the inspiration for  this story  was a log lodge at the seaside, with huge boulders at the waters edge and a storm raging, and a picture  I saw on TV of a lighthouse covered roof to base in ice, after a winter storm. To see the picture go to http://ozlandbard.blogspot.ca/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=50

 

Rover ran full tilt at his door, needing to get outside fast. He’d had an unusually big, and delicious meal, and his stomach was overloaded. He put his head down and aimed at the door flap, hit….and was sitting back on his haunches, with a pain in his head. ‘What’s wrong?’ he barked. ‘Why is my flap locked?’ Shaking his head, he stood up and looked at his master. ‘Why the miserable creature, he’s laughing! Doesn’t he know that HURT?’ Rover whined, and stood staring up. ‘Why did you lock my door?’ he rumbled. His master reached over and stroked the dog’s head. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed,” he said. “But it did look funny. Come on, I’ll let you out the front door. This one is frozen shut.”

 

They walked through the house and when they got to the front, they could see out the window. ‘Oh, my!’ Rover thought. ‘I didn’t realise there was such a storm. When did it blow up? Must have been while I was sleeping. Well, storm or no, I have to go out. It’s going to be a very fast trip! No way I’m staying out in that!’ His master opened the door, and the sound of the wind rose. He could hear the sea raging, crashing against the rocks on the shore.

 

He ran out, found a sheltered spot to do what he had to do, and turned to head back. But he heard a different sound, and had to investigate. Unfortunately, the sound was very faint, and seemed to be coming from the other side, from the sea. Keeping as close as he could to the wall, he made his way, rounding the corner, almost into the teeth of the gale. Hunched down, moving with difficulty, with rain and spume hitting his face like small hailstones, he made his way along. He could now see why his door wouldn’t open. The whole back side of the building was covered with ice. He was getting colder and colder, and ice was forming on his pads and his face. He was just about to give up, when he heard the sound again, a bit louder. A squeaking, mewling sound.

 

He moved several steps on, and there it was, a little lump of icy fur. Holy Great God Bog, it’s a kitten! he thought. How on earth did it get here? Well, guess I’d better get it inside. Looks to be almost dead. He leaned his head close, and the silly little thing tried to shy away.

 

‘Don’t be daft, you stupid feline!’ Rover growled. ‘I’m trying to save your useless life!’ He opened his mouth over the small, half frozen furball and picked it up. He had to pull a bit, as it was starting to freeze to the ground. The warmth of his breath started melting the ice, and he could feel it wriggling a bit. He wanted to tell it to stay still, but couldn’t. If he opened his mouth to talk, he’d drop it. He took as firm a hold as he could without breaking it’s skin, and made his way back. The return journey went much faster, as he had the wind at his back.

 

He scratched at the front door, whining. ‘Come on, master, hurry it up. I’m freezing, and if I have to hold this idiot kitten much longer, I’m likely to just swallow it!’ The door opened, and he bounded in, skidding across the wood floor on his ice packed paws. He turned his head just in time to avoid hitting the wall with a mouthful of half frozen kitten.

 

“What have you got there?” his master asked. “What did you find that you thought we’d want in the house?” ‘Hmph!’ Rover thought, ‘not something I’d want here, that’s for sure!’ He dropped the kitten on the floor, turned and skidded and slid into the kitchen. There he settled down on his mat by the fire, ignoring the kitten, and his master, and started chewing at the ice on his cold paws.

 

The master stared in surprise, then realised what Rover had carried in. “My lord, it’s a half frozen kitten!” he exclaimed. His wife and children ran in to see. “Aw, the poor little thing,” his daughter exclaimed. “Rover, you are a hero, rescuing this poor wee baby from the storm!” She ran into the kitchen and hugged the dog, depositing a kiss on his wet head. ‘Hmph! he thought. Hero I don’t mind, but kisses? Yuck!’

 

Her mother lifted the kitten and carried it to the kitchen, gathering a couple of big warm towels. She sat by the fire and settled the kitten in her lap, carefully wrapping a towel around it. “Warm some milk, Alice,” she told her daughter. “And bring one of those doll bottles you have. That will do for feeding it. Make the milk just warm enough so you can barely feel it when you drop a bit on the inside of your wrist.”

 

As she talked, she was busily wiping the little thing’s fur, and soon the first towel was wet. The second towel finished the job, and she cuddled it close in her arms. “Rover, you are the best dog in the world!” she said. “I wonder how it got out there, where it came from?” she murmured.

 

When Alice came with the doll bottle, carefully washed and filled with the warm milk, her mother stood up and settled her daughter in the chair. She wrapped a smaller, dry towel around the kitten and put it in Alice’s arms. “Hold the bottle to it’s mouth, and see if it will drink.”

 

Alice did as instructed, and the kitten was soon sucking away at the bottle. “Oh, look, Mom, it’s eating!” she whispered. “We are going to keep it, aren’t we? After all, Rover brought it to us to look after. It’s his Christmas present to us.” She looked up at her parents, eyes wide, smiling.

 

“Yes,” Dad and Mom said together. “And I think we should name it Stormy Noel,” Mom added. “It came to us at Christmas, from a storm, and it’s a stormy grey colour.”

 

Even her brother agreed on the name, though he had been pretending to have no interest in the kitten. Rover lay curled up on his mat, warm again, and thought, ‘then he rumbled low in his throat, now I’ll have to put up with that little feline pest being around all the time! Oh, well. Merry Christmas, everybody!’

 

Three days later, the storm had moved on and the ferry from the mainland arrived with the mail and supplies. They told the captain about the kitten Rover had found, and he said “everyone wondered about the poor little thing. We all thought it had drowned. It was part of a litter from the Jones’s cat, and somehow wandered off. How it got to the island I don’t know, though several small wooden crates were washed off the dock. It must have got in one of them and been washed ashore here. Did you find any finished wood pieces around?”

 

Young Tim said “Yes, I found some – most were pretty smashed, but four were still usable. I put them in the shed to dry, I was going to use them to make the model windmill for my school project.”

 

“Is there printing on them?” the captain asked.

 

“Yes, one has Seville Or on it. There’s more, but I can’t make it out”

 

“Then that is the answer. Your kitten found refuge in an orange crate, and took a short voyage. He is one lucky little animal. Better keep an eye on him, he seems to be the adventurous type.” he went off, laughing and calling back over his shoulder “I’ll let the Jones’s know, they will be happy that he’s alive and in a good home.”

 

Rover listened to all this, and thought ‘I did do something special that night, didn’t I? Isn’t that great? I really am a hero. And it’s good to find out how the little pest came to be there. Now, how can I get it to sneak onto the ferry and go back to its Mommy? Hmmm….’

Inspired by Facebook picture of glowing-eyed snow people rising out of a field, and the Nissan snowman and attacking rogue ‘Ents’ commercials

 

The Snow Nation was in an uproar. Everyone calling for action in the face of the desecration caused by the Humans; it had taken centuries, millennia, to raise the snow people to this extremely high level of anger, but now it covered every place where snow lay on the ground at levels of three feet or more.

 

Millennia ago, all the land was empty except for natural growths, such as trees, grass, flowers and so on; yes, there were animals, some very large, some walking on the surface, some burrowing below, some flying above. But they used what was there and except for the burrowers, they made no changes to the land, and the burrows did no damage to the growing things.

 

Then the humans appeared. At first, they were welcome; they made no changes, lived in trees or natural caves. They hunted the animals and gathered nuts and fruits for food. Then one discovered how to use the fire the Gods started in the forests, and that led to gathering wood, eventually to cutting down the trees. Imaginative individuals kept inventing things to make life easier. The fire warmed the caves and coked the meat making it easier to eat, and keeping the young and old warm in the cold weather, the skins of the animals attached together covered them in the cold.

 

Another bright thinker figured out how to make moving large things more easily by putting logs under them. Soon, another devised a way to take slices of the trees, cut lengthways, and fastening them to make a platform to carry larger loads which naturally led to cutting slices of logs and attaching them, and so invented the wheeled wagon.

 

It was not always easy to find convenient caves, and someone made a shelter of small trees and mud. They learned how to use stone to build sturdier shelters, and soon groups of these grew, taking space that had provided food sources, roots and grains. In time, they figured out how to plant seeds and grow their own grains, and fruits and vegetables. This led to building storage pits lined with stones, taking up more of the growing land.

And so it went, century after century, each year when the snow came back the snow people found less and less free land, and more and more land covered in Human buildings. Finally great areas of land were covered with hard materials and huge buildings. They had moving carriages that ran on the hard streets, propelled by something that left a nasty stink in the air and turned their lovely white snow to dirty grey.

 

At last the humans built huge ships for going out into space; the grounds taken up for storage, and sending them off out of Earth’s atmosphere was huge. At first it was just a short trip, out of the atmosphere, once around the world and back. But eventually they were sending enormous ships that held thousands of humans off to settle on other planets. The first of these ships carried mechanical ‘men’ that were capable of doing what the humans couldn’t do; they made a planet habitable for the humans. This was called ‘Terraforming’, and had gone on for centuries until the first of the terraformed planets, Mars, was ready, and the first of the enormous colony ships rose majestically on a pillar of flame, and humans left Earth.

 

There was less and less area left where the snow people could rest comfortably under the thick snow in fewer and fewer fields. Even good drifts, against walls and hills were harder to find, until at last the rage that had been building for centuries, no, millennia reached the peak. Outrage resounded over all the snowy lands. “This has to end!” they cried. Eyes glowing, they rose from the snowy fields, and in their millions, the Snow Nation, Outraged, declared War!!

 

Their raging anger caused huge blizzards that blew for days on end, trapping humans in their homes and vehicles. Power went off and they lost heat, pipes froze so they had no water and the food they had stored in freezers and refrigerators ran out. Those in vehicles were trapped under mountains of snow and died. The snow people even enlisted the help of the huge evergreens in the woods; the evergreens became active, moving and attacking vehicles traveling on the roads going through their forests.

 

Humans died by the hundreds, thousands; even in countries where snow never fell, they were washed away by floods many feet deep. Many of the snow people turned into ice that wreaked more havoc. The war went on, heading for a worldwide peak in deaths. Winter extended into the months of May and June, and the snow people were so caught up in their anger and revenge that they didn’t even notice. For all the damage they were doing, in spite of all the deaths, they were hardly making a dent in the human population.

 

The leaders were gathering to try to work out some plan that would cut the human population down to an acceptable level, and how to then keep them there. In the midst of their discussions, in the midst of the wildest, coldest storm, a snow boy flew in and managed to get his father’s attention.

 

“Papa, papa!” he shouted, making everyone turn to stare at him.

“Son, what do you mean, whipping in on adults in conference? You know better, explain yourself.”

 

“I’m sorry, papa, but I just heard something that might give us a chance.” The snowboy said. “The Humans are prepared to send an exploratory ship out to Europa to look for signs of alien life. There will be a two man ship that will carry two probes to Ganymede, which is coved in ice over water and has a thin oxygen atmosphere. These probes are also going to look for signs of life. They will be powered by highly condensed water and will spend a lot of time there, circling Ganymede many times. The probes will just graze the atmosphere.

 

“If we can get enough of our people in the summer stage in the fuel tanks, every time a probe powers up, our people will be dropped to the surface through the atmosphere and will fall as snow. We can colonise Ganymede, and it is probable that no human can ever live there. We’d have our own world, and those who are left here will have all the room they need.” He stopped and looked at the adults around him, waiting for their reaction.

 

Everyone had frozen; not flicker of movement, just a room full of snowmen of various sizes and shapes. The snowboy was afraid, so he slowly and silently oozed along against the wall until he settled in a little pile in the corner and waited. Then suddenly the place was a whirlwind of activity, voices calling out, even laughter as the adults realised that their race could be saved, and no more humans needed to die. His father looked around and found him, drawing him out to the middle of the room.

 

“Son, you are a genius! Your name will be known and praised all over Earth and Ganymede! I am so proud of you, and your incredible mind.” Papa patted him on the head, and told him “run and tell your Mother and everyone you can find. We must start preparations immediately if we are to get as many as we can to the blast-off site. When did you say they are taking off?”

 

“On the second of March, from Wallops Island, lift off slated for eleven a.m.”  Snowboy said, and took off running to spread the news.

 

Six weeks later the island was inundated by the oddest rainstorm anyone had ever seen. It centered over the reservoir where the water for the two explorer vessels was being stored. The huge tanks were still only partly filled, and the ground crew were frantically trying to find a way to speed up the pumps, when the sudden downpour started. Within two hours, all of the tanks were full, even the smaller extra one. Then the downpour stopped.

 

“That was the darnedest thing I’ve ever seen!” the head of the crew in charge of filling the explorer’s tanks exclaimed. “And hardly any water on the ground. You’d think it was done on purpose, but… well, maybe God took a hand.” He took off his cap and scratched his head. Replacing the cap, “he said well, let’s get to work.”

 

By the next day the two explorers’s had their fuel tanks full, holding much more than expected, at a higher compression than planned. But after a very thorough check, it was found that the tanks were not overstressed. “Even when the water freezes in space,” the head engineer said, “there will be room for the expansion. Oddest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s almost as though the water wants to go.” Shaking his head, he walked away.

 

Six and a half years later, two ovoid shapes with attached cylinder shapes approached the moon Ganymede and went into orbit. They separated, each making a ball of twine survey of the planet, crisscrossing each other’s path and flying just below the outer limit if the atmosphere. With each correction of their path, massive amounts of water vapour fell through the atmosphere and floated down as snow.

 

The exploration lasted six months and then, with a last blast of water they headed out and back to Europa and the mother ship. There was just enough water left to allow them to slow and maneuver for rendezvous and re-entry into the bowels of the ship. They didn’t know it, but they had seeded a colony on Ganymede, a colony of snow people who were soon busily settling down and remaking the surface of the planet to suit their lives. The little Snowboy and his family rejoiced that at last they could live and grow without having to fight and kill for the right to do so.