Chapter 16 Felix
Chapter sixteen
Felix
“Whoa,” Naomi breathes, scarf pulled up to her nose.
The blizzard’s finally tapped out. What’s left is soft, lazy snow drifting down over a world that looks like it got dunked in powdered sugar. The air bites at any exposed skin, but everything feels so… Christmassy.
“Finally,” Silas says, rolling his shoulders. “We can actually stand outside without getting sandblasted. This is much better."
"Better?" I grin, punching his arm. "Man, this is epic. Look at it! It's like we're the only people on earth."
He just grunts at my remark, probably to stay on-brand at this point, but there's something different, his posture is looser, easier than it's been in ages.
We wade through the drifts toward the woodshed. It takes maybe five minutes this time instead of the march-of-doom forty from the day we fetched firewood. The snow’s still deep, but it’s clearly not trying to murder us anymore.
“So… nature walk?” Naomi asks, a little breathless as she trudges after us. “Maybe some light birdwatching? That would qualify as ‘thrilling’ after being cooped up so long."
“I’m pretty sure what we’re about to do involves less birds and more velocity,” I tell her, falling into step at her side.
Silas reaches the shed and yanks the door open with unnecessary drama. “Damn it's been a while,” he mutters, sounding pleased.
Inside, lined up next to neat stacks of firewood, are four beautiful old-school wooden toboggans.
Naomi stops dead. “You have sleds.”
“Four of them,” I say proudly.
She steps in, running a gloved hand along one. “So we’re… sledding? Like, down a hill, fast?”
“Look at you, putting the clues together,” Silas says, mouth quirking. “Yes. We are, in fact, going to throw ourselves down the slope just a few yards away. It’ll be great.”
Her expression flickers between horrified and intrigued. “I should probably mention I’ve never actually done this before.”
“What?” I gasp. “Never?”
“City kid,” she says. “Our winter sport is fighting for a cab.”
“That is the saddest sentence I’ve heard all week,” I say solemnly. “We’re fixing it immediately.”
“Can I object on grounds of self-preservation?”
“Overruled,” Silas calls, already dragging one sled out and trudging up to where the hill starts. It’s a long, gentle slope that spills out into a wide, empty field of snow. Perfect for a beginner and experienced fools like us. “Watch and learn, counselor.”
He drops onto the sled, gives one solid shove, and rockets down. For a second, it looks like he's going to wipe out spectacularly, but he doesn't. He executes a perfect run, spraying snow at the bottom like he's in a Mountain Dew commercial.
Liam goes next, whooping as he rockets downhill, arms out.
“Your turn,” I tell Naomi.
She clutches her sled to her chest. “Any advice?"
"Don’t die.”
"Super helpful, thanks."
She settles onto the sled, boots braced, hands wrapped tight around the rope. She takes a breath that definitely sounds like a prayer… and pushes off.
For the first ten feet, it’s fine.
Then she spins.
She goes backward for a solid stretch, hair flying out from under her hat, yelping the whole time. She hits the one bump on the entire hill, goes airborne with an impressive scream, and vanishes into a drift at the bottom.
Fuck. "Mia!" I start running, but then she bursts from the snowbank, hat missing, cackling like a maniac.
“THAT WAS AWESOME!” she shouts. “Felix, get your ass down here!”
The tension drains from my shoulders. She's okay. And hell yeah, I'm going next.
I don't need to be told twice. I launch myself down, deliberately hitting the same bump she did. I catch air… then wipe out spectacularly, losing my sled and rolling the last twenty feet.
"Graceful," she smirks as I lay at her feet, upside down.
“That's me in a nutshell,” I wheeze, spitting out snow.
The next hour is pure, chaotic joy.
We race. Liam finds “optimal trajectories,” which Silas then body-blocks just to mess with him. I manage a full backward run without crashing and feel unreasonably proud. Silas tries to stand up mid-ride once and eats snow spectacularly.
Eventually, we decide to level up and all pile onto the biggest toboggan, because what could go wrong?
“I call front,” Naomi says immediately.
“You’ve only gone down this hill nine times,” Silas points out.
“And clearly I’m a prodigy. Get on, cowards.”
Against all logic, we listen. Naomi in front, me behind her, then Liam, then Silas anchoring us.
“Ready?” she calls.
“Wait—” Liam starts.
She shoves off.
The sled surges forward. We pick up speed frighteningly fast.
“NAOMI, YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO STEER!” I yell over the wind.
“I AM STEERING!”
“INTO WHAT?”
The world blurs into white and screaming. Somehow, we make it to the bottom upright, skid to a stop, and just sit there for a moment, panting, processing the fact that none of us flew into a tree.
“Again?” Naomi asks, voice bright.
“Absolutely not,” Silas says… but he’s grinning, snow in his hair.
We roll off the sled in a heap, and that’s when I notice it… The snow under my glove… it's perfect for packing.
Naomi is a few feet away now, back to me, brushing snow off her coat.
Perfect.
I scoop a handful, form a ball, then lob it…
It lands on her shoulder with a soft thump.
She freezes, then turns… slowly.
Her fingers brush the mark on her jacket, then curl into a fist. Her eyes narrow.
“Oh, it’s on,” she says, dead quiet.
She scoops and throws in one swift motion. But her aim needs work. The snowball sails a good meter to my left… and nails Silas right in the chest.
Everything goes silent.
He looks down at the splatter on his coat. Then he looks at Naomi. Then at me.
"So that's how it's gonna be," he says, his voice a low growl.
He crouches and starts packing snow with the focus of someone assembling a weapon.
“Wait!” I shout. “It was me! I started it!”
“And we’re going to finish it,” he says. “Pack rules, Felix. An attack on one—”
“Is an attack on all,” Liam finishes, already forming his own snowball.
Naomi’s eyes go wide. “Okay, hold on, three against one is absolutely—”
A snowball cuts her off mid-protest.
“Article 4, subsection 2, hostile environment!” she yelps, diving behind an overturned sled. “This is textbook ganging up!”
“No article 4 whatever!” Silas calls back, absolutely living his best life. “This is war.”
We annihilate her. She tries valiantly to build a quick wall next to the sled, but it’s more “sad mound” than “defensible structure.” She’s laughing too hard to aim; one throw misses Liam by what has to be twenty feet.
“Geneva Convention!” she shouts desperately.
"This ain't Switzerland!” Silas yells, pegging her in the shoulder.
She crawls back to the sled and pops up from behind it, hair escaping her hat, cheeks bright pink, eyes shining. She looks so offensively pretty that something in my chest does a weird, tight squeeze.
So, obviously, I hurl a snowball directly into Silas’s face.
The silence is deafening. Snowflakes drift down. Naomi is frozen in place, her jaw on the ground.
"TRAITOR!" Silas roars.
“Strategic alliance shift,” I correct, diving behind her sad little fort. “I’m not getting dragged to war crimes court with you.”
“You have a death wish,” Liam calls, laughing.
“Let’s get them, counselor,” I say, bumping Naomi’s shoulder.
She grins, feral. “With pleasure.”
We pop up together and absolutely nail them, Liam in the arm, Silas in the ribs.
What follows is a full-on two-on-two snow war. Silas has an arm like a cannon. Liam keeps trying to flank us. But Naomi and I have chemistry. And by chemistry, I mean she uses me as bait while occasionally landing lucky shots.
“Duck!” she yells.
I drop and feel a snowball whistle over my head.
“Now!”
We both rise and throw. Both shots hit.
“Truce!” Silas finally gasps, doubled over and wheezing. "Truce, we can't... You win..."
Naomi straightens, breathing hard, snow dusting her hair. Pride is written all over her face.
“Truce,” she agrees, sounding very pleased with herself.
We all just collapse backward into the snow, spread out in a loose star. For a while, the only sounds are our breathing and the distant rustle of pines.
“Snow angels?” Naomi suggests.
“Obviously,” I say.
Suddenly, we all flap around like deranged birds, creating the world's most chaotic angel formation. Then, we just lie there, watching the snow fall from the sky like nature's own glitter bomb.
I turn my head. Naomi’s lying in her mangled angel, eyes closed, lashes dotted with tiny flakes. She looks… peaceful. And perfect.
“It suits you,” I whisper.
She doesn’t open her eyes. “What does?”
“Being an angel.”
Her eyes snap open. Color crawls up her neck into her cheeks. “That—That's extremely cheesy, Felix.”
“Yeah,” I say, grinning at the sky. “Still true, though.”
She looks away, but I know she's smiling. "You're ridiculous."
“He is,” Silas agrees from my left, but he's smiling too.
Liam lets out a low, satisfied hum. “I really could get used to this.”
I feel it then. This palpable thing in the air. This storm, this day, this perfect snowball fight... things are different now. I can tell the ice around Silas' heart is cracking. The walls around Liam are thinning.
And me?
I suspect I'm already halfway gone.