A Child of Snow

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. The stark outline of a young girl and her white hood walked soundlessly across the clean sheet of an undisturbed snowfield. I assumed I couldn't hear the crunch of snow under her boots because of the whistle of wind that brushed through the barren desert of trees and winter cotton, or perhaps it was just the sound of my teeth chattering against each other.

I couldn't remember how I had appeared here or how it was snowing in what I thought was mid May. All I could remember was that when I was previously awake, the day had been sunny and moist, with the faint stretch of a rainbow barely blending with the blue sky. My body craved the heat to return, but I couldn't see even the smallest sliver of light.

Upon gaining some consciousness, I took closer notice of the girl in front of me. She appeared medieval in some sense, the white cloak being made of a thin velvet, and the bits of hair that peaked through the corner, colored to look like they had once been a much brighter color, but were dipped in ink.

I tried to get closer to her. She had stopped to kneel down in the snow, to tie her shoe or to play I did not know. She hadn't turned back to me once yet, but for whatever reason there was some sort of pull that grabbed at me and drew me closer.

I inhaled the cold as I went, falling into it like a pool of ice water. When I had first awoken, I had been chilled to the bone. That had been the only sign that I wasn't dreaming, as I could feel that cold deeper than a faint prick on certain parts of my body not covered by my blanket. It was a sort of poetic chill, akin to the mist above a wide lake.

It seemed like years until I got to my destination. I had seen both sides of sugar covered trees and felt every snowflake as it touched my skin and melted into me. I studied my tracks as I went, memorizing the patterns they made and seeing how deep they would go. The smallest things had caught my attention, distracting me from the girl until I could barely make out the shape of her black hair and I remembered to keep walking.

As I got closer, I noticed her skin was plump and pale, with a very rotund shape. I was surprised to find that there was no flush in her cheeks. Not even the barest press of pink could find its way onto her face, and she would almost be entirely blending in with the snow if not for her hair. God, it was some of the deepest black I had ever seen, a kind that threatened drowning. I hadn't noticed I was standing right beside her until she turned her head to look at me.

She was youthful, with dark eyes like a doe, pale lips, and an albino face similar to the white of an untouched moonstone. I felt as though I was watching an old film when I looked at her too long, some vague glimpse into the past. But she didn't appear to be from any time, at least not any that I had read about in a book. She was somewhat like a being in her own, a representation of adolescence and purity and terror.

She didn't look wary or surprised by my presence, nor did she seem happy. She paused to look at me, before lying down with her stomach to the sky and her hair splaying out around her. She didn't seem phased by the frigid air, so I decided it wasn't above me to lie next to her. I was not like her, and shook frantically, but she set a small hand on my arm and caused me to still.

It was peaceful, letting my face be speckled with cold snowflakes while I finally was at rest. I could see the darkness encroaching, but I was not afraid of whatever came after that. I let myself be swallowed by peace, an ocean tame at night. I didn't know anything, and yet that didn't terrify me as much as it once had. Sunny days seemed far.

The girl didn't speak, but she drew stories in the snow of her adventures in this white world. She told me of high mountain peaks and deep caves filled with stalactites and colorful rocks. She illustrated oceans frozen over and slippery patches of unseen ice that she had stumbled past. She spoke of something like a perfect world, and I clung to it as if it were my life force.

I don't know how long it had been until the sky became a darker shade of gray and I realized that our time in light was coming to an end. She had stopped telling stories, something I hadn't realized until a few moments afterwards. I worried that it was a dream, something I'd never get to see again until something brief and vague brought it back years later, and I went on to remember it in flashes. But a dream so vivid seemed impossible to even my foggy mind.

I tested out my voice to see if I could talk. "Hello," I said. It's strange to greet someone you've felt like you've known your whole life, but I needed to say something just to confirm that I still had a grasp on this world.

She didn't respond. In fact, she didn't even look at me. She was still staring at the sky, eyes glossy and dark. I thought there could have been sadness somewhere on that moony face, but she couldn't be sad. She couldn't be sad because she was the child of happiness, some paragon of youth enveloped by a kind of honesty that didn't need to be spoken. She was not beautiful, but she was perfection.

I didn't speak again. I knew that speaking then would only make her leave. I needed to stay silent, and she would stay. But the sky was dim. I think the saddest part about winter is that there isn't a sunset. You aren't handed a telltale sign that night is approaching, nor a beautiful fade into something that many consider to be a time of fear. You just have to wait for it, and even then it hits you like a bullet train.

I turned to the girl, waiting for something. Somewhere in the time I had been wallowing in a non-existent future, her eyes had fluttered shut and she had drifted off into a breathless sleep. There was no rise and fall of her chest, no gentle carry of small puffs. She wasn't dead, that I knew, but she was no longer here.

Her skin had started to dissolve into the snow, and her features melted into each other to create a soft but mortifying blend of an appearance. Her cloak had begun dragging her deeper and deeper into the snow, until she was nearly entirely submerged.

I was struck with a feeling of urgency, a frantic thrum that pounded in my ears and forced me up. I had no name to scream, nor a face to remember so that I could conjure an image in my head, something to hold onto. I grabbed at the snow, tearing at the area where her silhouette should have been imprinted in. All I could see then was the marks of my hands, too good to be snow. I cried and begged until I was too drained to breathe, and I toppled over to the ground and curled in on myself.

That night, I had to sleep with the expectation of spring.