For Love Of The Snow Goddess

Blindly he followed her, yet soon enough he was again totally lost.

This was unbelievable to him. How could a beautiful woman appear to him twice, yet each time vanish without leaving a trace?! Somewhere in the back of his mind, distant memories, tales of the Snow Woman surfaced. The Goddess of snow and winter. Of death by freezing. He tried to suppress the shudder that rose up in him, with little success. That was only a myth anyhow. A fairy story women told their little children to make them not do stupid things like vanish off into the snow on one cold night. The story had never affected him, he remembered wryly. Maybe that was why he was in this mess now.

He sat down in the snow again, putting his head in his hands. There was nothing he could do. He was fully aware of his vulnerability, of his total helplessness in this alien and icy landscape. He was as weak as any child that had strayed away from their family and friends in a snow-packed field. It wasn't a feeling he enjoyed. And what of that beautiful woman? He could feel himself falling in love with her despite the fact he had only seen her twice, and she had never spoken a word to him. Her elegance was stunning in it's simplicity. Her face was radiant in it's featurelessness. Her lack of any sort of distinguishing marks, aside from her paleness, only served to make her even more awesome in his eyes and his mind. He realised that he would do anything to see her again. He realised she was the angel that gave him the strength to fight against the snow and the chill, just so he could see her again. Never before had these feelings stirred in his heart and it all felt so unfamiliar to him, this burning in his chest was an entirely new sensation.

He stood again and stumbled off into a random direction, praying helplessly that this might be the right one, and that he might see her again. Yet after what felt an age, he was still alone and lost, and she was still eluding him.

He slumped down against a snow-topped standing stone that he had never before seen in his life, which served only to emphasise how hopelessly lost he was. Maybe this hunt for her was as pointless as anything else in the snow. He tilted his head back and stared upwards at the heavy grey clouds. The blizzard had calmed for a while, leaving a dull, ominous feeling in the air, of a storm yet to be unleashed. Slowly his eyes started to shut again, his arms wrapped around himself to conserve heat: although being in the snow was warm, being above it was still horribly cold. He was just about to surrender himself again, to give in to everything, when again that smell of delicate flowers came to him. Now, however, he was too tired, too lost and uncaring, to open his eyes and look for the scent. He started, however, when he felt a hand as cold as an icicle stroke the side of his face. A voice that sounded as much like the blowing wind as speech whispered to him, "Why are you lost? For what do you seek so desperately, that you run blindly into a blizzard without a care in the world?"

His eyes opened slowly at first, then, when he recognised the shape in front of him, opened wide. "Y...y...y...ou!" His voice was jittery with the cold, his teeth chattering so much he could barely speak.