A Sleigh Ride Together

Chapter One

C'mon its lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

-Sleigh Ride

It was the first snow of the season and the wind blew the small white flakes around like a snow globe. It looked like a perfect winter day, with only a thin layer on the ground.

A woman stood on the sidewalk, watching the snow come down. She smiled as a horse trotted up, bells jingling around it's neck.

"Care for a ride?" asked the man on the horse, dressed in a Santa suit.

She looked the sleigh over, "Alright. But I better not get any coal this year."

"Just you?"

The girl nodded, her dark chestnut hair moving with the wind. With that, she began to climb into the sleigh.

That's when a dark-haired man came up, "Mind if I join you?"

He smiled at the girl, whom he'd spoken to earlier that night in the hotel lounge. They hadn't spoken about anything important, just smalltalk.

"If you must," she smiled and scooted to the other side, making room for the man.

"Why thank you," he said, sitting next to her.

The sleigh began to move and the woman shivered, pulling her thin jacket tighter.

He took his leather jacket off and placed it around the woman's shoulders, "Here, let me..."

"No, really. It's freezing, I can't let you do that," she responded, making a small yet failing attempt at giving the coat back.

"Sure you can," he insisted, watching the snowflakes land on her hair.

"Well, I guess it's mine now then," she smiled and pulled out his wallet. "Let's see what else I have now..."

Upon opening the wallet she saw more than a few different ID's, all with different names on them. She looked up at the man intrigued.

"Which one's really yours?" she eyed him.

"Where would the fun in me telling you that be?" he responded. "Show me yours, I'll show you mine.

"Arbre..." the woman said her name.

"Dean. Hm...Arbre, that's an interesting name."

"Well, I'm an interesting person," Arbre laughed. "It's not really all that interesting. Means tree. And I'm the interesting one? You've got like a hundred fake IDs in your wallet."

"Never said I wasn't interesting."

She took off Dean's coat, handing it back to him, "You need it more, interesting Dean. You've got short sleeves, at least I've got a jacket of sorts."

Dean looked at the woman he couldn't even say he knew. The girl he'd merely met.

"The cold isn't all that bad."

Arbre responded with a smirk, "Which is why I don't need your jacket."

"Well then..." Dean began.

"End of the line," the Santa interrupted, stopping the sleigh where they started. "Happy holidays."

Dean got out first and then helped Arbre down.

"It was nice meeting you. Even if your name means tree."

"You too," she smiled. "Even if your wallet has some questionable items in it."

The two looked back at the Santa and said in unison, "Merry Christmas."

They looked at each other and laughed before walking their separate ways. The Santa watched for a moment, smiling.

Dean stopped before going back inside the hotel, turning to look at the Santa. Both he and the sleigh were gone already, with no marks in the snow to show he'd ever been there.


Author's Note: So I had this cute idea for something like this. And it was going to be a little one-shot, but I changed my mind. It took me a couple days to type this up and in those couple days, I came up with a plot. So now I'm pretty excited. Reviews, as always, are great. We writers love them. And they might influence me to change my mind about some aspects of the story as I have planned already.