"Why the HELL do I live where the air hurts my face?", I muttered to myself, trudging through the February snow. A cold wind froze my cheeks and my eyes watered above the scarf across my face. My coat kept out about 80% of the cold. I thought about living somewhere warm, like southern California. I could do it - I had the tech skills to make it there as a programmer, or a systems analyst, but I never tried.

"Because this is HOME, boy.", I heard in the back of my head. I thought about all the times my father had said that to me when he wa alive. Every time I said anything about moving away, he'd remind me that he'd been born here, and lived his whole life here, and if it was good enough for him, it would be good enough for me. I don't think he even really liked it here, but even though he died five years ago, I could still hear every one of the things he used to say to me. I missed him, but even with him gone, it still felt like he was holding me back. My whole life had been like that. Every time I talked about getting out of the little box he'd put around me, he was the first one to shut me down.

You know, February is the worst month in Toronto. Sure, November and December are rainy and dark, and January is when it starts to really get cold, and you get snow and darkness. But February? February is the WORST. Every day it seems like there's some sort of "cold front from the Arctic" or "Polar Vortex" to deal with, and they ALWAYS seem to show up when I can't stay home and hibernate. How is it that the shortest month of the year seems to get the most fecking cold and snow? How is that reasonable? And, even worse, it was almost Valentine's Day. For years, that was the lone bright spot in the month. She and I would either hide inside together, or book a vacation down to somewhere sunny, and escape the cold and dark. But not any more. That part of my life was over this year. Now, February was going to be an unbroken slog of cold, dark, and snow.

I thought about this as I trudged through the snow on my way to the subway, every step making the snow on top of the sidewalk squeak in the cold, and feeling my footing slide on the layers of crystallized water beneath me every time I put my foot down. I just knew that I was going to be frozen by the time I got to the station, but I didn't have much choice. With only one income paying the rent now, I couldn't afford to skip shifts, and I couldn't take the risk of looking for a new job. What if it was worse than the one I had? When she was still living with me, we had a buffer - but the marriage was well and truly over, and she'd moved out and moved on, so I was stuck. I put my gloves up to my mouth, and tried to breath some warmth into them.

Just then, I saw something red sticking out of the snowbank in front of me. I stopped beside the anomaly to take a closer look. There, in the snow, was the tail end of an arrow. About a foot of the shaft stuck out of the snowbank, giving a clear view of the fletching. Weirdly, the fletching was a deep shade of red, and didn't quite look like feathers. I adjusted my bag so that it wouldn't swing around when I bent down, and pulled it out of the snowbank. The arrow was about two feet long, with a white shaft. It was quite light, and seemed to be smooth - it seemed shiny in the dim winter light.

Holding it in my gloved left hand, I brought my right hand up to my mouth, and pulled the glove off with my teeth. The winter wind numbed my fingers almost instantly, and I ran my bare hand over the arrow. I was shocked when a warmth like nothing that I'd ever felt before bloomed through me. I gasped, and then coughed as the frigid air flooded my lungs. Quickly, the warmth faded, and I hurriedly tucked the arrow under my arm, and put my hand back into the glove.

"That was SO weird!", I thought to myself. I looked closer at the arrow, and that's when I noticed the arrowhead. It wasn't a hunting tip at all - it was a heart. And it looked like it was faintly glowing. There was a glimmer of something in the middle of the arrowhead, and it seemed to almost be pulsing. I stood there, looking at it for a few minutes. The snow that the weather forecast had promised started up, with little pellets of snow pelting my face and coat as I stood there, thinking about the arrow.

Finally, I made a decision. I turned around, and headed back home to my bachelor apartment. I needed to think about this, and there was no way I was going to be able to concentrate at work. I would be interrupted far too many times, and face far too many questions from people there about what I'd found. Somehow, I knew that I didn't have much time to figure out what to do with it - it was a gut feeling, coming from somewhere deep inside. For once, I listened to my gut and headed home.

Once I got to my apartment, and out of my winter clothes, I pulled out my phone, and called my boss. I took a closer look at the arrow in the light of the kitchen - the only area with decent overhead lighting in my apartment. The shaft, in this light, wasn't one single color - it almost looked like it was made of mother-of-pearl. There was an iridescence to it and it almost seemed to shift and change in the light. The phone rang twice in my ear,

"Yeah, who's this?", came the voice of my boss, Jerry. Jerry ran the IT department at my company, and he was, without a doubt, one of the laziest people I'd ever met. He tried to pass it off as being "efficient", but the reality was that he shifted every task, responsibility and fault away from himself onto anyone that he could, and took all the credit for their efforts for himself. As the person with the longest tenure there, I was the one that usually got thrown under the bus, but, as I said earlier, I needed the job, so I never said anything.

"Hey, Jerry? It's Karl here.", I started.

"Karl, what's going on?", came his reply. I pictured him in his "office" - really, just a cubicle in the corner. The company didn't believe in anyone under the level of Vice President getting real offices. But he always called it his office, and bragged about it being in the corner, with a view out the dirty windows. I could picture him, reading something off of his computer and tapping his fingers on his desk as he talked to me. I knew he was not really paying attention to anything I was saying, so I continued before I lost my nerve.

"I'm not going to be able to make it in today.", I said. My stomach clenched, and nausea flooded into my stomach as I said this. Gritting my teeth, I continued with my excuse. "I slipped on the ice on my way in, and I'm kinda dizzy. I'm gonna stay here and work instead of coming in." On the other end of the line, I heard Karl grunt in annoyance.

"Jesus Christ, man - can't you just suck it up and come in anyways? What am I supposed to do if you're not here? You know that we're shorthanded already. Johnson and Wilkins both booked today and tomorrow off. With you out, that means that we're down to only 40% coverage on the helpdesk.", he said, his voice rising in a whine. This was the part where I usually would cave, and go in to work and do my best to "soldier on", as my father used to tell me to do. But, somehow, I resisted the urge to cave, and stuck to my guns.

"I don't think that's a really good idea, Jerry.", I started. In a flash of inspiration, I continued, "I mean, I already threw up once, and I'm REALLY dizzy. I mean, it wouldn't be good for anybody if I passed out at work, or barfed all over the CIO's laptop, would it." I could almost hear the gears spinning in Jerry's head as he thought about this.

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Edited to fix names