Snowy Serendipity
“He stood at his bedroom window, as he did every morning, every day.”
His tea was cold, the bitter remnants of bergamot painting his throat with citrus spice. He stood at his bedroom window, as he did every morning, every day. It was a comfort turned custom, even as the world refused to do the same.
He observed the fallen snow. How many more winters like this? How long before people abandoned the season to history? Flakes of white-gray ice descended outside in erratic billows, and he considered for a moment reaching out to touch them. But then the urge passed, and his heart emptied.
Day one, day two. So on and so forth. By the final cascades of the snowstorm, his tea box was depleted.
He stood before the window and took in the familiar landscape: farm land cloaked in the sky’s frozen tears. Although there was something new today, too. A red truck was parked beside the road. Two children had leapt out and were laughing, throwing fistfuls of snow at their parents. They danced around in bright flashes of color while the parents smiled and beckoned them to the car. We’re not there yet. Only a minute more.
The family stayed for a snippet of time. And then they were gone, off into the haze with the farmland at their backs.
He stood there, motionless. The scene lingered before his eyes.
Breath one, breath two. A soft smile crept onto his face, and when he opened the window, the snow greeted him from a thousand memories and brought forgotten life.
About the Creator
Bridget Couture
An aspiring author and poet with an unquenchable love for books. Can often be found typing intensely or substituting reading for sleep.
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More stories from Bridget Couture and writers in Fiction and other communities.
The Ashen Grave
In vain fall the lost… drown us in their cries. Drown us deep and dark… beneath their mangled lies. Uttering thus, she moved forward, a figure drenched in moonlight. The shadows cast upturned lines on her face, neither parallel to the earth nor becoming of any natural laws. They bounced like the reveries of a crooked midnight fever, dancers summoned from unknown time. She did not create the shadows. She could not rip them from her features. And yet they trailed, just as her voice did, onto the canoe boards and apart from reality.
By Bridget Couture7 months ago in Fiction
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Last night I read the picture book, the one my mother read to me as a child. It brought me comfort, whether from recollections of the warmth of my mother’s lap or from something of the story itself, I cannot say. The story frightened me, I remember, and the ending was all the sweeter for it, as was the glow of the lamp and the shelter of the arms around me. I suppose now that this was the purpose, to cause fear to bubble and swell in a child, all the better to feel the balm of safety after.
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Comments (1)
Sometimes it can be just the littlest thing that turns the day around. Nicely told.