At the Hotel Higginbotham, dawn arrived the color of cold iron. Clouds hung low and heavy above the glassy pool, pressing down like an unmade bedspread. Bubba Edwards, Senior (and only) Pool Cleaner, stood beside the water in his favorite Bermuda shorts, watching the surface with grave attention.
He knew it was going to rain. The staff knew it too; that’s why they weren’t out setting up chairs and tables. Bubba took quiet pride in knowing he took his job more seriously than the grown-ups.
He dipped a test strip, watched it bloom pale lavender, and smiled. Perfect.
Something wet struck the back of his neck. He looked up. The first drops of rain fell fat and cold, bursting against his feathers. Within moments, the drizzle thickened. Bubba sighed, looking down at the pool. His perfect pH would be ruined. He capped his kit, shook out his wings, and glanced toward the hotel doors. If he was lucky, and Chef Sam was in a good mood, she’d give him some deformed croissants before yelling at him to get out of her kitchen.
He took a step toward the hotel as another drop hit—harder this time. Then another. They weren’t drops anymore; they were tiny white pellets, bouncing off his feathers and onto the cement around the pool. And into the water. Bubba crouched to look closer. Little balls of ice rolled between his webbed toes. He looked up, startled. They were falling from the sky. The word rose to his beak before he could stop it.
“Snow!”
Excitement surged through him. He’d seen pictures in books—ducks gliding through white forests, ducklings building round little snow-ducks in front of cozy cottages. He spread his wings and spun, laughing as the hard bits pinged against his feathers. He opened his beak to catch one.
It hit like a pebble.
“Ow!” He tried again. “Ow!”
The next struck him square on the bill. He winced, rubbed the sore spot, and frowned up at the sky. The snow of storybooks was soft, he was sure of it—something you could waddle through, something you could scoop. This was just cold and mean.
A particularly big pellet plopped into the pool with a plink. Ripples spread, distorting his perfect reflection. Bubba frowned. The snow was falling faster now, little white specks sinking like sugar cubes. “You’ll hurt it,” he muttered. He grabbed the skimmer and began scooping frantically. But the snow was too small to catch, and besides, it disappeared as soon as it hit the water.
The hail came harder. His wings ached; his feathers dripped. He swiped and swiped at the water, angry at the sky for being wrong—for making snow that hurt when it should have been soft, for pounding the pool the way it was pounding his back.
“Bubba! What are you doing?”
He froze. The pounding stopped. A wide blue umbrella appeared between him and the dark clouds, and beneath it stood Ping, the hotel concierge—his boss, everyone’s boss. She held the umbrella in one hand and a pile of red fur in the other.
Bubba stared up at her, chest heaving, feeling cold, defeated, and dented wherever the snow had hit him. “The snow is wrong,” he cried. “It hurts!”
Ping tilted her head, her eyes kind. “This isn’t snow, Bubba—it’s hail.”
He blinked. “But it’s white. And cold.”
“Fair enough,” she said with a small smile. “Hail is hard snow. Most of us try not to play in it.”
She draped the red fur around his shoulders—a Santa coat from the lost-and-found bin. Bubba pushed his wings through the sleeves. The coat was too big and puddled around his webbed feet, but it was warm and soft. It wasn’t lost anymore, he thought. It had found him.
“I don’t like hail,” he said.
“Most people don’t,” Ping replied.
The pelting slowed. The air softened. Bubba blinked upward. The white wasn’t bouncing anymore; it was drifting, spiraling gently down. He held out a wingtip and caught one. It melted almost before he felt it.
“There you go,” Ping said, closing the umbrella.
“This is snow?”
“This is snow.”
They stood together for a while, watching the air fill with white. The pool’s surface dimpled with tiny blossoms that vanished almost instantly. The sky smelled clean, as if the whole world had been rinsed.
Bubba looked up at Ping, her feathers glinting in the subdued morning light. Warmth bloomed beneath the oversized coat—not from the fabric, but from the way she stood beside him, steady and sure.
“That’s Ping,” he thought. “She always makes things the way they’re supposed to be.”
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