Yatzil was at practice with the community orchestra. The group was getting ready for the annual holiday concert, and they were having a dress rehearsal today. This left Khonshu alone with the boys. Of course, he didn’t mind watching the boys for Yatzil, he was their father and part of being a good co-parent was being there for your child and their other parent. The fact that he was a god and she was the mortal avatar of a goddess co-parenting his youthful avatar did not change this fact.
It was snowing today, big fat flakes of snow that were quickly adding to the already deep snow on the ground. Marc, Steven, and Jake were very excited for the snow and the three aspects seemed quite determined to convince their divine father to let them play in the snow.
“Please,” Marc asked.
“Por favor” Jake begged
“Please, please, please” Steven chanted. “Please, pleeeeeeeeaaaaaasssssseeeeeeee!”
“All right, we can go out and play in the snow. Go put your snow suit on, and your boots. Dress warmly! It’s cold outside and your uncle Declan will be contrary if you catch a cold because you didn’t have enough layers on.”
The little boy cheered and jumped up. He ran to his room and started to bundle up. Not five minutes later the little boy waddled out, bundled up in a snowsuit, coat, sweater, sweatpants, boots, hat, scarf, and mittens. He ran up to the door and fumbled with the knob, mitted hands struggling to turn the knob.
Khonshu opened the door for his little moon, and they ran out into the snow. He followed them into the yard, shutting the door behind him. While he didn’t feel the cold he still didn’t enjoy the snow.
He stood and watched his son frolicking in the snow. The child was jumping through the snow drifts, digging holes, making snow angels. Jake in particular enjoyed making (and throwing) snowballs, while Marc and Steven seemed interested in making a snowman. The little boy was diligently rolling a ball of snow around the yard, carefully making sure it stayed round and tightly packed.
While the boy busied himself with the construction of his snowman, Khonshu shook his head. Ugh, snow was starting to pile up in his cranial cavity. This was why he hated being out in the snow so much. Snow had a way of sneaking into his skull and just piling up in there. The feeling was unpleasant, like his head was stuffed full of cotton. He imagined that it was similar to what a human felt when they were congested from a cold. And to make matters worse,the snow wouldn’t melt until he went somewhere warm, as his skull lacked body heat. This meant that the only effective way of removing the snow was to shake it out of his skull. Unfortunately the best way to accomplish this was to remove his skull from his body, not the most pleasant feeling in the world.
Khonshu reached up and grasped his skull firmly, a hand on either side. He twisted his skull to the left, then twisted it to the right. Feeling sufficiently stretched, he abruptly thrust his arms up, popping his skull loose. Slowly and carefully, he tipped his skull upside down and shook the impacted snow loose. He moved gingerly as he shook the snow out; he had learned from experience that moving his disembodied skull about too quickly would make him nauseous. In fact, one such event was how he discovered that even lacking a neck, he could in fact throw up. It had not been pleasant and he had no desire to repeat the experience, ever.
With his skull tipped upside down, Khonshu’s view of the world was also flipped. This was part of the reason it was so disorienting to remove his skull; he perceived everything from the point of view of his skull. Currently his view was of his little avatar, walking towards him. He could hear the crunching of the snow under their feet. They stopped inches from his upside down skull, their face shoved into his. Their cheeks and nose were rosy red from the cold, and their breath came in small frosty clouds. It may be time to go in soon.
“Wooooah. That’s so wicked!” Steven squealed right into his eye socket. The noise echoed around in his now snow free skull, disorienting him.
“I have an idea.” Marc, he thinks Marc said that. It was hard to think straight, the words were bouncing around in his head and he was getting dizzy.
“Podemos usar su cráneo para el muñeco de nieve!” Jake, he knew that was Jake. The boy said something, Khonshu was not sure what, he was still learning the language that the young Jake liked to slip into. Spanish, that was its name.
“Jake, what-AHHH!” He yelped when the little avatar reached up and grasped his skull with their surprisingly strong hands. They pulled it away from Khonshu’s grip and started running.
“OH NO!” Khonshu moaned. The world was bobbing up and down, swinging back and forth at a rapid pace. He was starting to get motion sick. He could sense that his body was feeling ill, it was only a moment of time until the body got sick to its stomach.
“Put me down boys!”
The boys skidded to a halt. Khonshu could see a mound of snow in front of him. He was lifted up, and he saw another mound on top of the first snow mound. This mound had pebbles down its front, and a stick shoved in either side. He was raised up a little bit more, flipped right side up, and shoved down into the mound of snow. The boys took their scarf off and wrapped it around his nonexistent neck. They then plopped a baseball cap onto his head.
“Perfecto!”
“Sweet!”
“Best snowman ever!”
“I agree boys, that is a good snowman. In fact, it’s so good we should get a picture of you and it so that you can remember.” Yatzil was at the gate, her violin case in hand. She was early, and Khonsh had not noticed her arrival in his current condition.
“Don’t you dare!”
“PICTURE” the boys screamed as they clambered next to his makeshift body. Yatzil grinned, and snapped a picture with her cell phone. CLICK. She then walked into the yard and positioned herself in such a way that she could get a picture of the Khonshu-man, the boys, and Khonshu’s dejected body which was sprawled out in the snow. CLICK. Pictures taken, she walked up to Khonshu’s body, and bent down, intending to help it up.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you….” Khonshu started to warn Yatzil. Unfortunately his warning was too late.
His body was still quite nauseous, which was why it was laying down in the first place. When Yatzil pulled his body into an upright position, the inevitable happened. The body vomited up what looked eerily like the night sky. The body and Yatzil both were covered in the godly vomit. Yatzil let go of Khonshu’s body, and let him flop back into the snow. The boys observed the occurrence with deep fascination.
“That. Was. Awesome!” The boys were so fascinated by the turn of events they were all co-fronting, eager to take in the experience first hand.
“I warned you. Now can someone please give me my skull back?” Khonshu wanted his skull back on his body, he wanted to clean himself off, and he wanted out of the snow. He had had enough snow fun to last him an entire year.