Snow Flowers

This was not going to be pleasant.

The dimming afternoon sunlight filtering through the skylights of my 'writer's hideaway' told me to expect one of those spasmodic, cold and wet early autumn storms. The north wind was picking up something fierce as it surged down through the canyon, beating on my small cabin at the foot of a lofty ochre sandstone cliff. How brutal was this storm going to be? From the looks of the deep blue-gray clouds rushing in above my skylights, it was going to likely dump a lot of frozen precipitation, the heavy wet stuff. That was fine; these conditions make for good 'story-writing weather'. I'd gotten up here last night and laid in enough supplies to see me through until the sun returned. Digging out from under this pile of snow and ice would be difficult; I was here for the duration. I was capable of riding out this surprise storm, but for added precaution I needed to bring in some extra firewood and double-checked the generator. Once those chores were finished, I'd be set. Safe, warm and secure. With the added blessing of no cell phone reception in the canyon, these isolated conditions would be conducive to helping me polish up a couple of short stories I'd been working on. I was ready for whatever was ahead - or so I'd thought.

The wind was gusting violently against the north wall of my little cabin, enough to hear and feel its effect inside the small kitchen, well lit with natural light. In a pinch, I had electricity as long as my generator had fuel. First order of business, I started on making some cold-weather food; a big pot of soup, a batch of spiced chili and some all ready prepared grilled meats, good for stuffing into tortillas for later meals. While concentrating on paring the vegetables for the soup pot I listened to the sleet and frozen rain pelting hard against the roof. I was glad I had the fire going and plenty of firewood stacked inside, it'd be miserable to have to go out into the teeth of this monster from the north.

I finished sharpening the blade on my large carving knife - nothing more infuriating than a dull knife. I had almost finished slicing and chopping the chili ingredients when I heard a muffled thump on my porch. I assumed that the howling wind had driven a fallen pine branch near my door. The thump repeated itself and this time with a scraping sound. I stopped chopping and listened a little more intently. Then there was a sharp kick at the door. This needed investigating. I took a couple of strides toward the door and heard another strike near the base of the door. With carving knife in hand, I flung open the door and saw two young women crouching in the bitter cold, staring up at me from my porch.

I could see they were both in a bad way. One was lying on the icy wooden planks, her hands were white, her lips blue; no wonder, her denim jeans were soaking wet. Her pants had accumulated a noticeable amount of frosty ice covering her legs. She had a light-weight pull-over red hoodie which was completely drenched and was covered with snow and pieces of sleet, making it cling to her torso even tighter. The second woman was stooping over the crumpled and frozen wet form, attempting to drag or push her companion closer to my door. Though her clothes were not dry, neither were they encrusted with sleet like those of her friend's, although her pants were wet below the knees. She was shivering. With obvious panic in her eyes, she was trying to assess whether the sight of me standing inside the cabin doorway with a large knife was a good thing or another danger. With her bare hands pushing on her fallen comrade's left should, she looked up at me and pleaded, "Can you help her?"

I punched my knife into doorframe and bent over to grab the frozen form under her shoulders as I directed her friend, "Lift her feet and help me carry her!" I moved backward dragging my hypothermic victim, maneuvering into the bath alcove off the cabin's one big main room. With urgency we got the victim into the alcove. I barked, "We have to get your friend warmed up now! Get her cold wet clothes off. I don't think we have much time to bring her back." My commands were greeted by a blank stare as the gal leaned against the rough wood wall quaking. This second woman was probably going into shock as well. Or at the least she was too cold to respond to their situation in a meaningful way.

I dashed out of the bath alcove, pulled my sharp knife from the door post then slammed the cabin door shut. Stepping quickly back to where I'd left the two young women. I threw open the valve to let the heated water from the roof-top tank next to the chimney flow into my large claw-footed tub. I dipped my hand into the water. The temperature was warm. I was thankful that I had started the fire earlier that morning to be able to supply us with warm water for this emergency.

The shivering, blank-stare woman had knelt beside her friend and had begun to slap her wrists. I rather abruptly pushed her aside and back out of the way toward the door. I slipped the carving blade under the stiff and frozen hoodie just above the left hip of the comatose body on the floor. It took three thrusting motions to slit the hoodie all the way up to the neck. I placed my right hand on her ribs to support myself as I cut off her garments; I could feel that her core body temperature had already dropped dangerously low. I forced the split garment up and off her left arm and rolled the cold body onto her back and tugged hard on the right cuff and pulled off the wet, shredded fabric that was draining precious body heat out of her. I pivoted around on my knee and pulled up on the waistband of her tight blue jeans trying to get a point where I could insert the blade and cut off her frozen pants. There wasn't much room and I certainly didn't want to stab her in the gut. So I slipped the blade in on its side just a little way down toward her pelvis and then rotated it 90 degrees and cut through the waistband and followed the seam down her left leg until I had slit open the whole pant leg. She remained on her back, thankfully breathing, but very shallow breaths. She didn't move as I operated with my knife. I scrambled over the unresponsive gal and straightened out her right leg laying against the tub; starting at the ankle, I cut up the seam until I had cut her jeans into two halves. I rapidly cut through the laces on each of her boots and pulled them off of her feet along with her little pink socks. Working quickly before I slipped her into the warm water still filling the large tub. I stuck the four fingers on my right hand under her bra and pulled up, giving my blade room to work in her cleavage. With on deft upward slice I'd removed her bra. I felt a twinge of regret that I'd just ruined a very nice-looking piece on lingerie; satiny gold with lace demi-cups which were overstuffed with her ice-capped grand tetons. I then turned to the last bit of clothing on the cold form lying on by bath floor, her panties. Too difficult to pull them off of my frozen visitor, so I easily cut through them. Again, I was struck by sexiness of her matching satin gold panties with lace accents on either side of the hips. I had a fleeting thought of wonder, what kind of woman goes out into the forest, so ill-prepared for an early season storm and goes hiking in a matching, sexy golden lace bra and panty set? Well, whatever kind of woman meets that description, one of them just landed on my door step.

I motioned to her friend watching my work from the doorway and pointed to the knees and ordered her, "Grab under her knees and help me lift her into the tub." She heard my instructions and did as I had commanded. With a rather ungraceful effort, we managed to submerge her cold body under the tepid warm water.

I told her friend to move over to where I was and hold her head above the water, telling her, "It'd be a shame to save her from hypothermia only to see her drown." I saw that her shocked friend understood her job, so I said, "Hold her just like that, I'm going to get you something to help you warm up as well." I returned with a heavy blanket, and extra flannel shirt and a winter jacket. I wrapped the blanket around her as she knelt at the side of the tub holding her friend's head. I encouraged her, "Keep doing that while I go pump more water into the heating tank and build up the fire." I had to go outside to work the water pump. The weather was now hitting hard and bringing big wet snow flakes to the ground; that is, once they stopped blowing horizontally. I came back inside and piled some logs onto the fire and then stepped into the bath alcove to see how the situation was going.

As our hypothermia patient lay motionless in the warm water, I opened up the valve and let some more warm water replace the cooling water in the tub. Some flushing was returning the patient's cheeks; they no longer had the appearance of white wax. The blue of her lips was giving way to a healthy pink. I checked her pulse in her neck and it seemed stronger now than when she arrived and her breathing was a bit deeper and relaxed. I told her friend that I would take over from here and that she should go warm herself by the fire in the other room. She could take off her clothes and dry them and wear the ones I'd given her, or she could just sit by the flames with the blanket around her. She was hesitant to leave me with her naked friend, but I insisted she go get warm and then we would talk.

She sat by the fire for only a few minutes and then walked back to check on her friend (as well as me). She said, "I'm Rosie. The naked woman in your tub, that's Lily."

I looked at the small-framed gal draped in my blanket and said, "I'm Vic."

"Lily and I were just going to hike the canyon for the afternoon, hoping to make it to the top of Chimney Mesa when this storm blew up and caught us. We were surprised by the weather and turned around. By the time we got off the ridge, the wind was blowing pretty hard and the rain was already freezing, mixed with snow. Maybe we took the wrong fork in the trail on the way back to our car. We tried to cross the stream on a fallen log that was supposed to be a bridge, but Lil fell off into the creek and then slipped on an icy rock and ended up completely wet."

"Rosie, by the time you and Lily stumbled onto my porch, I don't think your friend would have made it much further down the road. You're lost and I suspect you're not very close to where you left your car. Lily had a very low core body temperature and I'm thinking she would have died if I was not up here to spend a few days in my cabin."

Rosie was wide-eyed at my somber assessment of their erstwhile predicament - but also sounded a note of skepticism; "Do you really think she was that close to death?"

"I do. She was very cold to the touch, her lips were blue, her skin looked like pale wax and you were too much in shock yourself to be of much help with decision making. But you did get her to safety and you saved her life. I am sure of it."

Rosie nodded in ascent to my analysis, then asked, "How long before we can leave?"

I told her, "I think this storm is going to keep dumping snow at least through tomorrow morning. We may be stuck here together for a couple of three days."

"Can we get out if we leave right now?" was Rosie next question.

"I wouldn't advise it" was my honest answer. Rosie was suspicious, and she definitely didn't like my answer.

Rosie persisted, "We both teach school and we need to be back in the classroom on Monday. And Lil has a dog that needs to be fed. Besides, she will need to get something else to wear. We have to get back in town!"

I told Rosie, "If you take my SUV, and leave right now before it gets dark and the snow piles up any higher and drive in 4-wheel drive, I think you could make it back to town."

"How can I take Lily with me?" was the next question to complete Rosie's plan.

I looked at the slowly warming naked woman in my tub and then looked at Rosie. "No. She stays here where it's warm. She looks like she will recover and be OK. But driving back off this mountain in this storm in her precarious condition is a negative Rosie."

Rosie's eyes flashed at my abrupt certainty and the nixing of her plan. She folded her arms across her chest with my heavy blanket still over her shoulders, "Well, I can't leave Lil naked to the world up here with a strange man in the mountains!"

"Then I better get going to make dinner... and breakfast, and lunch and dinner and breakfast for three. It looks like you'll miss school and be my guests until maybe Tuesday or Wednesday. And if you're thinking of calling in the cavalry to rescue you and Lily; you may have noticed that there's no cell phone coverage in this canyon either."

Rosie's jaw was set but she began to tear a little, "That won't work either. Can I trust you with Lil? I mean if I go right now?"

I cocked my head, and said looking into her cold steel eyes, "It's your choice. You have my word - and you will have my SUV. It looks to me like Lily is slowly coming around. I'll take care of her. I've got some of my award-winning homemade chili and some soup that will help restore her health once she's ready for some food. I'll keep her safe and warm. But if you decide to go back, it better be right now before conditions worsen."

Rosie seemed defeated, but then looked at me with a fierce determination, "Mr. Vic, I am trusting you and so is Lily. Don't even mess with us - and you know what I mean. So how do I get out of here?"

I insisted Rosie keep my heavy blanket, and my coat and I sketched her a map of where we were and then I escorted her out and around to the side of the cabin and put my keys in the ignition and shifted it into 4WD. I pointed her down the Forest Service road, which was quickly filling with drifting snow, telling her, "Keep right at both forks and then take a left when you reached the blacktop highway. You should recognize the way back into town from there." I adjusted the heater for Rosie, scraped off the accumulated ice from the windshield and sent her off down the mountain.

It was biting cold outside with a cutting wind, so I didn't linger to see the tail lights disappear down the dirt road away from my cabin. Besides, I had a hypothermia patient to check on back inside. I checked the water temperature and added more warm water to slowly raise her core body temperature. Lily was looking healthier at this point, but I stayed to keep an eye on her. Honestly, she was quite an eyeful. I was guiltily delighted to be looking over this naked woman with perfectly rounded orbs floating just below the water's surface. I was serious about my job of returning Lily to a healthy 98.6 degrees, but if I've got to nurse someone back from near death, I count it as good fortune to get a peek at a beautiful, large breasted woman lounging in my hideaway bath tub.

I was refilling Lily's tub for maybe the fourth time, she heard the running water and opened her eyes. I watched and was expecting a startled reaction, a scream even, or a panic attack at finding herself in a strange bath tub with a strange man next to her. I did not get what I was expecting. She closed her eyes softly as if nodding off for an afternoon nap and then slowly reopened them and looked down at her breast and let her gaze drift down to her toes at the end of the tub. She raised her head and looked at the ceiling. Through the skylight above she could see snow covered pine branches and blowing snowflakes falling from from swirling dark, heavy clouds low in the somber sky. Without any show of a startle, she turned her head to me as if she always knew I was there, and said in a whisper, "I feel like I'm in heaven."

"Lily, you got pretty close to heaven today, but you landed in a safe and warm place back on earth." I used her name thinking this would sound assuring, but she was yet to seem the least bit startled by her circumstances. "Lily, how are you feeling?" was my follow-up question.

Lily looked out the windows at the tempestuous snow storm kicking around outside, and slowly answered after running a mental check of her thoughts and feelings, then softly replied, "I like it here - but where am I?"

"Lily, what do you remember about today?" was my question to this unconcerned woman in my bath tub.

"I was going to go hiking with a friend to the top of Chimney Mesa, but it got too cold and so I turned around...", her voice trailed off as her memory unexpectedly ceased to provide any further details.

I told her that she and her friend Rosie got caught in a surprise snow and ice storm. I filled her in on what Rosie had related to me about her mishap and how she was almost dead from hypothermia. She seemed disappointed that she had come close to dying, and then asked, "Is Rosie was alright?"

I told her that Rosie had gone back to town to let everyone know what happened to them, feed your dog and get you some clothes. Lily looked again at her body in the warm water and then looked at me, "I don't have any clothes?"

I laughed as I reached over and picked up her shredded red hoodie and sliced up bra off the floor and showed them to her. "I apologize, but it was all me who is responsible for completely disrobing you in such a destructive manner."

The corner of her mouth turned down as she peered over the edge of the tub at the rest of her clothes on the bathroom floor. "You destroyed my favorite bra and panty set" she said glumly, "but, you probably saved my life."

"I am Vic, I am a writer, a teller of stories and when pressed, I am a savior of maidens in distress. But I fear sometimes in order to save said maidens in distress; I have to inflict some collateral damage. Those were very sexy undies your brought out into the cold forest this day m' lady."

"I'm the kind of gal who likes stepping into pretty things first thing in the morning. I kind of feel it makes the day go better. Though, I guess it didn't quite work out so well for me this morning. Do you mind getting me something to cover up with? I'd like to get out of this water now."

I stood to get her a towel from the shelf behind me and offered her my hand to make sure she was steady on her feet as she slowly rose from the water, my very own Venus. She wrapped the towel around her and I handed her a second towel, which she took without comment and wrapped it around the upper portion of her athletic body. I said, "Excuse me, I'm going to go find some of my clothes for you to wear."

I returned momentarily with arm load of the few clothing items I had stocked in the cabin. I placed the odd assortment of apparel on the toilet seat and told Lily she'd have to make do until Rosie returned with her own clothes. Meanwhile, I was going to go get some hot food going in the kitchen. I picked the knife up off the bath floor and stepped to the other side of the cabin to heat some soup and chili while Lily dressed in my clothes.

"Oooh! Boy-pants. I've never worn those before, can I put on your boxers?"

"Be my guest" I said with a smile and a shake of my head. "After dissembling your 'unmentionables', I guess I owe you something."

"How weird to have this 'pecker hole' right here in front" was her observation. "But I guess it works better for you than for me."

From the kitchen stove I shouted to her, "Enjoy it while you can. I hear some gals are afflicted with envy of such equipment. Right now I am about to be 'whipping it out'- your warm sustenance that is; some hot soup and a bowl of New Mexico red for us. Finish dressing, put a blanket around you and go have a seat in the chair next to the fire; I'll be over to serve you your meal pretty soon."

Lily was fiddling and adjusting my clothing on her feminine form as she warmed next to the fire. I was still in the kitchen when she asked, "Hey, Mister Vic; are you a 'nasty man'? Or are you a 'naughty man'?"