Sun and the snow

Welcome to the Spot Writers. This current prompt is a story about excessive amounts of snow.

This week’s contribution comes from Chiara De Giorgi. Chiara is an Italian author and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. She writes fiction, with a focus on children’s literature and science fiction.

 

Sun and the snow

by Chiara De Giorgi

Image by Brandy Umfleet from Pixabay

Sun was a lucky little boy.

He lived with his extended family in a big one-storey wooden house surrounded by a large garden, where he spent many happy hours playing with his cousins. There they had all kinds of adventures, playing make-believe all the time. They were pirates, plundering and fighting, then they were dragons, flying and breathing fire, then they were trains racing madly across the country… The fun never ended! The only thing that bothered Sun was his own name. Not that he didn’t like the sun, mind you. It’s just that he really, really, loved snow. Those who knew of his passion always gave him a snow globe for his birthday, although he was born in the hottest August known to history. He now owned a collection of snow globes: small ones with just a tiny figurine inside, like a penguin or a kid on a sleigh, and big ones with entire villages inside. Some of them were music boxes as well, so he could listen to a nice little tune as he watched the snowflakes descend and settle on the roof of the houses and the treetops.

One morning – it was winter, his favourite season – he woke up to the sound of his aunt clearing the snow from the path that led to their house. Crunch, swish! Crunch, swish!

Excited, he quickly got out of bed and ran to the window.

“Aunt Jasmine! I’m awake! I’m coming out to help you!”

Aunt Jasmine smiled at him and kept shovelling the snow. Crunch, swish!

Sun’s loud voice awakened his sister and his cousins, and soon all five of them were outside, hopping in the snow, throwing snowballs to one another, and making Aunt Jasmine’s work more complicated, especially because snowflakes were still falling down.

She stopped for a moment, thinking, then she called out.

“Hey kids, come over here!”

She set the shovel aside and stepped up to the big snow heap she had just made. Then she threw herself onto it backwards and waved her arms and legs leaving shapes in the snow that made her look like an angel. The children promptly imitated her, screaming with delight.

“This is the most fun I’ve ever had!” Sun was beside himself with joy. The snow got down his neck, his sleeves, into his shoes… snow was in his hair, in his ears, in his eyes and even under his nails. “I am the happiest boy in the world!” he cried, his cheeks red from the cold and his eyes sparkling with happiness.

The snow started falling heavier and his daddy came out, scooped him up, and carried him inside.

“I want to stay out in the snow!” he protested, not happy about it at all. His sister and cousins were also brought in, and all of them kept grumbling the whole time while the grown-ups dried them off with towels and hair dryers.

Later, the kids wanted to go outside and play angels in the snow again, but the grown-ups said no. “There’s a snowstorm, nobody can go outside right now. We need to wait it out.”

Sun thought that it was very unfair that he had to stay in while there was so much snow outside. We were having so much fun, he thought. We were so happy doing snow angels. Then we came inside, and the sadness came, and now look what happened: there’s a storm!

Bored, he sat in his room watching out the window the snow bieng being blown in all directions by the harsh wind. Then turned to the shelves and admired his collection of snow globes. He picked the biggest one and looked inside, shaking it slightly. Snowflakes began to fall on the houses in the village, on the bridge crossing the frozen stream, on the lampposts and… Sun frowned. Had there always been kids ice-skating on the pond and playing in the park? He sighed. “Oh, how I wish I could get inside this snow globe and play with them in the snow!” he said. Then he lay down on the bed holding the globe tightly and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he was lying on a snow-covered field. He could hear voices not far away. High-pitched, excited, laughing, calling… He took a look around. His eyes widened in amazement. “I’m inside my snow globe!” he cried excitedly. He didn’t even pause to wonder how it could be. He ran up to the group of kids near the pond and played happily with them for a very long time – probably hours, he thought – and no grown-ups ever called them home!

Suddenly, something changed. The sky darkened and snow started to fall. The children welcomed it with joy and started a snowball fight. After a while, however, Sun noticed that the others had worried looks on their faces. Some grown-ups arrived and they looked worried too.

“It’s the heaviest snowfall I’ve ever seen!”

“What if it doesn’t stop?”

“Where does all this snow come from anyway?”

“It’s impossible to clear the roads!”

“What will we do?”

The fear in the voices of the people around him also infected Sun a little. Had he escaped the snowstorm in his world, only to end up trapped by a snowstorm in the snow globe? There must be something he could do…

“Hey! I know what we should do!” he shouted suddenly. Everyone looked at him.

“Do you know how to stop the storm?”

Sun shook his head. “No. But I know how to make us happy again! We must do snow angels!”

“How will that help?”

“I don’t know, but Aunt Jasmine made us do snow angels and we were all so happy, and then we had to go inside and we were sad and then the storm came…”

“Hey, this idea is not half bad!”

“We may chase the storm away by being happy!”

“Yes! Let’s give it a try!”

They all threw themselves onto the snow and began to wave their arms and legs, drawing angels in the snow. Soon, everyone was feeling incredibly happy, despite the wind and the big snowflakes that were blowing everywhere. And, lo and behold, the storm ran out.

“That was fun”, said an older kid, holding out her hand to Sun to help him up. “Are you coming back to the pond with us? We are going to build a snowman!”

Sun felt a sudden pang of homesickness. He wanted to go home and do snow angels and build snowmen with his sister and his cousins. But how could he do that?

“I suppose you have to wake up”, said the kid.

“What did you say?”

“Wake up!”

Sun opened his eyes. He was on his bed, the snow globe still in his hands. His sister was shaking him.

“Are you awake now?”

“Yes…”

“Great! Come out with us, then. The storm is over, Auntie Jasmine says she needs us to do snow angels again!”

Sun smiled. That was the best day of his life!

 

*****

The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/