What surprised Mestral more than the sudden snow moving into the area as he drove in his simple truck to a volunteering event, was his daughter's reaction to it in the passenger seat. Val came along sometimes to help with the housebuilding projects, depending on how her education was going, When she had triumphantly finished her homework on the evening prior, he had given his consent for her to come build with him on the chilly Saturday project.

Mostly these projects were something to help pass his time. Mestral didn't have a career and mostly played the stock market for money- very successfully, having casually invented some software to basically do it for him. It provided for their own needs, but his sense of community from growing up on Vulcan had never quite fallen off. Today the volunteers that Mestral worked with were painting the interiors of a few houses that they had been rebuilding in a low-income neighborhood a few miles away. It was too cold to do any of the needed outdoor work. Since the project wasn't dangerous or overly complicated, he had elected to invite along his eleven year old daughter to help.

Val was in her denim yardwork overalls with thermals, underneath her winter coat and wool toboggan, while Mestral wore a thick flannel plaid shirt and jeans under his. She had elected to wear the hat so that she could pull her hair back, not dissimilar to how Mestral used his to hide his Vulcan ears. They rode in silence into town, Mestral focused on driving and Val looking out the window at the gloomy cloudcover.

She gasped suddenly. "Dad!"

Mestral glanced over at his daughter. "Yes?"

"It's snowing!" she said excitedly. Mestral frowned slightly, having to remind himself again that he had promised her mother that he would not to impede Val's enthusiasm no matter how much he disapproved of it. "There are snowflakes falling, look!"

There were indeed. It had snowed occasionally in Albuquerque, but not for long and never enough to accumulate. This was their first winter in the Ozarks of Arkansas and apparently it did actually snow here. So far all they had experienced was ice and sleet but it was indeed snowing now.

"What cloud type creates snow?" Mestral quizzed. Val didn't miss a beat.

"Altostratus. Sometimes cumulonimbus," she said, calming down under her father's cool demeanor. "I've never seen snowfall like this before though."

The flakes were indeed coming down rather hard, and Mestral turned on the radio to the weather station as they navigated the city streets. Apparently this was the beginning edge of a series of snowfalls that were supposed to hit over the afternoon and overnight. Hazardous weather, school and business cancellations were probable but not until the next day, so he decided not to turn around and they pulled to the curb down the street from the houses that the volunteers were fixing.

The men and women who volunteered for the community loved Val; she was usually the only child to help out and when her father wasn't around, she showed a wicked sense of humor. Mestral knew about this, but he hadn't figured out how to address this, or even if he needed to. There had never been a human/Vulcan hybrid before and in Val's first eleven years, he had determined that playing by ear was often the best policy despite how ridiculous it would be for a traditional Vulcan family.

Eight hours later, two of the three houses were completely painted and the third house was put off to a later date due to weather. Everybody wanted to get home before the snowstorm hit, Mestral and Val included. They cleaned up and organized the equipment, said goodbyes, and mutually split up to go home. Val told him stories that the other workers had shared throughout the day as Mestral drove, and they got home at dusk just as the roads were beginning to get slick. They bathed and cleaned up, and watched the snow start piling up over bowls of soup.

The next morning, Mestral woke to a scream and a door slamming. He jumped out of bed and ran into the living room. Nothing was out of place or broken. He frowned, and a sound outside caught his attention. He looked out a window and saw Val with just her coat over her flannel pajamas and rainboots, looking around enraptured. He sighed slightly and put on his own coat and gloves, grabbing scarves and hats for both of them as he stepped into his boots and went outside.

"Put these on," he said bluntly, handing Val her gloves and hat as he put his own on. "And I will teach you how to make a snowman."