Second Snow (Solo)

[Golem Girl]

It was the second time Angela Battersby had ever seen snow.

When she saw it out the window, her first impression was that the clouds themselves had been torn to pieces and were now drifting to the ground. She watched out the dirty windowpane in amazement for a whole minute. The little white particles of light looked like shimmering fairies, dancing about in the winter air.

“Hey! Hey! Ms. Goosebourne!” Angie shouted, excited as a little girl. “Hey, I think it’s snowing!”

Ms. Goosebourne had seen no less than sixty-four winters, and countless snowfalls. She was a massive woman with hair like a harpy’s nest and a moral code so strict that the most fundamentalist religions, the sort that banned dancing and woman from showing any skin below the neck, excluded her on the grounds of being “no fun at all.” She ruled the Goosbourne Home For Young Women, a small building on Downer Av., City of Scara Brae, with an iron fist. Young, single ladies were welcome to stay in her spacious home for as long as they liked, so long as they followed her rules. Not many young ladies made the cut. Angie’d been staying there three months now.

Ms. Goosebourne came and peered out the window. “That’s true,” she conceded. “I hate the snow.”

Angie was unsurprised. Ms. Goosebourne hated a lot of things, including (but certainly not limited to) sunshine, rain, snow, sugary foods, music, card games, and the color yellow.

“I’ve never seen snow before,” Angie said. It was almost true. She never had seen snow like this before. The snow she’d seen had been a blizzard, not a light flurry, and it had been in the heart of the desert.

Ms. Goosebourne grunted and went back to the kitchen, where she was cooking her specialty (meat so dry you could break iron fillings on it, vegetables so mushy they gave you a runny nose, and some sort of grey goo that was possibly supposed to be dessert and possibly was the brain of some sort of small animal; no one knew, and all were too afraid to ask. Girls at the Goosebourne Home For Young Women ate out most nights.)

“Well, I think it’s awfully exciting,” came a soft voice from behind Angie’s shoulder. Angie turned around to find Nutmeg.

Nutmeg was a short girl with mousey brown hair and a decently pretty face that she hid behind too many layers of makeup. She had no self confidence and rarely spoke, but Angie had developed a sort of friendship with her recently; the girls were the longest residents at the Home. Nutmeg’s parents had apparently named her so under the impression that girls ought to be named after spices. Nutmeg was an alright name; Angie just pitied her sister, Mustard.

“You’ve lived here your whole life though, haven’t you?” Angie asked. “It’s nothing new to you.”

Nutmeg blushed. “I just think there’s something awfully romantic about snow,” she said distantly. Nutmeg always had the impression of being at a slightly different point in the conversation than the other person. It was slightly jarring.

Angie pondered this statement for a long moment. “Yes,” she said finally, “I agree. And I think I’d like to go outside and experience it for myself.”

“You’ll get cold!” Ms. Goosebourne shouted from the other room.

“She can borrow my hat and gloves, Miss Goosebourne!” Nutmeg shouted back. She proffered a bright green cap and a pair of white-and-green striped fuzzy mittens.

“Thank you very much,” Angie said. The mittens were slightly too small and the cap squeezed her ears, but she didn’t want to hurt the girl’s feelings. “I’ll be back before dark!”

“When you get back, don’t tramp wet snow onto the carpet or I’ll have your ears,” Ms. Goosebourne shouted, just before the door slammed shut. Angie sighed. The Home was a nice place to stay, and she had some friends there, but it was starting to become irritating. She wanted a place of her own, a life of her own. Soon.

She pulled off the mittens and stuffed them in her jacket pocket. The snow, still falling, had begun to accumulate a few inches on the ground. Angie wondered what would happen if the snow just didn’t stop falling. Would the layer just keep rising, until first the door was covered, and then the windows, and then the roof; all of them buried under a soft but deadly white blanket? That didn’t ever happen, did it?

She took a handful of snow off the ground, now suspicious. The first thing that surprised her about the snow was how wet it was. It melted into ice cold water in her palm almost instantly. She wiped her hand off on her jacket, disgusted.

Then another thought occurred to her. If it was just water, could you eat it? She tried.

Cold! So cold! It was like eating ice chips (something which she had tried only once) but even worse. Ick! She’d heard that some people mixed the snow with cream and ice and ate it sometimes, but could not fathom why. Disgusting.

Before she could do any more exploring, something hit her in the back of the neck. It was cold and wet and started dribbling down her back.

“Hey!” she shouted, swiveling around. “Hey, whoever did that, I’ll—“

A little boy, maybe four or five, with a bright green hat popped his head out of an alleyway.

“’Ey, that was a good shot, weren’t it, miss?” he said.

“Huh?” Angie said, confused.

“We’ve got the same hat, miss!” he declared, with that wisdom of observation that only young children seem to possess.

“Er, I suppose so. What were you saying before, kid? You threw snow at me?”

“Sure I did! ‘Aven’t you ever seen a snowball before, miss?” the kid asked, incredulous.

“Well, no,” Angie admitted.

The boy walked up to her and proffered a ball of snow in his left hand. “See? If you pack it up right tight like this an’ throw it at people, it sure leaves a mark,” he said, giggling.

“I guess so,” Angie said. She rubbed the back of her neck, which was now red and cold. She hadn’t realized that the now could be packed tightly like that. She’d been born in the heart of the Fallien desert, and had only made it to a climate cold enough for snow in the spring—too late for snow. The kid’s ‘snowball’ had given her an interesting idea.

“Hey kid! Listen good, because I’m going to teach you something,” she said.

“Yes’m?” the kid said. He looked up at her with big, clear blue eyes the color of the summer sky.

“If you throw another ‘snowball’ like that at me again, I’ll take your tongue and tie it to your bootlaces. Understand?” she said, as pleasantly as she could.

“Cor, an’ you really mean it!” the kid said. His eyes were wide.

Angie nodded. “And I hope you won’t pester my friends who come out of that house either, or we might have trouble.”

The kid nodded furiously, then looked thoughtful. “’Ey, how ‘bout that big old lady that lives in there? She count?”

Angie laughed. “If you want to go after her, that’s on your own head.”

The kid nodded. “See ya, miss!” he shouted abruptly, and he ran back around the corner.

Angie was left alone in the street, with the falling stone and the chickadees. She sat on her haunches and watched the birds for a few minutes. The chickadees seemed so carefree, so happy. She was struck by a memory as powerful as a blow.

Two girls are sitting next to eachother in the desert sand watching the birds circle above. One is fifteen and one is fourteen. They are best friends.

“You want to know a secret, Angela?” one girl says.

“Sure,” the other says.

“I want to be a bird. I want to fly away, somewhere far from the desert, somewhere where it snows. I’ve always wanted to see the snow.”

They both sat in silence. “I bet we could do that,” Angie said.

“What, turn into birds?”

“No, make it snow. We could do it.”

“In the middle of the desert? How?” Her friend laughs.

“Magic,” Angela says. “Definitely with magic.”

Angie was pulled out of her reverie by a voice: Nutmeg’s.

“Hey Ang, are you coming back inside soon? It’s got awfully cold,” Nutmeg said, worry clearly in her voice.

Angie shook her head. “Not yet. I’m going for a walk, actually. I’ve got an idea, and I need…I need to go shopping.”

[Golem Girl]

“Excuse me, miss, but would you like to buy a hippopotamus?” came a voice from behind her.

“What?” Angie asked. She whirled around and was confronted by a seedy looking man in a bowler hat. The man outstretched both his palms, which contained a small herd of tiny animals. They looked like insects, maybe two inches in diameter each.

“What’s a hippopotamus?” she asked, frightened but slightly curious nonetheless.

“Well normally they’re exotic, big, dangerous animals, but I’ve magically shrunk them down for your entertainment! Only twenty gold pieces each!”

“Those look like a lot like cockroaches you coated in glitter and cut the antennas off of,” Angie said suspiciously. “Not like hippopotamuses at all. Not interested, sorry!”

“Sure? Sure you aren’t looking for…something else?” the man licked his lips in a way that disturbingly reminded Angela of a snake flicking out its tongue.

“Quite sure,” Angie said. “Rip off someone else!” She hurried down the avenue, and eventually broke down into a sprint, away from the creepy man in the bowler hat. When she stopped she no longer knew where she was. She looked left and right and finally realized where she had ended up.

She was on Roxbury Avenue, not the best part of town. Whatever shops that the main population hadn’t wanted to see out in the open had ended up here. Some sold magical artifacts; some sold exotic jewelry; some just sold funny clothes with a lot of whips and feathers; but mostly they just sold illegal things.

Seemed like exactly the place she wanted to be. Shopping time!

It was still snowing, now harder than ever. She’d left behind the mittens by accident and was forced to shove her hands in her coat pockets. At first the winter weather had seemed wonderful and alien and beautiful; now it just seemed downright unpleasant. She could see her own breath condensing in the air as a mist in front of her face, and she wondered if this was usually what happened. It was somewhat disturbing. For the first time since she’d left the desert she found herself wishing she was back home, if only for the weather.

Sophie would have loved this, though, wouldn’t she? She always wanted to see snow, she found herself thinking.

Finally she found the sort of shop she was looking for. It was a little magic ingredients store, a tiny hovel with a falling in roof squeezed in between two much larger brick buildings. It looked like a sapling trying to grow in the shade of two larger trees and dying for lack of sunlight. Two windows bulged at the bottoms and were narrow at the tops, each let out yellow light that looked more diseased than comforting. The door was painted black and the mail slot looked like a hungry mouth. It looked like the sort of place where you'd find horrible curses and devious hexes, love potions and illusions, and maybe even poetry-spewing ravens perched on skulls or busts.

Perfect!

[Golem Girl]

She pushed the door open and a cowbell hanging on the door gave one loud clang. It was much warmer inside; that was nice. She looked around and examined her surroundings.

The shop, as is only natural for magical stores, was much larger on the inside than on the outside. The walls extended out in either direction indefinitely, and each one was covered in magical knickknacks of every shape and description. She picked one up at random, a white orb with a single blue dot on it. The label under it read “The Eye of…”

“Argos,” someone finished for her. “A horribly cursed item. For some reason all it does is give the bearer a terrible tendency to misuse adjectives and adverbs. We’d put it back if we were them. It’s very dangerous.

Angela placed the stygian, ovular orb of sight back on the shelf tentatively and then shuddered.

“That was terrible!” Angie said. “Who keeps such a thing lying around…”

For the first time she observed the shopkeeper properly. It was an old woman…probably. It was hard to tell under the many layers of black cloth she was swaddled beneath. Two beady yellow eyes peered out from beneath a broad-brimmed black hat.

The witch cackled. There was no other word for it. It was a laugh that had gone through insanity and out the other side, a laugh that had trained among the great masters of Evil Laughter and found them to be lacking in sincere creepiness. It was the sort of laugh that takes years of practice to achieve. Angie was impressed. She had met a master.

“I’m called Mistress Wightham, but they can call us Gran if they wish,” the witch said.

“They?” Angie said, completely thrown off.

“They! The young man and lady standing in front of us, of course. Who else would we be talking about? They must not be very bright, Lewis. We can tell.”

Angela nodded slowly. Irregularities in behavior were pretty much to be expected when dealing with those who had practiced magic a long time. Magic did something to the firings in the brain, made the senses not see what was in front of them…or maybe just see more than the average human could. The wizards she’d met at the University were hardly less strange, although in a different way.

They were just downright daft.

“Lewis?” Angie asked. She worried that she might regret asking the question but couldn’t help herself.

“Lewis is my brother. He helps me around the shop,” the woman said. She cackled again. “Fat lot of help he is though, eh! But I digress. They must have come in here looking for something, eh? Young university students don’t drop by here often, oh no, they’re not allowed. So they ignore us altogether, very rude. Unless they want something really…badly…”

Angela gulped. “Well…wait, how did you know I’m a student at the University?”

The cackle returned again. The old woman must be easily amused. “We can tell easily, can’t we Lewis? Now, are they going to buy something already or are they going to leave?”

“I’m not sure what I want, actually,” Angie admitted. “I’ve been thinking of a new spell, though.”

“Explain?” the woman said, sounding curious. “What kind of magic do they practice, hmmm?”

“Golemancy, actually,” Angie said. “I’ve been thinking of a new material to make golems out of. Normally I use sand and clay, but this might work better after all.”

The old woman grabbed Angie’s shoulders and put her nose right up against her own crooked one. “They’re not saying…they want to make golems out of flesh do they!?” she exclaimed. Then she let go of Angie’s shoulders and cackled. “Oh, how unexpected, how—“

“No!” Angie shouted. This woman was getting on her nerves. “Obviously not you batty old woman. I’m no necromancer. What I meant to say was snow. I want to make a golem out of snow!”

Angela felt the blood rushing out of her head and breathed deeply. Could she go anywhere without getting in a fight with someone? Apparently not. It wasn’t her fault that people were just so incredibly stupid and irritating sometimes.

The witch didn’t seem to care; she just laughed. “Ah, well, that’s a novel idea. Not quite as exciting as flesh but I think it could work. Hmmmm. Hold on just a minute!”

The old woman vanished among the aisles. Angie was left alone for a long minute. One minute turned into two, two turned into five, and five turned into ten. She tapped her foot impatiently and looked at her wrist, then remembered that she wasn’t wearing a watch. Where had the woman gone? Had she forgotten altogether about Angela’s existence? It seemed possible; the witch had clearly been a few magic words short of a spellbook.

“Hey, Mistress Wightham!” Angie called. “Hello?”

“I told them that I prefer to be called Gram,” the witch said, dropping from above. Literally dropping from above. She fell from the ceiling. She covered in soot and carrying a large sack. Angie was speechless for a moment.

“Er, hello…Gram,” she said.

“Don’t stutter, dears, it’s not very attractive. Now we think we’ve found just the thing for them,” Gram said. “I had to fly up through the chimney to get it though, didn’t I? Here they are!”

The witch dumped the sack on the floor of the shop. Out poured countless little rocks…no, not rocks. Coal. Little black lumps you start fires with.

“We don’t, er, I don’t understand,” Angie said, confused and almost picking up the old woman’s pronoun issues. How was coal related to anything else? Maybe the old woman was just daft after all.

“This aren’t just your average run of the mill coal, my dears! It’s magic coal!”

“Oh.” Angie said. She tried to be as kind as possible, using the sort of voice one does when addressing a state magician whose trick was completely obvious, but you can’t help but clap anyway just because you don’t want to make him feel bad. “I…see.”

The old woman shook her head sadly. “They don’t believe me, do they? They think we’re like that man down the street selling cockroaches dressed up as elephants—“

“Hippopotamuses.”

“—isn’t it hippopotami? Oh well. I don’t know, and I don’t care. They don’t believe us, but I can show them! Come outside! We’ll show them!”

The witch rushed out the door, and Angela hurried to follow her. She had no idea what to expect—nothing, at this point, would have surprised her.

[Golem Girl]

The following post takes place 15 years prior to the events of this thread, in the Desert of Fallien, before Angela was exiled from her family.

The camel is an interesting creature. No other, not even the fiercest of predators or most deadly of bacteria is so stubbornly adamant to make life a living hell for human beings.

Angela’s camel had become obedient after countless well-placed kicks in the ribs with pointy shoes. Sophie refused to use such violence, and instead had tried to befriend the creature. This had mixed results. On one hand, the camel’s behavior hadn’t changed at all. On the other, at least now when it spat in her face and kicked her in the shins, it probably was doing so out of playful affection rather than absolute hatred.

“I’m not sure that’s a step up,” Angie teased.

“Oh, hush,” Sophie said. “We’re making progress, Lotus and I. Lots of progress!”

“Lotus? You named your camel Lotus?” Angie said. She was laughing hysterically. ‘Lotus’ was an ill-tempered, foul-smelling brute of a beast.

“Yes, well, it sure beats your camel’s name,” Sophie said.

Angela shrugged. “Bastard is just an apt descriptor, not really a name.”

Both girls laughed.

Rarely were the two allowed out of Angela’s family’s camp. Angela was the daughter and sole female descendant of the great Golemancer of the North, Ragnhilder. Her family had migrated across continents and to a drastically different climate than their ancestral land of Salvar, but their pride had remained the same. To ‘keep her safe’ she was given very little freedom. Sophie was Angela’s servant, and ironically had more freedom of movement than her master. Still, for the most part they were stuck together. Neither ever complained; they were girls of about the same age and had fast become close friends.

Today’s trip to the neighboring oasis, therefore, was something special. Years later Angie wouldn’t recall the trip itself as anything important, but the conversations they had during it certainly were. It was here that Sophie told Angie of her hopes and dreams, of how she wanted to be a bird and fly away, of how she wanted to see snow. Always, she said, she’d wanted to see snow.

On trips like these Angie became aware of the desert as a physical being; a creature, or vampire, sucking their energy and life in the form of moisture. She, the desert, did not allow for weakness. The noon-sun beat down on them ferociously. Both carried huge canteens filled with water. In the desert, water is all. Water is life.

They rode into the West, as young people so often do. The West is adventure, is rebellion. The West is the unknown. They followed the sun’s course for days, fleeing from its rays in the morning and desperately trying to catch the last pieces of its red light in the evenings.

“Let’s just keep going, Ang,” Sophie said one day. “Keep going and never look back.

Angie shook her head and smiled at her friend. “I don’t think so, Soph. Maybe someday.” They both rode in silence for a long time after that.

One evening, while both girls were gnawing on jerky quietly, Angela suddenly sat up perfectly straight.

“I’ve got something to show you, I think!” she exclaimed. She grabbed a stick from the side of the campsite and began to draw a circle in the sand.

“What is it?” Sophie asked.

“Hold on,” Angie said. She finished her magic circle and sat in it, legs crossed. She closed her eyes and outstretched her cupped hands. She began to hum softly, then louder and louder, until finally she was singing aloud. Sophie watched in silence. She had seen Angie practice magic before, but couldn’t fathom her purpose.

The campsite began to glow with arcane light. Angela’s singing reached a crescendo, and then there was a bright flash. She opened her eyes.

“Nothing happened,” she said, disappointed.

“No! It worked!” Sophie exclaimed. “Look in your hands!”

Both girls peered closely at Angela’s cupped hands. Floating just above them was a single, impossibly fragile snowflake. It twirled in the air like a tiny ballerina, then settled on Angela’s palm and melted.

They sat in silence for a long while, stunned. It had really worked. Snow in the desert! Snow!

“How did you know what to sing?” Sophie asked.

“I don’t know,” Angie whispered. “It just felt right.”

“Whatever it was, it worked,” Sophie said.

Angie shrugged, laid back, and curled up on the ground. For a long time she said nothing at all. “It was just one snowflake.”

“If you made one you could make more,” Sophie said. She laid down next to Angie. “Do you think?”

Angie didn’t respond. Instead, slowly, ever so carefully, she put one arm around Sophie. Sophie looked over, surprised, but said nothing.

I think I might love her, Angie thought, and she was terrified by the thought.

“It’s cold,” Angie said stupidly. Sophie nodded.

The two lay like that for a long time, silent, staring up at the desert’s incredible clear night sky. The stars stood out like little pinpricks of light, so bright and beautiful but yet so distant from one another.