The dark sky of night begins to brighten with the rising of the Novarian sun, and the thick barrier of precipitating clouds becomes a brighter shade of gray with each passing minute, shedding light on a snow-covered, semi-urban landscape. It is barely seven hours into the day outside of the planetary capital, Xenoxia, and a heavy snow falls from the obscured sky, adding to the foot of accumulation that had fallen through the night. Activity is at a bare minimum in this suburb of the main city, with snow covering all avenues of transportation, from the driveways to the roads themselves. Of course, the plows have been working into the wee hours of the morning to keep the main routes clear of slush, but they work to no avail as additional snowfall consistently fills the gaps of progress.
The day is November 15; near the beginning of winter, as to be expected from such weather. Inside a small house with a large snow-covered yard within the suburb, Dr. Katherine Manx sleeps inside her moderately-sized bedroom with the blinds down and a little nightlight on by her bed; she isn't fond of waking up in complete darkness. The night before, everyone in the city was aware of the oncoming winter storm as local meteorologists kept the populace updated through the media on the oncoming onslaught of snow. However, it was uncertain how severe the accumulation of snow would have been through the early morning hours.
Ten minutes after seven, the alarm clock on her nightstand by the bed begins to blare, causing Kat to stir as she feels for the button to disable the alert. She sits up in her white nightgown with spaghetti straps and rubs her eyes, still a bit tired from keeping up with the weather reports from the night before.
"I need some more sleep; that night didn't last very long……OH!"
Remembering the circumstances, her tired expression immediately changes to excitement as she rips the covers off of her body and rolls over to the other side of the queen-size bed by the shaded window. As Kat gets to her feet, a pull of the string raises the blinds and fills the room with a white light that blinds her momentarily. With her hands in front of her face to guard her eyes, she peeks over them after a minute to verify with clearer vision. Brilliant white snow blankets her porch, her yard, and everything as far as the eye can see with a thickness that shocks her initial judgment.
"Oh my gosh, no one was calling for this much precipitation! I'm not sure if I'm going to even be able to make it to the hospital today or not. I guess I better take a look at my driveway…"
The amount of light reflected by the snow surface creates more than adequate lighting for her house during the day, and Kat proceeds to walk around the bed and turn off her lights to save energy.
"Personally, I really hope I can't make it to work today. I mean, normally it wouldn't matter because I would be alone at home on days like this, and I would want to be at work doing something. But, Doggie changes everything…"
The center open area of the residence remains dark as Doggie Cruger sleeps on the foldout bed from the couch in the living area of her home. It had been a few months since his escape from the planet Sirius and his transport's crash into the Novarian capital, and he and Kat have steadily built their friendship up from the moment they met in the hospital. It is during this time that Doggie experiences so much more about the universe than he ever dreamed of knowing before. He lies silently and shirtless under a few blankets as the door to Kat's bedroom opens and she walks out into the open area to bring some light into the place.
"At least the only electricity I'll be burning during the day today is my heater."She walks to the door and checks the internal and external temperatures on a digital display. "23? It's cooler than they predicted too…I hope the high today doesn't reach above freezing…"
Dr. Manx continues around the openly-adjacent rooms, opening the blinds and letting the daylight in. As the light comes in from the side Doggie is facing, he begins to wake, squirming around on the bed. Kat hears it creaking with his shifting weight as she raises the last set of blinds and turns to see him as he sits up. "Good morning, Doggie."
He yawns as she approaches him, noticing the landscape of snow through the window behind her. Kat sits on the bed beside him and rubs his head affectionately. Doggie, liking her touch, grins with satisfaction, but he continues to stare outside. Eventually, Kat catches on to his dumbfounded expression. "Oh, it snowed a whole lot last night!"
Doggie is silent as she looks at her. "W-what?"
"You can't see all the snow on the ground outside?"
He looks out the window again, seeing the heavy snowfall that continued. "That's……snow?"
Dr. Manx is unsure how to react, sensing that there is something she doesn't know. "Uhhh……you don't know what……snow is?"
"Well…no, I don't…"
"You've…never seen it?"
"No…I never saw this on Sirius…"
"I can't believe it; he's never seen snow before? That's sad. I wonder what he thinks about it…"
Kat takes a hold of his hand and stands up from the bed. Doggie pulls the blankets off of him with his free hand and swings his legs over the side of the foldout, then stands up and follows her to the window in his black pajama pants. The visibility is greatly reduced because of the heavy precipitation; the next house over is barely visible. To her, snow is a wonderful thing to lift people's spirits and to slow down society so it can stop to enjoy the simpler things of life. To him, it is a white and multiplying virus which falls from a passing carrier and clings to anything and everything, overtaking all matter to and beyond the horizon. The blue dog lets out a soft, high-pitched whine from his nose, stating his distress at what he thinks he is seeing.
Kat looks up at him, concerned. "What is it, Doggie? Is something wrong?"
"……It's……scary……" With that, he lets out another whine.
"What, the snow??" Doggie slowly nods, fearing the supposed "parasite" that blanketed the ground. "But…why does it scare you?"
"It's just……everywhere…" Kat begins to realize the source of her friend's caution, thinking back to what she knows about Doggie's life. On Sirius, Doggie spent the vast majority of his time located about five degrees of latitude north of the equator, in which there is a small variable of temperature between consistently warm seasons. However, on Novar III, the capital is positioned nearly sixty degrees of longitude to the north of its equator, creating a much colder climate in comparison, not to mention that the planet-star distance is also greater.
The ring of the communicator breaks the silence, and Kat turns to cross through the house to receive the incoming message. Pressing a button on the wall by the entry patched the connection. "Katherine Manx speaking. Oh, hello Doctor. Yes, I'm fine, thank you." She looks out the window toward the front yard to verify conditions as Doggie continues to look out toward the backyard in fear and lightly whine. "Well, from what I can see, the driveway is completely covered, and there's a huge ridge of snow piled up along the street. Heck, I can barely even see the street from here through the snowfall. Yes, what do the forecasts say? You're kidding. Oh, thank you, I really appreciate that. Okay, you take care of yourself over there. Good-bye." She presses a button to close the link.
Hearing Kat's end of the conversation, Doggie takes notice. "Who was that?"
"It was one of my supervisors; he said I could take the day off today!" She quickly comes back over to Doggie, quite relieved and excited that she can stay home. "It helps when you're primarily based in the research field."
"That's great, because I'd be worried if I had to spend today alone, surrounded by all this white stuff…"
"Really, Doggie, it's not the bad thing you think it is! Snow is wonderful!"
He sighs, not wanting to believe her, but he realizes that Kat probably knows what she is talking about. "Ok, then, prove it."
Kat smiles at him. "Ok, I will." With that, she takes Doggie by the arm and begins leading him toward her bedroom door. "C'mon, let's get dressed!"
He becomes alarmed. "What? Where are we going?"
"We're going to play in the snow, of course!" When he hears this, he begins to resist and whine as Kat brings him into her bedroom, and they stop. As Kat sees this, she develops a consequential approach, fairly sure that it will work. "Well, if you don't want to play outside with me today, I guess I might as well call the hospital back and tell them I'll be coming to work after all…"
Doggie stops resisting upon hearing that Kat might possibly leave him alone for the day. "Okay, okay, I'll play…"
She puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry, Doggie, I'll make sure that the snow doesn't create a worrisome experience. Everything will be fine." Inside the bedroom, Kat slides open a large portion of the wall, revealing a long closet space. "Be sure you put on plenty of layers; it's really cold outside."
He walks up and sorts through the clothes that Kat had bought for him after his stay at the hospital, then pulls out a large blue sweater and a t-shirt, and then a pair of green cargo pants. Doggie then walks out and into the living area to give Kat some privacy, closes the door behind him, and tosses his clothes on the foldout bed. Meanwhile, Dr. Manx realizes that he has left and pulls a t-shirt and an orange sweater out of her side of the closet, along with some jeans.
As they dress in separate rooms, daylight outside has reached its maximum with the overcast conditions, and the snow continues to fall as hard as ever. An additional two inches of accumulation has built up in addition to the foot that had fallen the night before, and the environment is desolate compared to a normal day at this time. Under normal circumstances, many people would be filling the roads with their hover-cars on their way to work, but now the streets remain clear as the majority of the populace has taken heed of the conditions and are staying home. Nonetheless, accidents occur at various intervals down the road, mainly due to a hover-car scraping over a snow bank in the road, causing a malfunction with the G-diffusion systems underneath the vehicle and the loss of control. Even with all the people staying home on this day, very few venture outside to enjoy the snow, and would rather enjoy the sight from a heated interior.
Doggie finishes dressing first and stands by the window once more to look at the falling snow, thinking about what Dr. Manx was about to drag him into. "Well, this is great. I've only heard of this 'snow' for only five minutes and now I have to go out in it. I guess I might as well trust Kat; she knows a lot more about things than I ever will. Even so, I'm still not very thrilled about playing in something that smothers everything."
The sound of a door opening breaks his thoughts, and he turns to see Kat walking in with a black coat, a matching cap, some socks, and some large gloves. "Here, you're going to need these too." She comes over and dumps the load on his bed.
He approaches. "Thanks Kat." Doggie proceeds to sort through the remaining items, reaching for the coat first. The thoughts of his life now compared to the life he had before strike him as he sees his own clothes before him, more worth than he's ever had. "You know, I can't thank you enough for all of this…"
"What?" Doggie catches Kat off guard.
"Well, for bringing me here and giving my life a fresh start."
Kat smiles at him. "Doggie, you give your thanks by staying with me. Without you here, I don't know how long I'd last by myself. In fact, I should be the one thanking you." She comes around the bed and hugs him, and he embraces her back, grinning.
"Heheh, don't mention it." They share each other's warmth for a few seconds and release, and Doggie continues to finish his outfit.
"I'm going to put the rest of my stuff on; I'll be right back." Kat goes back to her room, and finds the remaining accessories for her own getup—blue gloves, a blue coat with a hood, a couple of pairs of socks, and some brown boots. After finishing her outfit, she comes back into the open room to see that Doggie is also finished dressing. "You ready to go outside?"
He sighs. "…Yeah……I'm ready…" Doggie walks over to her, and they take each other's hand. Kat leads him to the front door and opens it, allowing yet another beam of light to enter the house. As they walk outside into the nearly knee-high accumulation, the door closes behind them, and the blue dog starts to whine and whimper on the porch, cringing as the snow starts falling on his head, muzzle, and shoulders. Unexpectedly, as his scales come in contact with the sub-freezing air, they change from blue to a light blue color.
Kat takes notice. "Huh? Doggie, you're changing color!" She points as Doggie realizes that he cannot look at his own face without a mirror and whines even more. He tries to turn and escape back into the shelter of the house, but he trips in the depth of the snow and falls off the porch with a yell, landing face first in the yard. Dr. Manx gasps and makes her way carefully down the steps and into the yard, trudging through the snow all the way. As she makes it to him, he pulls his head up out of the snow. "Doggie, are you alright?!"
Doggie has snow all over his face and muzzle as he notices that he has some in his mouth as well. He gives a puzzled look as he swallows the melted snow. "This tastes like……water?"
"Of course, Doggie, that's all it is! Frozen water." A look of realization and relief comes across his face. He then reaches down, grabs another handful of snow, and eats it. "Ok, you're not supposed to eat it!"
Kat reaches down and forms a mass of snow between her hands, shaping it into a ball. Doggie finishes eating snow and sees her forming the snowball. "What are you doing?"
"Oh, I'm forming a snowball." She finishes and stands up as Doggie gets up out of the snow. "Hey, look at that!" She points at an imaginary object behind Doggie, and he turns his head to look, giving Kat the perfect opening. She takes the shot with the snowball, hitting him in the back of the head and knocking his cap off into the snow. He is startled in response and looks back at her with the rest of his light blue head exposed. "Oh my gosh, Doggie, are you cold?"
"No, not really. In fact, I'm starting to burn up in this."
"Gosh, it's 23, and he isn't cold? Strange…" Doggie trudges back to get his cap, then takes his coat and gloves off and sets them all on the porch. "You sure you're not cold?"
"Actually, I feel quite comfortable now." He notices her awkward look. "Yeah, I know it's strange; I don't understand it either." Doggie then remembers the snowball and bends down to scoop up a mass of snow. As he sweeps more snow onto his pile to use, Kat begins to realize that this is going to be no ordinary snowball.
"Uh, Doggie……that's a little big…" He just continues to shape the two-foot sphere of snow, grinning. Once he finishes, he lifts the ball up in front of him and trudges through the snow after Kat, laughing the whole way. Dr. Manx grew wide-eyed and screamed, trying to run away, but she trips and falls in the snow as Doggie catches up. As she tries to get back to her feet, he comes up behind her and crumbles the snowball all over her head, covering her in snow. She falls back down with the weight of the snow on her, laughing. Doggie laughs too and lies down in the snow next to her. "See? I told you the snow is wonderful!"
"Yes, I stand corrected!" They laugh together as the storm continues to dump snow on the city. Dr. Manx gets up on her knees and begins to bury Doggie with snow. "What are you doing now?"
"Oh, I'm just taking advantage of your resistance to cold." Kat chuckles as she shoves snow against and over his long tail, and then over his body. The added accumulation from the storm helps bury Doggie as she works. "You're very fascinating, you know that?"
"Come on, I'm not that interesting."
"Oh, but you are! I feel like every day I'm learning something new about you. Like a scientific discovery that never ends." Doggie hears this and lets out a light whine, being reminded of his dreadful past in the Sirian laboratory. Kat hears his dismay and stops burying him in snow as she bends over and looks at him face-to-face. "No, I didn't mean that. Everything's okay, Doggie. Everything's okay…"
"I know it is, and I know you mean well." He sighs as Kat resumes burying him in the snow. "I guess I need to just let go……but it's so hard…"
"Just give it time, Doggie. Give it time." Kat finishes burying him with snow, except for his head. Doggie decides to close his eyes and lay unresponsive as Kat laughs at his appearance. After a minute, she notices his situation and becomes concerned. "Doggie?" She bends down and pats his face, but with no response. "Doggie?? Doggie!"
He suddenly opens his eyes and yells as he rises out of the pile, scaring Kat and causing her to run across the yard as best she can in the knee-deep snow, as Doggie follows behind. Soon, he is able to catch up and embrace her, causing them both to fall again with Kat on top of her canine partner as he continues to hold on. "You're easy to scare!" Doggie laughs.
"Hey, stop laughing!" Doggie rolls to his side and sets Kat in the snow, and she rolls back over to face him. "You want to make a snowman?"
"A snowman? Is that like a man made out of snow?"
"Well, yeah, something like that."
"How do you make one?"
"Here, let me show you." Kat gets up and brushes herself off, and then bends down, grabs a handful of snow, and forms a ball. "Ok, do what I do." Doggie rises to his feet as well and makes his own snowball. "First, you make a snowball, like this. Next, you place it on the ground and roll it around, causing it to collect snow as it rolls and increase in size." She does so, and her snowball begins to get larger and larger. "Try it, Doggie!"
Doggie places his snowball on the snow and crouches down to roll it. Slowly but steadily, it begins to collect additional snow and enlarge. "Am I doing it right?"
"That's it; you're doing great!" By this time, Kat's snowball is about a foot and a half in diameter. "You want the do the ball on the bottom? It's going to be the biggest one."
"Sure, how big should I make it?" Doggie's snowball is about two feet wide now.
"Probably about three feet should be good enough." They continue rolling their balls of snow throughout the yard, creating a couple of winding tracks which curve in seemingly random directions. After a few minutes, Doggie's has reached the desired size, and he rolls it to the center of the yard. Kat finishes with hers soon after and notices that he has finished. "Yes, that's great! It only needs to be smoothed out a little bit. Here, let me put mine on top of it…" She proceeds to lift her two-foot snowball up and trudge to the center of the yard, and then places hers on top of his.
Meanwhile, Doggie is smoothing out the bottom ball as best he can with his bare hands, scooping up snow from the ground to fill in the gaps. "How's this look, Kat?"
She looks down as she smoothes out the upper ball. "Great, you're really getting the hang of it. And to think, you were so scared of snow."
"Well, when you see something so expansive that you've never seen in whole life, it tends to hit you."
"Yeah, I guess you're right." Soon, Doggie and Kat finish with the lower two-thirds of the frozen sculpture. "Alright, we're getting close to being done. All we need is a smaller snowball for the head."
"I'll take care of it." Doggie bends down to form another core for the top section, but begins to look uncomfortable as he works.
"Are you alright?"
He stops. "I'm still feeling a bit warm."
Kat sighs in disbelief. "I hope you know what you're doing. It's nearly into the teens out here."
"Don't worry, I'll be alright." The canine proceeds to pull his soaked sweater over his head, exposing his t-shirt and forearms underneath. His additional exposed scales change to light blue immediately upon coming in contact with the subfreezing air.
"I guess the change in color is part of an innate climatic adaptation mechanism…"
Doggie looked at her, confused. "A what?"
"It's an ability you apparently have to adapt to temperature extremes. Don't worry about asking me about it, though, because I really don't have a clue of any of the details."
"Well, we'll probably find out, eventually…" He trudges through the snow back to the porch to drop his sweater off with the rest of his discarded clothing. "She'll find out as much as I let her, that is. I don't know what other qualities I possess, but as for the ones I do know, they will remain a secret. Sure, she seems unconditional in her care for me, but I don't want to risk losing her to some obtuse trait of mine. These features have been the source of pain for me for so long, and I finally am past the hatred; I don't want to go back."
As Doggie sets his sweater down and pulls the rest of his accessories out of the newly-fallen accumulation, he looks back at Kat through the heavy snowfall, watching as she places the head on the snowman and begins to smooth out the rougher surfaces. He smiles as he thinks about her. "She's beautiful. It's hard to believe that only person in the universe who really cares about me is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. This may be too soon to be feeling like this, but……I think I love her."
Dr. Manx finishes perfecting the smoothness of the top ball and peers from the other side to see her canine companion seemingly lost in thought as he stares at her. "Doggie? Are you ok?"
He then breaks out of the trance and responds. "Yeah, yeah, I'm coming." Doggie makes his way back through the now 15-inch deep snow to help Kat some more. "Ok, now what?"
"Let's see…I can poke holes in the head for the eyes and mouth." She begins to do so. "We're going to need a couple of branches for the arms. Can you get a couple from below the trees in the backyard?"
"Sure, if I can find them." He slowly proceeds around the house through the driving precipitation, only to lose his footing and fall around the corner, out of the view of Kat. His shirt gets drenched in the snow, turning translucent with the absorbed moisture and causing the rest of his upper body to match his already discolored scales. "Sure, snow may be fun, but this much? I can barely walk in this mess."
He looks up, and then realizes that Kat can't see him, especially through the blinding snow. "However, with my position, now would be a good time to see what this new form…or color…is capable of. I wonder…" After getting on his knees, Doggie outstretches a hand toward the snowfall, as if trying to manipulate water. Instead, the snow from the ground rises up with his hand in a rope like fashion, following his motions in the air with fluency. At sub-freezing temperatures, he is capable of bending ice.
Doggie gives a look of surprise as he lowers his arm and drops the frozen mass. "This is incredible. I could do so much with this power right now!" The light-blue canine thinks for a second, and then focuses on the snow beneath him. The patches beneath his feet solidify into solid ice to support his weight, and then begin to force upward to lift him to the surface of the accumulation, all with the gestures of Doggies arms and his own thought patterns. Next, he makes the motion of walking, and he begins to slide across the snow's surface, keeping his thoughts on the patches of ice beneath his feet as he traverses to the backyard with ease. He stops his skating at one of the trees by the rear property line, and the ice patches break up into snow again.
"Wow. That was actually pretty fun. Now, I'm going to need some branches…" He looks up into the tree, with its barren branches and limbs. "But I don't want to take any from the tree. I know there should be some beneath the snow here, but searching for them would take forever……Let's try this." With some more focusing power, Doggie outstretches his arms toward the snow on the ground before flicking them upward and outward. A section of snow cover suddenly flies upward with his motion and piles ahead of him, completely uncovering a section of the ground, including a few dead branches that Kat would need.
"That saved twenty minutes." He bends over to grab a couple of equally-sized limbs before looking around at the mess he had made. "I guess I better put things back the way they were so Kat won't get suspicious. That's all I would need—her finding things out and me getting backed into a corner…" To cover up the disturbances he made in the snow surface, Doggie makes a few sweeps with his arms to level the snow back to where it was originally, including smoothing out the tracks left by his snow skating. Branches in hand, he condenses the snow under his feet to ice again and begins skating back around the house, smoothing the tracks out behind him as he moves. As he reaches the corner, he stops skating and begins trudging through the accumulation as he did before, as Dr. Manx is back within his view.
As he approaches with the limbs, Kat finishes adding rocks to the face and the mid-section, filling the holes she poked earlier. She then sees Doggie coming with the branches. "Wow, with all that snow back there, you sure did find them quickly."
He reached her and handed her the branches, and she then goes around the snowman, poking the branches into each side. Kat takes his hand after she is done and they trudge around to the front side to view their progress.
"Hmm, it looks like there's still something missing…" Kat tilts her head to one side and thinks. Doggie is tall enough to look over the snowman and see the porch, where his outerwear lay with the hat on top. He then gets an idea, lets go of Kat's hand, and begins making his way back to the porch. "Doggie, what is it?"
"Something to finish our snowman!" he replies with a raised voice from the porch. He grabs the hat from the top of the pile and comes back behind the frozen creation before setting the hat on top, shaping out the points of the cap for his pointed ears. "How's that look?"
"It's perfect!" She laughs as the blank in her mind is filled, and Doggie comes back around the snowman to join her.
"Yes, it is."
Kat turns to look at him and notices his drenched, translucent shirt for the first time. "Ok, I think it's time we take you back inside." She takes his hand in her glove and begins leading him to the front door.
"What is it? I'm feeling fine! Really!"
"I'm not taking any chances. I mean, you've GOT to be cold!"
Doggie gives up and simply lets her lead him inside. "Oh well, the snow was starting to get kind of boring anyway." They climb up onto the porch and Dr. Manx opens the door. As Doggie becomes exposed to the warmth of the house again after his entry, his scale color immediately reverts back to blue. He then begins to shiver violently, as the warm environment overrules the icy slush on his body, making him vulnerable. "S-s-s-o-o-o-o c-c-c-c-o-o-o-o-o-o-l-d-d-d-d-d…"
Kat looks back. "Oh my gosh, we've got to get you under wraps quick." She closes the door, quickly sheds down to a shirt and pants for better movement, and then rushes to the restroom to gather many towels. She then comes back with a heap of towels and dumps them on the floor. Then, after leading Doggie further into the house, she pulls his drenched shirt and pants off and begins drying him off with towels, as he is virtually paralyzed with cold. After several minutes, the excess moisture on him is absorbed into the towels, and his shivering slows considerably. "I was waiting for something like this to happen, eventually. But you're definitely taking this better than anyone else I know. Heck, they would be already dead by now. You still cold?"
He is able to move again, and she turns to look at her. "Somewhat."
"Ok, I know what we should do next." Kat goes to her bedroom and slides open the closet, where she keeps plenty of spare blankets in response to the naturally cold climate. She pulls out all the blankets she has and comes back with her hands full of covers, stumbling around furniture to make her way to the open space in the living room, where she dumps the pile. She then takes a few blankets and lays them out on the floor. "Ok, Doggie, come here!"
He obediently comes to her and lies down on the blankets in only his black briefs. Kat then lies down next him and begins reaching over to the pile on her other side to drape covers over them. Several more minutes pass before the pile is depleted, and Doggie and Kat lie together, concealed under a thick barrier of fabric. "Feeling better?"
"Yeah, I kind of like this idea." He grinned.
"I knew you would." She kissed him on the cheek and they embraced under the covers before dozing off into a nap. And the snow continues to fall.