5 Minute Freewrite Day 445: The Big Freeze

Of the many things I remember about the time my parents and I lived in that great Island, one to notice was the long yet mild winters. Years later I would know the true presence of ice, either by spells of the arcanists I’ve met, or by being in other latitudes, but even then, the coldest memory I have is that of an afternoon in the townsquare.

I was a child by elven standards, barely a baby by human ones, but I knew how to walk, and boy I sure walked a lot!, I liked to learn, not just from books but also from my environment, and it wasn’t escaping, since that place was so nice and lively that children were left to their own devices. My parents gave me a couple of coins and the warning to “not get too crazy” with my purchases.

It was just the time when new merchants came to present their new products, and for a curious child, it was a paradise of discoveries. Many shiny things, a lot of weird noises, and a couple of hours passed with me getting close to a vendor and then retracting when something else caught my attention, until I saw an excited group of local children around the small improvised store of a Gnome merchant.

They were all either holding spheres of something that looked creamy and cold, or waiting to get one of them. I got curious and closed the distance. By the time I could speak with the Gnome, all the other children had their creamy cold spheres and the merchant had a small mountain of coins, but the stuff was nowhere to be seen. My purple eyes probably watered a little, because the merchant watched me with a sympathetic look and said in a hushed tone hey little elf, wanna taste an experimental flavor?, I said YES.

Once I got my treat, a creamy sphere of a shade that kind of looked like my eyes, I went to sit on the closest patch of grass and rabidly ate the stuff. The Big Freeze then happened, and my brain got colder that the buttocks of a meditating tundra Yeti. It wasn’t the worst pain, but it paralyzed me for a while, enough for the rest of the stuff to melt in my hands. That night, when my parents asked how my afternoon went, I only answered, in a solemn tone I’ll dedicate my life to learn the secrets of that which is called Ice Cream!.