I feel my cheeks burn as the wind stings my face, making them flush with winter’s cold breath. My hands are clasped together, fingers entwined with each other as they rub silently together, the flesh pink and raw. My eyes crinkle shut as I wait.
As I wait.
A ghost of a smile flickers across my face when my frostbitten cheeks are refreshed by his warm breath. His arm slips around me softly, silently, drawing me close. I can sense him move around to face me, though my eyes stay closed, relishing the tranquil sensation that curls inside me. Slowly they open, blue twinkling with the captured stars of night as he comes into view.
Words are held like frozen droplets on my parched lips as he takes my hand and bows slightly, his hair obscuring his nameless face; a face forgotten in the shifting folds of time. I laugh with dubious remembrance, the sound bouncing off the wind like the tinkling of bells as I give a low, unsteady curtsy, eyes downcast. The impossibility of the waking dream wracks my fragile soul, though, slowly, it calms as he solidifies in my grasp, my hand gripping his tightly to make sure he will never let go. My face holds that mesmerized smile, frozen forevermore, as the transcendence begins.
A shiver travels down my spine as his lips press softly to my cold fingers, pleasure traveling down them with soft intensity. I cannot take my eyes off of my shadow-kissed palms, the blossoming of consigned feelings berating the barbed walls that bind my heart, making them tremble.
I am pulled to him, eyes glistening with acceptance as I suddenly find myself in his arms, his hands holding me tightly as he twirls me around and around the snow-laden land. My hair fans out behind me as I dance, my face lighting up from an inner glow that I find only he can call forth. My hat falls off my head and to the ground in a lazy drift, but I don’t care.
He is here.

















The world rushes past me as I spin, the single lamp post illuminating us from within as we move as one. The shadows prance delicately in step with us like wispy tendrils of the past that I slowly find myself embraced within. I can see them from the corner of my eye, their dark bodies twined with one another as are we. Their mirrored world, thinly veiled, crinkles as I brush against it in our dance, my feet dipping into its deathly shadow as the cold bites my flesh. He tries to draw me from it; to keep me from his dark world, opposing the one I live in now, though it is hard. The shadows flicker within their realm of light and dark, love and hate, life and death.
The drifting fragments of the world around me knit themselves into love’s cloak, void of sadness, as his touch calls me back. Softly, quietly, gently, I find myself once again beneath the lonely moon and the radiant lamp.

I am home.
Winter coos in our ears as it sweeps us into her arms while we dance in the vanishing darkness, a protective lamppost lighting our path. We stay within the safety of the light, and though the lamp’s light may be what stills night’s breath, we are what entices its mysterious smile.
His hands are strong and sturdy as he dips me suddenly, my eyes closing as a surprised laugh falls off my lips. My hair tickles the whiteness that surrounds us in the night, flakes falling softly onto our heads. Though he holds me strong, I fall.
And the walls crumble.
His arms wrap around my waist as he pulls me up, drawing me closer than ever before. A small gasp parts my lips at his closeness and echoes in the silk of night’s woven blanket. I look up slowly, my lashes holding small flakes of snow within them like a cage and I swear I can see them sparkle in the light that comes from us.
As I press my head to his chest, the sound of his steadily beating heart is so sweet it makes me sigh in tearful relief. I curl up in his welcoming warmth, the sensation soothing my very soul. His hair caresses the nape of my neck as his lips part near my ear, the sound just as I remembered. White clouds come from both of us as we breathe in sync, as one, smiles of our love tugging at the corner of our lips. I wrap my arms around his back, savoring the feel of the warmth he gives me as the shadows entangle his feet.


I am grasping at air.
The light that surrounds me dims. The glow is no longer there. And neither is he.
I am alone.
My surroundings fade slowly, the white landscape turning black as the shadows consume, the darkness battering my defenseless heart. My eyes search the darkness, their light crumbling beneath hope’s last breath as the silent moon looks down upon a small girl in black within a sea of white. My lips tremble as I bite them softly, the light flickering and ebbing.
Only when the torch goes out am I plunged into the night, my eyes swelling with unshed tears for I know. The lamp has been broken for years.
The wind stirs my hair from the faint memory of my twirl as I hear the echo of my long forgotten laugh. A laugh that hasn’t been heard in years.
I sigh as I turn away, scooping down to pick up my hat from the harsh land. My eyes turn downcast, coming back to where they have always been as I walk into winter’s night.