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Start your story with someone looking out the window and seeing the first snowfall of the season.

Posted in Winter on Dec 1, 2023

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✍️ 84 stories

Lost and Found

Submitted to Contest #227

Lost and Found It was Friday, December 1.  Winter opened her left eye … 8:12am. She would normally be at work by now, but today was the first of 10 vacation days. She stretched, yawned, and pushed up onto one elbow to look out the window. Ugh! Falling back heavily onto her pillow, she pulled the covers up to her chin, rolled over to her right side, moved her knees and arms to the fetal position, and closed her eyes. She woke again at 8:57am, noticing that she hadn’t budged an inch, and enjoyed the muscle and joint r...

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God’s Dandruff

Submitted to Contest #227

When I was young, my mother explained thunder as God moving furniture. I asked her about snow, and she told me it was God’s dandruff. The view from my hotel window that second morning made me ponder that the ever-present deity needed stronger shampoo.            The odds of being snowed in at the palatial Hotel Toplice in Slovenia were shortening, much to my horror. It was an all-expenses paid corporate break at a luxury spa resort with excellent facilities and stunning views of Lak...

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Retail Hell

Submitted to Contest #227

Lucy had been organizing the return rack of clothes when a child squealed at a frequency only dogs should have been able to hear. Working in retail, she knew that it usually meant one of two things. The first was that they had somehow managed to find a way to tear open one of the toy packages in the back of the store and were currently having the time of their life bashing Barbie’s brain into the linoleum floor. But the scream was coming from the front door, so perhaps this was one of the few times that she should go investigate. She relucta...

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They Came Across the Snow

Submitted to Contest #227

The clouds were low and heavy, and the air was still in the hour before it came. A long bank of mist hovered over the bare trees which lined the country lanes. And where the lanes converged there was a dead-end road on which the boy lived in a comfortable, rambler-style, house surrounded by 200 acres of deep woods. And his heart was in these woods. When the sun dissolved below the horizon, he watched out the front window as darkness filled the leaf-strewn hollows. Cold shadows rose slowly out of the creek bottom, rounding the treetops a...

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FIRST SNOW

Submitted to Contest #227

FIRST SNOW Luke stumbled out of his bedroom and shuffled down the hall to the kitchen wiping the sleep out of his eyes and yawning loudly. Last night had been a late night, a very late night; the party had continued on into the wee hours of the morning. His head felt like it was two sizes too big for his neck and shoulders and his tongue felt like it was wearing a little fur coat. He padded softly over to the window and slowly pulled back the curtains, letting his eyes adjust little by little to the light that started to filter in through...

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Winter's Last Gift

Submitted to Contest #227

My chest was burning. The sensation intensified, searing a path up my throat. Heartburn. A frequent occurrence, especially after an attempt at sleep, and one that meant my current attempt would be cut short. Not even born and my baby had a vendetta against me.  “You really don’t want me to rest, huh?” I mumbled to my stomach while slowly sitting up from the lumpy, uneven sofa bed where I’d slept for almost six months. The large, glass door to the room squeaked as Maura opened it and pushed aside the curtains, fluorescent light floo...

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The Fall

Submitted to Contest #227

She held the hot cup in her hands, letting the warmth spread through her and ease the stiffness. She took small steps, watching the liquid hit the rim of the mug as she moved into the living room and sat in her armchair. Carefully, she brought the scalding hot drink up to her lips and took a first sip of Christmas cheer. It always brought her back to Christmases in her childhood. She eased into the calm of it and turned to look out the window.  There was a small dusting of white powder on the window frame and little dots of white cove...

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Leah’s Fate

Submitted to Contest #227

Snowflakes danced down to earth, diamonds glittering against steely velvet. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. The boy settled further into the window nook in his bedroom. He absentmindedly stroked the soft head of a stuffed bear that slouched on his windowsill. Watching the first snowfall of the season, the boy felt a bitter ache from somewhere deep inside him. It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas, alright… and that reality broke his heart. Christmas was a time for family. Christmas was the time when h...

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Beat Your Heart Out

Submitted to Contest #227

They drifted down, the white crystalline flakes, big and heavy, wispy spirits of the leaves that littered the brown yard. It was a beautiful sight but it gave Piper Ross a knot in his stomach. As a kid, he met fresh snow with high excitement but now as a drummer, getting ready to go out on tour, he saw it as doom falling. They had started a metal band, ironically called ‘Witch’s Tit’ and with a beat-up used van, they were set to go. But it was a beautiful sight, Piper had to stop and admire it. He always loved the snow: the heavenly whi...

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Frostbite

Submitted to Contest #227

White flakes began floating gently, a contrast to the tree bark and pine needles that surrounded the car driving farther from civilization. Aimee pressed her head against the window and groaned. “It’s snowing,” she said. “I know! Isn’t it great?” Elaina grinned, then quickly focused again on the road. Aimee sighed and rolled her eyes. “Of course you like snow.” “I thought you liked snow, too?” “I do! When I’m tucked away inside our apartment drinking hot cocoa, safe in the knowledge that if I need to venture out, the doorman wil...

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Christmas Tea

Submitted to Contest #227

December, 1776 - Outside Trenton, New Jersey "Come on now, wake up, child! You shan't sleep the entire morning, there are chores that need doing." At the sound of her mother's voice, Lucy's eyes fluttered open. She was already awake, but was laying still until the last possible moment, warm under the heavy quilts and blankets. She briefly pulled the covers over her head, basking in the warmth, then sighed and hopped out of bed. She glanced at George, Benjamin and Daniel, and barely made out their forms in the darkness of the room. Ge...

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Embracing The Magic Of The First Snowfall: A Tale Reconnecting And Renewal.

Submitted to Contest #227

As the daylight waned, casting a warm orange glow across the landscape, Emily found herself lost in thought, gazing out of her bedroom window. The leaves had long since fallen, leaving the trees bare and exposed to the cool autumn air. But something about this evening was different. Emily's breath caught in her throat as she noticed the first delicate snowflakes of the season cascading down from the heavens. She had always loved the first snowfall, the way it transformed the world into a magical wonderland. It was as if nature herself had ...

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A Priest, A Rabbi, And A Minister Walk Into A Diner

Submitted to Contest #227

The ground was covered with snow by the time Virgil Vestoff got back to his office from the sales meeting. It was the kind of fender-bending, wet slop that demands the sacrifice of any moving vehicle foolish enough to challenge Mother Nature. “Where’d this stuff come from?” Virgil yells at his friend, Sheldon, who occupies the office next to his. Sheldon halts in front of Virgil’s office, his camel coat askew and his fedora barely tilted on his head. “It came out of nowhere. Everybody else in the office has already booked. I just heard we...

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Secrets of the Snow

Submitted to Contest #227

My neighbors disappeared last December. Susan and Marty were a troubled couple—he drank too much, she was the angry one. In the summertime, when we all had the windows open, we would hear the shouting and slamming of furniture. We decided that we would rather brave the heat than listen to them fighting. So it came to no one’s real surprise that Marty didn’t show up to work one December morning. That’s what the detectives told us. Detective Crenshaw knocked on our door in the afternoon, asking if we had seen anything unusual going on at Susa...

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The Snowflakes of My Life

Submitted to Contest #227

Standing by the window, I listen to the wind and watch as it twirls the snow upwards reliving the moment of the first snowfall of the season. Holding a hot cocoa close to my body I can feel the warmth which sweeps away the chill. I remember days gone by! My childhood, the frost on the windows, the longing for my mother’s arms to hold me and take the chill from my body. There was no cocoa, no heat, just a chill that never went away until my mother’s arms held me close and made me warm again. The winter nights were cold, and we children woul...

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