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junelalonde · 20 days ago

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Snowshoe, Ch.1

[CW: alcohol]

Freja came in from the cold, kicking the snow off her old work-boots. The donkey, middle-aged, face seasoned in tired creases and creeping silver, shouldered the door closed with a grunt. The winter air whistled through the tooth-gapped planks lining her garage. She beat the hoarfrost on her sun-bleached patrol cap off over her palms and hooked it over a purpose-struck nail. The cool wet on her hands wiped over her snout and cheeks felt good as she tried to rouse herself awake. She pressed and pulled at the corners of her eyes, feeling lucky that her breath hadn't frozen them shut during the small trek over from the house. It was a bitter February morning - clearly colder than her clock radio said it was - but with a hopeful chance of sun later in the day for most of Northern Minnesota. She placed her fogged glasses upon an old key-rack and reached up to pull a string.

The banks of fluorescent tubes above her crackled alight in a fit. Taking up most of the space was a hulking machine, an Aetherium-powered walker mech, or “Aewa,” crouched low into itself. It sat surrounded by all the clutter, second-hand tools and modest comforts befitting a home repair shop. Today she’d be investigating her engine’s vacuum tubes for leaks. She planned to send her daughter down to the stalls in town later on and pick up some actuators for the knee assemblies. She thought of going herself, but she figured maybe Ida wouldn’t mind heading to town alone again. She groaned, stretching and bending the last remnants of sleep out from her body, and felt her knees click.

Pinned, clipped, and taped to most every visible surface above her workbench were personal keepsakes she’d collected through the years. Her certifications in both piloting and repairing Aewas were hard-earned and hung neatly, and occasionally useful to point at when clients would try to argue labor costs. Some old fliers showing off various production Aewa’s and major sled races added to the mechanic’s pastiche. A sleek gray shadowbox, meticulously arranged with various service ribbons and patches commemorating her years with the region’s corporate government, AE-NORD, sat clear within eyesight to anyone entering the garage. The law wouldn’t let her place it anywhere else apart from over the mantle inside her house, and she didn’t want to risk impulse getting the better of her while feeding tinder into the fireplace. She wasn’t allowed to destroy it, hide it, or throw it away, so she did her best to pretend it simply wasn’t there. Official letters from AE-NORD, however, invariably got tossed un-opened into a burn pile - unless they held her pension.

There were other keepsakes, less yellowed and torn, more local to her current time and place, more adored. Letters from the schoolhouse, notes of thanks from the local council, sled-racing officiant patches, and some newspaper clippings. She was an answer for a regional Sunday crossword puzzle once, which she still found ridiculous. Dearest to her, though, were the photos of old friends from around the township, given their own spots on a cabinet with “Deadbeats” scrawled above them in black grease pencil. In each little blurry snapshot there was Freja, flashing wry grins and throwing arms over the shoulders of various townsfolk she came to know, typically with bottles or fishing-rods in hand. There were notes under each portrait reminding her of how much they owed back for various favors, but over time she thought less about the numbers, and simply liked thinking she had buddies close-by. Some of them she hadn’t seen in almost a year.

With a casual swing of her knee, she kicked on a small forced-air heater resembling a jet engine. It roared awake, dull iron glowing orange, making quick work of the cold garage. She shrugged off her worn leather bomber and tossed it over the back of her creaky shop chair. Freja rolled her shoulders, flexing her gray-furred arms and back. Her figure was broad, lean, fitted into a forest-green jumpsuit covered with faded oil stains, sun-bleached shoulders, and traces of salt at the cuffs. A small green Velcro strip with embroidered black letters read “Dahl” over her left breast. She clicked on her small coffee-maker, strapped on her tool belt, and plugged in the dusty shop radio to the local pirate station. With some hesitation, she leaned down in front of a locked cabinet and pulled out a hidden bottle of whiskey.

Freja fixed her coffee blond with sugar and a jolt of rye, and appraised her morning’s project. The Aewa was a small single-seat bipedal mech, originally christened with the drab technical designation “SNE-Kanin Mk.II”. She found this name, along with the original specs, underwhelming. Through her years piloting with AE-NORD, she made a long, slow series of half-legal modifications. Chief among them: two large steel-plated skid kits to help the feet deal with the ice and snow, and a twin pair of long sensor and communication arrays which gracefully swept back over the cockpit. This gave the Aewa an outline almost resembling that of a snowshoe hare. At the time, part of her felt ridiculous for putting her paycheck back into a machine that wasn’t hers, but the Aewa had saved her hide one too many times. She felt it only right to imbue it with her care, likening it to a communion, an appreciation - something like love.

Upon retirement, she registered a new name for the mech, painted in shiny yellow block letters clean over the drab olive-green body: “SNOWSHOE.” She was gifted the Aewa as a sort of going away present, with some help from her shop buddies chipping in on the decommissioning fees. As much as they used to tease her for the work she’d put into it, none of them wanted to risk touching it after she was gone. She’d modified it to the point where no one else could functionally use it without risking dismemberment anyway. It was, every part, an extension of herself. Freja rapped her knuckles against the forest-green hull.

“Morning, dummy.”

Far away from her time spent sprinting toward danger, she’d often come to the garage to distract herself between small repair jobs in quiet refuge. Fine-tuning adjustments, smoothing out warped panels, replacing electric screens for mechanical gauges where possible, and keeping her running better than new. It gave her time to mull over other things. It gave some sense of productivity too, though she couldn’t escape feeling that it was ultimately in vain. Steeped in some ill-kept nostalgia that nagged at her in a place she didn’t care to look at directly. Bereft of real function, or purpose. She sipped her coffee and felt the burn of single-malt blooming over her tongue and down her throat.

As she ratcheted the nuts off a rear panel, her thoughts centered on how she might help her daughter, Ida, with her mechanic’s apprenticeship. Freja was getting by on that stingy AE-NORD pension along with infrequent repair gigs, keeping her from providing all the resources she wished she could have. Freja would sometimes think on setting up a repair stall downtown, taking on more repair work for something approaching a consistent income, but ultimately she figured that if she was needed, she’d have been told. She hoped, at the very least, she was giving Ida enough knowledge to tackle whatever may come her way. That was the best she could equip her daughter with for now.

She dropped the nuts and bolts into a tin bowl with a loud clang, set the large panel aside, and pulled herself up off the cardboard covering the cement with a grunt. Her mug was empty, so she poured another and doctored it with more rye. Hesitating again, she poured a separate glass and let it sit on the counter to warm. She’d have to hide that in awhile, she thought. She mocked the weak protests sounding at the back of her head. Why not more whiskey for the useless, dumb, old jenny? Freja eased herself back down under Snowshoe’s exposed engine assembly with a sigh, laying there a moment, listening to the noise of the heater. A knock at the door snapped her back to reality.

That’s Ida.

Freja quickly sat up and slammed her forehead straight on the underside of the engine block. She cursed up a storm, stumbling and scrambling herself upright to hide the whiskey glass in the sink. She pressed her palm to her forehead to check for blood, thankfully coming back clean. She ran the faucet and mimed washing her hands as she yelled over the racket of the heater towards the door.

“Door’s open, sprout!”

In swept Ida, her teenage foal, a flurry of snow whirling in behind her. She kicked the snow off her workboots and threw her shoulder against the door to close it again. She slipped down her yellow scarf and pulled a tired grin at her mother from under a thick-knit woolen beanie, long ears tucked deep into the collar of her mom’s hand-me-down old bomber. She slipped the goggles off her face and rubbed at the pink on her muzzle, trying to wipe the cold away.

“Whew! Mornin’ Mom,” Ida chimed.

“Mornin’ goober - Uh, you’re up early today.”

“Ya, I got some errands to run in town, ‘member? I forgot to pick up eggs last night and I wanna see if Frank got those-” She trailed off, her gaze snapped onto the whiskey bottle stood open and part-empty on her mom’s workbench.

“-What is that?”

A jolt hit Freja’s gut, her face running pale under her gray fur. Her wits blurred under the buzz she was pretending not to have. You hid the glass but not the bottle. Dumb-ass. “Oh, that? Ah, some kids left some garbage at the end of the driveway - I was just dumping it out.” She lied, cupping a mouthful of water up to her muzzle, rinsing and spitting the rye off her tongue, unsure what actions would best sell the story she was fencing to Ida.

“Mom.”

“Uh, y’running by the Post office today by any chance?”

Ida couldn't hide the disappointment under her breath, a hurt from her chest Freja felt from across the garage. This was too early. Was it really this bad, now? She gave her mother a pleading, searching expression which reminded Freja of the exact look she herself would give Ida when she caught her in a blatant lie. Ida briefly made an attempt at keeping order, pushing the conversation, answering calmly.

“I s’pose I could do that, ya.”

“Well, uh…If you see Brent, could y’remind him it’s been three months since I fixed his, uh, heater? Could use the money.”

Ida gave up, shaking her head and gesturing at the bottle, eyes once again searching for an explanation in her mother’s face. She stepped closer, her mittens signal-yellow and leveled square at the bottle. “Please, tell me what’s going on here?”

Freja turned around, leaning herself back against the fiberglass shop sink, wiping her hands off with a rag. She knew she was caught dead to rights, but it wouldn’t stop her from another run at freeing herself from the responsibility of her daughter’s heartbreak.

“Oh, just your mom being a fucking idiot, I guess.”

“Mom, c’mon.”

Her tone was flat, hiding her own disappointment. “Well, what do you want me to say, Sprout? Y’already connected the dots, so.”

Ida’s lips searched for the words, “Mom, stop it. I don’t need that.”

“Well, I don’t need this either, Ida. I’m a grown woman, I can do what I want.”

“You don’t need that,” she said, gesturing at the bottle again, “I just need to know if this is a problem now so maybe I can try and help, or something.”

“A problem? You want a problem? Fuck it, here’s a problem - There’s virtually nothing for work, I can barely help you get your tools, and no one gives a rat’s ass whether I make it through this winter or not. And why should they! A washed up, broken old woman rotting alone in her garage out in the fucking tundra. A hero. Hardly worth worrying over what the hell I’m up to, not like anyone does.”

“I worry.”

“You’ve got better things to worry about, Sprout.”

Ida squinted, incredulous. She knew enough about her mother to know where those words came from, and did her best to let them by. The foal shook her head and chose her next few words carefully. “Mom, listen, I’m not trying to fight you. This was just surprising to me. Frank helps me service my tools and he’s letting me pick up side-gigs. Small ones but, every little bit helps, right? Things are tight, sure, but I think we’re okay - at least for now? I just can’t account for stuff I don’t know about. You haven’t left the house in months and now you’re hiding liquor, y’know? We were together on this - it was getting better.”

The words ricochet ‘round Freja’s skull in search of any rebuttal, but Ida’s aim was steady and true. There wasn’t anything there for her to hurt herself with in the immediate. She pulled herself up again. The middle-aged, retired Aewa pilot and mother, nodded meekly. She was suddenly aware of the gray hairs floating in her periphery.

“…When you’re right you’re right, Sprout. I’m sorry, I-”

Ida took a step forward, “Is this still about Quinn?”

Freja’s eyes flashed like daggers, leveled square at her own kin. Ida was afraid of that look. Freja felt herself falling away. What’s left was a terrible weight, a frightened animal, a wound. Her voice was dark, low, ready.

“This isn’t still about anything, Ida Jane Dahl.”

They froze. The space between them felt wider than it was. The timer on the heater clunked off, leaving only the murmur of the radio, the glassy clink of the fluorescents above them, and the whistle of the wind through the boards. The quiet was deafening. The chill was quick to seep back into the garage, curling past the heat rising off their ears. Ida clenched her jaw and stared at the person that raised her, painfully, through lake-green eyes. She remembered for a moment, looking at her, that they shared the exact same colors.

Ida broke first. She was quiet.

“I’m sorry. That was…Really dumb of me, to say. I shouldn’t have. I’ll see about Brent’s brother. I’m grabbing eggs and coffee on the way back, too. I’ll get out of here - I just uh, need to borrow the sled.” Her eyes were forward but wouldn’t meet Freja’s again.

Freja shifted her weight back, taking a moment to defuse herself. She caught herself huffing, hard. She saw the change in her daughter and knew who did it. You stupid fucking animal. She murmured, rehearsing her lips for apology, and patted at the pockets on her jumpsuit. She managed to fish out a few shotgun cartridges, and handed them over. Ida pocketed them quickly.

“I’ll be back later.” she said, turning to leave.

“…Hey,” attempting to drain the venom out of her voice, the smell of her own breath hitting her, rubbing it in. Dumb-ass. “I’m sorry, Sprout.”

“Yeah, no, it’s fine.” She hid her eyes under her goggles.

“…Ya, okay. Love you?”

“Sure, yeah.”

Freja gestured at a hug that Ida ignored as she whisked herself with a slam.

The cold filled her lungs. She stared at the dingy white door. Freja heard the muffled crunch of her daughter’s footsteps growing quiet and distant. She wanted to open it and say something that’d undo what just happened. Instead, Freja slumped back over to her workbench. The donkey hunched herself over, palms pressed hard into the grime-soaked particle-board edge until she could feel something, anything, that might bleed off the shame. She heard the sled start up and rev off down the driveway. Then nothing.

She was left with nothing.

She forgot to breathe. She inhaled deeply, reared herself up slow, grabbed the glass out of the sink, and sighed. Freja placed it back down in disgust, slapping the open bottle down into the sink with a clattering thud. She watched some of the amber spiral down. None of this had to happen. Not like that, you stupid beast.

She dragged herself over and heaved herself down into the shop chair, and slowly kicked herself toward Snowshoe. The chair bumped iagainst the hull, and she dropped the back of her head back with the deadened chime of bone on metal. Thud. Her gaze caught along the portraits of would-be friends she hadn’t seen in months with the word scrawled there in grease-pencil.

Deadbeat.

She thudded the back of her head against the hull a little harder, needing to feel it. Thud.

They used to get along better, before she forgot herself. Back when she’d take Ida down fishing at the lake for Sunnies. Back when she’d help her along hiking trails at sunrise in the northern woods. Thud. When she’d teach her the difference between the mushrooms you could eat whenever, and the ones you could eat only once. Thud. How to make good Birch tea. How to drive stick. Thud. How to bring the bigger boys down. The names of the flowers around their house. The birds Quinn didn’t have nicknames for.

Thud.

The fuzz of the radio bled into the whistling through the boards. Her eyes settled on big green plastic bins sat up in the rafters. There were Christmas decorations up there that hadn’t been pulled down in years. Ida was owed a Christmas, she thought, even though Ida told her they didn’t have to have them anymore. What kid says that? A little kid that has to manage the house finances, you fucking jackass.

Thud, thud, clang!

“Shit…”

She felt that one. She winced, hand reaching to the back of her head, rubbing at the now tender spot.

Just a warm, quiet morning, the little pair of ‘em. Share some coffee - Ida was old enough, she can have coffee now. Crack a joke, find a smile somewhere. Whatever else’d be a bonus. She brought her knee up to her chest, her hands meshed tight over her shin. Maybe some cinnamon toast, with the good butter. She couldn’t help wrenching at her knuckles. She whimpered quietly in frustration, dropping a cheek on her knee.

She saw a small photo hidden up in a corner of the garage she would forget about. A small family portrait with three little figures, hung up alone, alongside a mala necklace. One-hundred and eight beads, made in pine and adorned with iron-veined Lake Superior Agate, corded and tasseled in forest green thread. She fingered at the same one she wore on her arm, darker through the wear of time than the one that hung there, frozen, under the dust and the dark.

“I’m trying,” she whispered.

#furry #fiction #snowshoe

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