Date: January 7, 2019

    Frank was glad to be back in Hazel's good books. He invited Hazel over to Pan's Park for a picnic. Pan's Park was a nature center consisting of five acres of trees, glades, and streams. Three trails snaked through the deciduous forests and picnic tables dotted the glades. Pan's Parks was a favorite place of the Satyr family, as well as the Fauns, an environmental group known for picketing and protesting.

Frank took care to prepare the food beforehand and put it in his his purple backpack, since he was lacking a picnic basket. Instead of a picnic blanket, he brought along a space blanket. Before he left, Frank's grandmother slathered him in sunscreen and told him that he'd better make Hazel happy.

"You're just like your father," she said.

Frank wanted to protest that he was not. He thought of himself as more cowardly and less disciplined than his father, but under his grandmother's glare, he kept his lips zipped.

"And like your father," his grandmother told him, "you need a strong woman by your side. Fai, I can see that Hazel is a woman possessing all the fine qualities one could want in a friend or a wife. If you're a wise man, you will make her both."

"Grandma, we're still in high school!" Frank said.

"Yes, but I expect that you will be a couple that goes steady," his grandmother said it. "I have video-recorded your interactions with Hazel every time she has come over and examined them for any of Gottman's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, or stonewalling. After having a kind psychology professor named Eros Cupidon independently verify my results, I am glad to say your relationship seems healthy. Keep it up, Fai."

Frank left his grandmother's house after a hasty goodbye and drove over to Hazel's house. She was waiting outside when he arrived and in a cream-colored sweater dress and black coat, she looked more radiant than the snow under the sparkling sun. Hazel climbed into the passenger seat and showed Frank two canteens of gumbo soup that Nico had made for their picnic.

When they arrived at the park, they parked and decided to take the longest trail — which was only a three mile loop — and stop at the nearest picnic table to eat lunch. It was cold, but the soup was still warm when they sat down on the space blanket — for the picnic tables were covered in snow — to eat their lunch. The gumbo went well with the saltine crackers Frank had packed and they finished their meal up by eating a cutie apiece.

"It's so peaceful here," Hazel said.

"And beautiful," Frank said, though Hazel's smile outshone the bare trees easily.

"And seclusive," Hazel said, laying one hand on Frank's cheek.

She leaned over and kissed him like she had never kissed him before. Despite having dated girls before, the only person Frank had ever kissed besides Hazel was Reyna — and that was only due to an unfortunate game of spin the bottle. Kissing Hazel was like taking a sip of gumbo: it made him feel warm inside as if his very soul was being wrapped in a fuzzy blanket. When the kiss ended, Frank folded his hands over Hazel's and clung to her like a knight errant who had not seen his beloved lady for many years. It was then that Frank decided that unlike Don Quixote, he was lucky to be with his beloved and unlike Lancelot, he would wed her if he could.