Gifted White Powder

Word count: 425

At Christmas eve a small girl, around the age of ten was sitting in front of the window. She sighed a deep, disappointed sigh. “Mum, why didn't it snow this Christmas?” she asked quietly. Her mother came off the sofa she’d been sitting on and walked to her daughter. As she hugged the youngest child she asked: “Why are you asking, honey?” The girl looked up at her mothers’ smiling face. Her eye almost watering and answered: “I asked daddy, in heaven so he could ask God to make it a white Christmas this year.” The mother wiped a ginger curl out of her daughters’ face, so much like her late husbands.  “Maybe he is saving the snow for something special?” she said thoughtfully. The girl crossed her arms stubbornly and pouted. She didn’t want snow saved for a special day. She wanted snow on Christmas, just like in the song. The holidays past with no sign of the crisp white powder, even though the girl asked her dad in heaven and God every evening to make it snow .

It nearly ended in her screaming up to heaven ‘Daddy?! Are you even there?! ‘. She did keep fate, she was sure her daddy would not let her down. It would snow, she was sure!  So every morning she’d climb out of her bunk and run to the living room to press her tiny nose up the glass. The endearing morning ritual lasted for almost a month. It seemed like she’d given up on the snow.

The end of January neared, just as her eleventh birthday. When the morning of the twenty-eighth dawned she was up before anyone else in the house. The birthday-jitters waking her with a mixture of nervousness and excitement. Yet she knew that if she stayed in bed, her mother would wake her whilst singing Happy Birthday to her. Next to that, there was the fact that she was almost a hundred percent sure her mother got her the dress she had loved so much. This would mean she could wear it to school that day, to show off. As she expected her mother did get her the dress. Proudly she bounced into the living room to admire the rest of the presents that were waiting for her on the table. Only her eye was drawn to the big window. Her smile grew even wider and her eyes lit up. Tiny white flakes of snow where gracefully falling from the heavens. As if to say:

“ Happy Birthday.”