Winter's Night

 A winter's night has always been a mystical night. I don't know what colour the sky was. If the sky was white then I would be confused. Or scared. Or both. I would think that the sky was the ground or the ground was the sky. Whatever colour it was, it was hard to describe. I think maybe it was grey because if it was white I wouldn't be able to the speckles of white, like some of the old Jackson Pollock paintings Mom had taken me to so long ago. Unlike the famous paintings, the speckles danced. They fell slowly in a swift and subtle waltz until they landed softly on the ground joining those like it.

The ground felt funny on my toes. Every step I took, my foot would be enveloped in a hug of white all the way up to my mid calves. Sometimes I would stand still, feeling the snow turn to water where it met my body heat met the funny substance. When I stood, I liked the feeling of snow in between my toes, I wiggled them until I couldn't wiggle them anymore. When I couldn't move them, I knew it was time to keep going.

Soon, I could barely move my feet, but that was alright. I switched from running to walking to marching. I raised my bare knees square in the air like the toy soldiers Timmy used make march around the house for hours without end. I forced each leg into the ground and continued going, kicking the white fluff out of the way.

Through the blizzard, I could see it. The black trunk of the tree stood out on the amount the white. I was almost there.

My thighs began to grow numb but I still pushed forward. I was almost there, almost with my family. My shivering arms shook violently at my sides. I held my hands out as I walked, allowing each snow flask to fall on my open palms. I couldn't feel a single thing, my hand was long grown numb. My work worn childish hands had started become blue. The shivers of my arms continued all over my body all the way up to the exposed part of my neck between where my hair ended before the dress began.

Images of what my face looked like forced themselves to the front of my mind, no matter how hard I tried to push them away to focus on the tree. I could imagine my red blue tipped ears matching my bright red elfish nose. I could imagine my blue eyes, becoming more lifeless with every step. I could imagine my pale cheeks, all the rosiness gone from the supple skin. My lips were cracked and blueish, that I didn't have to imagine. I could feel the snow collecting on my agape full lips. Framing my dying eyes are my eyelashes. My once thick black lashes were dashed in snowflakes.

But I kept going. I was almost there. Until I fell.

My lifeless legs gave out when they got caught on a root of the tree. The snow was not yet packed and my ribs landed on the gnarly under-branches with a crack. Had it not been for the quick spreading pain, I would've given in on my desires. The desire to just lay there. To give in. But it was not yet time. Instead of giving up, my hands scowered underneath the snow and pulled my dying body closer to the tree.

And then I was there. I was with them again. I couldn't see the three little plaques, but I knew exactly where they were. To my left was Mom, then Dad, then Tim. I made it. I looked up at that confusing sky again and decided it was a grey-blue. It was the kind of grey-blue that only a winter night can hold. As the Jackson Pollock sky cried tears of fluffy white, I shut my eyes, spreading out my fingers and toes, taking in the powdery snow, until it took me and I was gone, on a winter's night.