318 A Winter's Tale: White-Out—All Colors, Altogether, All At Once

He'd never put much stock in the legends—how when a blizzard created a total white-out, demons would slip out of the frozen æther to do their evil work. It wasn't the storm that kills, the stories went, but the monsters within them.

Still, the deniers had argued that no blood had ever been seen on the snow after such fatal storms. Yes, people disappeared, but a blizzard is no trifling weather. A person could be buried alive under the inches-per-minute that easily overwhelms; or a child can be blown into the quicksand snow of a crevasse.

Inuit shamans say it is the color, white, that kills.

They say that white is everything, altogether, at once; a mere man is no match.

The science of the electromagnetic spectrum agrees: white is all colors reflecting back at once—a reconstructed rainbow—disguised as invisible. Thus, white trumps the red, and red is only a rumor of the white ground. The stuff of campfire stories.

All colors hide in white: the red of exsanguination; the orange of blood mixed with plasma; the yellow of bile; the green of putrefaction; the blue of ischemia; and the darker hues which stink of decay.

The legends of white were gruesome, but the men, women, and children torn apart were just part of the folklore. Common sense says they were probably just lost or dead from exposure, interred until nature held their wakes in the spring.

He had been caught off-guard. When he couldn't differentiate the horizon from the sky, he realized what he was in for.

There had been the signs: winds of ice with heavy, white dough flying horizontally; the drifts accruing by the minute.

He would be OK, he figured. He was layered warmly and was further insulated by a thermal coat. And he knew to not rest, but to climb, relentlessly, as fast as the ground rose with its waves of powder.

Then, once visibility reached zero, he was torn apart—horrifically, traumatically, and with finality.

It had struck again.

His blood had been covered by the instant precipitation. And somewhere further North, where the inclement weather abated, a blood-stained polar bear re-entered the visible spectrum, diffracting the specters in the spectra.

________

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

For Wednesday, November 13, Day 318 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge.

366 WORDS (without A/N)

48 DAYS TO GO! THIS UNSEASONABLE WINTER WEATHERS ON, 366 FLAKES A DAY.

There are currently three cold Vocal writers in this 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

• L.C. (Polar) Schäfer

• Rachel (Solar) Deeming

• Gerard (Molar) DiLeo