A Story of the Past, the Future and the Cold

Ice dances among the clouds. Everything around her is coated in clear crystal, and the world is silent. Each individual leaf, each blade of grass, is separate from the others, encased in its own little shell molded to its exact shape. These shells are their homes now, and their coffins later. As the cold seeps into them, they will wither and shrivel, yet still be held upright by the omnipresent ice. Come spring, they will be reborn anew, and raise their nonexistent heads to face the sun.

The girl turns, and walks, her feet crunching on the glassy grass and releasing a few lucky strands from their cases. The world is sparkling with an everlasting beauty that will be gone by the next day. She can barely see, and yet everything is within her view. She walks, and she thinks, of snowflakes, of family, of sweet kisses on happy days. Enveloped in the past, she is still in awe of the present, of the fragility and the quiet strength of the ice. It thinks that it will last forever and that life will remain within its grasp for eternity, yet it melts in its arrogancy and must return to freeze another day.

She wants to run inside, to fetch her camera, to preserve this day for as long as she can. But the ice keeps her out. It calls to her, and she is seduced by its silent brilliance. She knows that it will not last, and that no photograph can capture its spirit. The cold makes her skin tingle, and the absence of wind and sound makes her spine tingle. She could taste the bitter cold, but it mattered not, here in this frozen paradise. Quietly she attempted to pace, to preserve it all in her memory to look back upon. Again the ice crunched beneath her feet as she walked all around and back again, back through clouds of her own steaming breath. Finally she knew that her mind held as much as it could, and though she would miss this ice, though she knew that she would probably never see it again, she headed inside to once again meditate on the past, the future, and the cold.

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I'm really not sure what to highlight.....I just sort of wrote what was in my head. I don't know if I actually completed the task, but heck, I enjoyed it. This actually (mostly) happened to me last year - there was one morning when everything in my yard had frozen over and I just went out and walked around. It was really amazing - I was in awe the entire time. Go out in the cold sometimes, guys. It clears your mind :D

--Ali