A/N: So glad to be doing this again! Though it's been a long time since I've written anything for this fandom, bear with me. Might take me a couple of days to find my feet again.

Prompt: An ice sculpture competition, from mrspencil

It is a curious thing, that once well known, the famous seemingly become an authority on everything, their presence requested at events that have little to no relation to the very reason the person became famous in the first place.

My friend Sherlock Holmes was no exception. As his career flourished we became accustomed to receiving invitations and requests to all sorts of events that he took a fierce pleasure in declining. No one ever saw him attend one of the many society balls he was invited to and he regularly declined dinner invitations with the highest peers of the land, though he was not an infrequent guest at my table. The only public event he attended regularly was the theatre, strictly for concerts and operas. After his seeming return from the dead following his meeting with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, when he rose to heights previously unheard of, he frequently lamented to me that he received more invitations to balls and requests to judge baking contests than professional consultations. "I am an expert in crime, Watson," he said. "Not a soothsayer to determine one's course in life." This after he had sent packing a young man who had been most anxious to consult my friend as to whether he should ask his sweetheart to marry him. I knew that Holmes had been hoping for a problem of interest and was most disappointed not to receive one, and that this accounted for his tetchy mood.

So it was that Sherlock Holmes took his coat and hat from the stand one bitterly cold day in January and turned to face me. "I should very much like your assistance, Watson, if you would be so good as to accompany me."

I had been about to begin the organization of my patient files and was therefore quite eager to do something other than that. "Do you have a case, Holmes?" I asked.

My friend chuckled in his silent way. "No, though I confess you may be of more help to me in my task today. No, Watson, I have been asked to judge an ice sculpture competition."

I followed him out the door, in a state of some surprise, for this was the sort of request he would ordinarily turn down with no thought. "That is not usual, Holmes. Why should you be named a judge for an ice sculpture competition?"

Holmes let out a sigh. "It seems the Association of Amateur Ice Sculptors - yes, there is such a thing, Watson - is in the habit of having a well-known figure as judge for their annual contest."

"And who better than the famous detective, Sherlock Holmes?" I finished knowingly. Many people thought such. Only last week he had been requested to referee a charity rugby game, though he knew nothing of the sport.

"Precisely," Holmes said. "I must confess the idea of art that must of necessity disappear after a time is rather a poetic one, is it not, Watson?"

My friend had, at times, a curiously poetic bent that appeared at unusual moments. I knew of his interest in art, as well as his connection to the Vernet family of artists, from whom he was descended. Perhaps this did account for his interest in judging an ice sculpture competition, though his taste in art differed extremely from both popular and critical opinions of art. I often accompanied him to art galleries in which there was not a single piece of what I would have called art.

We arrived at the park in which the competition was held to find the artists already hard at work. While the association's head greeted Holmes enthusiastically I began to wander among the artists, watching their work with the envy of one who is not artistically inclined. That they could create such work out of a substance which was doomed to melt was an accomplishment I could only dream of, and I stopped before one artist appreciatively. "That one is very good, don't you think, Holmes?" I asked. The man stopped his work to allow us to inspect it - a very lifelike rendering of a horse.

Holmes stopped next to me and examined the piece. "The legs are much too thin," he said derisively before moving on. I hurried to follow.

"I was not aware you are a great expert in horseflesh," I said.

"I am not," Holmes said. "However, the thinner the animal's legs, the more muscle and sinew one must include, and intricate work such as that requires more skill than that man has, I wager."

This seemed an unfair assessment and I continued on in silence, studying an ice castle closely and an icy replica of St. Paul's Cathedral that left me very impressed. Holmes said nothing about it, merely continuing to gaze at each artist's work. I stopped before one artist who had undoubtedly heard who would be judging the competition and decided to sweeten his way to victory. "Holmes…" I said, hiding my smile. The last artist had chosen to render a bust of my friend, in the deerstalker hat and Inverness cape that my illustrator, Sidney Paget, always erroneously depicted him wearing. The artist had evidently studied Paget's drawings, for he had captured Holmes's hawklike features very well.

"I am very glad to meet you!" the artist cried. "I am a great admirer of you, Mr. Holmes! And Dr. Watson, too! Why, it is the highlight of my week when I find a new Holmes story in the Strand.

"Thank you," Holmes said, though he was no more enamored of my stories than he was of Paget's illustrations, and walked on without further word.

"It is a good likeness," I said to the artist, who appeared not to have noticed Holmes's rudeness and simply beamed at my compliment.

It was bitterly cold and it occurred to me that working in such conditions had to equal Michelangelo's feat of painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling alone on his back, though when I said as much to Holmes he accused me of hyperbole. Yet, when the contest was over, he appeared as ready as I to return to our fireside with a cup of tea. I surveyed the artists' completed work, and thought that I should almost certainly choose the replica of St. Paul's as the winner, though I had no idea which piece Holmes would choose. Though I did note that he was quite correct about the horse I had considered so lifelike; the artist in question did not have the skill to render the muscle correctly and the result was amateurish at best. Holmes, for his part, studied each piece closely before choosing the winner, a simple flame rendered in ice that I had overlooked.

"Why this piece, Holmes?" I asked, for it seemed very simple to me and did not compare at all to any of the other pieces.

"There is irony in rendering a flame in ice, don't you think, Watson?" Holmes asked. "Yet, for all its simplicity, it is an ideal subject for this medium. Ice is not a medium for detailed work, Watson, yet is ideally suited for any shape, particularly that of curves. I chose this piece for it shows off the medium best of any work here."

Holmes's discourses about art were often theoretical and beyond my understanding, though I thought I did begin to see something of what he was describing in the flame he had chosen. Its simplicity did come across very well in the ice, where the more ornate works lost much of their detail and did not compare. My friend's artistic eye was, clearly, better than my own and better than I had previously thought. He had clearly made the artist very happy, as the man smiled widely and shook hands with all his fellows, as well as with Holmes and myself. The winning sculpture would be displayed in the park for as long as the winter lasted, where we frequently stopped to see it until it at last went the way of all things winter. There was irony, I thought, in watching a flame melt, surely something not seen outside of poetry and ice sculptures. It was a shame that modern technology could not keep such a thing forever, I remarked to Holmes, though much of their appeal lies in their fleeting nature. Much like life, I thought to myself, though Holmes would have called me maudlin had he heard me.