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Another Night and Day Alliance 278
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' anada "Sleeping in the Snow" 02 feb '
' 278 by Infernal 2001 '
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The first time he fell asleep in the snow, he was barely a man,
kicked out of the nest a little too eagerly by a steel-toed grown-up boot,
and it wasnt long until he found himself in over his head. He knew he
needed a home, but hed never learned how to build one, or how to find
one, or even how to seek shelter when the wind got cold enough to kill
and the frost crackled with the whispered names of restless, greedy
ghosts. One hungry day in a blizzard of glass, he tripped and fell into
a ditch, curled up into a ball, slipped his hands into his pockets, and
dozed, not caring if he ever woke up.
He was nearly buried before hunger and a feeble, flickering curiosity
woke him up. By this time, to the outside world, he was a hump in the new,
snow-paved landscape, a steamy, frost-rimed blowhole in a smooth surface
puffing out his exhalations like smoke signals from Hell. Crying from the
pain of moving frozen joints, he shifted and stood, stamping and shaking,
and ran back to his fathers house to thaw out under broiling reproach.
Years went by, and he learned much of the worlds ways. Out he went
again, assured and determined, and he sought others like him. Together,
he thought, they could build a home, a community that encircled itself
for protection from a hostile environment, a collective greater than the
sum of its misfit parts. When the snows came, he watched in dismay as
the bonds formed in sunnier days turned to brittle icicles and sugar
glass, disintegrating at the first touch of the bitter, unfriendly
wind. He vowed to stay his ground, and he was buried, waiting for help
to rebuild what had been destroyed. He fell asleep there, abandoned,
and it was only by chance that he awoke at all, freezing and nearly
immobilized, to dig out and crawl away.
He was hurt, but not dead, and he kept himself alive as one did in
his world, seeking makeshift shelter when he needed it, grim and
narrow-eyed, angry and frostbitten, certain he would never find the home
hed wanted for so long. At length, he came across a fellow traveler,
one with whom he felt a bond deeper than the blood in his veins, and
they endeavored to carve a place together from the unforgiving rock and
tundra. They built the best home he had found, a shelter that warmed
him and made him faint with gratitude at his good fortune. And one day,
he slept there in faith and certainty, and he awakened in the snow
again, half-dead, alone and frozen nearly solid.
And he finally learned the most important lesson, the one that brings
tears to the eyes of the silent dying, and awakens the most carefree in
the depths of night with tremors and unspoken terrors. Sometimes
theres just no helping it, no way out of the snow, and you just have to
accept it. Eventually, the snow will kill you, but at least it will
only feel like a deeper kind of slumber. Its the waking up and moving
on that hurts so damn much.
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` anada278 by Infernal (c) 2001 anada e'zine `
