[Gift] The 11th Hour | Snow Plow

It had been Aither’s idea to be helpful. That wasn’t Meelo’s only reason for doing it—Meelo didn’t dislike helping people—but it had been a massive push towards actually doing it rather than wondering if there had been a possible solution and allowing the opportunity to pass her by.

Which was to say that Meelo wasn’t opposed, but this hadn’t been Meelo’s idea at all.

The harness was modified from a horse’s, tightened to fit her body. Meelo understood the impulse to shake, feeling the way it hugged her, made her feel confined.

Ahead was a seemingly-endless expanse of snow, glittering as the sun hit the ice crystals within. Beneath it was, nominally, a road. Meelo had seen it a few times; if she squinted, now, she could just make out the curvature of it, the way it fell lower than the untrodden ground around it.

The first steps were the hardest. Getting the plow to move at all took strength, and she thought—not for the first time—that an Earth dragon ought to be doing this, if it were a dragon’s office. But she pressed her toes down harder, leveraged friction and torque, and slowly—agonizingly slowly—the plow started to move.

Once she was going, and the plow was scything into the snow, pushing it open, it was still hard—and she, ahead of it, cold, reaping no benefits from the plowing—but it was manageable. It would just take time.

Much like the plow, she dug in. There was nothing to do now but the job at hand. She could complain tomorrow about how this had been better suited to someone else; for now, it was hers.