Frozen stars

I wake to the sharp cold air burning my face.

Shivering, I pull my blankets closer, ever since the accident twenty years ago, the world has become a second ice age.

The accident.

The accident that caused us all to live in this hell that's frozen over.

The year is 2050. Twenty-five years ago, our world leaders gathered together to discuss the melting ice caps, the burning forests, etc.

For centuries we have taken our world for granted. And piece by piece, whether knowing or not, we have been poisoning our own home.

To put it simply, our world was dying.

The gathering's main focus was the melting icecaps. To see if there were any way to reverse the damage. Working together with some of the world's best scientists, they discovered a way to change the climate. To reverse the damage that we had done.

Immediately they started working, working on what we'll never know. We were never told what their big scheme was. Or what the idea was that would supposedly save the world. It was all done in secret, and by the time people had begun to realize what they were doing, it was too late. Disaster had struck.

Whatever plan they had gone wrong, very wrong.

My dad has told me stories about that day. The day it started to snow in the Lut Desert of Iran. It was August, 7th, 2030. He lived with my mother in a settlement on the outskirts of the desert. I had not yet been born.

He described himself waking in the night to strange shadows floating across the bedroom wall. A cool breeze, nothing like he had ever felt before drafting through the open door and stinging his face.

It has been snowing ever since. Every day another 8-10 feet of fresh snow. Every year or so you feel the difference in the air.

Every day we're getting closer and closer to the stars.

Ten years ago, a group of scientists, leaders, and anybody who felt they could help solve the problem, traveled to the center of the storm.

They traveled to the place that was once supposed to be the solution to all our problems.

Nobody that went has been heard from again, except for one.

My Uncle.

I was nine when my uncle departed with the others to the center of the storm. I remember my father begging him not to go. Then waiting every day for a sign or a piece of hope that he was alive. Or that he was coming home.

He did. Two years later, I was elven sitting next to my mother wrapped in a blanket, reading a book. When my father came rushing into the room carrying a figure in his arms. The figure I will remember to this day.

He no longer looked like my uncle, but a mere memory of him, lost in the frozen eyes and sunken face. He had lost both his legs from the knee down, from crawling in ice and snow. His hands were frozen shut into tight fists.

We did our best. My father sat with him day and night for three days. He could not talk but stared at my father as if communicating a warning only he could hear.

Right before his death, using every ounce of strength he had rested the past few days to get, he opened his hand.

Inside was a heart-shaped locket. My father took the locket in confusion and wonder. After examining it, he looked back to his brother.

He was gone. He had completed the mission he had labored through hell to accomplish. Now, he could sleep.

Five years after my uncles return, and one more group sent out and lost, they abandoned all hope of journeying to the center of the storm.

Instead, efforts were placed towards getting rid of the snow still falling.

We tried everything. Still, the snow fell.

Day by day, month by month, to year by year, we came closer to the stars.

Now on this morning of December,24th, 2050, I wake. It's Christmas eve, but there is no joy, no celebrations or laughter.

I walk up the stairs of my room into the shelter, once filled with people, now empty.

I lost my father to the storm two years ago. My mother followed not long after. There are so few of us left, slowly passing due to lack of food or oxygen.

With no one to see or talk to, I make my way outside and climb to the top of the nearest snow pile.

All day I sat there, clutching a chain around my neck. Night soon came, starlight illuminated the sky. They looked so close. I felt I could reach out and grab one, pull it out of the sky, and bring some light into my world.

I extended my hand, hoping to feel something, anything. But there was nothing there.

Nothing there, nobody for miles. Just cold, just snow, just nothingness.

Shivering, I clutched the chain closer to my heart.

The chain, the locket, the locket my father had gotten from his brother and passed to me when he died.

The locket. The locket of mystery. The locket no one knew why my uncle had given so much of his life to bring back to my father. All we knew was that it was very imporant to him. And so it became very important to my father.

So, tightly I held on to it and cared for it. Every day as my father had done.

Climbing down the snow pile and entering my shelter. I took the locket off and placed it into a box made from scavenged wood. Stroking the locket fondly, the one last piece I have connected to my family.

I closed the box and set it carefully on the table.

Tears streaming down my face, I walk back outside.

The air is so hard to breathe.

I climb back up the snow pile, breathing heavily.

I know tonight is my last night sitting here. I gaze up at the stars, tears still streaming down my face, burning my frozen cheeks.

I lay back, thinking of my father and mother.

Thinking of the world they left me in. Then lastly, thinking of the stars.

And how badly I wanted to reach out and touch them.

Taking one last deep breath, I smiled. It was almost over. Over for me anyway.

No more cold, no more snow, just over.

I closed my eyes.