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Avery shook his head at Colette's question. "Nah, Alida didn't mind. If she had, I wouldn't have made it back here with the sled." He pantomimed getting tackled, and then waited, laying in the snow, until she had made her choice.

"Cool! Now we're ready to go! We have to get to the top, so let's go!" He jumped up out of the snow and lifted the saucer over his head. He frowned a bit, realizing that the one Colette would be carrying was much longer than this one, and would be hard to lift. But it did have that pull string...

"Do you want help? Or are you gonna pull it? It's got that string, right there." It was half buried in snow from all of Avery's antics, and he kicked some snow aside, almost falling over again in the process.

Rel stomped around in the snow, delighting in the rather satisfying crunch the powder made when she brought her boot upon it. She scooped up a handful of snow and threw it in the air, letting it fall all around her. Laughing, she removed her glasses, brushing the substance off. Replacing said spectacles, she called over to her white-haired charge, "C'mon Ayame! Hurry up! We don't want people to leave us out, do you!"
Ayame just grumbled, hugging his coat around himself tightly. He followed Rel at a much slower rate, whining along the way.
"But Reeelll.. I hate the snow.. It's so cold.. and.. and you know what can happen if get to cold!" He added a resounding whimper at the last part in a final plea.
"Oh, come on! You'll be fine! You've got your nice warm coat! Besides, you should socialize with the others more!"
Jeeze, there was no convincing this woman.

Spiro hadn't bothered to answer the woman's question, moving up to a sit, his mouse sliding down into his lap. The little critter scurried back up onto his shoulder as the boy brushed snow from himself, feeling awkwardly stiff.. He cautiously moved to a stand, wavering a bit, arms flailing about as he struggled to get his balance. He always seemed to have trouble with that after falling.. He watched with little interest as the scene before him unfolded, a slight tilt given to his head.

Mismatched eyes darted off into the distance for a moment, and then back before him, regarding Arafel coldly.. WHAT was she DOING? A small shake to his head as he began to stiffly march off in the opposite direction. He didn't understand all of these people.. He went to find himself a secluded spot, and then slowly slid down into a sit.. And then flopped over, arms sliding up and down and legs left to right. His eyes clamped to a close as he did so, the boy drawing in a deep breath.. And then Spiro sat up, scooting back to stare at the snowangel he had created..

It made him angry.

((Nah, not pointless. ^_^))

Avery shook his head and tried not to laugh as Colette fell into the snow. When she asked for help, he was going to reach down and put the string firmly back in her hand... but as he reached for it he got paffed in the face with a snowball. A large snowball. A large snowball that had been packed really well.

His face stinging, he fell backwards on his butt, in complete shock, but a slow grin spread over his face, a determined grin. He stood up, and shouted to the world, "Nobody does that and gets away with it! C'mon Colette, this means war! We're gonna find who threw that and get 'em!"

So much for letting Colette make decisions.

Alida on the other hand, had no intentions of getting caught in the middle of all this. She nodded to Yuki's question, and then grabbed him by the hand to drag him over there, looking nervously back at the snowball fight.

Once they got to the table, she looked back at Yuki apologetically, and abrubtly dropped his hand. Oops. Not everyone likes touching... If he's Ritsu's cousin, he's probably the same way. Oh! Ritsu! They'll probably want to talk... She looked around for the boy, and found him sitting on the bench, next to Rime, who had just stood up, facing in the opposite direction.

"Ayame! Come sit over here! We've got hot chocolate..." She said that like she was dangling a bribe in front of the teen. She hadn't met many of the teens yet, and wanted to see what they were like. Besides, Ritsu had mentioned him a few times, in an admiring way, and if it would get the boy to talk more, she was all for it.

Ritsu had smiled tentatively at Yuki's approach, but his eyes widened into huge saucers at the invitation to Ayame, and he grew very still. What if he comes over here? What if he wants to talk to me? I won't know what to say!?

Alida tugged on Rime's sleeve, her mittened glove slipping into Rime's coat pocket to retrieve her small notebook and pencil. Rime looked down absently, smiling and nodding as Alida showed them to her. Alida turned back to Yuki, and showed them to him, smiling as she did so.

Spiro's fist connected with the imaginary face in the snow, and then dragged forcefully, deforming the snow angel's features.. And then he let out a huff of breath, and collapsed in the opposite direction of the snow-figure, laying stretched out on his side.. He watched his breath stream up towards the sky and then dissolved, and after a few minutes he felt the coldness creeping through his clothes and curled his frame into a ball. He let the stiff, almost frigid feeling wash over him and drew in a deep breath. It brought him some strange form of comfort. He could stay here forever.
Hatori had begun his trek down the hill, hands shoving themselves into his pockets. He could guess that he was wandering into a danger-zone as he made his way past the air-born snowballs and such.. Hmn.. His eyes finally came to rest on a few familiars and he made his way over from behind, and then a hand pulled free from his pocket to plant itself on the top of Ayame's head, looking over the other Sohma's. "Konbonwaa. (Good afternoon. Or you can change it to Ohayo if it's morning. You pick. =D Exciting, ne?)"

Ritsu about had a heart attack, and he gurgled a bit before squeaking out, "Ayame...san... W-welcome..." His thoughts had taken to racing in tiny circles, and he stared at the older Sohma. Luckily for him, the attention was taken off of him by Hatori's arrival. Ritsu let out his breath, and scooted close to hide behind Rime, peeking past her shoulder.

Rime smiled as Ayame accepted her invitation, and welcomed Hatori, as well. "Hello, you two. Hatori, would you like some hot chocolate? Ayame's enjoying it." She pointed to him and the cup he had in front of him, holding up another one to Hatori.

"Ah, introductions! Just so no one feels left out. Ayame, Hatori, you already know Ritsu, but this is Alida, and the little one by you, Ayame, is Sybil. She's not too happy about the cold, either, poor dear. But I can't leave her home alone." Rime made a look of concern, which quickly changed to one of amusement. Alida looked back from where she was with Yuki, and nodded her head politely, but opened her notebook and began to write.

Sybil had climbed up from her seat in the sled and was peeking over the table edge at Ayame, her hands cupped around the table top, nose between them. Her mismatched eyes looking somehow sleepily and curiously at the same time from within her scarf, hat and hood. Her tail was wrapped warmly inside her snow suit, as were her wings, so from the outside, she looked like a perfectly normal child. If you didn't take note of the odd birthmark on her forehead in the shape of a third eye.

"You're like Ritsu... I know..." She didn't really know what she meant, but she could sense they were alike. As were a lot of the other kids around the park. She nodded happily at being able to find something out, and though you couldn't see it past the scarf, she was smiling, a soft, secretive sort of smile.

Alida held up the notebook to Yuki, and let him read what she had wrote. I'm sorry for interrupting your snowman. But thank you for rescuing me. I think I would have just lay there forever, otherwise. I am never doing that again. There was a note of stubborn finality to the last sentence.


Avery had run, crawled, jumped and dodged his way over to where Arafel was hiding, breathless and as covered in snow when he arrived as if he'd been hit by all the snowballs thrown. He looked back to see if Colette was right behind him. He had tried not to get ahead of her, but sometimes he lost track of things.

"Miss Arafel! Can we join your team?" He asked as he ducked down beneath the fort's protective barrier.

((Whee! My first post that actually describes Sybil in more detail! ^_^
Rel: don't you hate when that happens? It did it to me in the pre-school rp, I think...))

Colette blinked her mouth making an 'o' in shock.. trying to get into the war-spirit... she wasn't much for fighting. But they had attacked avery! So she had to do something.
"O-Okay!" she replied as determined as she could, standing up and leaving the sled there, wondering if she should try to take it with her or not.

She tried to follow him, but he moved alot faster in the snow. That and she tripped on somethign on her way over, well someone.
She forced herself up, glancing back to see what she had tripped on.. "Spiro?" she squeaked.. her mind going 200 miles a minute. "Ah! I'm sorry! I didn't see you there and-!" she was cut off when a snowball hit her in the side of the head making her fall over.

It was quite a comical scene.. as soon as it hit her face went blank as if she had a heart attack.. For one she had never been hit with a snowball before, and second she was focused on Spiro and wasn't really expecting anything to hit her. It had startled her to say the least.

She blinked, laying there and letting reality sink into her.. she looked at spiro again, laughing a bit at herself as she relized what had happend "Snowball war.." she stated, to explain her thoughts.."I'm really sorry though!" she pushed herself back up, trying to catch up with Avery.
She felt odd leaving Spiro like that, but she didn't see she had much of a choice.

She slid down behind the "fort" panting out lil clouds of breath, smiling brightly. Looking over at her mom as if to say "yea can we?"


Arafel blinked giving a coy smile to the two, she crossed her arms "You can only join if.." she gave a pause for tension picking up two snowballs, "If you can throw a snoball." she gave them a look of uncertenty. Of course they could, she knew that. Twas just more fun to scare them a bit..

Handing them the snowballs she grabbed up some snow and made another one for herself. then put one int eh other hand, woo double amunition.

"One, two, three, fire!" she flung her snowballs at the attackers, Colette threw hers at the same time of course, creating a "snowball rain" effect.

"Waa~? Tori-San! That's so cold..~" Ayame wailed, though he bounced back not a second later. The pale-haired teen smiled and waved as he was introduced. "Hello, it's nice to meet you all.~" He remarked with a little wave.
He offered a smile to Sybil as she joined them at the table, eyes going wide a moment later at the young girl's remark.
Could she..? No, there was no way she'd know about their curse.
Ayame chuckled a bit, "Like Ritsu, huh? Hai, hai.. I suppose. We are related, afterall."
Then he took notice of Yuki.
"..Oh.. Yuki?" He said quietly, more to himself than anything. Ayame was used to his brother as a little sickly thing, was it really ok for him to be out in the snow like that?
Then again, if something did go wrong... Hatori was there, right? So did it really matter?
He looked over at the dragon again.
"Ah, ..Ha-San? You look a little tired... are you okay?"

(( Hrmm. Maybe not as big of a gap. Then again, it'd still be there, I'm sure. Since they don't even live together here. XD ))