Chamber of Echoes (Saturday Writing Essential. 5/19/12)

This Week’s Challenge:

Using prose or poetry, write something dealing with snow being shared somehow with someone else. Make sure you have both sci-fi and fantasy components in your story.

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Pam and Len had volunteered to go on a mission to the Chamber of Echoes.  They got along wonderfully, except Len was a bit of a neat freak and kept cleaning their small spaceship.  Pam was the first to venture into the unknown land.  This is not a canyon, she thought, this is a planet.  I can see the horizon and it's white everywhere.  If it looks like snow, it must be snow.  But, it's warm and I'm already sweating.  The minute she placed one foot on the ground, she heard a rumbling which sounded like a possible avalanche.  No mountains, the ground's flat, so no worries.

"Hey, Len, quit cleaning this ship and come on out here to do your job.  Remember, we're supposed to map this planet."  So they both journeyed out to the unknown.  Each time they took a step, making crunching noises in the snow, they heard a faint sound far away.  Realizing there was no danger, they continued on with cameras in hand and snow crunching with every step.  They heard faint noises in the distance and decided to check them out later.

Crunch, crunch, crunch - distant noises.  They crunched for well over a mile when the distant noises became louder.  As they neared the one and only tree, they distinctly heard, "Hey, hey, hey."  By this time, they had traveled well over a mile when they noticed that at each foot crunch, words came back at them.  It was, "Get off of me, me, me."  Get off my freakin foot, foot, foot.

Of course, they ran back to the ship, dug out the snow shovel and discovered what was under the snow.  Oops, it wasn't snow.  It was a massive flat root which appeared to be wiggling in pain and was leading to the one and only tree, which had a very angry look in it's white bark.  That's when they heard, "Sucker, sucker sucker."