Alex.J.Cobalt

Snowstorm – Snow is not peaceful, it is a raging beast that can kill. (Genre – General, Rating – PG)

It falls constantly, thick white dust which covers the land in an unchanging blanket. Instead of being full of vibrant life, there are miles of unending white.

The wind is cold here, bitter and biting against your skin. Snowflakes fill your vision, you must blink and hold your hand up against the storm which rages around you. The chill eats its way through your skin, down into your very bones, trying to pull you down into the soft embrace of the white earth. It wants you to stop, you want to stop, and yet you cannot.

Stopping here, in this storm, will mean your last feeling of Earth is the bitter cold.

It is not want you want. You have to continue.

The sky, which in summer is a deep blue, is now grey with the heavy storm clouds. There is no break in the skyline, just unending hues of grey that sweep across the horizon like a painter who has lazily filled in the background of her canvas. There is no birdsong that fills the air, even the breath that leaves your lips is whipped away by the wind, as if the storm wants you to suffocate in this desolate land.

Every step hurts, but you take one after another, not pausing to look back on your lonely path that you leave behind. Your sole focus is on the trees ahead, driven by the need to seek the protection of their shadow. They loom like a dark snake on the horizon, lying in wait to consume you when you get close enough.

Snow is not pretty, not out here. It is only peaceful in a photograph, when the snowflakes do not move and there is no wind scratching at your skin.

You manage to scramble up the hill towards the treeline, limbs aching with the effort of moving in the cold. Desperation carries you forward, as the wind begins to soften as you reach the protection of the treeline. It is dark in the forest, trees which were once emerald green and full of colour are now reduced to grey as the snowflakes dull their colour. Branches sag, trees break, and the forest life hides away from the storm. You cannot hear anything, no songbirds sing in the branches today.

Yet even the darkest of forests is preferable to the raw power of the storm behind you.