While anyone could go to the district of Tundratown to get the sights of winter in any time of the year, it was much more exciting when other places that were outside of the city got their first share of fresh snowfall. For one particular place that a seven-year-old Nick Wilde and his friends from school were walking through, the very same could be said.
When the weather reporters on the TV were showing the maps for everywhere made the call that snow was coming earlier than expected, they were certainly true in their predictions. At first, Nick thought it just meant that there was only going to be enough to cover grass with a thin layer of it, which he still always considered a good bit of snow. When he woke up one morning during his Christmas break, however, there was more than what he was anticipating.
The first instinct, as with any kit his age when they saw that the considerably best part of the season unfold, was to get out and play, and after he asked his mother if he could head out with some of his friends to go sled riding, she kindly agreed and it was off he went.
The fallen snow glittered all around as the fox, his three good friends in tow, trekked through it with their brightly-colored plastic sleds. It was around here that the spot they enjoyed sled riding in the wintertime stood, but this time around came the urge to try something different.
"Yeah, this spot's pretty fun," one of Nick's friends, a brown bear that was his age, said. "But why don't we all try something different?"
Nick's best friend Finnick turned around and looked at the bear, adjusted the warm and fluffy muffs he was wearing over his long and tan-furred ears. "Really?" he said in his voice that seemed deeper than the other kits his age. "What's that, dude?"
The ursid leaned in closer as if he were about to whisper a secret that couldn't be shared with anyone. "The Crazy Cliff," he said to them with a serious look on his muzzle.
The proposition came as a bit of a shocker, and gasps arose from Nick and his other two friends when they heard the mentioning of that location.
The Crazy Cliff that had been referred to was a nickname that had been given by kits in school for a particular spot around the area. Not a whole bunch of kits really did any sled riding down it a majority of the time, sticking to downhill spots like Nick and the others normally did, but someone in school always had came back to class after holiday break with sort of story about it, reminiscent of how fishermammals told their unrealistic tales about the catches they made.
The group of friends, of course, had heard their fair share of them.
"Are you serious?" Nick asked.
"Yo," Finnick added, "I hear goin' down that spot's so crazy that it makes you crazy. I mean, that's what I heard some kit say at recess that other day. No proof of that, though."
Another friend of Nick's, a white-furred wolf, also looked a bit surprised by the idea. "And I heard that you can go down so fast that you actually fly, like, out the sled in the air."
"Like when that kit flies on his bike in that movie?" Nick inquired to the canid before turning to his other friends. "Actually, I don't know about you guys, but I think that sounds awesome."
"Well," the bear answered, "as the leader of this sled riding club, I say that at least we give this spot a shot."
"What club? We never had a club," the wolf replied matter-of-factly.
"The one I just made up." The brown ursid pointed to himself and chuckled, bending down to pick up his sled before proceeding to trek in the direction of where he was set on sledding down. "Come on, guys."
"Hey, wait for me," Nick called back before he followed along with him, his pal Finnick right behind him with excitement written across his face as well.
The wolf behind him stood where he was for a moment, letting out a sigh before adjusting the dark blue scarf that was around his neck. Shaking his head, he picked up the neon green sled of his and slowly followed his friends, having a bad feeling about things at that moment.
From a good distance away, it didn't seem like that steep of a slope. It was when they had reached the top of it, however, that it was a bit more than they were expecting it to be.
When seen through the eyes of a kit or a smaller mammal, things had the tendency to naturally seem taller than they might have appeared to someone else, and this was no exception.
The brown bear of the group chuckled as he looked down. "Now this is what I'm talkin' about," he remarked. "I'd like to do that whole flying-in-the-air thing you guys said about for myself. It'd be like when Duke Caboom made that huge jump on his motorcycle. You know, when he went through all the flaming hoops?"
"But that was in a cartoon," the wolf of the group replied with a small sense of apprehension. When it came to being someone that found the potential dangers in things or a safer possibility, it was definitely him.
"The only question now is who's going first," the ursid responded to everyone.
"We'll decide how we always do," Nick suggested as he stepped up closer.
"Sounds like a plan, mammal," chimed in Finnick in agreement.
The red fox and his two friends all held out a paw flatly and placed their other on top of it.
"Rock, paper, scissors," they called out, looking at each other like it was a serious game that they were playing. "Shoot!"
With odds that seemed nearly impossible, all three of them ended up paper, sighs coming from them when they realized that it was a draw.
"Two out of three?" Nick inquired.
"Tell ya what," Finnick replied, pointing to the bear standing next to him. "How 'bout he just go first and then we all just go down at the same time after that?"
"That's a better idea, Fin." The tod nodded his head at the fennec fox before they slapped paws.
"You know," said their wolf friend, "I think I'm gonna watch you guys and then go last."
With a shrug of his shoulders, Nick responded, "That's alright. Too bad you're gonna miss out on being one of the first kits to take on Crazy Cliff this winter."
"Woo!" the ursid to his left whooped excitedly, jumping up and down as if he were at the starting gate and getting ready for a track and field event. "And now it's time for your new Winter Mammalympics champion!
With that, he plopped his sled on the ground a short space away from the edge of the slope. As he soon as he sat down on it and held onto to the sides of it, he slowly but steadily started to take off.
Once that static friction and gravity he learned of in previous science classes did its job, his descent on sled started to feel like that first drop on a roller coaster that came right after a slow climb up to it. He wasn't sure whether it was just him or not, but it felt to him like he were literally floating off his sled from the speed he started to go, just like those kits in school said would happen.
The ursid looked behind him before returning to what was in front of him, a gasp escaping him when he noticed something in his midst. He couldn't make out in that moment if it were the stump of a seemingly newly chopped tree or something else that stuck up out of the freshly fallen snow.
However, with how fast he was starting to go, a speed that even he, a supposed fanatic of excitement, thought was to fast for him, he found it hard to steer in a different course.
"Your brake!" his three friends called out back where started from. "Your brake!"
His good hearing that was instinctive of his species heard the concerned shouts of them, and he reached a paw forward to grip onto the thin piece of rope in front of him. He pulled it forward to try to slow him down, only for it unluckily become unattached on one side and render it nothing more than just a useless string.
Shoot, I don't got no brake, he thought before he ended sliding right up toward the object in questioning.
Present Day...
Nick shook his head as he looked back on that moment from many winters ago, looking out at the snow that had fallen around the very spot he and some of his old friends from back then played during winter break.
His son Noah stood to his left, bundled up in his coat and gloves, listening to his father's story as he told him about how that was one of the old spots that he came to when he was his age. "But you all wore your helmets back then, right, Dad?" he asked.
"Oh, of course," replied Nick with a nod of his head, knowing on the inside that the true answer was no. With that having happened back in the eighties, nobody seemed to wear helmets (nor did they seem to worry about wearing other things like elbow pads or shin guards for that matter). "But later on I learned that I enjoy sledding down a much calmer path, like this one." Turning over to look at him, he asked, "So, you ready for us to go on our first sled ride of the season?"
"I'm ready!" answered the fox kit, running a couple steps up the snow-sprinkled hill as he pulled the long sled at his side.
"Wait up for me, buddy." Nick chuckled as he slowly trekked to where his son was waiting for him.
The spot the vulpine had taken him to was a little spot a short drive away from where his mother now lived. From the bottom of what they had climbed, not super-duper high but good enough to make for a nice place to sled that afternoon, Nick could see his mom, dressed in her favorite purple coat, waving back at them as she got her camera out.
"Hi, Grandma!" Noah called out, waving back at her with a tiny russet paw. "Here we come!"
The kit sat himself down in the front of the vivid orange sled and grabbed onto the black-and-white handle facing him. With enough room behind him on the sled for him, his father joined him.
"You going to steer us down the path to Grandma?" Nick asked him.
Noah looked back at his father with a toothy smile. "Yep."
Nick pointed over to where his mother was still standing. "Lead the way, Noah," he said. "It's down the hill we must go."
Both Noah and his father laughed before starting to zip to the bottom of the snow they had climbed up, Mrs. Wilde cracking a wide smile at the memory being made between them.
Author's Note: So... writing something related to the upcoming wintertime ended up taking a bit longer than I wanted it to.
Sorry about that, folks...
On top of other things that have been going on that we're getting in the way, I ended up battling another strain of writer's block that was getting in the way, but I fought and decided to start my annual series of seasonal stories with this. :)
I really wanted to come back after the wait for something new to be a story about Christmas or something like that, but I'm still putting some touches on some of those stories. They were some of the ones that I had meant to share the previous holiday season but ended up forgetting about until after it was over. They needed some rewriting anyhow and so I will share those once I have completed them just in time for Christmas. :)
Anyway, let me know what your thoughts were on this one. As always, your feedback, whether it's good or bad, is gladly appreciated.
'Til next time! :)