Beginnings: The First Snow

Written by: Avelyn (25-A2)

Designed by: Avelyn (25-A2)

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When snow first fell, he was asleep. 

He woke up to silence. The usual noises were gone; no cars whizzed past, no wind worried the windows. For a moment, fear settled in his chest, old and familiar. 

Silence never meant anything good.

He lay under the covers, quietly counting, waiting for the next sounds, the ones that always came after silence. Odin. Dva.​ Tri.

He listened for the bombshells falling onto the ground, for the air to split, but the silence held.

Chetyre.

Then a knock – soft and careful–at the bedroom door.

“Are you awake?” his new mother asked softly.

He nodded into the pillow, chest still tight.

“Come see,” she said.

He padded hesitantly through the cold hallway, following her past the framed photographs he still didn't recognise himself in,  past the smell of buttered pastries wafting from the kitchen. 

The living room curtains were drawn wide. The street was gone. In its place, white ice crystals bloomed on the pavement, the snow smoothing out the hard edges of Yonge Street. It coated the cars, the sidewalks, the street lamps, turning everything soft and shapeless.

“It’s the first snow of the season,” his new father said, handing him a mug of something nutty that warmed his stomach when he drank. “It’s good luck.” His new parents stood close behind him, not touching as he pressed his nose onto the windowpane. They had learnt, slowly, that contact was a language that he did not yet speak.

He didn’t answer. Luck was a foreign word, too big for the small place inside him where belief lived. Snow meant winter, and winter meant cold, and cold meant—

He stopped the thought before it could find teeth. Far below, children were already running outside, shaping the snow into spheres before launching them at each other, their laughter rising into the morning air. The bright, reckless laughter made his chest tighten.

”Do you want to try playing in the snow?” He could hear the smile in his new mother’s question. He almost said no, but the world, now wiped blank, seemed to promise something. Somewhere out there, his past could be swallowed by the white.

His hands trembled as he pulled on his too-big boots, and they trembled some more as he pulled on his puffer jacket. His new parents didn't rush him. Together, they went to the entryway. When he stepped outside, the cold wrapped around him, sharp but not cruel. He stuck his bare hand into the snow, holding it up as he watched it melt into his skin. He then poked his boot-clad foot into the fluffy-white, before promptly falling flat on his face as his foot sank.

For a moment he just lay in the snow, and then without warning, something inside him unclenched; he opened his mouth — and laughed. 

The sound startled him; light and small. His. The silence of the cold was liberating.