A Day In The Snow
(Sled TF)
By ThatGuy

Penelope Sands walked morosely down the snow-flecked park road, trying not to be distracted by the sounds of people having fun all around her. It was a beautiful mid-December day, with snow covering the ground for miles making the park a veritable blank canvas that nobody could seem to resist diving into. No one, that is, except Penelope.

It's not that she hated like fun or anything, but she never seemed to be able to find the drive for it any more - not when there's so much work to be done. There were more important things… at least, that's what she used to say. Now, she wasn't so sure, but it didn't seem to matter anyways.

She trudged down the path in her winter vest and slacks, ignoring the occasional cheering kid or laughing couple - she just wanted to get home, sit down and… well, do something anyway. She couldn't think of anything to do - the numbers and letters of her latest report were still buzzing around in her brain.

She continued on down the path thinking about it when suddenly a misfired Frisbee smacked her in the head, almost knocking her short blonde ponytail and thick glasses askew and sending her slipping to her hands and knees in surprise. She pulled herself to her feet with a huff and looked up to see a bunch of young kids running up to her apologizing a mile a minute. "Could they be any less mature?" She thought, rolling her eyes as she flicked the Frisbee back at them, "though… I suppose they can't be blamed. It looks like they're having fun, and just because I haven't had a good clean day of fun in forever doesn't mean I should be all mad at them for it… sigh…"

It hadn't always been this way, not too long time ago she would've jumped at the chance to laze away the day enjoying the now. It had started out so easy, just a simple want to succeed as much as she could - when she was at school she dove into her studies, ignoring the calls of classmates to play games or invites to parties, and barely ever even went out for a simple night out, putting it off until the next independent assignment was done, and then the next extra-credit project, and so on and so on - never meaning to miss out, but always wanting to get that much more done so by the time it was it was too late, and she shrugged it off and went on to the next project, never admitting how much she actually had wanted to join in and fervently denying being a bit jealous of how much fun her friends would have.

After she graduated it was pretty much the same thing: with her skills and intelligence she easily found a job and almost immediately pushed herself 150% into it, willingly taking a workload that most of her colleagues would need triple overtime for, but which left her more and more drained as the months went by, especially since she rarely ever took breaks, let alone vacations.

Her boss, Mrs. Feswick, always says she should take it easy more often. After all, she wasn't exactly old, nor particularly unattractive either - she was a pretty young woman in her mid 20's with a whole life ahead of her to work herself to death - right now she should go out and meet people, have fun, and not weigh herself down so much. But every time Penelope waved her off. "There will be time for taking it easy later," she would say, "right now I want to have my priorities focused and my work done."

But months later and there didn't really seem to be any time to take it easy - when she was at work she was buried under piles of papers and when she was at home all she could think about was even more piles of papers. She even dreamed of forms and memos!

But now she was just getting herself completely distracted. With a sigh she walked off the path up a particularly tall snow covered hill, with no one around. Fighting the overwhelming urge to run home and start work on her next report a week early, she sat down and slumped down against a tree - immediately regretting it (and not wearing a hat) when she shook the branches and was instantly buried in snow.

With a loud and furious yell she threw herself to her feet, shook off as much of the snow as she could with as much rage as she could muster, and leaned back onto the tree - without shaking it this time - pouting angrily all the way, and then sighed gloomily when she realized what she was doing.

"Here I am in the middle of Christmas holiday," she thought bitterly, "a holiday Feswick practically had to force me to take, and I can't even relax for two seconds! I guess deep down I am a little jealous of all those people who can just drop off the world and have fun with their lives… I wish I could just have one day of real fun, but I never seem to be able to…"

As she was thinking to herself, she failed to notice an odd, crooked figure in a heavy winter coat lurking behind her - who certainly wasn't there when she walked up the hill - but then again nobody ever noticed him when he didn't want them too. Hearing her thoughts, he smiled a crooked smile. "So," he said silently, "that is what you wish is it? Well, so shall it be… and a merry holiday to you!" Sparkles flew out of his hand and into Penelope, who didn't react beyond shivering for a second, and his job done - whatever it was - he disappeared with a wisp of snow, cackling madly.

"I guess there's no point to it. I just can't relax," Penelope sighed again, noticing nothing, "I guess I'll just go home and-" "Huh?"

She tried to take a step off the tree, but her feet felt strange. Like they were asleep, but oddly stiff. "I didn't get a lot of snow in my boots did I? I don't think I-" "GAH!" She looked down at her legs and jumped back in surprise - her feet were shrinking out of her boots! In fact, they were looking too small to be feet at all!

She lost her balance as the stiffness spread up her legs and had to hold onto the tree for support. At this point, her feet were flat, thin, pointed, completely stiff, and starting to change too a tin-like color, and whatever was going on was starting to move upwards: her pants were melding into her legs and her ankles were joining her now non-existent feet as small, flat, thin slats of silvery stiffness.

"What the heck is going on?" Penelope asked frantically. When nobody answered (in fact, there was no one around) she whimpered anxiously and clutched tighter onto the tree for hope of not falling into the snow. Unfortunately, whatever was going on had other plans. Her thighs were shrinking all at once, and several things happened together to make her lose her balance. First, her hips started to separate and flatten themselves - her legs were somehow moving apart parallel and it was beyond hard to stand up that way: it was like standing on stilts. Second, he arms started moving by themselves. Despite her great protest she let go of the tree and fell forward into the snow, sending her thick glasses flying off her face onto the ground.

As she fell to the ground she began to bend backwards to an impossible degree almost effortlessly, and of course she had no idea how. She landed on her slats with a dull pouff and her whole upper body even with the rest of her. Still moving on their own, her hand grabbed what was left of her legs and joined them in flat metallic thinness. At this point her whole body was completely stiff, and while the bottom of her hips completely turned into a pair of separate metal slat and turned a whole 180 degrees, everything from the top of her hips up was going through it's own amazing transformation, also changing color, but to a wooden brown instead of the metallic hue of the rest of her, and her features were starting to meld together.

She looked down at herself and realized it wasn't just her color that looked wood, her whole upper body was literally changing into it, and that's not all. As the wave of color hit her waist it widened to match the width of the rest of her, and her chest started flattening out in the same way, though with a slight indented curve, almost like a seat - she was too much in shock to even be agitated.

"Would somebody please tell me what's going on?" she screamed, "Anybody? Please! I-mmmhmmmph." Her calls were cut off as her wooden wave hit her head and she felt her face sort of meld into the rest of her body, leaving her a carved block of wood on top of a pair of curved metal runners - in short, a expertly built looking sled.

At this point she totally lost it. She wasn't sure what she was, she had no idea how it happened, and she was at a complete loss as to how her day could have possibly turned out like this (an unexpected turn, without a doubt). She could still hear and see, though out of what she had no idea, but she definitely couldn't move or talk. She was about to go completely ballistic, when all of a sudden all her panic seemed to drain out of her - in fact, all her thoughts seemed to kind of float into a kind of blissful fog except for an overall contentment, with a hint of anticipation and excitement (though she had no idea for what).

She had no idea how long she laid there idly, and she didn't really seem to care, but after a while she thought she could make out the sound of a couple people crunching through the snow:

Little Jimmy Warren and his father were walking through the park trying to enjoy the pristine scenery, but not quite managing it since they weren't staying for long. They didn't really have anything to do, and that being the case Jimmy's father decided they might as well go home, much to his son's chagrin. Still, they decided to take the scenic route, which happened to include one particularly tall snow covered hill, where they ran across a very expertly built-looking sled just lying there in the snow unused.

Jimmy, kid that he was, ran over to it right away. "Whoa!" he said, picking it up and showing it to his father, "look at this awesome sled! Can I keep it?"

"No, son. It doesn't belong to you," he replied with a shake of his finger, "someone probably brought it here and forgot about it, and they might come back for it."
"Aww, can't I at least ride on it for a little bit?" he pouted, "this is such a great hill for sledding! Please?" Unbeknownst to him or his father the sled in his arms was actually hoping the same thing.

Jimmy's father's mouth twitched with a smile. "Well… maybe a little bit. But we're leaving it here after you're done."

"Alright!" Jimmy cheered (the sled did too, but obviously nobody could hear it) and dove into the snow headfirst, laughing all the way - this was shaping up to be a very fun day.


Epilogue:

Jimmy and his father spent all afternoon taking turns rocketing down the hill, falling into the soft snow at breakneck speeds, flying into the other hills and all in all having a great time - at once point Jimmy even ended up in a race with a bunch of other kids with sleds (he won of course), but in the end he followed his father's word and left the sled back at the hill, where it was found by a young couple having a quaint little date in the park, and they also stopped and decided to have some fun sledding through the park. After they were done, they also left the sled in the park where someone else could find it.

And so on and such all day - everybody had a great time - at first taking their turn finding it and using it, and later on sharing the sled amongst themselves - and in the end it turned into a great big party as people from all over the park brought their own sleds for races and games. All in all, a very good day.

Penelope woke up the following afternoon sitting against a tree in the park not entirely sure how she got there or why she was barefoot in the snow, among other things. As she groped around looking for her glasses (she eventually found them a buried in the snow a short distance from the tree), she realized she couldn't quite remember anything about how the day before - had she gotten drunk or fallen asleep?

All she could remember was that whatever happened she had had a really fun time, better than she'd had for a long time before, and it felt great. Happy. Energizing even, like she wanted to go out and do more.
"Maybe I should get out more often. I'd forgotten how much fun, well, having fun could be!" She thought with a great big smile that hadn't found it's home on her face in ages, "but first, I have to get home! I'm freezing my toes off here!"

As he watched her hop foot-by-foot through the snow, giggling giddily as she went, the crooked figure smiled beneath his hood. "As I said, wish granted, and it seems I did a pretty good job - good for you Miss Sands. Who knows, we may meet again someday." He laughed and started to fade away, but just before he left one with particularly good ears might have heard.... "You know, I'm pretty good at this, maybe I should start doing this for a living."