Boot Soles

“Yahoooo!” yodeled Daniel as he shoved his foot against the hard, burgundy brick of the chimney. Snow chunks toppled loose around him as the kinetic energy of the shove mixed with gravities pull and he half flew, half slid down the roofline in an avalanche of snow. His sister rounded the corner trudging through the knee-high snow just in time to see him vanish into the blizzard of falling snow disturbed from the blanket of twinkling white snow on the roof.

“Daniel!” yelled his sister as she stumbled through high snow to the place where the black sole her brother’s coal colored boots was sticking out of the heap of snow that had just cascaded off the roof. Daniel laid winded for a moment unable to think or move. “Daniel,” she shrieked at him again, her voice sounded muffled through the snow. “Joan?” He asked thickly unable to think.

“Yah, you alright?” She questioned him. He moaned. “I fine,” he called and began to try to shovel away the heaps of snow surrounding his head with his hands, unsure which way was up. Truthfully he felt cold, dizzy, and numb to the world. But nothing seemed broken. “Can you get me out?” His sister’s mittened hands grappled with his boot and pulled. The boot flew off and slipped through her grasp, landing and vanishing with a swoosh into the snow a few feet away, sock and all, as she toppled over. “Ugh, the stupid boot, are you okay?” He kicked his now bare and freezing foot towards the sound of her voice and yelled a few choice curse words into the snow surrounding his head. She responded by tickling his foot.

Daniel kicked and squirmed as he floundered. His head finally broke the surface. “Joan! Get away, I’ll tell.” “You are such a cantaloupe head,” she retorted and crunched to her feet. “If anyone,” she stomped the snow off of her, “is going to tattle it will be me.” She stomped off through the snow past the place where his boot had vanished in the snow. “Besides,” she added with twinkling eyes, “with all you foibles, there will be a lot to tattle.”
“My foibles!” he shouted struggling to keep his bare foot out of the snow. “You’re the one with the foibles, you always foible fun, snow, and cantaloupes. You’re so foibled, you’re a foibler--”

“Am not,” she retorted she yanked the door open and it clanked shut behind her heel.

He carefully steped over to his boot on his now numb foot and gingerly, brushing the snow off, pulled it back on. He glanced up at the chimney, grey smoke curled out the top, and the traced the path he had made through the snow with his finger. Time for trial two.