This one is cute and sweet.
Prompt: Snow
Characters: Aelita
Setting: Christmas, 2007, between Distant Memory and Hard Luck
It was snowing hard when Aelita woke. The clock next to Jeremie's bed read 5:58, and she could hear no movement from anywhere else in the Belpois household. This was the second thing to meet her eyes; the first was the snow. She stared at the falling tufts for a moment, thoughtless and transfixed. Unfamilliar sensations and memories surfaced all at once, and a childish longing filled her mind. Almost automatically, as if from a reflex, she tiptoed down the stairs, past Jeremie, huddled without complaint on his sofa, and out the door into the snow-covered street, without so much as a coat.
The bitter sting of the cold flakes against the bare skin her nightgown did not cover melted into a feeling of sight, the dark stain of a melted flake against a tiny mitten. The buildings became a wood, an endless mass of trees reaching beyond infinity in her tiny perception, and gigantic. She had never considered that she had never touched snow since that age. She had never even considered that it snowed anywhere but in her memories.
There were muffled voices from behind her; she did not know at what time they started. Her child's mind took over her reason, and trust overruled suspicion. Daddy and Mommy, of course. Daddy and Mommy were close by, to make sure she didn't run away. Daddy and Mommy to check the woods for the wolves and other creatures, to keep the world safe. Daddy...and Mommy...and...
"What is she doing? She'll catch a cold!"
"Anita, dear, she's Canadian. They do this all the time."
"What's going on- Aelita! What do you think you're doing?"
Aelita turned to face the family, silent but smiling. Her fantasy visions dissolved in ribbons as she saw Jeremie's face, fraught with worry and wonder. But the happiness remained. The happiness couldn't go away.
- Carth