Page 36 of Abdominal Snowman

The cursor blinking in the empty white box stared at her.

The vehicle hit an icy patch in the road, and the driver lost control, careening over the side of the ditch.

She winced at the terrible paraphrasing of the event, but it wasn’t like she could tell them the truth.

Abominable snowman ran out in the road.

Sage wished she could recall everything clearer, but she couldn’t quite remember how tall Soren’s beast shape was in comparison to the car. She couldn’t remember if he had claws or fur or… anything.

All she remembered was white, and more white, and then two shards of glowing blue. She’d reacted with instant fear, but had still swerved to miss whatever she’d seen in the road.

Shaking her head, she still could hardly believe that Soren was who—

Thunk.

“Ugh!” she groaned and ripped her headphones off. In the echoing silence, she heard the tinny beat of the music from the headphones, but no thunk.

With a grumble, Sage stomped to the door and pushed her feet into the boots she’d ordered in preparation for this trip. On the rack, she couldn’t find her jacket, but she was too annoyed to bother going all the way upstairs. Grabbing the warmest-looking coat—a fuzzy lined jacket—she shoved her arms in and zipped it up. It fell to her knees, but she didn’t care. The damned thing would keep her warm. She searched for a toboggan to stuff on her head in the entryway, huffing when she couldn’t even find that. For a snowbeast as orderly as Soren, she was annoyed at his apparent lack of cold weather gear. Didn’t his human form get cold?

Thunk.

“Hey!” she shouted, yanking open the front door. At first, she was looking down to make sure she didn’t trip over the lip of the stair and winced at the brightness.

Sage gasped as she lifted her head. A shimmering white landscape surrounded her, and she drifted to the edge of the porch, expanding the white landscape.

The trees were heavy, branches slumping under the weight of carefully balanced white piles, tipping them closer to the snow mounds below. She’d never seen this much snow in her life.

Ever.

The stairs and a pathway had been scraped away from the porch, but the snow on either side came up to her calves.

The cold assaulted her open mouth, and she snapped her lips shut, hissing as she noticed the sting of the cold against her exposed skin. It cut through her sweatpants like needles, and she shivered even in the solace of the huge jacket.

Thunk.

“Soren!” she called out, her voice seeming to both echo and absorb into the snow.

She stepped off the porch, following the bigger footprints around the side of the house and to…

“Oh,” she said to herself.

Soren was beneath the awning of a wooden roofed structure. Piles of split wood were sloppily stacked to his left, while logs awaited a chop to the right.

An axe was hanging loosely in his hand as he bent and picked up the pieces of freshly cut wood and tossed them to the pile.

Sage watched wordlessly as he worked. He hadn’t noticed her yet, standing next to a tree alongside the house. How had he not heard her calling? What happened to his super hearing?

But she didn’t dare give herself away now. Not as Soren leaned the axe against the cutting stump and made his way to the log pile.

Her mouth dropped open as he bent and wrapped his arms around the log. He didn’t even hesitate as he straightened his knees, his arms and back flexing, muscles standing out in stark relief as he lifted the log and walked. His face was only the slightest shade of pink, but a cloud of fog spilled from his lips as he lowered it down.

As he stood, he finally noticed her. “Sage?” he asked, confusion furrowing his brow. “What are you doing out here?”

Sage prided herself on being a strong, independent woman. Truly.

But she had to admit she didn’t hear Soren the first time he spoke. All of her attention was stuck to the snowbeast’s bare upper body. His abs, pecs, and biceps were defined with a layer of muscle that apparently was strong enough to lift half a fuckin’ tree.

At first, she thought he was covered in a simple sheen of sweat, but as he drew nearer, walking out into the snow barefoot, the overcast light shone off him in a thousand tiny shards of frost.