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Chapter One Cold
It was cold.
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It is cold.
The world is frozen; a feeling as comforting as it is familiar.
I used to dislike winter. The very first touch of cold in the air would mark the arrival of what used to be my favorite time of the year — but then all too quickly it would get too cold, and that meant the swift end of the short-lived but beautiful season. The vibrant oranges and reds of the autumn landscape would fade abruptly into dull whites and grays.
But now, there is a certain comfort I find in wintertime... a feeling that I first discovered several months ago, right around the end of the winter prior. When things had first begun truly spiraling for me.
Or maybe they always had been. Quietly.
Winter. The simplicity of it is soothing; the hushed silence of the world around me a stabilizing contrast to the turmoiling one inside. I can almost imagine it: merging with the snow itself, sinking down and never returning — existing eternally wrapped within a blanket of silence, or even not existing at all.
The fresh snow and dead foliage crunch underneath my tennis shoes as I travel deeper into the bare trees, the few leaves upon their branches just barely hanging on as the beginning of winter came upon us. As far as I'm concerned, it already felt like winter a month and a half ago. Burgess has long been known as a peculiarly cold place, snow coming too early and leaving too late.
It's almost like winter has made its very home here.
The local kids usually go to the wide clearing on our street, but, this time, they evidently chose to go deeper into the wooded area behind it, perhaps in search of the larger fields and other unexplored land that lay there. Probably not the safest choice, but I wouldn't tattle.
The night before had brought the biggest snowfall of the season. With a sudden gust of wind, a few snowflakes drift onto my face, caressing it gently. I guess Jack Frost will now be visiting more often.
A wry smile twists my lips as I exit the treeline and begin to make my way across a flattened wheat field, slowly approaching the group of children playing at the end of it. It was in no way a beeline, as I stuck mostly closer to the trees. A few blurry faces here and there are familiar — damn, if I knew I'd have somehow kept sticking around for this long maybe I would've asked for glasses last spring — but more than a couple of new ones have joined the fairytale cult this year.
