broadcast... dream?
The world is wide and white and empty, and you remember (not for the first time, or the last) that you hate snow.
You never liked it to begin with. It's cold, but then again the cold doesn't touch you, not after they turned you into one of those beasts. It's wet and it sticks to your clothes, though, your hair, your bare skin, and it leaves tracks wherever you go, and you hate that. Tracks mean people can follow your footsteps and the long dark furrows in the snow where you dragged a body away the night before. Tracks mean they'll find what's left of it eventually, unless more snow comes quickly to bury it all.
(Snow reminds you of that little soldier, the one with the hair paler than anyone else's, and those awful icy smiles, and the way you can never quite catch up to him even though he leaves tracks behind just for you to follow.)
You hate it, at first. But it isn't long at all until you think, let them come. What harm can they do, anyway? The soldiers they send are like snowflakes to you, whirling and pale and unable to touch you no matter how hard they try or how massive their numbers. They melt all the same when you face them, so let them find you.
You leave tracks for them, so they know where to look.
They don't, though, no matter how long you wait. The whole world is wide and bare, completely empty except for you and a massive silvery tree in the center of it, and all of it cloaked in white. No soldiers come, no giant hoofed monsters, nothing but snow and snow that erases your footprints and turns your breath to thick grey fog (mist, it's mist and it can kill you, they said.) The frustration is so thick in your mouth it tastes like blood, and eventually it seems that even you aren't there anymore. You can't find any trace of yourself.
Once you realize that, the snow seems warm around you. You decide you don't mind it at all, really.
You never liked it to begin with. It's cold, but then again the cold doesn't touch you, not after they turned you into one of those beasts. It's wet and it sticks to your clothes, though, your hair, your bare skin, and it leaves tracks wherever you go, and you hate that. Tracks mean people can follow your footsteps and the long dark furrows in the snow where you dragged a body away the night before. Tracks mean they'll find what's left of it eventually, unless more snow comes quickly to bury it all.
(Snow reminds you of that little soldier, the one with the hair paler than anyone else's, and those awful icy smiles, and the way you can never quite catch up to him even though he leaves tracks behind just for you to follow.)
You hate it, at first. But it isn't long at all until you think, let them come. What harm can they do, anyway? The soldiers they send are like snowflakes to you, whirling and pale and unable to touch you no matter how hard they try or how massive their numbers. They melt all the same when you face them, so let them find you.
You leave tracks for them, so they know where to look.
They don't, though, no matter how long you wait. The whole world is wide and bare, completely empty except for you and a massive silvery tree in the center of it, and all of it cloaked in white. No soldiers come, no giant hoofed monsters, nothing but snow and snow that erases your footprints and turns your breath to thick grey fog (mist, it's mist and it can kill you, they said.) The frustration is so thick in your mouth it tastes like blood, and eventually it seems that even you aren't there anymore. You can't find any trace of yourself.
Once you realize that, the snow seems warm around you. You decide you don't mind it at all, really.