February 5th 2020

Chapter 36
Their Holidays With Snow

Maya had hardly made it a secret, as December kicked off. She wanted snow. Not just a little bit, no. She wanted a whole freaking winter wonderland. It was their first year back in Austin, the first Christmas they'd be spending in their house, and it was going to be a great one, if she had any say in it. Sam would joke that the universe really had it in its best interests to make it so.

Whether it was the universe or simply the weather happening as it would, they woke up one Friday to find their world had been blanketed in white.

More to the point, they had been awakened to discover this. The sun was barely up, and they'd both been startled awake by the sound of Maya's phone chiming with an incoming Skype call.

"No, five more minutes…" she grumbled, face in her pillow, while Lucas lifted his head just enough to see the screen.

"I think that's the new four-year-old," he lay back down. If anything was going to convince her to ditch the warmth of those blankets, her little brother was definitely going to be a contender.

"I know, I know…" she sighed, lifting herself on her elbow while she reached for her phone, turning on the lamp first. As predicted, when the call connected, she was presented with the freckled face of Matthew Jonathan Hunter, aged four, as of today. "Happy birthday, baby brother," she smiled like she totally hadn't woken up a minute ago.

"Maya, are you going to come make a snowman, please?" MJ giddily asked.

"Well, sure," she laughed. "But we're going to need snow for… that…" she'd turned her head to look out the window as she said this, only to pause in surprise. "Woah…" At this, Lucas turned to look as well, and the surprise hit him as it had done her. "Yeah, okay, tonight?"

"Okay!"

After she'd hung up with her brother, Maya had climbed out of bed to join Lucas, who already stood at the window, and see what he saw.

"Cold, cold…" she backpedalled to get her slippers on and throw a robe over her PJs, but finally she got to see for herself… her wonderland.

Living out here on the lane, in Pappy Joe's old house, their home now, had always been like hitting the next level in how their surroundings could change everything. It was a far, far cry from her days in New York. Looking out the window now, it felt like she just had one thing in mind and it was to break out her camera, or pencils, or paints… possibly all three, one after the other.

"Do you think Sam's seen this yet?" Lucas asked. May turned to look at him, and he regretted the question instantly, or possibly he anticipated he might need to apologize to him later. "Maya…" he tried to call her back, but she was already dashing out of their room and down the hall. Stopping at the door, she pressed her ear to it for a moment before cracking it open.

She only had a second to realize it was so quiet because her brother wasn't in the room before she felt a hit of cold… also the hit of a cold, wet thing, managing to lodge just at her neck where it was then able to break apart and slip inside her robe. She cried with surprise, turning around to find Sam standing there, throwing arm still in the air and dripping with melting snow. The grin on his face was something fierce, potentially over compensating, and such an echo of what hers might have looked like if the positions had been reversed.

Lucas stood at the door to their room, about halfway between the siblings, holding back the urge to laugh with all his might.

"So young to die…" Maya declared, chasing after Sam a half second before he turned and started back down the stairs.

After the 'face-off' had come to an end with a bit of running through the snow in inappropriate footwear and a couple of cold and snowy siblings, they had been welcomed back into the house with towels, rosy cheeks, and the promise of coffee, as Lucas had chosen to hang back and prepare for their return from the chase.

"Can you stay home today?" Sam asked his sister.

He'd made it through the end of his first semester, finals and all, and right now he had that look in his eyes like he wanted to do exactly what she'd wanted to do, as soon as she'd seen the snow earlier. Lucas was nearly done, too, one more final this afternoon and then his days of driving out and back would be done until January. As for Maya… she was sort of at an in-between. She and her team had completed their round of school sessions. Everything was on track for Stage Ready to start full out in the new year, too. They had a schedule, they had participants registered… It was all happening. At this point, she wasn't exactly twiddling her thumbs, waiting for the start, she still had things to do… But she could do those at home if she chose to.

Snowy wonderland… Brother here… Brother there… Oh, she chose to.

"I don't know, are you ready for round two?" she asked, giving the slightest leap forward, only an inch but enough to get Sam to startle, which made her laugh.

"I'm gonna get you this time," Sam declared, pointing at her.

"Yeah, okay," Maya nodded, sounding much more like 'in your dreams.' "You have to study now, right?" she asked, turning to Lucas with a much more sympathetic tone.

"Would have run out there with you guys earlier if I didn't," he nodded.

"Aww," Maya smiled, taping his hand. "I'll shove you in the snow later," she promised.

"Not if I catch you first," he smiled back.

"Oh, it's like that," she squinted.

"It is," he returned the look. He couldn't wait to get back now, and he hadn't even left yet.

After seeing Lucas off to his car, Maya had turned to her brother, the two of them sharing a look that was less 'let me tackle you into this snow' and more 'race you to the attic.' In the end they had to meet somewhere halfway though, as the open door had led to the dogs bouncing excitedly off into the snow. Once they had collected the pair of them and dried them off back inside the house, they had finally climbed up toward the attic.

The gable window still showed some coverage, although a lot of it appeared to have had time to slide off. It was hard to tell the difference, with the sky being clouded over in white as it was. What they had been looking forward to the most was to discover the view from the other windows, the ones that would open up a vast stretch of the land ahead on both sides.

"We're the first ones to see it like this," Sam pointed out as he and Maya looked through the front view. She looked at him for a beat… He had a point. The attic was brand new, and this was the first snow fall since its construction.

"Hang on," she hurried back down the steps, out of the attic and into hers and Lucas' room to grab her camera. When she returned, she snapped a few shots of the views from both the front and back windows. She showed the screen to Sam as he leaned in to see. "What now?" she asked him.

"The house," he smiled, and she wholly agreed on that, so they headed down, putting on some appropriate footwear and jackets unlike earlier. Despite the disruptions in the newly fallen snow, from their previous scuffle, they were able to get some good images. Maya had been showing her brother how to use the camera to its fullest extent, passing on those tips and tricks she herself had learned from Shawn, and from classes she'd taken back in high school.

"We need to come back and take some more later, when the string lights will be on and… Hey, no, come on!" she ran back toward the house, Sam on her heels, when they spotted Trix and Lou making a run for it once more.

After spending most of the morning back in the attic, quietly painting and drawing – Maya at her desk, Sam sitting cross-legged underneath the gable window – they had decided to go and have lunch, to see what the city looked like beyond the lane, on this snowy December day. Lunch had given way to a stop at the art supply store, which tended to be a lengthy endeavor when the two of them would go there together. By the time they left and started on their way to the Hunter Hart house, they had fallen down a line of discussion about Christmas presents for this family member or that friend.

They arrived and left again almost immediately, as Shawn had been about to go and pick up MJ from pre-school. Happy to get a chance at surprising the birthday boy, they went along for the ride, the three of them along with one-year-old Haley.

The birthday boy was in a decidedly less cheerful mood than he'd been when he'd gotten hold of his mother's phone and called his sister that morning. They found him in the midst of having a nosebleed dealt with. Shawn had hurried over, leaving his youngest to his eldest. They quickly learned that, in his giddiness after having been in the snow, MJ had slipped and fallen, coming back into the building in anticipation of being picked up. He clung good and tight to his dad when he spotted him, and Shawn rubbed at his back, working to reassure him. After they'd finally seen that the bleeding had stopped, and MJ seemed on the whole to be fine, they had left the bench.

"Hey, bud," Maya crouched to receive her little brother, once he'd spotted her and realized she'd come. Sam had Haley now, and Maya had a feeling MJ wasn't about to let go of her until they made it back to the house. "Hey, you're okay, you're alright," she told him.

"Can… can… we... still make the… the snowman?" MJ asked, in his little shaken voice.

"You bet, birthday boy," she kissed his blond head. "We'll make a whole bunch of them if you want."

MJ spent the ride home huddled against his big sister's side. He would get made fun of by some of the other kids sometimes, who'd call him a baby because he liked to hug people. More than once, she'd listened to her parents vent their frustrations, knowing they couldn't exactly go off on a bunch of toddlers, though they had some opinions to pass on to their parents…

They were nearly to the house when her phone rang and, one arm around her brother as she was, she fished it out blindly and stuck it to her ear.

"Hello?"

"Maya, it's time…" a frantic voice greeted her. She blinked.

"Who's this?" she asked, even as she pulled the phone back and saw that it was… Oh… Oh! "Farkle, hey! Time, it's… The baby?"

"We just got to the hospital," he told her. She could practically see his face in her mind, eyes wide, jumpy… It seemed like just a moment ago they had been stunned to learn Farkle and Isadora were expecting, but no, that was… that was six months ago already, and now… now baby Minkus was about to make his or her entrance into the world, very possibly sharing a birthday with the boy tucked at her side at this very moment.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners