The Story Spark for this piece was Winter.
The writing prompt I took was “When she shook the snowglobe, suddenly…”
The Snowglobe
Why was this the present she got every year? Granted, her birthday was in January, but really, a snowglobe? Do they realize how many snowglobes she already has?
Today was her 18th birthday. It should have been special. Maybe for once, she would not be given a snowglobe to honor her reaching this milestone. But no, here it was. And the worst thing about it was that there was no sign of who gave it to her, as usual.
The party had ended, and now she was left by herself to gather up her presents and put them away. She went up to her room and began the process.
As she picked up the snowglobe, she noticed that the scene inside it looked different from when she first unboxed the package. “That’s odd,” she murmured.
When she had opened it downstairs, it showed people milling about a snow-covered field. Not very interesting. Now up in her room, the scene still showed a snow-covered field, but this time all the people were gone. There was only one person standing in the field, and the person looked a lot like her.
When you have a snowglobe, you have two choices: shake it or invert it and return it to its normal position, to watch the snow fall over the scene.
She was angry at the person who had given this to her, so she shook it vigorously and then set it down. All of a sudden, the room grew much colder. As she looked out the window, a sudden snow squall was pummeling the ground.
Looking back at the snow globe, she saw a similar scene of falling snow, only this time the person in the globe was building a fire in a stone fire pit in front of a rustic cabin.
As the snow abated in the globe, so did the snow outside her window.
What was going on? Was there a connection between the snowglobe and what was really happening?
She decided to test this theory out. She began to think of a pleasant snow scene. One in which she was sitting inside a cozy cabin by a roaring fire, looking out at a picturesque vista of snow-covered trees, chirping birds, and a light drifting of snow.
As she thought this, she inverted her snowglobe and righted it. She watched the globe intensely as the scene morphed into exactly what she had imagined.
Her room became cozily warm. Taking her eyes off the globe, but still holding it in her hand, she turned to see the scene around her. It too had changed. For this time, it mirrored the scene she had seen in the globe. As she looked up to where the sky should have been, she saw what appeared to be a glass dome.
As the snow began to peter out, she let go of the snowglobe. No sooner had she done that, she found herself back in her room, but the scene stayed the same in the globe.
When she touched the globe, nothing changed, but when she shook it or inverted it, the scene she imagined would change. Maintaining contact with the globe brought her into the scene itself.
The day after her birthday, that magic snowglobe stopped allowing her to create images and stories to share.
She thought, “So maybe getting a snowglobe every year isn’t such a bad gift. With all the snowglobes I own, all of different scenes, I could create my own stories to share, and none of them have to be the same.
And that’s exactly what she did.
