strangetrip | [GP] SNOW DAY

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[GP] SNOW DAY

Thor and Loki got an early start, because there was a lot to do. Almost two weeks to the day since their first small-but-successful experiment with snow, Loki was confident that he'd improved enough for a bigger experiment. Still snow, because Thor wanted it and it did seem like a decent way to try something big-ish without causing Loki unnecessary grief with the other residents. (It was an arrival day, so there would perhaps be some grief with any new arrivals, but that was entirely acceptable.)

It was before dawn when they went out into the grounds. Thor called up clouds and loaded them with water so they hung low and heavy, covering the sky so that the sun, when it rose, wouldn't ruin the event. Loki took his frost giant shape and staff (now very familiar to his hand) and concentrated on dropping the temperature. Just around the Inn and grounds, but that was enough to be serious effort.

When the snow first started, the flakes were big and wet, and melted as soon as they hit the ground, which was still on the warm side. As they melted, they cooled the ground. After an hour or so, the flakes were smaller and more powdery - real snow, not glorified slush - and they were starting to stick to the ground.

By mid-morning, the Inn and grounds were covered with a thick layer of snow, and it continued to fall.

***

Meanwhile, indoors and inspired by the snow, Hurley and Xavin decided to try and make cookies. Cooking together was fun, since neither of them exactly knew what they were doing apart from 'follow the recipe', but since the point was 'try to make cookies' they ended up with a lot of cookies. Sugar cookies, gingerbread, all kinds.

There was no way they'd be able to eat all of them.

Instead, they loaded them onto trays and hauled them to the cafe, then brought out various frostings and candies for decorating. This had been completely intentional. Completely.

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The snow crunched under Jag's feet, as he came to stop a few feet from the snow castle. "That's impressive."

He'd bundled up as well as he could, because it was either that or walking around with his own portable fire, and he didn't want to encourage the snow to melt. It was so fucking good to have something like winter for once.

Not much used to praise, Snow briefly ducked her head. Though her hands kept moving and her eyes stayed on her work. "Did it before with somebody," she admitted quietly. Really, she didn't think her efforts were very good at all, though who the hell was she to judge artistic effort, including her own?

"They must've been a good teacher," Jag remarked, slowly walking around the castle to look at it from a different angle. "Want some help? I've never done anything like it before," he warned her, before she could answer.

"S-she..." After stumbling over Sansa's name, Snow pressed her lips together for a moment. "She grew up in a cold, northern climate. Spent a lot of time playing in snow as a kid."

Jag went down to his knees beside her, not close enough to crowd her. "That would help." He could tell how hard it was for Snow to talk about her, whoever she had been, so he didn't push, but filled the space between them with words of his own, words Snow could choose to answer, or not. "We had some snow most winters, when I was a kid. Didn't hold up too well in the cities, but in the countryside? I've built more than a few snowmen. Never thought to build a castle, though."

Snow nodded, pausing in her efforts to look at her work. "I grew up probably not that far from here. We almost never got any snow. Too warm. And right by the sea. Last year was the first time I'd done anything like that... and she wanted to build her home. So we did."

"Is this it again?" Jag asked with a nod at the castle. He had to wonder if she had been another one from Exandria, or a place like it, or if she was more like Val, from a filthy rich family. Or both, really.

Snow nodded again. "Winterfell, she said it was called. The seat of her family, until everything went to shit. Thousands of years old. Sansa..." she swallowed, sighed, and pushed on through the saying of her name, "Sansa was a noblewoman."

"Well," Jag said, and his smile was half-wince as he hoped the humour would work, and already anticipated that it would fail, "I'll try not to hold that against her."

That was interesting. Sansa was too far removed from her life now for Snow to be offended on her behalf, but she had other reasons to ask, "What's wrong with that?"

Jag shrugged, and looked back at the castle. "They tend to look down on people, don't they?"

Well, that wasn't untrue and didn't she fucking know.

"Guess so. But she wasn't like that." Sansa had been aloof, something some people probably interpreted as superiority, but instead Snow had found her to be a less-broken kindred spirit. Someone who was wounded and wary. Someone who hadn't previously understood how much she could be hurt, how much her parents were shielding her from.

"I wouldn't expect her to've been," Jag admitted honestly, and gave Snow a small smile. "Not if you liked her."

"She might have been, before I knew her," Snow allowed. "But when I knew Sansa she was very kind." Certainly she had not ever treated Snow as less than herself, for all that Snow could be strange and taciturn and occasionally violent.

Looking back at her project, she went on quietly, "I was raised in a rich man's house. My father called it his 'castle by the sea.'"

Snow had never really told him much of her past, but Jag hadn't expected anything like... that. She'd never struck him as the rich girl type. He frowned a little, in confusion. "You're nothing like one of them."

So he reckoned the story had to be more complicated than that.

"No," she agreed. She hadn't had much chance to be. "My father kept me a secret after my mother died. Because he was ashamed of her. And then me. I didn't know that was what he was doing, 'til he married again. And didn't tell her 'bout me."

"Is that because you're Red?" Jag asked, a serious frown on his feature. He wouldn't have used that term before he'd met Em, but that was the one she used when she talked of her friend Dani, and he'd picked it up at some point along the way.

Snow nodded. It was such a fact of her life that she didn't find it awkward at all to say, "Mama was Crow. And he wanted her so bad it drove him to distraction. But he was always ashamed of it. He just forgot how ashamed until she was gone and he was left with me."

"He sounds like a right wanker," Jag remarked, but he sounded a little uncertain. Not of what he was saying - that much he believed, a hundred percent - but of her reception of his words. Val had taught him that badmouthing the worst parents to their child was not always welcome.

"He was useless," Snow agreed. She had no attachment to any of the people in that house. Except perhaps her brother. She wasn't sure she could even remember his face anymore. "Didn't have a patch on my stepmother, though. So eventually I just ran away."

Jag nodded; he wasn't that surprised that running away was something they had in common. "So did I, once. It... sucked, but it was the best thing I could've done." There was a bit of a question in his eyes, because he wondered if she felt the same way about it.

It was hearing that question for a second time that made Snow look up and really look at him. For a long moment she didn't say anything, largely because she wasn't really much in the habit of reassuring people. She ignored many folk in this place, would bite more than a few without blinking, and she'd never done either with him. Still, he looked like he was trying to figure out how not to step wrong.

"We're okay. You and me. If you didn't know."

Jag frowned in confusion, not sure what she meant by okay, or where this was coming from. "Er. Okay?"

Snow faltered, casting her eyes down. "You keep... flinching? Am I that scary?"

Jag's frown did not clear. Did he? Flinching? Fuck, that must look terrible to her. He reached out to her, slowly, a hand on her shoulder. "I'm not frightened of you."

[GP] SNOW DAY

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