Three Bugs in a Field
by Jesse Fisher

A light dusting of snow covered the once brown field outside of the small house.Inside the quant house sat a trio of yellow themed kabuto, two almost identical bots looked to the third. The green eyes of it’s visor were that of childish glee, that and the slight high pitched screech. A more detailed kabuto with wheels as the soles of its feet covered his audio receivers in pain.

“What is with her?” The wheeled kabuto groaned. “It’s just snow.”

A more basic kabuto just shrugged out of habit, as it began to check the firewood for the day.

“Give her a break, I built her near the end of winter so this is the first time she has seen it.” It shot back to its near copy as it threw another log on the fire.

“I get that but she has been at this for several hours after we explained what snow was and what you can do with it.” The wheeled one replied annoyed by the younger’s speed talk of ideas once the snow picked up.

“Let her be happy, it’s not like we had that reaction to snow the first time.” The basic kabuto sat down and looked at his near double. “We are born sass machines that take the world through a skeptical len that only got clearer when others showed us there was more than just what we thought.”

“So this is what I’m like as a parent.” the wheeled kabuto replied looking at less hyper kabuto in front of him.

“Ya our trainer was surprised how I acted.” The base kabuto chuckled. “Took me at least a month until I was sure I would not wreck myself worrying about her just wondering off and getting hurt.”

“Dads!” Said younger kabuto, wine drawing their attention. “I want to go out and make a Snowbot!”

“In a bit sweetie, for now how about a story?” The base kabuto asked, getting up and picking up a book.

“Will it involve a snowbot?” the younger asked the wining gone but big doe eyes filled her visored screen.

Permafrost
By PixieWings

New snow has formed over the plots.

It should, Guin supposes, feel cold.

At first touch the drifts hold firm, but when she steps down, they splinter. Silently she crushes them into the grooves of yesterday’s footsteps. The moon watches her track them up the hill, up to the bowed barren tree turned crystal in the frost.

She isn’t wearing boots. The snow grazes her bare ankles as she climbs, soaks into her pants when she kneels at the summit. Her fingers push through the sheet of ice, sweep it from the stone in the ground.

Abigail Jensen.

Guin’s fingertips press into the carved edge of each letter. She can imagine their jagged bite on her skin.

Then she can imagine something softer.

A little girl’s hand, clammy, sticky with jam.

Warmth, fragile but present, cupped between their linked fingers.

And a time when the girl’s chirping voice had filled the silence and her heart.

Ages ago.

Now the only sound is boots crunching their way up through the rime, kicking up flakes in a joyous destruction of Guin’s footstep path. They skip their way over the graves to plant themselves behind her.

“Guinevere!”

The woman’s voice skewers the night, goring it on Guin’s name. Her suit is the color of wine, staining the diffused moonlight. There’s fire in her eyes, kindled by loathing and glee, and she’s happy to throw a new misery on the pyre.

She’s far too loud, and she knows it.

“Leave.” Guin breathes.

“What?” The woman’s grin splits wide. “You’re fine with me watching, but when I come to say hi-”

The bowed tree shudders and moans, frost dragging its limbs down toward Guin’s fists.

“Okay! Not a problem! Stuff to do anyway! Just one thing.”

She presses her palms together, and bows at the waist. The flames in her eyes lick across Guin’s cheeks. They dance across Guin’s Shackles, the ice fractals inked sapphire blue beneath her eyes.

“I need a favor.”

A Cold Silence
By L. L. Marco

The sun had been so warm only moments before. Now it fell hollowly around her, empty and serving only to cast a dusty yellow filter on a world which had fallen so suddenly still around her. The forest was silent. The air chilled. The girl trembled as her eyes fell upon a simple oak coffin resting on the dirt path a few paces ahead. Years of sunlight had bleached its surface and only served to make it even more unnatural against the lush green foliage cradling it.

A thick, powerful force reared up from the wood and coiled around her, guiding her towards the casket. Once at its side, her terror numbed and with its absence came an intense desire to see what lay within. A deeply rooted curiosity devoid of survival instinct overtook her. The girl reached out her trembling hand.

The lid slid off silently and with unnatural ease.

Her eyes fell upon a body. His skin was snow white and utterly still. His purpled lips remained ever-so-slightly parted, capturing the moment his final breaths were sealed within the coffin. The air from the casket smelled ancient despite the remains being untouched by time. Staring down at him, she realized that a breeze fluttered faintly in and out from the wood around him. It was as if, somehow, the casket breathed for him….

Suddenly, the boy’s blood-red eyes shot open. His stare locked onto hers, shattering whatever spell had been holding her. Even now, his chest didn’t rise or fall. There was no life in this moving corpse. Panic seized her. Luna jolted back but a stoney white hand clamped around her waist. Her skin burned as steam rose up from where he touched her, the flesh screaming out before the nerves froze solid. A creeping numbness spread up her arm. She was screaming now. Her free hand clawed at him, desperately trying to escape as the cold inched further and further up. There was nothing she could do. So when the cold finally reached her throat, she let out one last choked scream.

And then…

Silence.

Waltzing in a Winter Wonderland
By Twangyflame0

Valik’s feet crunched into the snow as he moved through the city park. He raised his head and opened his mouth, letting a few snowflakes land on his tongue. He knew how much it made him look like a child but he didn’t care. He continued to stare up to the sky and enjoy the faint flakes falling.

He twirled and hummed to himself, waltzing with the snow in a dance only they knew. He felt the cold winter wind blow into his face as he continued his waltz. Though, soon the snow had to leave, the last flakes finishing their travels.

Valik smiled to the sky and waved. “Till next time, you beautiful mistress of winter.”

Playfully, the wind blew in his face as he continued on his path. He smiled at the small joys he saw on his path. Snowmen built by children, snow forts battered by today’s wars, and the marks of the people who were there were still evident on the benches.

He continued to walk down the path. He knew he would have to return to his apartment soon, but just wanted to enjoy his time out as much as possible. At least, that was until he saw something he didn’t like.

The smile slowly fell from his face as he walked up and examined the scene. He sighed and pulled up his phone, dialing the proper authorities.

The dispatcher picked up after a few minutes. ”Hello, this is emergency services. What is your emergency?”

“I would like to report a double homicide.” Valik continued to speak before the dispatcher could ask more questions. “The bodies are in the center of Burabura Park, right in front of the main fountain. The assailant is nowhere to be seen but the bodies seem fresh. I would recommend sending out people to search the area. I would also suggest hurrying so the bodies do not suffer more damage from the snow. I’ve kept this call on long enough that you should have traced this call. Now I shall conduct my investigation. Detective Valik Von Vandermeer out.”

They Never Learn
By MasaCur

Sonja strode across the frozen field, the snow crunching under her feet, her blonde curls bouncing as she walked. Beside her, Wyndar lumbered, his short, thick legs managing to keep pace as they made their way to the village. Ringed with a wall of stone, the village was made of squat buildings, thatched with sod. At the top of the hill, there was a great hall made of logs.

“Who approaches?” yelled a voice as they got closer to the outskirts. A man, armed with a bow, stood atop the wall.

“My name is Sonja Jarlsdottir. My companion is Wyndar Hammerhaft. We have come looking for Viggo Bjornrock.”

“We have heard of you,” the guard called back. “Sonja the Gold. Sonja Firebreath. What do you want with Bjornrock?”

Sonja sighed. “If you know who I am, you should know not to test my patience. His Majesty, Charles Gustav, has placed a warrant for the arrest of Bjornrock. I am here to execute that warrant.”

“Piss off, Firebreath! Bjornrock is not leaving with the likes of you. Tell King Charles that if he wants my clansman, then he should send more than two people to collect him.” The man scoffed. “Not just a woman and a half-man!”

Sonja turned to look at Wyndar, his auburn mustache bristling with fury. He frequently got mocked for his short stature.

“I say we burn the village down already,” Wyndar muttered.

“Peace, my friend,” Sonja said. She turned back to the guard at the village wall. “You have one hour to produce Bjornrock for us. If you fail to do so, we shall enter your village and take him ourselves. If your people resist, we shall raze it to the ground.”

The man laughed mockingly. “You are free to try!”

Wyndar sighed, pulled out an hourglass, and set it in the snow. “I hate when they choose to resist. They already know your reputation.”

Sonja smirked. “And yet they always do. They have an hour, Wyndar. Unless they choose to attack us first. You should get your crossbow ready.”

[REDACTED] by OrigonStory2000

Command had underestimated how fast the seasons were turning that year. Before we knew it the Hawk was already on our backs. Our deployment had been rushed to try and beat the snow. That lack of foresight meant that now, five days into our march through heavy forest, we were feeling the effects that lack of snivel gear and warm rations cause.

Private Doss spotted the fires on the sixth night. The camp must have been five hundred strong at least, but there were only a few dozen fires. Barely any guards. It didn’t make sense how they had moved this far without being noticed. Or to expose themselves by lighting fires. Maybe they thought they had safety in numbers. Or maybe they were struggling with the cold, just like us.

Our platoon was outnumbered ten to one. We couldn’t risk trying to slip by unnoticed. If caught, we’d be good as dead. We also couldn’t leave them for another platoon to find. They were our problem.
HQ might have neglected to give us thermals or chow, but one gift they’d left us with was a 60mil and six canisters of homemade whiskey Pete. We fired on the seventh night. The men we’d move in confirm all tangos were KIA come sunrise.

I’m no stranger to death. I know what it is to kill a man. That’s how I knew. Broken and burned bodies, too small and too numerous to be soldiers. Hastily scribbled orders clutched in the skinless claw of a ruined corpse.
Two words.
“Civilian Evacuation”.
But it was still snowing.

I belayed our maneuver orders. We waited at the death site for three days, until a soft white blanket buried our actions. When we finally rejoined the main company, I filed the official report.

“Zero Casualties Sustained.”

“A Quiet Longing”
By Shea Carris

In a seemingly random longing to see something from before, Wander had stopped in his tracks.

Not that he could really step any further. In front of him lay a body of water that stretched on farther than his eyes could see. The salt scented air blew through his hair and robes as he spun on his heels, his emerald eyes glancing around as he pondered where to go from here.

Maybe it was the heat of the sun beating down on him, or maybe it was the want to return to what was familiar, that made him turn to the direction he knew as “North.” In his own rhythmic pattern, he began to walk, tail swaying and dragging behind him.

Wander could never remember where he’d been before. With the passage of time, of which he passed through remaining the same save for the flowers on his antlers, the world around him was always changing. In the many days and nights it took him to stroll to the countless edges of the Earth, this forest could very well have been a field in the past.

The silence of this place was a stark contrast to the defeaning crashes of the waves he had once stood before. Despite the water’s reflective beauty, he found that he much preferred this unmoving landscape and all of it’s glittering glory.

Picking up his feet, Wander found himself twirling and leaping more than walking. With his light footsteps, he was tiptoeing over the surface of the freshly fallen snow, barely breaking it’s surface. His breath, it’s beat rising slightly, manifested in the form of a fog that was gone as soon as it came, drifting away into the peaceful night.

This hush that was near tangible, and the winter air that he danced through, is what he missed dearly when he wandered some place far away. It was obvious, he would waltz solo, but Wander would dance happily regardless. Even when an inevitable pang of loneliness hit his heart, he’d return to the quiet snowy forest and dance with the moon.

The Quiet of Fresh Snow
By MysteryElement

I had always thought the Winter King would have blue eyes. That’s how the stories portrayed him, or any other emissary of winter. The gaze I now faced was a ruddy brown, like oak leaves reluctant to fall away, the white of his eyes like encroaching frost. I had not meant to look, I had not known he was there, but when I turned down the snow-covered trail our eyes had met. I don’t think he meant to look at me either. The snowfall around us was deafening, absorbing all sound as it feathered the ground in white.

CRACK.

I turn my head just in time to see a deer’s white tail as the poor creature leapt further into the woods. When I turned back the eyes were gone. There was no one there. I released my breath, billows of white clouding my face before wisping into the cold wind. I could still feel the deep cold of those eyes reaching into me as I continued my walk.

Small details filed into my memory as I walked. His hair had been striped with deep browns and ebonies. He had worn trousers, but his chest and feet had been left bare to the cold. His skin had glowed pale and cold like moonlight. He should have felt out of place.

The snow fell harder, and the trees seemed to draw closer around me making everything unfamiliar and claustrophobic in the haze of falling snow. I took a deep steady breath to calm myself but could not shake the dangerous stillness. I released another long breath, but there was no white cloud this time. I sigh deeply, purposefully, but could not generate enough heat to warm the air.

A branch cracked behind me, and like the deer I thoughtlessly leapt into the underbrush in some adrenaline-addled thought of preservation. I could no longer feel the cold, but my lungs burned with a strange fire as I stood. I saw nothing but trees, and heard nothing but the silence of falling snow.

Snow falls like confetti on a Carnaval day
By Larissa (Lari B. Haven)

Winfrey was perching on his chair, tearing old papers into tiny pieces. The tropical heat was taking a toll on him.

“Oh, dear! Have you ever cleaned this place?” Alexandria said, annoyed from the other room.

The professor couldn’t understand why she was there.
Being cooked alive, and eaten by bugs while organizing his living room was a bore. Imagine it: a young lady and an old, tired Professor. What a criminal sight.

“You did enough.” He took her by the hands and pleaded, “It’s Friday, and it’s Carnaval tomorrow. Don’t you have real friends to see and go out with?”

“I don’t care about partying; I’d rather come to visit you…” She lied.

He knew she was just avoiding his bigger questions. Alexandria had very few associates, and he was one of them.

“What is this?” She took a little round globe filled with soaked semolina from the cupboard.

“A snow globe. I think It’s from my time in Germany. I miss snow days.”

“This is how snow looks like? I only ever read about it in books. Does it shine like this?”

“A tad,” he laughed. “On the first day of snow, kids would go play in the streets, with their friends. Just to see the snowflakes falling.” He threw his minced paper in the air, while she watched in wonder. “The snow falls as confetti people throw from the balconies on Carnaval.”

“Confetti on Carnaval?” She smirked. “That’s your snow?”

He nodded. She got the message he was trying to send.

She took the globe between her hands, and again, grinned while daydreaming about winter that only existed in a faraway land.

“Still… I’d love to see it,” she half-whispered.

Winfrey could be a couple of years from knocking on Death’s door, and she was very young. But they understood each other. Cared for each other. Maybe all she was missing was a little push to go see the world.

“I will take you there. Someday,” he answered.

He would give that push.

Digging Joy From The Cold (Nyssa’s Story)
By Calliope Rannis

Another day in her lonely tower. Snow had fallen last night.

Nyssa looked towards the University outside, blanketed in white. It looked beautiful. Nothing like the dark, messy room she’d been living in for the last two years.

Snow had been rare where she lived, but she remembered almost exploding with excitement whenever she saw that white world outside. Back then, she’d do everything she could think of – rolling it up into snowpeople, shaping snow bugs and snow lobsters with her body, throwing snowballs off the cliffs and watching them fall into the sea…

It also reminded her of how it had never felt the same since her mother had died. She’d stopped playing with it after that. Now snow was just an excuse for her to stay inside.

Nyssa looked away, her eyes catching the reflection in her askew mirror. Her blonde hair was a tangled mess, looking barely any different from the clumps of hair building up on the floor. Her skin was going pale from the lack of sunlight.

She tried to smile. Her lips pulled back from her teeth. Her brown eyes stayed as dark and dull as before.

A familiar knocking shattered the suffocating silence. Nyssa jerked in surprise. She was here? During winter break? She went to open the door, saying “Iyra, you know I’m not doing study sessions during holidays…” before seeing a beaming smile on the half-elf student’s face. “Oh. What’s the occasion?”

“SNOW!” Iyra spun around, arms outstretched in wonder. “Look at it Professor! It’s so, so beautiful!”

Nyssa cocked her head curiously. “I’ve never seen someone so excited for snow in…well, thirty years. Why come to tell me about it though?”

“Well, it’s just that – we never HAD snow at home. I only ever heard of it, and now it’s everywhere!” She spun again, overwhelmed. “Honestly I – I don’t know what to do. Professor, you’ve lived here for years, what DO you do with snow?”

“Never…had…” Nyssa paused, staring into space. Then she smiled, as a distant light began to shine within her eyes. “I have a few ideas.”

System Log for Umonon-17: Temperature Seal Breached; Igniting Distress Signal
By IsaDragon

The station’s alarms had long since been silenced. Only a tiny flashing blip of red light remained, humming in the climate control room. Under the desk, Quin tucked gloved paw-like hands under her body and settled in to wait, for death or rescue, in privacy.

Snow was both cold and wet. She had never experienced a wet type of cold before. The Meerpine homeworld used to have harsh winters, but it was a very dry world. That was centuries ago; most Meerpines lived in climate-controlled spaces these days.

When Quin volunteered to research this ice moon, she never expected this.

Her eyes stung from the tiny airborne flakes of ice, and she closed them on instinct, relying on her other senses—hearing, heat, vibrations. She would have to remember the feeling to log later. She refused to think of the alternative.

She felt the snow settle like a blanket on the floor, soft and wet. She heard the light bouncing around and reflecting from the piles below.

The excess humidity in the air at this station never really bothered her, until the climate seal started leaking and it began to freeze midair.

Snow was confusing. It was just tiny frozen water, and she had seen small amounts artificially created in a lab before. She had heard of worlds where snow formed naturally in huge amounts, as weather.

Nobody theorized about just how bright it was. The harsh lighting on snow was blinding, even with her eyes closed. Light had a sound of its own, and this was dizzying. Like a shattered mirror.

The snow was melting near her, and she was wet. Meerpines never really had large amounts of water available, this should be fascinating. She reached for a pad, remembered she didn’t have one, and almost went to go look.

Her quills were rising, she realized, and trembling. That was… a cold reaction? That made sense, she was very cold right now.

Her hands hurt, and her nose was numb. There was light singing, and singing, and… something else? A shape—

“Othala get over here, we have a survivor!”

In the Frosts
By Clanso

As soon as snow started to fall Ada was out of the door, immediately forgetting everything her protectors had told her about why they needed to stay cautious and hidden. She stopped dead in her tracks about 100 meters from the house and looked up at the sky. “… blabla, who cares, there’s nothing here that could harm us anyways, Concern, you know that! ” Ada tried to catch a snowflake with her mouth and missed.

Little did she know (or care) that there *were* things out here that could in fact harm her and her guardian. Apart from the gunman of the White Court, who would be almost indistinguishable from the falling snow should he choose to attack, there was also the biting cold of the Frost. Rainbows were not made for the cold. After all they need rain to thrive.

” …but it’s snowing! Come on, Concern, live a little!” The swirling colors of Ada’s skin seemed even brighter against the stark contrast of the white snow. It almost seemed to glow from the inside. That alone made her stand out, so she didn’t have to run around like a maniac and talk to empty air to make it worse.

“I’m not a maniac.” Ada scolded playfully as she began to climb a tree next to the hut. It’s her nature to climb high but right now that was a very unwise decision. She could fall off and hurt herself. The White Courter could spot her even more easily and if that didn’t make her obvious enough she was the loudest thing in the entire Frosts right now. She was bound to draw unwanted attention…

Ada groaned. “Alright, partypooper! I’m going! I’m going!”

Besides. Simone was waiting inside with a hot cup of tea and some nice, freshly made purple.

“Really?” Hearing that Ada all but jumped from the lowest branch and ran back towards the safehouse. “Race you back!”

[From the treeline the White Court’s best assassin watched the scene in silence and smiled to herself. Then the door of the house closed and all was quiet once more]