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A busy city is quieted by a big blanketing of snow. Write from the perspective of two (or more) characters who live there.

Posted in Winter on Oct 26, 2022

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✍️ 51 stories

The colours of snow

Shortlisted for Contest #23 ⭐️

With the first snowflakes came a heavy silence. The city hunkered down to weather the storm. Flurries of snow shot down the alleyways and settled in thick piles in the parks. Andrew stood at the window of his apartment on the sixteenth floor and watched the view disappear into a swirl of white. Lena watched the same snowflakes from her apartment, also on the sixteenth floor, but in the tower block on the other side of the street. They both stood in silence as the world shrank down to the size of a window and filled up with snow.The storm ble...

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New Beginnings

Submitted to Contest #23

They say after every rainstorm comes a new beginning. So what about after a snowstorm? During the night, a thick layer of snow blanketed the city, keeping the skittish inside. The city looked anew, tarnished with a brand new white layer like a blank slate. The streets and sidewalks were clogged with snow, making it impossible to travel anywhere--including work and school. Every citizen awoke that morning with the same thought: ‘I am not going outside today’. Well, almost every citizen. I stared through my apartment window laced with a thin f...

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Snowbound Memories

Submitted to Contest #23

When the coldest months stepped their icy feet upon the Isle of Mixed Blood’s shores, the winter brought with them took no prisoners. Though the Stormshield Mountains along the northern coast often blocked the worst of the weather, bulbous and rolling clouds of dark gray yet carried a frigid chill that helped birth raging inland snowstorms. What fiery colors remained of the autumn were soon buried in snowdrifts or encased in crystalline ice, and invasions of frozen flakes whipped through the air for days and sometimes weeks on end before any...

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White Blanket And A Draft

Submitted to Contest #23

Mabel gently awoke. It was the light that had coaxed her from her sleep. Through the window, an erie pinkish-white glow emanated from outside, disturbing the usually flashy-dark night. She looked over at her older sister, Sarah, still asleep on the cot next to her. That’s when Mabel noticed the silence. Undisturbed, muffled silence. This was New York in the middle of January, 1942, noise should have been what woke her up. But it wasn’t.  Mabel quietly rose from bed and tiptoed to the window. Her family’s apartment was near the top of th...

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3 Tic-Tacs

Shortlisted for Contest #23 ⭐️

Last night’s fight had been a big one. Mallory felt the weight of it sitting in her skull like a hangover, waterlogged from crying and disoriented from the twists and turns of an argument that made little sense. It had been one of those fights when she eventually lost track of her initial point (and she suspected Jacob had, too) but rather than let it go, she seized upon new ideas and offenses along the way. Mallory was a flexible arguer. She was proud of that trait. Get her riled up about something and soon enough she’d have ten other thing...

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Tips

Submitted to Contest #23

December sixteenth and Broadmore Street bustled with people. Lunchtime meant midday holiday office parties and Christmas shopping on the fly. With limited street parking, most people walked, scurrying to get to their destinations. The December chill had begun to settle in across the city. Two of the three local television stations were predicting snow at today. One predicted up to twelve inches. Reggie Moore could predict snow better than most. When. How much. Yes, he had watched the weather forecasters and...

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Calm and Still Tomorrow

Submitted to Contest #23

Sophia I hug my knees into my chest, watching from the window seat of the townhouse as snow falls in its unhurried manner. Just a thin layer of glass creates a marked divide - my warm little pocket of the world kept separate from the squall outside. Trees line my street - spaced out every ten feet or so - and their leafless limbs begin to collect snow, like enormous skeletons donning capes. The elderly tree in front of my window seems especially regal. With my first-floor view, I am able to see straight up the trunk to the tangle of bra...

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Snowy Tragedies

Submitted to Contest #23

The bright lights from buildings all around shined in the windows of my apartment, allowing me to see the snow outside. “I’m sorry, Mom. The weather has been unpredictable these days. We’re supposed to get up to six inches.”I can hear her sigh through the phone, her disappointment obvious. “Will you still be able to make it for New Years?”“I don’t think so. Some roads are already being blocked off.”After bearing a goodbye, I hung up the phone, sitting down on the couch with a blanket of guilt. This is going to be a long holiday, I thought to...

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When Opposites Attract

Submitted to Contest #23

I woke up to utter silence, no cars honking, no sound of pedestrian walkways beeping outside my apartment window. In the place of those noises, there was only emptiness. And I felt a pang of dread, a feeling driven from some lost instinct, drawn deep down from the depths of my soul. With increasing dismay, I pried open the curtains with my fingers. Outside, I saw only blinding whiteness. I saw the snow, and I heard nothing. White and silence, a stark contrast to the colorful, strikingly noisy city I normally resided in and relished. In my mi...

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A Clean Sheet

Submitted to Contest #23

Looking up from my work, I witness how the first snowflakes appear in the sky. As out of nowhere, they swirl down softly and invite me to get up from my desk. From where I stand, on the eleventh floor of a dull office building, I have a nice view on the streets below.“It’s not really winter until it snows,” my grandmother used to say. Celebrating Christmas without her for the first time in my life, felt awkward. It wasn’t really Christmas without you, grandma, I reminiscence in silence.The flakes are getting bigger and bigger, as if grandma ...

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A curse and a blessing

Submitted to Contest #23

“Bob, get ready to shovel” – Lisa called out from the kitchen to her husband.“What?” – he asked, flashing the toilet.“The shovel. Get it ready because it started to snow” – she explained.“I just got back from work. Barely had a chance to piss and wash my hands” – he responded.“I heard we are to expect even up to three feet of snow overnight” – Lisa added as she stirred the stew.“What’s for dinner?” – Bob asked, approaching the stove.“Nothing for you, if you don’t shovel and maintain the driveway” – she replied, placing the lid on the pot.Bob...

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Gift of Snow

Submitted to Contest #23

Liz and Debbie walked together towards the shopping area through the deep new snow. Their feet crunched into the soft granules, making deep footprints. A few snowflakes were still falling, glistening in the sunlight that peeked through the heavy grey clouds. The bright white ground was dazzling, and the reflected sun made it feel too warm to be snowy, except for underfoot which was literally freezing. The world felt very quiet today, as so many people had opted to stay indoors, if they were not at work.Liz and Debbie talked together animated...

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Silent City's Population Control

Submitted to Contest #23

Imagine we are pigeons in the busiest city in the world. Acclimated to the bitter cold, snow has no effect on our feathers. Let's visit one of our city's inhabitants and observe. We happen upon one of the better citizens of New York City. She works every day, curbs her dog, cleans after it, recycles, pays taxes. She is a model citizen in every right and loves her city to a fault. She is waking up on a day like normal. She doesn't drive so the impending snow storm is nothing more than a few extra items of clothing to wear when she steps out o...

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You Never Know

Submitted to Contest #23

Jimmy and I had been neighbors for about three years, but we never said much more than hello, or good morning to one another. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but I worked odd hours, and he was strictly a nine to five person, so our paths didn't really cross all that much. We lived on a pretty busy street in an otherwise quiet neighborhood, and the people living in the houses around us pretty much kept to themselves. There weren't a lot of backyard cookouts, and I'm not sure that anyone had any kids. If they did, they weren't noisy. Of...

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Gas station snow retreat

Submitted to Contest #23

Harold Winter. A word often associated with playing children, icy snow, and Christmas cheer. All things that I hate. The children and Christmas cheer cause too much singing and screams of “Joy” but worst of all is the snow. Snow causes traffic, traffic causes me to be late to work.  In preparation for the lovely snow I woke up at 5:30 AM and skipped my morning coffee to get out of the house early, but it seems the traffic will not cease. I Sit back in my seat, pulling out my phone. I dial my boss, he answers on the first ring. “Hello?” ...

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