In the quiet winter night, a boy walks through the snow.
He is silent, as silent as the cold that surrounds him. The wind is still, or possibly just not there at all. The world is as dead as a graveyard as the creatures of nature hide from winter.
The child leans down and taps a fallen log with his staff. Frost and ice shoot across the log, encasing it and freezing it. Snow begins to drift slowly down from the sky. Clouds block the light of the moon.
The frost child looks up at the sky, as if looking for the hiding moon. Snow falls softly around him, smothering what little life was still showing through the white coat on the ground. The child jumps up suddenly, landing on a snow-heavy tree branch above him. The disturbance causes snow from the tree to fall in clumps onto the ground.
From his new position, the child looks out over the world below him, at the small town in the distance, glowing dimly in the night. The town is covered just as the forest surrounding it, white with the snow the child had created.
The town is cold. The child is not.
With a leap, the boy falls from the tree branch just as the wind picks up. The child spins through the air like the snowflakes surrounding him, until he silently lands without a sound. He leaves no footprints. The child begins running, running away from the town, through the snow, or maybe just over it, until the town is far behind him. There is no trace he was there at all.
The snow follows the frost child.
The snow follows, and the child runs, and no one sees him and no one hears him, any more than one would notice a single snowflake drifting in the wind.
Eventually, the boy begins to think that maybe he is not a boy. Maybe he is not a child. Maybe he really is just a snowflake, drifting invisibly through the sky. Maybe the snow does not follow him; maybe he follows the snow.
The frost child makes no noise. Like the snow, like the frost and ice, the child is silent without the wind. Sometimes, he tries making noise. Sometimes, the frost child screams and cries and begs for someone to hear him. Nobody ever hears him.
If a frost child screams and no one is able to hear him, does he make a noise?
If a frost child cries and no one knows he exists, does he exist? The child does not think so.
It is said that belief is the most basic and most powerful form of magic. Even children, especially children, innately carry this magic. The frost child eventually began to use this magic, if inadvertently.
The boy began to believe that he did not exist, just as the others believed. He began to believe that he was merely a snowflake, a piece of winter cold.
He believed he was nothing. And so he was.
He believed he was no more alive than the snow that was part of him, and so he became a part of the snow.
No one mourned the loss of the lonely frost child. It is quite possible that no one even noticed he was gone, save for a few spirits.
In the end, the frost child died as he had lived; alone.
A/N I found this in one of an unfinished stories folder. It was actually finished, but I didn't post it because it was too weird. I like writing these weird abstract things. Which is funny; these types of stories are the only ones I can honestly say I like with my own writing ability, but they get less favorites/follows/reviews than the ones that I think I write horribly. I guess it makes sense though, that people like plot more. Oh, and I guess this can be a sort-of prequel to Funeral?