Why She Runs (Cold As Ice Contest)

For a good deal of her life, Marie had always assumed that she would be on her own. New York's streets were as congested as usual, and moving through them had been more difficult for nine months, and the many more that came.

In the early morning of September, she remembered the pain of labor when it came. She remembered having to get in her car and drive herself to the hospital before she actually was moved into a delivery room for a good five hours.

Once she was able to hold her newborn, she kept thinking to herself: How am I going to be a good mother? Her arms began to shake slightly, causing a nurse to have to steady her. She was going to have to raise her new baby on her own. How could she do this? How would she be able to take care of this new child?

What wonderful thing didn't start out scary?

-- Four years later --

It was safe to say that she was doing fine. As she laid down on her back for what seemed like a good thirty minutes, she managed to bring herself up into a sitting position. When Marie bothered to look at her alarm clock, she smiled sleepily at the fact that it was only seven o'clock, and a Saturday morning. She still had to go to work, but at least it was almost the end of the working week for her.

Once she slowly slipped out of her bed, she jolted when she stepped onto the floor, causing a loud, rubbery, squeaking noise. The noise had woken up a certain someone in the other bedroom, and was now fussing from being woken up. Yeah, life was so rough.

She looked down to see that it was one of the rubber balls lying on the ground. Loud thumping began to get closer and closer to her room until the door was flung open. This made her lift her feet up back into the bed before a black blur tackled the ball and began to wrestle with it. The crying had increased in volume before Marie actually managed to get out of her bed and move to the next room.

The room itself was fairly sized with pale blue walls and pale gray carpets. The only furniture in the room was a small wooden dresser with a small mirror, and a small, bright green, plastic, race car bed. The occupant of this bed was a blond, and now red in the face from crying, toddler. She smiled down at him and scooped him up into her arms so she could attempt to calm him down.

"Hey there, Alexi..." the twenty one year old slowly moved her whole body from side to side and kissed the top of his head little head. "Did Roscoe scare you that much?" she tried teasing her son a little to try and get a reaction out of him. Looking back at the "intruder" who had followed her into the room, she smirked slightly when she knew that the black German Sheppard had the squeaky ball in his mouth, his tail was now wagging slightly in anticipation.

The four year old only grinned with a little laugh, "Maybe... Roscoe is loud." he looked at her sneakily before he tried to reach up and grab her nose. His light brown eyes were squinted from the effort, making her chuckle and lean down slightly so that his slightly chubby fingers barely brushed her nose.

"You almost got my—" she stopped in mid-sentence and noticed something in the mirror.

Realizing that there was just the faintest hint of blond roots in her usually dark brown hair, she felt her muscles tighten up a bit. The more pressing matter right now was that she still needed to get ready for work.

"What's wrong, mama?"

"Time to get dressed and eat breakfast." she smiled a little, "Just let me get ready and I'll make food as soon as I'm done." Without another word, she set Alexi back down on his own feet, and moved to her bathroom.

This left a curious Roscoe to drop the ball and poke his head through the bathroom door. She knew that she should have gotten up earlier in the morning so she could actually get ready. But all she needed to do right now was put in her colored contacts. This covered her birth-given brown eyes with a vibrant purple color.