I realized too late that I had eaten far too much Christmas cake. I say eaten, but more realistically I had drunk it. It was too soggy to slice, or even hold, so Everett had just spooned the vile concoction into a big Santa mug. He said it was more festive that way.
"I'm not sure whether I'm numb from the cold or from this cake," I muttered, reaching a hand to my face. It felt like there was a lag between the moment I tried to move my hand and the moment my hand actually moved.
"It's not the cake, don't worry. I'm completely numb too," Everett assured.
"But you ate more cake than I did."
"Well, I feel fine." He flopped down into a pile of snow, gesturing expansively. "It's just the cold."
We were sitting outside in the garden, waiting until the snow piled up enough to build a snowman. The wind whipped against my face and flakes stuck to my lashes.
I drew up my knees, shifting closer to Everett's warmth. "Remind me again why we aren't just waiting inside?"
"It could just stop snowing and evaporate at any instant! I don't want to miss it again."
I traced a pattern onto the snow. The layer was thin enough that the brown mud beneath dirtied the white surface. "We'll have to wait a while."
"No, there's like," he gestured wildly, "snow everywhere. We can make angels too."
Everett wriggled about where he lay in the snow. His limbs moved haphazardly, not keeping to any particular direction as he muttered something about the art of making snow angels under his breath. I temporarily wondered whether he was drunk. But then again, he wasn't acting any differently to normal.
When he was done he scrambled to his feet, kicking up more snow and mud in the process. His hands planted on the angel, leaving glove prints all over, his elbows messing up the wings. I pulled him to his feet and we stood side by side, gazing at his handiwork. It looked like a dog had tried to dig a hole.
Everett beamed. "Does it look like me?"
I tipped my head to the side. "Um...sure."
"Really?"
"Well, it has your essence."
He seemed pleased with that answer. His eyes glittered from beneath snow caked lashes, and I could see the edge of a smile from behind his yellow scarf.
"Let's gather up some snow from around the garden," Everett suggested. "I think we can make a big enough pile for a snowman."
Everett led me to the shed from where he promoted grabbed a rake. I opted for the more obvious choice of a snow shovel. We started building our pile, his rake dragging muddy lines through the snow. It created dirty brown rivulets all over the lawn, snow turning to rainwater and mixing with the sand.
"Uhh...I think we have enough now." Everett leaned against his rake, staring unsurely at the dirty heap of snow.
"It's mud," I stated. "What we're making is a mud man."
"It melted faster than I thought." Everett squinted up at the sun that had poked out of the clouds and was now beaming brightly. "Curse you, horrendous British weather." He shook his rake at the sky, sending dirty snow flying over us both.
I half-heartedly prodded at the heap with the tip of my shovel. "We can still poke a couple sticks in there and give it a face."
Everett tried to snap off a twig from the tree that grew beneath his window. It yanked out the entire bottom branch instead, one almost as tall he was. He stumbled under the sudden weight of it, the branch tipping and thwacking him on the face.
"I am not climbing down that tree again." I raised my shovel in the direction of the destroyed trunk.
Everett groaned. "I could use a little help here."
I hoisted one end of the thick branch. "Where should we put this?"
"Just lay it right here, it can fertilize the tree and help the broken part grow back."
"We'd have to bury it really deep though," I said doubtfully. "We should probably just get rid of it; it'll be a mess in your yard."
Glancing around the garden, I saw that it was already a terrible mess. I could only hope that it would snow again and cover it up before his parents got home.
"No it's fine, it'll be gone soon," Everett said.
"Maybe the rest of it," I mused. "But the branch is much too big to be buried by any snowing."
"It doesn't need to be buried. It'll just break down in a few days and fertilize the whole place."
My jaw went slack. "Everett, it doesn't just- just disappear."
"It decomposes! It goes back in the ground," he exclaimed, waving at the branch.
"Yes but that's...over years." I sighed. "And generally works on much smaller chunks."
"Oh." He paused. "I've just been breaking plants and scattering them around all these years. It always disappears the next day. I thought I was fertilizing the yard."
"Your dad probably has to clean it all up later."
Everett looked thoughtful for a moment. "He does get annoyed sometimes, but I was confused as to why. I thought I was helping."
I looked on, bemused, as Everett straddled the thick branch and started tugging. He finally managed to yank out a few short twigs which he then jabbed ferociously into the pile of melted snow.
"Why does this snowman have three arms?" I questioned as I got to collecting pebbles.
"Mm...no, one of them is the nose."
"But it's the same length as the arm twig." I picked up an oblong stone and tossed it away, trying to find a smaller one with a more rounded shape. It didn't exactly match the stone I had picked out for the left eye.
"You just have to use your imagination," Everett advised. He picked up a hefty stone and threw it onto the heap, collapsing it even more if that were possible. "There, you can use that for the other eye."
The snowman lay in a sad puddle, half buried under the large rock that was meant to be its eye. With broken sticks and streaks of mud, it looked more like a snow monster than a man. It was a grotesque sight.
"It looks sort of okay actually.... Not as bad as I thought it would turn out!" Everett beamed. "Let's go inside. I'll make hot chocolate!"
A/n: empiresofwater made this pic for me! She writes queer historical fiction, so if that sounds like something you're interested in you should check out this link to her profile! —> empiresofwater