When Time’s Pulse Ceased

The windchill whispered woeful words unto the tundra’s ear; the harshness heard discouraged the earth, whose despondent soils stowed low under the snow. The sonics of the howling breezes could not reach the band of byzantium-colored clouds above, which were brooding—brewing a somber song all of their own. Hail-fall called for encore after encore. As hailstones clapped against the ground in ovation, the storm persistently performed its show. Thunder did not blunder: It rocked the lands below. Although the region encircling the central basin was devoid of vegetation bar scarce cloudberry plants, the valley was in no way lifeless. Smaller fauna pervaded across the open wintry plane; bears and bigger beasts plodded peremptorily. The tepid nomad, clad in a bristly, insulated overcoat fashioned out of caribou, fox fur, and necessity, scuttered along on trackless snowpack in traditional woven snowshoes. The lamenting wayfarer was unencumbered by any company: Blustery blues moved him to walk alone across the circular territory surrounding the frozen pond. Underneath the miniscule pool’s iced-over surface level flitted infinite schools of fish, which could, ostensibly, sustain every half-nourished creature or hurting person yearning to feel full within miles of the chilled site. The weather-beaten survivor possessed no skill for the art of ice fishing, however. Instead, to fend, in regular order, the man would forage for enticing amber cloudberries flowering and growing wildly on scant plants, each of which begging to be picked; though, even the ripest fruits consistently failed to sate the hunger inside. His customary measures would leave him starved if he continued. Like age-old icicles who stalwartly hang from the gapes of arctic caves, whose endurance depend on unabating low temperatures, his rigidity would end at a point. Long-winded habituations would produce gale winds capable of inflicting bone-chill; obstinacy would render the nomadic man frost-bitten. Soon he would be lost to his storm.

But at the instant, and in the centrality, where the tempest would have taken him, time’s pulse arrested: hulking shards of hail hung—suspended; all squalls stalled. Evidently, weather’s parting requiem was to be postponed; clarity’s concerto was queued to play for when the man would carry the day after the temporal passage’s resumption. The poor man’s sore eyes were fixed upon the gaze of an effervescent arctic hare whose aura roared both more fully and more radiantly than any aurora the stormy sky had ever seen or attempted to serenade before. The exchange was eternal. Illumination welled between the beings. Endless sentiments were transmitted with no words. Then the second finally split. Hail hit the ground. The hare hotfooted; her tracks left brilliant luminescences, which would subside to reveal the luxuriant greens that were repressed by ice and snow. The man followed her lead. The hare vivaciously bounded about, revivifying the cold, gloomy world the man had come to know. The nomad was in affected awe: He too began to glow; his heart had started to thaw. Their high-spirited game of chase diffused rich and everlasting color upon Mother Earth’s canvas. The atmosphere turned ardent as bright blue hues swept the austere former indigos out of the sky. Flora adorned with burgeoning polychromatic flowers sprang to life in a flurry as the two wove in and out and back and forth alongside the frozen pond. Both were quick; and although they only became closer amid the playful whirl, the hare remained just out of reach. Then she crossed onto the icy pond: The man did not slow his stride. The heat broke the ice. The barrier between themselves and the waters was melting rapidly. But the arctic hare could not, or would not, swim. Fearing the depths, the hare made a beeline back toward the land whence she came while she still had her secure footing. The man plunged.

She had shown him that every fish, no matter how dazzling their beauteous, alluring scales were, or no matter how drawn to his light they were, that none of them could set his soul ablaze under the surface. The man’s storm had cleared outside and deep within: He would brave the conditions. And he would not starve, for he was too impassioned. Nor would he drown. So he set swimming back toward paradise, to solace whom he loved.