Man, I'm cruising through this story! I've got two chapters ready after this one, but I've set a goal to not post a new chapter until I have the next two chapters ahead of it finished and ready to post. In this chapter, I've introduced my OC, Alex. She's a big character in the series, so pay attention!

Little did they know, that back in Burgess there was another person puzzling over that day's events. She was Jamie's grade and age, being twelve. She had brownish hair that was cut off just below her shoulders. She had green eyes and freckles, and was pretty much a loner.

Her name was Alex.

School had just been let out. She had gathered her sketchbook and pencils and went to her locker. She said a quiet 'Hello' to Jamie, who had always been nice to her and was the closest person she had to a friend. Not that she was unsocial. She just didn't really hang out with most girls in her grade.

She pulled on her jacket over the white sweater she always wore to school, and stepped outside into the frosty air. Walking across the school yard and passing Jamie's group of friends, she heard the murmurs of 'Jack Frost' passing through the group.

Not surprising. Jamie had the reputation of believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Alex didn't believe in that kind of stuff anymore. She hadn't since she was six, and her brother and his friends had laughed at her for such beliefs. So she was a non-believer.

She reached the entrance of the woods, where she had to walk through to get home. The snow made it difficult for her, as no one had shoveled the path through the woods.

That was when something extraordinary happened.

A long stick fell from the sky and hit Alex on the head. That wasn't the extraordinary part, lots of sticks fell from the trees. The extraordinary part was when she picked it up.

It was long, probably even longer than her older brother was. The end was curved, so it looked like a shepherd's staff. It was caked with frost, and cold to the touch. Alex turned it over in her hands. She twirled it like a baton. It was pretty cool. She'd bring it along with her. As she was straightening it up, she hit it against the nearest tree. That was the extraordinary part.

The place where the staff had touched the tree turned shiny, and then frost started spreading across the place where it had been touched. Alex gazed, open mouthed, at this result. She gripped the staff with two hands, and touched the tree again, higher up.

The same results followed.

Alex stared down at her hands. She had found a magic staff. A frost staff.

A winter staff.

Because it was human nature to do so, Alex ran through the woods, touching random things with the winter staff, turning it frosty and cold. Then the rational part of her calmed her down and told her to slow down, to take a look at this before she went and froze planet earth over.

She sat herself down on a rock, and examined it from tip to tip. She had confirmed it not to be battery-operated, electronic, or solar powered. She had found a magic staff.

Alex gripped the staff tightly and concentrated. Hard. She felt something deep inside her soul push along with her. She felt something flutter across her cheek, and realized it had started snowing.

This was awesome.

She ran along the path, making it snow harder, harder, harder, until she could barely see in front of her face. Waving the staff around, having so much fun, then, WHOOSH!

The wind had picked her up off her feet, and now she was hovering a foot or two off the ground. So she could control the winds as well. Interesting.

She now flew above the treetops, just skimming the bare branches with her stomach. This seemed like a dream, but it felt so real. She really, really hoped it wasn't a dream.

If it was, she never wanted to wake up.

* * *

After a while, Alex realized she probably had to get home. Not that her parents would notice if she had gone missing.

She flew home most of the way, but where the woods ended, she landed on the ground, (rather roughly; she would have to work on that) and walked the rest of the way home.

This part of the town was kind of dirty, with tiny houses and small, chain-link fences that fenced in a front yard of dead grass. Alex's was the one nearest to the woods.

Normally she would have gone through the front door to attract some attention. But today, she entered through the back door with the staff. She didn't want to give attention to it.

No one was in the kitchen when she came in, which made the cost clear all the way up to the bedroom. Her older brother, Ben was probably out with some gang. Dad was probably at work, and Mom was probably sleeping on the couch in the living room.

She didn't have any trouble getting to her room and locking the door behind her. She dropped her stuff on the floor of her messy bedroom and sat down on her bed with the staff in her lap. She surveyed her room carefully. It was not messy because she was a messy person. It was messy because Ben had been in it, snooping around for some money. She couldn't hide the staff in here, Ben came in at least every day while she was out, looking for money. He knew she had money, he just hadn't been able to find it yet. That's because she didn't hide it in her room.

Gripping the staff tightly, she opened the window of her bedroom and carefully stepped out onto the roof. There was a big old oak tree in the backyard. Her father said at least once a week that he planned to cut it down. They all knew, though, that he couldn't earn the money to. One of the branches of the tree jutted out near the roof, and Alex had no trouble jumping onto it, and crawling into the mess of thick, gnarled, branches.

Inside the tree, there was enough room to sit down. If it was summer, the canopy Alex had constructed out of leaves and branches would be more hidden, but snow provided just enough cover, anyway. It was concealed in such a way that it could be a tree house, and for Alex it had served just that purpose. It was where she had hidden all of her treasures, and was where she would place the staff for safe keeping.

It was like a second home to Alex. Cold in the winter, but still a home. She relaxed against the nearest branch, and sighed as she admired the winter staff, leaned up against the adjacent trunk.

She wondered where it came from, and why it had fallen from the sky. More importantly, why had it hit her on the head?