A Shimmering Vortex of Snow

Stepping lightly from the looking glass, Alice did not return alone. Does something else speak through her or are her words her own?

December’s double moon prophesized the demise of not only the year but a decade, resolving itself in a duplicitous image of inverted correspondences, a hieroglyphic code on the corrugated wall of Nightmare. Erudite absorption consumed the isotopes of collective being as it glided over a dreamscape of ashes, for the intensity of its touch set Chronis to cinders.

Like many of you, Chance was a dreamer and seeker after arcane knowledge and power. He often found inspiration in the weather. It had been a ravenous storm. Throughout the night, snow fell like feathers torn from swans by timber wolves. Seen by many as a perpetual in-of-doors time of the year, he welcomed the smothering layers of accumulation. Having survived many a sudden blizzard in the warm hollow of a snow cave, he was no amateur when it came to the practice of outdoor winter survival. When the midday sun peered through cataract-clouds and the wind was still, he decided that it was an excellent opportunity to strap on his snowshoes and venture out into the open field.

Guided across the magnificent desolation by an elemental whose words whispered through progeny-cones and aromatic needles of Pine, much like the carver of Hawthorne’s tale, he was startled by such preternatural beauty, a woman with fringed deerskin pants, holding two white owl feathers over her eyes. She lead him to the threshold of a silver thread of water. Stepping over to the other side, time accelerated itself into a spontaneous twilight. The temperature dropped sharply; his breath crystallized on his scarf, lashes and brows. Having some experience with rifts in nature, it occurred to him that all he had to do was simply jump back over to the other side, turning time back on itself again. On completion of this simple motion, the darkness still remained. Icy stars bloomed in the garden of infinity, gathering themselves into a laurel wreath, surrounding and crowning the blue supernal moon. There was no silence more hypnotic than the northern woodland’s hush. The interstellar contemplation of the vastness of the universe stranded him in thought. It was not an invocation to worship but a summons to understanding.

Chance was discovered the next morning not far from the silver thread of water, his gaze lifted toward the sky, stars fixed in its mirrors, a watcher at the gate and keeper of the key, frozen upright where he stood. All was above as it was below, for the Muse of the Apocalypse had descended in a shimmering vortex of snow.






Written tonite and published here first.