Sera closed her eyes in bliss, half of which was due to her indulged caramel frappuccino—icy in the heat which cursed the entire damned bottom part of the U.S. The other half was caused by the sheer joy she experienced from being away from her dysfunctional family. Ah, the benefits of being eighteen: she never had to return to the damned apartments she had spent her childhood moving to and fro from, she never had to tolerate the stupid assholes in her household anymore, she never had to go to court-ordered family therapy again (praise the Lord!), and, best of all, she could live on the opposite side of the country without fear of being accused of addiction every time she so much suggested she felt like drinking a cup of coffee.
Life. Was. Good.
She strolled over to the outdoors sitting area in view of most of the cute little shops there and took a seat near the fountain. Once in the shade of the umbrella at the table, she let out a sigh of relief. Here, she could relax in the sweltering heat that barely relented even in the midst of winter. Here, she could sit in peace, admire cute children without being annoyed by them, and internally snicker at their flustered adults. Here, she could kick back and enjoy life. She wiped her hand wet with condensation on her jean shorts, hooking back her hair from her sunglasses and knotting it into a bun to expose her neck to the faint breeze. She sipped her drink and unzipped her computer case. She pulled out her laptop.
And here was where she found the most respite. Here, in this eighteen-inch hardcore heavy-duty piece of electronic perfection, she could find what she couldn't in real life. The sweep of a digital brush creating epic pictures, the literary divinity found in the adventure of storytelling. What craving left dissatisfied by the harsh... reality of real life could be fulfilled in books, in games, in drawing. She plugged in her headphones, streaming Three Days Grace from Youtube and tapped her stylus against the screen of her drawing tablet as she lazily eyed her surroundings. Whatever responsibilities she had—her job, her bills, what she was doing with her life—could be ignored at the simple press of the power button. She sipped her frappuccino, looking around for a potential subject to crack her art-creating knuckles at.
That was when she saw the Christmas ornament.
It was actually relatively big, for an ornament. The shiny snow globe was empty inside, but a cute little plastic elf with curiously rabbit-like ears and a red suit reminiscent of Santa Claus was holding it. She squinted at it from behind the brown tint of her sunglasses.
"Alright, who's the lazy store manager screwed up majorly in taking down his decorations?" she muttered to herself. "For God's sake, it's been four months since Christmas. And I thought I procrastinated." She stood up, glanced warily about for any hobos who might snatch her laptop and coffee, and darted for the ornament. Nearing the fountain's rim, she snatched it up by it's jingly hat—cloth, not plastic—and ran back to her table. Almost disappointed she didn't get to shake her fist and curse hobos, she dropped the ornament on her table. The globe then proceeded to detach from the elf's hands and landed on her foot.
She winced, more at the inevitable breaking of the globe than at the pain, cursing under her breath. Shitty manufactured glue, she thought. Crouching, she held it before her eyes. Oddly enough, it hadn't even cracked, much less shattered. With a sigh, she sat back down in her chair, somehow-invulnerable snow globe in hand to carefully balance in the elf's hands.
There was no elf.
She blinked. The elf didn't magically reappear. She blinked again. Damned defected blinks. Blinked again. And then she saw the elf, except it wasn't back on the table where she had put it. It was climbing up her leg with little grabby hands pinching her skin, reaching for the globe in her hand. Huh. This is actually a damned good mechanical toy. She watched with only a raised eyebrow because that was what bad ass people did; that is, until the elf started beating the arm she held the globe with a silver trumpet-thingy that came from nowhere.
"Son of a bitch!" She grabbed at the elf with her free hand and pulled it away from her, instinctively raising the globe out of his reach. With no time to spare wondering what she looked like to the other people lounging around the tables, she dropped the elf on the floor, standing up to back away from it. Only the elf was a persistent bugger, and latched onto her foot. She shook her leg to get him off, wildly flailing on one foot.
Then he bit her.
She lost her balance, hard, and as she fell she closed her eyes so that she wouldn't have to witness how much of an idiot she looked like. Please, please don't let my coffee spill on my laptop. I will believe in you, God, for a whole minute if you do. I'll even leave cookies for Santa, like a good girl. I'll clean my room, vacuum the floor, abstain from coffee for a month—no, a week. No, who am I kidding? It's not like you—
And God laughed at her, in his wise and almighty way that was supposed to grant some precious insight, some awe-inspiring revelation. Because instead of spilling on her laptop, it spilled on her in a rush of icy cold. Only it wasn't caramel-sweet goodness that exploded over her in a burst of freezing chill against her heated, sweaty skin.
It was snow.
Snow, you know? The stuff that's fluffy and white? That comes maybe once every four to ten years? The stuff that makes winter the best season ever, in addition to being able to rock a pair of long-sleeves for once? You know, the stuff that you make snowmen, snow angels, snow balls, snow forts... snow-snow out of? The stuff that you absolutely don't want to touch at all when yellow? That's what she landed in. Not hard cement, snow. Which made as much sense as a sexually appealing flamingo singing Rick Astley, because it didn't snow. Not in April. Not in cowboy country south. Not in a place that was eighty degrees in late November.
Her eyes flew open as the air shimmered about her like steam rising from boiling water. The elf, where was the elf? Where was she? More importantly, where was the laptop that she had spent a thousand big ones on out of her own pocket? Where were the shops, the people, the tables?
Where was her fucking frappuccino?!
She pushed herself up, wiping off the snow that was quickly melting on her heat-scorched skin. Pulling her suddenly frost-encrusted sunglasses off, she wildly looked around for the elf. She saw him, a few yards away. Smiling. With the globe.
And then she did shake her fist and curse, with modernized vulgarity rather than archaic, flowery phrases, because the elf just laughed at her attempts to stumble over in the freezing snow. It made absurd jumping motions, the snow inside the globe swirling around a faint mirage of a structure she was too far away to see. Her fingers reached for the stupid, stupid elf, but it stepped away from her reach into the swirling mass of warped air behind it. She lunged. Too slow.
It was gone, and so was the crazy swirl that made her wonder if she needed therapy of a different kind. Leaving her stranded in a pile of snow left scattered in her frantic wake, without her laptop, without her coffee, without any clue as to how she was wherever she was. Without socks or sneakers or long pants or even a goddamned jacket.
Priorities. Priorities first. She stood up, her survival instincts kicking in. She had survived eighteen years of bat-crazy kin. She could survive this. The cold burned at her exposed skin as she took inventory of what she had. Jean shorts, mid-thigh. Black flip-flops. White t-shirt. Sunglasses, so she could freeze to death in style. Cell phone, wallet, keys to a car and a house that were beyond that damned swirly snow globe. She pulled her hair out of its improvised chignon, returning her trembling hands already red from the cold to their crossed position tight against her shivering self. She needed a jacket, preferably two, if she was going to live through the next hour. Only when she looked around for the closest clothing shop did she notice the group of kids shell-shocked at either her sudden, unexplained appearance and attire or at her round of unabashed cussing. Oops.
"None of you heard that," she told them sternly. One of them, a boy with particularly wide brown eyes stared at her, and she stared back, willing for her magical hypnotizing powers to pass through her sunglasses and make him forget that he had suddenly just expanded his vocabulary quite a bit. Hopefully there were no parents around. Hopefully.
"S-sledding?" A girl asked of the brown-eyed boy who was just about as cute as annoying little boys got. Nervous glances were passed around.
"Why are you dressed like that? Are you drunk?" said a particularly bulky and mean-looking girl with short, brown hair.
"Um, Cupcake..." The nerdy blonde boy immediately shut up at her glare.
"No, no, children," Sera said in a dignified tone of voice, "it's quite alright. As a matter of fact, I am not actually drunk. I'm making a fashion statement."
"A dumb one."
Sera shrugged at the impertinent girl. "Seeing that my stylish attire is clearly unappreciated, I shall take myself to the nearest clothing store and purchase new garb to vesture myself in clothing adequate to your silly mainstream tastes." She smiled beatifically at them.
There was a silence.
"...What?" One offered in tentative, unanimous confusion.
"Fare thee well, young children!" She sang, turning around with a wave. Her bravado lasted as long as it took to get out of their stunned line-of-sights before she broke out in a run for the nearest store. She slipped through the automatic doors and ran into the blessed warmth of air conditioned shop, and realized that there was a God, albeit one with a twisted, sick sense of humor.
She walked out of the store with a new pair of skinny jeans, socks, boots, winter accessories, and a beautiful black trench coat she had admittedly splurged on. If there was a time to spend, it was now, when she had no idea where the hell she was or what she was going to do. At least she was warm. Her numb self thawing out in the depths of her coat, she felt a little less miserable and a little less like she was going insane. She would get through this. Find a bank, catch a bus home. Or a plane. Or a magical snow globe carried around by insane elves. She reminded herself of her priorities. There would be enough time to wonder what the fuck was going on on her trip home.
She was debating whether or not she should pull a time-machine/transportation-device "Hey-random-stranger-what-year-is-it-I-mean-place-is-this-IT-WORKED!" when the boy whose cuteness she had so admired just a few minutes before slid past her on his sled. In the middle of the street. In the middle of a slew of cars. And holy Ronald McDonald, little boys did not sled through an intersection of moving cars without dying.
Sigh.
No time to wait for the pedestrian light. She sprinted past said pedestrians, earning a few honks, fingers, and incredulous looks. What was a few more to the already insane day she was having? And, clearly, stopping children from dying was higher on her priority list than thinking, because here she was, running downhill as recklessly as the kid was.
He turned sharply around the corner, completely defying physics. No time to try and make sense of things, either. She made the same sharp turn at a different road, hoping to cut him off. For the next few moments, she got to remark on just how fun sprinting on frosty sidewalk and dodging walking people in boots was.
She stepped foot in the park at the same instant that the boy was hurled into a pile of snow at the base of a statue. Warm once more from both her clothing and exertion, she hurled herself by his prone form. He's dead, he's dead, he's so dead. Someone call 911. But there his dazed eyes, crowing voice, and wide grin were, and she reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose, only to get slammed into by a couch of all things.
This day could not get any worse.
She was dimly aware through the lancing pain in her skull and shoulder of the boy wrapped in the arms connected to the body that had just shielded him from the two-hundred pound bulk of devil-spawned chair. Her body. Which kind of hurt, right now. Through the exclamations of his friends, only his voice got through to her.
"I can't breathe," he squeaked. Good thing, too, because otherwise she might have strangled him while she laid there in oblivion. She rolled off of him, groaning, and settled into the snow for the second time in the last thirty minutes.
"I lost a tooth!" he shouted to his relieved and very impressed friends as he sprang up with all the energy of a kid who had not just been hit by a piece of furniture traveling at twenty miles per hour. She didn't think she broke or dislocated anything. Her sanity, maybe, but who needed that anyways? She was going to have bruises all over. Not to mention a tiny ring of a bite mark on her leg.
"'Tis just a flesh wound," she said aloud to herself, and she knew she was alright. Quoting Monty Python and the Holy Grail was a straight give-away. She closed her eyes.
And freaked the shit out.
She stared with wide-eyes at her surroundings, lunging upwards. The kids turned their attention towards her, and the brown-eyed boy asked her if she was okay. No. No, she was not okay. Not at all.
The movie. The one that had came out last year, the one with what's-his-face. Who had made it? And it's name? As the opening of the movie came back to her, so to did whatever had happened to her and was happening right now suddenly make sense. The blow to her head had made her remember that much, but she could only remember it's storyline and ending and characters dimly. She did remember one thing in particular, though. She sharply turned around, ignoring the pounding in her head and in her pulse.
And gazed into the mischievous, ice blue eyes of Jack Frost himself.