The Fabulous Spec-Fic Smack Down Anthology

Winter Wonderland

Date of creation: 08/13/2024

Word count: 1496 (Google Docs)

Author's note: This was my entry for round one, part one. The prompt was to write a story featuring a newly written book and a character named Pipaluk, and the maximum word count was 1500 words.

Click the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button to go directly to challenge, or click the link in the in-line comments here. →

*****

The cheery knock at the door couldn't have come at a more inopportune time. I sighed and set the book on my lap so I could pull my right glove off. The few droplets of moisture left in the cold, dry air around me crystallized when they touched my fingers and fell tinkling to the sofa and the floor. I conjured a thin slab of ice as a makeshift bookmark and inserted it carefully between the pages without touching my bare skin to the paper, and then I pulled my glove back on my hand.

Another knock, followed by a "Hello?"

Pipaluk.

I sighed again and shouted, "I'm coming!" Then, lowering my voice to a mutter as I closed the book and set it on the sofa, "Not all of us can drop everything at a moment's notice. You try being a snow witch one day. See how you like it."

I padded to the door in my slippers to wrench it open, and there was Pipaluk. Neon green hair spiking out from his head in all directions, as if he just stepped out of an explosion (possible), wearing thick plastic lab goggles (fogged up), a wide smile (annoying), a long white lab coat (buttons mismatched), and heavy work boots (covered in a purple gooey substance). Nothing new. That, combined with his short stature of barely four feet tall, made it easy to look past him to my yard.

"What in the name of Jack Frost?" I exclaimed.

"Language," Pipaluk scolded me, wincing.

"Your—things—have ruined my yard! What do you expect me to say?"

The heat cubes were bouncing happily all over the exposed brickwork and patches of mud, shades of brown, red, and orange all over what should have been white. My boundary line of ice was long gone, as were the snow banks and ice sculptures I'd cultivated so carefully. A small, solitary patch huddled in one corner, trembling as its glassy surface weakened, drip by painful drip.

"I'll get them out of here, I promise!" Pipaluk said hastily. "But it's not so bad. You can fix it, right?"

I yanked his cloudy goggles off his face and threw them on the ground. If I was going to glare at him, I wanted to see those overly large eyes, but his thick glasses were fogged up, too. And he'd worked hard to perfect those glasses. Unlike some people, I valued hard work, so I didn't wrench them from his face and throw them on the bricks to grind them under my feet. I just thought about it.

"Take off your glasses," I demanded.

He reached up to press a button on the glasses' right leg, and tiny windshield wipers set to work, clearing the lenses so I could see his hot pink irises.

"I can fix it," I said through clenched teeth, clenching my fists at my sides, "but it will take time. That was precision work. That willow tree took years for me to make. Years! And it's gone in a matter of hours!"

"I can help! I can—"

"You can get your new pets out of my yard," I said, dropping my voice into a low, dangerous tone. A freezing wind picked up and slapped my face. Pipaluk shivered. His windshield wipers froze in place with a whine of tiny gears. "Now."