• The light cascaded around the old pines, white and icy rainbows of color flooding the air, it's beautiful dance witnessed only by the trees and their few passersby, a lucky greeting only scarce hu-

    "Hurry up, Scooter, We're not even to the hill yet!" The girl shouted behind her. She clambered over an icy felled trunk, and slid to it's base.
    "We have to hurry, or it'll get dark before you can see it!"

    The boy, normally named Josiah, but apparently, in this case, 'Scooter', desperately tried to return to his thoughts of the beauty of what he saw, but failed. Miserably. Instead, all he could do was appreciate it with his eyes, ears, and not thoughts, as he tried to keep up with the girl, less ridiculously named Andrea.

    Their feet were the first ones to scar the snow, not even the forest's children; it's rabbits, deer, birds, anything that dwelled their, had stirred from their homes and pocked the fresh blanket of soft ice. This gave the two an air of the open, that the crisp frozen air was not just of fresh winter, but of freedom.

    Andrea, pushing her way to the outskirts of a frosty clearing, turned back to see Scooter's progress. The boy was having some trouble, having been distracted by an intricate formation of icicles, having frozen to look like a pyramid of waterfalls. She dragged him away, and forced the sled under his nose.
    "We're going to sled, not look at pretty ice. Come on!" She announced, tugging him by the hand over the crest of the hill.

    "Is this where you were taking me?" Josiah complained. "A hill? There's one right next to my house." She laughed at him, and urged him to follow. The snow was getting deeper; parts of it were managing to flood their boots and invade their socks. But they carried on, to the unknown place of wonder brought upon Scooter by Andrea, Oh, the anticipation. It's probably more hills.

    The girl finally urged him to turn around, and when he did, he could not quite describe what he saw.

    Luckily, narrators do not have such a problem. It was a frozen river, a narrow street of perfect ice, fish and rocks and seaweed flowing underneath the icy window's surface, as if the riverbed were a giant fishbowl, with eight inch glass. The frozen river led to a fairly steep decline, nearly a waterfall, although not so steep as to cause a whitewater.

    The girl turned to the boy. "Some hill, eh?"
    Scooter looked to her, and replied, "Why did you bring me here?"
    She scoffed at him, as if he had said something truly stupid, tossed the sled onto the frozen river,and shoved him onto it.

    Before he could do anything but yelp, Scooter found himself gliding down the frozen river, the icy trees and snowy bushes to either side of him breezing past as if they were moving. He looked over the side of his sled to see a small salmon, matching pace with him. It didn't appear to even be moving, only to be flicking it's tail and staring straight ahead.

    He grinned to himself, ignoring the gentle bump of the sled and the breeze throwing fluffy snowflakes in his eyes.

    Atleast, until he reached the decline. The sled accelerated faster than he could have thought, catching him by surprise and sending a solid spike of hot adrenaline through his veins. He gripped the edges of the sled, wary of the trough of the river hill speeding to meet him.

    He laughed.

    The icy window smacked into the bottom of the sled hard enough to send him bouncing out of it, letting him slide a good throw away from the bottom of the river hill. The girl came running over to him, having tried to keep pace the entire way, laughing.

    "I thought that was pretty ice," Scooter said, on her approach. Andrea grinned, and shouted,
    "Well, why else would I have brought you here?"