.

Yorn watched it rise.

The square remained beautiful despite everything. Frost still sparkled on the stones. The lights still glowed across the street. Snowdrift Bay still went on being itself with all the stubborn charm that had made him love it in the first place.

And that, more than anything, kept the encounter from souring completely.

Because this was the town.

A place where one could start the day admiring winter light and, ten minutes later, accidentally end up in a territorial argument with a sentient tube person and a bureaucratic snowman about tone, personhood, and conversational optics.

Yorn stood there a little longer, then sighed and resumed walking.

Next time, he told himself, he would keep moving.

No greetings.
No remarks.
No attempts at light banter with volatile weirdos before noon.

This was an excellent plan.

It was also, he suspected, one he would fail to follow almost immediately.