Cold, outside and in.
Frost this morning.
Not the cruel deadly frost that turns every inbreath of the dry air to pain and scatters the pathway with dead birds. Nor yet the damp misty frost that grows delicate flowers of ice on the tip of every grass blade. But a determined, utilitarian frost that had nothing more in mind than mking the pathways slippery and the roads treacherous.
Nothing stirs, no sound of squirrels in the park, no distant echo of ducks squabbling over a few desultry fragments of yesterday's bread, no bark of dogs let off the leash to run across the sugar powdered grass.
Just a sleepy small boy pottering slowly onwards. His hand in mine, his head tilted back to see under the edge of his slightly overlarge wooly hat. Swirling fernlike patterns of ice on every car window as we walk along, swirling cloudlike patterns of turbulence as we blow streams of dragon breath into the the still silent air.
Not the cruel deadly frost that turns every inbreath of the dry air to pain and scatters the pathway with dead birds. Nor yet the damp misty frost that grows delicate flowers of ice on the tip of every grass blade. But a determined, utilitarian frost that had nothing more in mind than mking the pathways slippery and the roads treacherous.
Nothing stirs, no sound of squirrels in the park, no distant echo of ducks squabbling over a few desultry fragments of yesterday's bread, no bark of dogs let off the leash to run across the sugar powdered grass.
Just a sleepy small boy pottering slowly onwards. His hand in mine, his head tilted back to see under the edge of his slightly overlarge wooly hat. Swirling fernlike patterns of ice on every car window as we walk along, swirling cloudlike patterns of turbulence as we blow streams of dragon breath into the the still silent air.