Fic: Farewell Freeze
Title: Farewell Freeze
Rating: K
Word count: 3200
Summary: The Roslin-Adamas' snow-filled final days on Caprica.
A/N: Thanks to nixmom for the beta. And so so so many thanks to sci-fi-shipper for making the beautiful banner to accompany the stories in this series. It's gorgeous, huh? :)
This story follows Tauron Testimony.
Laura rooted through the cardboard box, hoping to find a hat and mittens for each of the kids. While she found piles of silk and wool scarves that belonged to her, some of which she’d forgotten about (why didn’t she wear the scarf with the butterflies more often? it was so pretty), child-sized accessories were nowhere to be found. “Bill,” she finally called, though she’d hoped not to disturb him. “Can you give me a hand?”
“Wanna go outside!” shrieked Sephie, pulling at the rainbow suspenders holding up the three layers of pants she wore. She stomped up and down, amusing herself at the sound her rubber boots made against the worn pine floors.
“Be a good girl and go sit with Phin,” Laura instructed her daughter. “You can look out the window until it’s time to go out.” Phineus was doing just that, mesmerized by the thickly falling snow as he sat patiently in his beanbag chair wearing as many pants as Sephie, as well as two sweatshirts and an unzipped drab-olive jacket.
Sephie disregarded Laura’s suggestion, bending down instead to place a sloppy kiss on the forehead of the newest addition to the family, who lay on a blanket next to Laura. “Tickle, tickle,” she said, devious as her fingers waggled closer and closer to the infant’s sides. Cyrus squirmed away, as if aware that he was completely at her mercy.
“Muffin, you leave Cy alone,” Bill said, finally entering the living room. He had a pencil tucked behind his ear and his fingers were marked with highlighter and stray pen marks commensurate with his end-of-the-semester paper-writing push.
Sephie turned away from the baby, who began to cry once no one was paying attention to him, and held her arms up to Bill. He swung her up onto his hip in the practiced motion of a man who made that movement easily a dozen times a day.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, honey,” Laura said over Cyrus’s indignant wailing. She rose up from her crouched position in front of the box she’d been searching and stood in front of him before looking around at the rest of the cardboard boxes ringing the room, stacked three and four boxes tall in some places. “Do you have any idea where the kids’ cold-weather stuff is? I never thought it would get like this between the time I packed up and when we actually moved.”
Bill frowned in thought, then crossed the room to set Sephie in the green beanbag chair next to Phin’s orange one. Most of the living-room furniture had already been packed into the container that would transport their things to their new home, but the small beanbags remained, along with a folding table and chairs. “Look at all the snowflakes, Sephie. Did you know every snowflake is different?”
“Wanna play,” Sephie said, looking out the window.
Phin nodded solemnly in agreement. “Outside,” he added.
“I’m surprised they even have mittens,” Bill said, scanning the room for a promising box. He pulled out one labeled “Twins - Clothes” and started to look through it. “This must be the first real snowfall since they were born.”
Laura hummed and stood over him, rubbing his tense shoulder and neck muscles while he rifled through the box’s contents. One by one he pulled out four mittens, of which only two were a matching pair, and a couple of knit hats that were a bit thin for snow wear but would do the trick for a short trip outside.
“Well done, sir,” Laura said, leaning closer to kiss the tattooed skin at the back of his neck.
He tossed the handful of mittens aside and turned to face her, tenderly drawing her lips to his. The sound of his pencil, dislodged by Laura in her enthusiasm, clattering against the floor broke them apart, and they both started laughing when their attention fell to the blanket that had until recently been the sole province of young Cyrus.
Sephie and Phin had laid down on either side of the baby and pulled the edges of the blanket up over them, making for what appeared to be a crepe filled with little Roslin-Adamas.
“Anyone in here?” Laura asked, shuffling closer as Bill did the same. “I’ve got some mittens and hats, I just need to find Phin and Sephie so we can go outside and play...”
“You two better not be crushing your brother,” Bill added, though his tone was more playful than accusatory. Twin giggles escaped from beneath the blanket. A few unintelligible whispers followed, then the ends of the blanket flew back and three flushed little faces looked up at them. Phin and Sephie looked thoroughly entertained, but poor Cyrus was overwhelmed, and his face screwed up to let everyone know.
“Mittens, you two,” Bill said, reaching down to pick up the baby before he could let loose the scream that was building. The kids obediently turned to Laura, who placed a mitten on each outstretched hand and a hat on each head before zipping up their jackets. Cyrus had burrowed against Bill’s shoulder, soothed and content as Bill swayed him back and forth.
Laura had tugged on her own hat and gloves, and turned to Bill as she zipped up her heaviest coat. “Thanks for holding down the fort, dear.”
He shrugged awkwardly with his baby-free shoulder and grinned. “This guy can help me with my paper while you three play. Have fun out there.” He turned and went back to his office, and Laura could hear the mechanical cranking sounds coming from the swing that was set up in there -- this wouldn’t be the first paper Bill wrote while keeping watch over a baby. Luckily Cy was laid-back in his own way, neither fussy like his brother had been nor as energetically demanding as his sister.
Laura led the two older children out the front door and into the white-blanketed expanse before them. No cars were out on the road; the whole city had shut down, somewhat hysterically, hours earlier.
Phin’s green eyes were wide as saucers as he took in the snow-covered trees and the completely obscured walkway, while Sephie ran out into the yard like a puppy newly freed after spending the day in a crate. She took just a few steps through the light, powdery snow that reached the hem of her jacket, before finally giving up on making progress and throwing herself down into the white stuff.
“Mama, it’s cold!” she squealed, sitting up and blinking the snowflakes off her long lashes. She pushed herself up and ran maniacally around in circles, kicking the snow out in front of her with her red ladybug boots. Phin clung to Laura, turning his face into her corduroys to avoid the falling snow.
“Come on, Phineus,” Laura coaxed. She took one staggered step after another, impeded by both the snow and the thirty pounds of timidity attached to her leg. “You can walk in it, it’s okay.”
Her burden was finally relieved when Sephie ran up to them and grabbed Phin by the arm, forcing him to let go of his grip on Laura and follow Sephie into the snow she’d already tramped down. She laughed and pulled him to the ground, rolling around. He followed her lead, and soon they were both covered in a thick crust of snow.
Laura stood by, happy to see them exploring the foreign substance. Phin was enjoying it as much as Sephie once he got over his wariness. She reached down, unable to resist gathering up a handful of snow and packing it together. Caprica City hadn’t seen a snowfall like this in years. Laura's memories of the last one were as cloudy as the skies above, but she guessed she’d been in... primary school? ... the last time there’d been enough snow to gather up into a serviceable snowball.
She crouched down beside her little polar bears, who barely registered her presence as they chased each other around. Driven by a distant memory, she began rolling the snowball around the untrodden snow, nearly surprised at how quickly it grew into a decent-sized boulder.
“Mama what you do?” Phin, breathless, came up beside her and leaned against the snowball that was now nearly his size.
“I’m making a snow Cylon,” Laura said.
“What a snow Cylon?” Sephie demanded to know, joining them.
Laura reached out and brushed away the snow from Sephie’s cheeks and the red curls, now wet, that peeked out from beneath her hat. “It’s something we can make with the snow. This--” she gestured to the boulder before them “-- is the bottom part. Want to help me make the rest?”
They looked at one another. “Yeah!”
She showed them how to make the first starter snowball, hoping that she wouldn’t end up regretting having given them that knowledge for a potential future arsenal, and before long they had pushed and grunted and squealed their way to making two more pieces, with some shaping help and direction from Laura. She hoisted the middle piece on top of the larger boulder, then picked up Phin so that he could stack the headpiece in the appropriate place himself.
“Very good,” Laura praised them. The final product towered over the twins, at nearly four feet tall. She looked toward the house; she really needed some tinfoil and a piece or two of licorice for some flair, both of which she was fairly certain were still present in her half-packed kitchen. But she was sure that once they went inside, it would be for good. She gently tugged Sephie away from their creation, afraid the girl’s no-holds-barred hug to the snow Cylon might bring about its premature demise, and felt around in her pocket to see if she had anything with which to adorn the thing. Some loose change and a random puzzle piece wouldn’t be very helpful, but when her fingers closed around a familiar tube, she felt hope that was confirmed when she pulled it out and noted that it was the deep, rich red she’d lately favored.
“Now we draw the face,” Laura explained to the kids, who were looking at her for direction.
Phin couldn’t care less, but Sephie knew what Laura held in her hand; it wasn’t that long ago she’d drawn all over the kitchen wall in a lighter shade of lipstick. “I wanna!”
“You want to what, darling?” Laura kept her tone light, but her face was all business. Was a please too much to ask?
“Draw face. Pweeze.”
She patted the snow down firmly where the roving red eye would go and picked up Sephie. Sephie’s chubby little fist could barely fit around the tube of lipstick, but somehow Laura was able to guide her in applying the product in a straight line where she imagined the eyes would go, the lipstick saturating the icy surface. She stepped back, pleased with the effect, and let Sephie slide down to the ground. “See? Snow Cylon.”
“Slow sny-on,” Phin tried. “Daddy fly. Shoot dem.” Sephie pantomimed shooting their friend-turned-enemy, her aggressive stance and high kicks just as much a threat to the structure’s integrity as her hugging of it had been.
“Daddy fought Cylons in the war, that’s right,” Laura said, wondering what Bill had been telling them during their bedtime stories. Maybe this hadn’t been the best idea. She needed to fill their heads with something more benign. “How about we make snow angels now?”
“What a snow angle?” Sephie asked.
Laura pulled up the hood on her coat and made sure it was secure before taking a few steps away from the snow Cylon scene in an effort to locate some untouched, abundant snow. “You lie back and move your arms and legs like this.” She eased herself down into the snow, wincing at the coldness that enveloped her limbs. But the coldness quickly fled as she began making wide sweeping motions with each of her extremities. A couple passes later she figured she’d have achieved the desired effect, and sat up.
Sephie was, unsurprisingly, already copying Laura’s movements in a plot of snow a few feet away, her little limbs working furiously. Phin watched, taking note when Laura stood up to inspect the imprint she’d left.
“What dat?” he asked, pointing at it.
“Snow angel,” she said. “You try, honey.”
Phin’s little brow furrowed doubtfully, but his refusal was cut short by Sephie’s gleeful bound from her spot on the ground to his side. “Come Phinny! You go now.”
Instead of finding his own fresh patch of snow, he waddled over to Laura’s former spot and lay down inside the much larger indentation. Laura had to hand it to him; the kid had the right idea, but wasn’t interested in taking the risk of laying down in the unpredictable powder.
“That works, too,” she allowed with a shrug.
Phin laughed at the big snowflakes coming down onto his face. Sephie, finally still beside Laura, had started chattering, though her cheeks were flushed with warmth.
“Sephie, you want to go inside?”
“No,” she said without hesitation, though she looked up at Laura as if she wanted to be picked up and held.
A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt, Laura supposed. Barring future vacations to one of the ski-resort secondary planets, they probably wouldn’t see another snowfall for the rest of their childhoods. Tauron’s arid climate never saw snow below the peaks of its scattered mountain ranges, all of which were far from Hypatia. She bent down and held her arms out to Sephie, groaning with effort as she swung her up to her hip. “How did you get so big?”
Sephie just grinned and nestled her face into the thick wool of Laura’s scarf, seeking dry warmth beyond the outer layer of melting snow. Meanwhile on the ground, Phin’s movements had slowed, and he was mostly just staring up at the gray, swirling sky.
“Okay, you two,” Laura announced, having become somewhat bored with the snow herself. Plus Sephie was getting heavier by the moment as she slid closer toward sleep. “Time to go inside. Mommy’s ready to get warm.”
Phin pushed himself up. “Daddy come play?” he asked, looking hopefully at the house.
Laura shook her head. “No, honey. Daddy’s working.”
“Why you no working?” Sephie asked her.
“Because Mommy’s got some time off before starting a new job on Tauron,” Laura said. “Remember how we talked about how we’re moving to a new house, and that’s why we packed up all our things?”
Sephie nodded, whether out of actual comprehension or just a precocious understanding of social cues, Laura couldn’t be sure.
“Well, we are moving so that Mommy can work at a new job there, and Daddy will keep going to school.”
“I go to school?” Phin asked, hopping up and down.
Laura took his hand and began walking back up to the house, the snow crunching beneath both their feet. “Soon you’ll go to school, honey. Not right away.”
His lower lip stuck out at that, but Sephie backed her up: “I don’t wan’ go to schooool.”
Laura kissed her daughter’s cold cheek. “Honey, right now we are just going inside to get warm and dry. Won’t that be nice?” She showed them how to stomp and kick the snow out of the treads of their boots, and brushed them off best she could before opening the front door and ushering them in.
“Stand right ther-- oh!” The warmth and smell of something baking hit her at the same time, even though her nose had started to run from the change in temperature and all she could sense was a vague goodness emanating from the kitchen. Bill came out wearing Laura’s frilly Viper apron and confirmed her sensory suspicions.
“Hey, guys,” he said, smiling. “How’d you like the snow?” He bent down to help Phin take off his boots.
“We make slow snyon,” Sephie said. “I shoot it!”
Bill gave Laura a questioning look.
“Snow Cylon,” she clarified. “And she hugged it first.”
“Hmph. We’ve got a little collaborator on our hands.”
“Daddy, I want go to school,” Phin announced. “Go to school with you.”
Bill looked confused. “I don’t have to go to school, buddy. All my classes are finished and I just have to send in my papers when they’re done.”
“How is that going, anyway?” Laura inquired. “From the look of this,” she reached out and tugged at the bib of his apron, “you weren’t writing for all that long while we were outside.”
He scoffed. “You of all people know that it doesn’t take too long to make a proper dessert.”
Her mouth watered; all that playing had built up an appetite. “Yum.” She tossed Sephie’s coat and pants to dry near the drafty window and raked her fingers through her daughter’s tangled hair. “You guys want to go change into dry clothes?”
They didn’t bother to respond, just took off running toward their room. Laura hoped that there were still some unpacked, clean clothes for them to change into. She started to remove her own coat and boots, careful to avoid the puddles of icy water that had accumulated in the foyer as she stepped out in her stocking feet. Bill looked at her, amused.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, reaching out to cup her chilly cheek. "Playing in the snow agrees with you."
Laura flushed even more than the earlier exertions and sudden exposure to warmth had caused in her fair skin. “You’re silly.” Her hair was matted far worse than Sephie’s, she was dressed in her comfortable high-waisted “mom jeans” and a bulky sweater that was technically Bill’s...
“Can you watch them while I get changed?” she asked, suddenly eager to get out of the unflattering damp clothing.
“Of course.”
They walked together as far as the twins’ room, at which point Bill took over helping Sephie yank her shirt over her head, where it had gotten stuck--and tangled with her suspenders. Phin sat on his toddler bed in his underwear, waiting for assistance. Laura gave the patient one an approving wink before moving on to her and Bill’s room and quickly changing into leggings, thick socks, and a long sweater. When she emerged, she found the twins sitting at the kitchen counter and Bill pouring glasses of milk for both of them. He’d swapped out his apron for a sling, and Cyrus was now nestled comfortably within it. The baby reminded Laura of an owl, with his tendency to watch everyone intently with his large dark eyes from his perch against Bill.
A timer rang out, causing the kids to clap and cheer and, she suspected, kick the counter, although now that the house was finally sold she wasn’t as concerned about that as she might have formerly been. Laura decided to make herself useful and went to open the oven.
The burst of warmth that came forth was welcome, as was the scent of freshly baked...cupcakes?
“This wasn’t what I thought you were making,” she said, setting the tray of Caprican apple muffins to cool on the counter.
“I know,” he admitted. “I figured we have plenty of cherry cake in our future.”
Next story: Tauron Transitions
Rating: K
Word count: 3200
Summary: The Roslin-Adamas' snow-filled final days on Caprica.
A/N: Thanks to nixmom for the beta. And so so so many thanks to sci-fi-shipper for making the beautiful banner to accompany the stories in this series. It's gorgeous, huh? :)
This story follows Tauron Testimony.
Laura rooted through the cardboard box, hoping to find a hat and mittens for each of the kids. While she found piles of silk and wool scarves that belonged to her, some of which she’d forgotten about (why didn’t she wear the scarf with the butterflies more often? it was so pretty), child-sized accessories were nowhere to be found. “Bill,” she finally called, though she’d hoped not to disturb him. “Can you give me a hand?”
“Wanna go outside!” shrieked Sephie, pulling at the rainbow suspenders holding up the three layers of pants she wore. She stomped up and down, amusing herself at the sound her rubber boots made against the worn pine floors.
“Be a good girl and go sit with Phin,” Laura instructed her daughter. “You can look out the window until it’s time to go out.” Phineus was doing just that, mesmerized by the thickly falling snow as he sat patiently in his beanbag chair wearing as many pants as Sephie, as well as two sweatshirts and an unzipped drab-olive jacket.
Sephie disregarded Laura’s suggestion, bending down instead to place a sloppy kiss on the forehead of the newest addition to the family, who lay on a blanket next to Laura. “Tickle, tickle,” she said, devious as her fingers waggled closer and closer to the infant’s sides. Cyrus squirmed away, as if aware that he was completely at her mercy.
“Muffin, you leave Cy alone,” Bill said, finally entering the living room. He had a pencil tucked behind his ear and his fingers were marked with highlighter and stray pen marks commensurate with his end-of-the-semester paper-writing push.
Sephie turned away from the baby, who began to cry once no one was paying attention to him, and held her arms up to Bill. He swung her up onto his hip in the practiced motion of a man who made that movement easily a dozen times a day.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, honey,” Laura said over Cyrus’s indignant wailing. She rose up from her crouched position in front of the box she’d been searching and stood in front of him before looking around at the rest of the cardboard boxes ringing the room, stacked three and four boxes tall in some places. “Do you have any idea where the kids’ cold-weather stuff is? I never thought it would get like this between the time I packed up and when we actually moved.”
Bill frowned in thought, then crossed the room to set Sephie in the green beanbag chair next to Phin’s orange one. Most of the living-room furniture had already been packed into the container that would transport their things to their new home, but the small beanbags remained, along with a folding table and chairs. “Look at all the snowflakes, Sephie. Did you know every snowflake is different?”
“Wanna play,” Sephie said, looking out the window.
Phin nodded solemnly in agreement. “Outside,” he added.
“I’m surprised they even have mittens,” Bill said, scanning the room for a promising box. He pulled out one labeled “Twins - Clothes” and started to look through it. “This must be the first real snowfall since they were born.”
Laura hummed and stood over him, rubbing his tense shoulder and neck muscles while he rifled through the box’s contents. One by one he pulled out four mittens, of which only two were a matching pair, and a couple of knit hats that were a bit thin for snow wear but would do the trick for a short trip outside.
“Well done, sir,” Laura said, leaning closer to kiss the tattooed skin at the back of his neck.
He tossed the handful of mittens aside and turned to face her, tenderly drawing her lips to his. The sound of his pencil, dislodged by Laura in her enthusiasm, clattering against the floor broke them apart, and they both started laughing when their attention fell to the blanket that had until recently been the sole province of young Cyrus.
Sephie and Phin had laid down on either side of the baby and pulled the edges of the blanket up over them, making for what appeared to be a crepe filled with little Roslin-Adamas.
“Anyone in here?” Laura asked, shuffling closer as Bill did the same. “I’ve got some mittens and hats, I just need to find Phin and Sephie so we can go outside and play...”
“You two better not be crushing your brother,” Bill added, though his tone was more playful than accusatory. Twin giggles escaped from beneath the blanket. A few unintelligible whispers followed, then the ends of the blanket flew back and three flushed little faces looked up at them. Phin and Sephie looked thoroughly entertained, but poor Cyrus was overwhelmed, and his face screwed up to let everyone know.
“Mittens, you two,” Bill said, reaching down to pick up the baby before he could let loose the scream that was building. The kids obediently turned to Laura, who placed a mitten on each outstretched hand and a hat on each head before zipping up their jackets. Cyrus had burrowed against Bill’s shoulder, soothed and content as Bill swayed him back and forth.
Laura had tugged on her own hat and gloves, and turned to Bill as she zipped up her heaviest coat. “Thanks for holding down the fort, dear.”
He shrugged awkwardly with his baby-free shoulder and grinned. “This guy can help me with my paper while you three play. Have fun out there.” He turned and went back to his office, and Laura could hear the mechanical cranking sounds coming from the swing that was set up in there -- this wouldn’t be the first paper Bill wrote while keeping watch over a baby. Luckily Cy was laid-back in his own way, neither fussy like his brother had been nor as energetically demanding as his sister.
Laura led the two older children out the front door and into the white-blanketed expanse before them. No cars were out on the road; the whole city had shut down, somewhat hysterically, hours earlier.
Phin’s green eyes were wide as saucers as he took in the snow-covered trees and the completely obscured walkway, while Sephie ran out into the yard like a puppy newly freed after spending the day in a crate. She took just a few steps through the light, powdery snow that reached the hem of her jacket, before finally giving up on making progress and throwing herself down into the white stuff.
“Mama, it’s cold!” she squealed, sitting up and blinking the snowflakes off her long lashes. She pushed herself up and ran maniacally around in circles, kicking the snow out in front of her with her red ladybug boots. Phin clung to Laura, turning his face into her corduroys to avoid the falling snow.
“Come on, Phineus,” Laura coaxed. She took one staggered step after another, impeded by both the snow and the thirty pounds of timidity attached to her leg. “You can walk in it, it’s okay.”
Her burden was finally relieved when Sephie ran up to them and grabbed Phin by the arm, forcing him to let go of his grip on Laura and follow Sephie into the snow she’d already tramped down. She laughed and pulled him to the ground, rolling around. He followed her lead, and soon they were both covered in a thick crust of snow.
Laura stood by, happy to see them exploring the foreign substance. Phin was enjoying it as much as Sephie once he got over his wariness. She reached down, unable to resist gathering up a handful of snow and packing it together. Caprica City hadn’t seen a snowfall like this in years. Laura's memories of the last one were as cloudy as the skies above, but she guessed she’d been in... primary school? ... the last time there’d been enough snow to gather up into a serviceable snowball.
She crouched down beside her little polar bears, who barely registered her presence as they chased each other around. Driven by a distant memory, she began rolling the snowball around the untrodden snow, nearly surprised at how quickly it grew into a decent-sized boulder.
“Mama what you do?” Phin, breathless, came up beside her and leaned against the snowball that was now nearly his size.
“I’m making a snow Cylon,” Laura said.
“What a snow Cylon?” Sephie demanded to know, joining them.
Laura reached out and brushed away the snow from Sephie’s cheeks and the red curls, now wet, that peeked out from beneath her hat. “It’s something we can make with the snow. This--” she gestured to the boulder before them “-- is the bottom part. Want to help me make the rest?”
They looked at one another. “Yeah!”
She showed them how to make the first starter snowball, hoping that she wouldn’t end up regretting having given them that knowledge for a potential future arsenal, and before long they had pushed and grunted and squealed their way to making two more pieces, with some shaping help and direction from Laura. She hoisted the middle piece on top of the larger boulder, then picked up Phin so that he could stack the headpiece in the appropriate place himself.
“Very good,” Laura praised them. The final product towered over the twins, at nearly four feet tall. She looked toward the house; she really needed some tinfoil and a piece or two of licorice for some flair, both of which she was fairly certain were still present in her half-packed kitchen. But she was sure that once they went inside, it would be for good. She gently tugged Sephie away from their creation, afraid the girl’s no-holds-barred hug to the snow Cylon might bring about its premature demise, and felt around in her pocket to see if she had anything with which to adorn the thing. Some loose change and a random puzzle piece wouldn’t be very helpful, but when her fingers closed around a familiar tube, she felt hope that was confirmed when she pulled it out and noted that it was the deep, rich red she’d lately favored.
“Now we draw the face,” Laura explained to the kids, who were looking at her for direction.
Phin couldn’t care less, but Sephie knew what Laura held in her hand; it wasn’t that long ago she’d drawn all over the kitchen wall in a lighter shade of lipstick. “I wanna!”
“You want to what, darling?” Laura kept her tone light, but her face was all business. Was a please too much to ask?
“Draw face. Pweeze.”
She patted the snow down firmly where the roving red eye would go and picked up Sephie. Sephie’s chubby little fist could barely fit around the tube of lipstick, but somehow Laura was able to guide her in applying the product in a straight line where she imagined the eyes would go, the lipstick saturating the icy surface. She stepped back, pleased with the effect, and let Sephie slide down to the ground. “See? Snow Cylon.”
“Slow sny-on,” Phin tried. “Daddy fly. Shoot dem.” Sephie pantomimed shooting their friend-turned-enemy, her aggressive stance and high kicks just as much a threat to the structure’s integrity as her hugging of it had been.
“Daddy fought Cylons in the war, that’s right,” Laura said, wondering what Bill had been telling them during their bedtime stories. Maybe this hadn’t been the best idea. She needed to fill their heads with something more benign. “How about we make snow angels now?”
“What a snow angle?” Sephie asked.
Laura pulled up the hood on her coat and made sure it was secure before taking a few steps away from the snow Cylon scene in an effort to locate some untouched, abundant snow. “You lie back and move your arms and legs like this.” She eased herself down into the snow, wincing at the coldness that enveloped her limbs. But the coldness quickly fled as she began making wide sweeping motions with each of her extremities. A couple passes later she figured she’d have achieved the desired effect, and sat up.
Sephie was, unsurprisingly, already copying Laura’s movements in a plot of snow a few feet away, her little limbs working furiously. Phin watched, taking note when Laura stood up to inspect the imprint she’d left.
“What dat?” he asked, pointing at it.
“Snow angel,” she said. “You try, honey.”
Phin’s little brow furrowed doubtfully, but his refusal was cut short by Sephie’s gleeful bound from her spot on the ground to his side. “Come Phinny! You go now.”
Instead of finding his own fresh patch of snow, he waddled over to Laura’s former spot and lay down inside the much larger indentation. Laura had to hand it to him; the kid had the right idea, but wasn’t interested in taking the risk of laying down in the unpredictable powder.
“That works, too,” she allowed with a shrug.
Phin laughed at the big snowflakes coming down onto his face. Sephie, finally still beside Laura, had started chattering, though her cheeks were flushed with warmth.
“Sephie, you want to go inside?”
“No,” she said without hesitation, though she looked up at Laura as if she wanted to be picked up and held.
A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt, Laura supposed. Barring future vacations to one of the ski-resort secondary planets, they probably wouldn’t see another snowfall for the rest of their childhoods. Tauron’s arid climate never saw snow below the peaks of its scattered mountain ranges, all of which were far from Hypatia. She bent down and held her arms out to Sephie, groaning with effort as she swung her up to her hip. “How did you get so big?”
Sephie just grinned and nestled her face into the thick wool of Laura’s scarf, seeking dry warmth beyond the outer layer of melting snow. Meanwhile on the ground, Phin’s movements had slowed, and he was mostly just staring up at the gray, swirling sky.
“Okay, you two,” Laura announced, having become somewhat bored with the snow herself. Plus Sephie was getting heavier by the moment as she slid closer toward sleep. “Time to go inside. Mommy’s ready to get warm.”
Phin pushed himself up. “Daddy come play?” he asked, looking hopefully at the house.
Laura shook her head. “No, honey. Daddy’s working.”
“Why you no working?” Sephie asked her.
“Because Mommy’s got some time off before starting a new job on Tauron,” Laura said. “Remember how we talked about how we’re moving to a new house, and that’s why we packed up all our things?”
Sephie nodded, whether out of actual comprehension or just a precocious understanding of social cues, Laura couldn’t be sure.
“Well, we are moving so that Mommy can work at a new job there, and Daddy will keep going to school.”
“I go to school?” Phin asked, hopping up and down.
Laura took his hand and began walking back up to the house, the snow crunching beneath both their feet. “Soon you’ll go to school, honey. Not right away.”
His lower lip stuck out at that, but Sephie backed her up: “I don’t wan’ go to schooool.”
Laura kissed her daughter’s cold cheek. “Honey, right now we are just going inside to get warm and dry. Won’t that be nice?” She showed them how to stomp and kick the snow out of the treads of their boots, and brushed them off best she could before opening the front door and ushering them in.
“Stand right ther-- oh!” The warmth and smell of something baking hit her at the same time, even though her nose had started to run from the change in temperature and all she could sense was a vague goodness emanating from the kitchen. Bill came out wearing Laura’s frilly Viper apron and confirmed her sensory suspicions.
“Hey, guys,” he said, smiling. “How’d you like the snow?” He bent down to help Phin take off his boots.
“We make slow snyon,” Sephie said. “I shoot it!”
Bill gave Laura a questioning look.
“Snow Cylon,” she clarified. “And she hugged it first.”
“Hmph. We’ve got a little collaborator on our hands.”
“Daddy, I want go to school,” Phin announced. “Go to school with you.”
Bill looked confused. “I don’t have to go to school, buddy. All my classes are finished and I just have to send in my papers when they’re done.”
“How is that going, anyway?” Laura inquired. “From the look of this,” she reached out and tugged at the bib of his apron, “you weren’t writing for all that long while we were outside.”
He scoffed. “You of all people know that it doesn’t take too long to make a proper dessert.”
Her mouth watered; all that playing had built up an appetite. “Yum.” She tossed Sephie’s coat and pants to dry near the drafty window and raked her fingers through her daughter’s tangled hair. “You guys want to go change into dry clothes?”
They didn’t bother to respond, just took off running toward their room. Laura hoped that there were still some unpacked, clean clothes for them to change into. She started to remove her own coat and boots, careful to avoid the puddles of icy water that had accumulated in the foyer as she stepped out in her stocking feet. Bill looked at her, amused.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, reaching out to cup her chilly cheek. "Playing in the snow agrees with you."
Laura flushed even more than the earlier exertions and sudden exposure to warmth had caused in her fair skin. “You’re silly.” Her hair was matted far worse than Sephie’s, she was dressed in her comfortable high-waisted “mom jeans” and a bulky sweater that was technically Bill’s...
“Can you watch them while I get changed?” she asked, suddenly eager to get out of the unflattering damp clothing.
“Of course.”
They walked together as far as the twins’ room, at which point Bill took over helping Sephie yank her shirt over her head, where it had gotten stuck--and tangled with her suspenders. Phin sat on his toddler bed in his underwear, waiting for assistance. Laura gave the patient one an approving wink before moving on to her and Bill’s room and quickly changing into leggings, thick socks, and a long sweater. When she emerged, she found the twins sitting at the kitchen counter and Bill pouring glasses of milk for both of them. He’d swapped out his apron for a sling, and Cyrus was now nestled comfortably within it. The baby reminded Laura of an owl, with his tendency to watch everyone intently with his large dark eyes from his perch against Bill.
A timer rang out, causing the kids to clap and cheer and, she suspected, kick the counter, although now that the house was finally sold she wasn’t as concerned about that as she might have formerly been. Laura decided to make herself useful and went to open the oven.
The burst of warmth that came forth was welcome, as was the scent of freshly baked...cupcakes?
“This wasn’t what I thought you were making,” she said, setting the tray of Caprican apple muffins to cool on the counter.
“I know,” he admitted. “I figured we have plenty of cherry cake in our future.”
Next story: Tauron Transitions