The finished version of this will likely never be public. Name is subject to change. - Steven was never used to snow. He grew up in suburban Arizona and hardly vacationed in the winter, so he never got to experience it often growing up. His family has a cottage in the middle of nowhere, Canada. Which he visited often growing up, in the summertime, of course. But now, he’s going to be spending a whole week in that cottage surrounded by dense snow. This marks both the first time staying in the cabin and being in snow since he was a child. Ironically with one of his closest childhood friends, Aleks. He met her in elementary school. She had transferred from Iceland and they bonded over their common love of music. Her parents moved to Arizona for job opportunity. Her mother is Russian and her father is Icelandic, and she spent most of her life prior to moving in Iceland. She’s supposedly lived in a a lot of different countries, all European. According to Aleks’ father, they moved so often due to her father and his (possibly illegal) job requiring them to move every few years. He has since retired (at 38) and they all permanently settled in America. Why settle in America when they had access to all those scenic and isolated European countries, Steven didn’t know. She had a hard time adapting, which didn’t help the fact that she was bullied heavily when she was younger about being European, once being called a “communist slut”, which led to a hilarious moment when Aleks reported what they said and she repeated it in front of the whole class, loudly. The teacher freaked out and asked how the other girls learned that type of language and they just started crying. What a day that was. When they got to middle school they both chose to join band, which marked the only extracurricular activity either of them have ever done in school. They both played saxophone all the way into high school, going the full nine yards with marching band, concert band and jazz. In this time, Steven introduced her to the wonderful world of video games which she got addicted to, it almost rivaled her love for music. They both went to different colleges; Steven going to a university in New York while Aleks moved back to Iceland to go to a university with a name Steven could never hope to pronounce. Both of them have been planning this for the past few months, selecting one of the few weeks in which both of them are off school. She’s short for a 22 year old, about 5’1”. Steven isn’t too tall himself, being 5’8”. Around her, however, he feels much, much taller than he normally is. Currently, she is covered in fluffy, white fur. It makes her look like a normal sized fox. A contrast from her summer coat, which exposes just how thin and scrawny she really is. Her tail runs just short of the ground and she’s pretty clumsy about it; more often than other foxes. She often gets it stuck on random things. Most often, a closing car door. His old, beat up mom van pulled up to the old cottage, leaving deep tracks in the snow where a road should be. The van was chock-full of junk food stuffed in grocery store bags and disorganized suitcases containing mostly clothing and technology. The Wheatles blasts over the radio as his friend rants over it in the passenger’s seat. “...but I never really liked Darren Johnson’s drumming. Never really had a style like the other drummers of his time, y’know?” Aleks is a music fanatic. Every week she introduces him to some new and obscure experimental rock band he’s never heard of. Steven wouldn’t call his music tase basic per se, but it certainly seems like it compared to the strange corners of music she’s into. Right now, she’s talking about a band called the Pussy Stuffers. A 70’s psych rock band whose band mates went on to reform as the famous John and the Mammals. “We’re here.” Steven said, completely ignoring what Aleks was talking about. “Finally!” Aleks responded before hopping out of the car, but not before they both grabbed their suitcases, leaving the food to be brought in later. She analyzed the cottage for a few minutes. It was moderately sized, not huge. About as large as an average single story suburban house. A stack of chopped wood lay under a tarp and next to what she guessed was a grill, but it was hard to tell under all that snow. She joined Steven as he entered it. The dust knocks into the wind as the door is pushed open with a loud creak. “Looks old. How long has your family had this?” “Been in our family for generations. Apparently our ancestors migrated from Europe and settled here. That’s what my parents tell me, but who knows.” The cottage looks like it’s taken straight out the 1800s. It’s refurbished with modern appliances, but it still keeps a very “old” look to it. It’s spacious and clean, much more than one would expect from a cottage as old as it is. The door opens to a small living room and kitchen. The living room has the expected furniture in a vacation cottage owned by an average middle class family: a sofa, a coffee table, and an old TV hung over a brick fireplace. The kitchen looks much more modern. Again, with the general appliances expected in a kitchen, though it’s smaller than average. “The bathroom is over there.” Steven said pointing to a door in the top left corner. “And the master bedroom is there and the guest bedroom is there.” He pointed to a door adjacent to the bathroom and another door across from the others. “You’ll stay in the guest. I’ll stay in the master.” Aleks nodded in acknowledgment. “We need to get everything inside. Right now, it can just be on the kitchen counters, we’ll organize it later.” How they can manage to get all that food on those tiny counters was a mystery, but one they were willing to investigate. After some moving of bags and Aleks going on another tirade about how much she hates some pop rock band, the bags were stacked on top of the small kitchen counter. It took a few minutes of shuffling around, but it worked. Now the real problem is going to be stuffing it all into the laughably small cabinets, but that was for later. Now, it was time to clean up the rest of the house.