I stood up, and immediately regretted falling. There was a spider web of cracks branching out from where I fell. I tried moving my foot, but that was rewarded with 5 more cracks in the ice. I started to panic. How am I gonna get out of this? Then I remembered my cell phone. I dug in my pockets for it, but it wasn't there. Where is the dang thing? I know I left with it this morning….oh wait. I never grabbed it off of my nightstand. Idiot. Now I really started to panic. I knew I was too far back in the woods for anybody to hear me if I yelled. I was officially screwed.
I looked around the ice again, and found a spot where there were barely any cracks. I bent down low, ready to jump over to that spot. I shifted my footing, and sprung.
As soon as I jumped I realized I had made a mistake. The ice where I was just at finally broke, leaving an empty hole in the ice. When I landed on the spot that supposedly had no cracks, I slid about a foot onto a spot with a lot of cracks. As soon as my weight hit that spot, I heard the ice give a small groan, then give way under me, plunging me into the deep pond.
I let out a squeal before the water engulfed me, and then I was choking on the water. I tried to swim back to the surface, but the cold water was making my movements sluggish, and the water weighed my clothes down. I could already feel the burning in my chest from lack of air, and blackness was starting to eat at the edge of my vision. I stared up at the hole in the ice, my vision dimming rapidly, and the last thing I saw was the outline of a person on the surface.
I woke to the feeling of something incredibly soft cocooning me. I was warm and cozy, a stark contrast to the feeling I had just a minute ago. Am I dead? That was the only reasonable explanation. I cracked my eyes open, and opened them all the way when I saw where I was. It was a small, cozy room, with a fireplace in the middle and a fire blazing inside. I pulled myself into a sitting position, and looked around the room. There was a night table to the left of the bed, with a small piece of paper on it. I leaned over and picked the paper up, reading:
Welcome to the North Pole!
If you need anything, don't hesitate to ring the bell.
-SC
SC? I'm in the North Pole, so that could only mean….Santa Clause? I decided to test my theory by picking up the ornate bell beside the note, and gave it a few rings. The ring sounded like a million icicles were tinkling together, and it was much too delicate of a sound to be heard from outside of the room. I was about to ring it again more forcefully, when the door flew open and a jolly Russian waltzed into my room, a silly grin plastered to his face.
"Hello! Glad to see you are awake and not sleeping with fishes, no? My name is Santa Claus, but you can call me North." He said with a bright smile. He had a heavy Russian accent, a round belly, a bushy white beard and white hair. The sleeves were rolled up on his red patched shirt, and his left fore-arm had 'nice tattooed on it, and the right he had 'naughty'. So this was Santa.
The woman standing, no hovering next to him looked like a hummingbird and peacock crossed with a human. She had a huge smile on her face, and was rapid firing out orders to the hummingbirds that flitted next to her. She was a ball of energy, and has zipping up and down on the air like a restless hummingbird. She had beautiful feathers covering her body, starting with greenish yellow feathers on her shoulders, followed by teal feathers, which melted into royal blue ones on her arms and sides. She had a plume of royal blue feathers with violet tips as her tail feathers, and her wings her going too fast to see. She had a slim face, which was framed by more beautiful feathers. Her head was covered in feathers, which travelled onto her face as far as her nose, and she had one solid yellow feather running up the middle of the blue and green ones. She had pink eye shadow on, which complemented the blues and green of her feathers wonderfully. If only I had my sketchbook, these people would exhaust my paints in a heartbeat.
I smiled at Santa, or North as he said. "It is better to be in a warm cozy bed than at the bottom of a lake. Thank you for saving me."
"It is my pleasure housing a child who believes in us. But you should know, I was not the one who saved you." North smiled at the woman next to him, and she introduced herself.
"I'm the Tooth Fairy, but you can call me Tooth. Of course you know what I do, and it is soooo exciting to meet one of my believers! What's your name?" She fired off rapidly, and I had to repeat her sentence in my mind to hear every word.
"I'm Tori. Nice to meet you guys. My mom always told me stories about you guys, and I always believed her. I can't wait to tell her she was right!" I beamed at them. "Thank you for saving my life, Tooth." I added.
She smiled knowingly at me. "Oh, I wasn't the one who saved you either." She added the next part with a mischievous grin. "Do you know of a guy named Jack Frost?"