Three-year-old Ao Xing (“Little Fifth”) looked up at his father with sparkling silver-gold eyes.
The toddler was wearing a cozy red mammoth-wool scarf that Su Nuannuan had wrapped twice around his neck over his sky-blue denim overalls. In his left hand, he was still holding a warm cinnamon roll that he had been nibbling on during the flight.
“Dada want Little Fifth get big?” the three-year-old asked, tilting his head as his stubby silver horns gleamed in the polar light. “Big like a mountain?”
“As big as you need to be to make this ten-billion-ton nail weightless, buddy,” Gu Changsheng smiled, holding out his hand. “Here, let Dad hold your cinnamon roll so it doesn’t get snow on it.”
“Okay! Dada hold snack! No let Tuntun sister eat it!”
Little Fifth carefully placed his half-eaten cinnamon roll onto a clean porcelain saucer in Grandpa Fu’s hand.Then the. Three-year-old toddler toddled three steps forward on the blue glacier ice, planted his squeaky yellow snow-boots wide apart. Took a deep breath into his chubby chest, and shouted at the top of his milky voice: “ROOOOOOAR—POP!!”
BOOOOOOOOOM—HUMMMMMMM!
A dazzling, majestic pillar of silver-and-gold starlight erupted from the toddler’s small frame, illuminating the entire Extreme North Glacier from horizon to horizon!
