Nothing to Say

Walking On Clouds

Winter.

It starts with a fall and ends with a fall--of rain and sunshine. That's what Anne Smith tells herself when she wakes up and finds a new note pinned to her wooden window. She walks with the spring in her step and the sky in her eyes, and only God knows what runs through her mind in her favorite time of year--winter.

She comes up with her best ideas in the best season and she loves the thought of completely blank things for her to color with her own imagination. Because imagination, she says, is her way of telling people to create, and telling her mind, wake up, because in Winter, everything begins again. Or simply begins for the first time, perhaps, she murmurs as she breezes past a mother and her newborn.

She smiles as she passes by skaters and bakers and construction workers and keeps pace with a fifteen-year-old boy whose name is Blizzard for the season he was born in. He glances at her curiously but does not stop to see why. "Do you want to know a secret?" Anne asks with cheery freckles and bright blue eyes. Blizzard slows his steps as she skips alongside him. She grins, then whispers with a hushed voice, "We're walking on clouds."

Blizzard blinks as she skips away, still lost in snowflakes and laughter and dreams. He knows what kind of notes they leave on her bedroom window. He's seen them addressed to him more than once. As far as the cruel words of schoolchildren go, he thinks, her behavior is very odd.

He does not see her reading the notes, then pulling out a cream-white leather backed book as she writes something down on half-filled pages.

But when he learns more about her and her secrets, he finds out. "I write one thing every day that's the opposite of what they say," she grins as she gestures towards the notes. "It's my secret to success." Blizzard wishes very much he could do the same. When he voices this, she says, "They do it to you too?" Neither of them speak more of it.

On Christmas, he gets one note and a largely blank-paged, snow-coloured journal. He flips throughout the book and finds a letter from the girl, whose name he never learned:

Blizzard White--
Write down the opposite of the bad things they tell you, Blizzard. Someday you'll learn that the ones that you write down are true. And don't let them bring you down; there are always people out there who are like that. Good luck finding the world.
--Love, Anne