Swaliti Winter

Megha had never seen snow before. And here she was now, staring at a vast expanse of white floor- or maybe white powder. She didn't know. She would know, only if she could touch it. From the appearance of it and the sudden burst of unusually chilly weather and the sunless sky flustered with pale hazy clouds, she concluded that it was snow, which spread through out till the hidden horizon. There was a tingling urge in her to feel the snow below her feet. But she couldn't. She was standing on a raised platform of a cage, tied to one of its bars.

She scanned through the whole cage and again went back to staring at the blanket of white beneath her feet, sitting infront of her with all its grace.

As the trance of the first snow of her life wore off, Megha noticed the incongruity of her condition.

Moments ago, she was cuddling her pillow inside her blanket, breathing its warm air. And now, she was standing amidst a snowy land. Did she have a memory loss! Did she forget her travel to this beautiful place!
She heard some creaking sound coming from behind. Turning back, she saw two more cages being dragged ahead on their wheels. How were the wheels gliding on top of the snow, when the men dragging them walked while digging their legs up to their knees into the snow! Was it even possible! Isn't the snow needed to be cleared first? Or....may be not. What did she know, by the way?

The cages held one prisoner each, tied to the bars, like Megha was.
The dragger men wore iron helmets in the shape of a cone. It looked so peculiar and unusual that Megha couldn't stop a chuckle from escaping. After a few seconds of blank bafflement, the probability of the reality dawned on her.

There was a myth in their city about people vanishing in the murk of the night. Some people had claimed of experiencing such incidents. Obviously, they were scoffed at by others. But now, their description of the place where they said they had gone after vanishing, matched Megha's present dimly lit surrounding. Unfortunately, the description of the cage draggers and their clothes matched too.
The more serious matter of concern for her was that, some people had, reportedly, never returned back after vanishing at night. "What if I don't return home too!" She shuddered at the thought.

She looked around. There was nothing except white, for miles.
The cages halted, and one of the dragger men approached Megha.
Megha stared at him.

"What are you looking at girl? Do you like my hat?" The man said grumpily.
Megha tittered and immediately realized she was so bad at timing. Seemed like that was her curse.

"This one laughs." The grumpy man said in a gruff voice. "Let's see how the other two react. Shall we?"
He looked at the other two cages.
One of the men near those cages removed the clothes covering the prisoners' faces by pulling them through strings. Those clothes vanished after exposing the faces. But that's not what caught megha's attention-she knew one of those prisoners. He was a television star she had had a crush on for a very long time. It all seemed very surreal-Saurabh standing with his eyes closed like a magnificent sculpture.
The other prisoner was a male too.
Suddenly, both of them opened their eyes and gasped at what they saw.
The prisoner beside Saurabh screamed to the highest of his lung's capacity. It was time someone did.
One of the draggers pulled out a knife and levitated it with some hand gestures. Soon he directed the knife in the air to go to the screaming man. It halted just an inch away from his neck. The prisoner gulped back his scream instantly.

"What's your name?" The grumpy man hollered.

"Mihir", the guy replied trembling.