Becoming the Winter
First I hear the cracking. I can feel through my bare feet the hair-thin lines spreading across the ice. And then everything beneath me vanishes.
I fall, plunging into the icy blue depths, and watch, helpless as the jagged frame of pale light slowly slips further away.
I reach out towards the watery light, even as my fingers lose all feeling.
The cold presses in, seeping past my skin, spreading through my bones and into my heart.
But even as I sink, feeling my blood become ice, I close my eyes in relief, because she is safe.
Everything else fades away.
Except the cold.
It is the cold more than anything else that is suffocating. Pressing in, closing out all else. Taking away the light.
And it doesn't go away.
It seeps in, past my heart, beyond my blood, into my very soul.
And now my soul is slipping away, melting into the frozen water.
Memory becomes liquid and flows away.
Then I feel it.
The touch of cool, silvery light. A touch I know well, but never noticed.
The touch of the moon.
But when I open my eyes, there is only darkness.
And I am afraid.
I barely notice the cold. It is around me, and it is in me.
And I am the cold.
But the darkness I cannot handle.
I want to cry out.
Then I am moving up, and I feel myself pressing against a surface, solid and smooth. And it gives way for me, shattering like fragile glass and falling away as I move upward.
The moon is there. And I can almost feel it reaching out for me. The light from the moon lifts me from the darkness and the ice.
I gasp for breath as the water slips away from me. And the air is cold.
It feels nice.
The rays of moonlight wrap around me, and my fear melts away.
When I feel my feet touch the slippery surface of the ice, a voice whispers out to me.
The voice of the moon.
Jack Frost.