28 january 2016

Writers Group

Starter: The eerie white mist descended covering the ground, leaving little about me recognizable. The sharp coldness penetrating ever crevice of my body.

A Cold Welcome

I’m lost. In a fog.Litterally as well mentally. Why have I come so far to find myself so totally lost. What do I do? It was not supposed to turn out this way. Though there was a white mist which had decended overnight, covering the ground, I thought nothing of taking my usual constitutional. I’m an experienced walker and I know this ground. However, the frozen heavy air of the deep clouds that had descended onto the hillside, left little recognizable. Nonetheless, I was determined to go. It was actually quite exhilarating. The heaviness of the mist gave a cleanliness to the crisp air. The mist did not fall. It was a wispy soup, through which you were immersed. Lost in its own world.

After a long climb, I reached the part of the trail where sits a most spectacular house. I had seen it before only through flashes of light through leaves. It had seemed of the place. Now, the white frost now gave it a ghostly look.

As I approached what was deep foggy mist, became an impenetrable cloud. And something else, it was apparent that I was not alone on the path. I heard a crack of a stick being snapped somewhere ahead of me.

I stopped. Listened.

There was the barest of wind, and then, with it, a coldness that penetrated every crevice of my body.

Hello! Hello! I repeated gently, friendly, warningly.

I continued walking yet listening, as hard as I could. Now my only senses were hearing and touch. The cloud around me absolute. My words disappears as they are said.

My eyes are open but cannot see.

The rest of my body goes on alert, but not yet at full fear. After all, I am on local ground and can always find my way back. At the moment, it seemed better to approach near the house, and if things worsened, I could seek refuge there.

The path began to rise, through the woods that surrounded the stone building’s blocky, two stories, stretching above the treetops.

My feet now felt each step, sensing the ground rather than seeing the ground. My hands were out warning to what was ahead. In my right was my walking stick. I began to use it to sweep ahead, left to right and back, keeping me aware of the path and the trees that lined the lane.

Again, from ahead. A sound… though I m not quite sure what it is. It is a deep wind that reverberates in my chest. A whirling around my head. I feel the movement of the moisture around me on my cheeks and hands.

I fight forward. I cannot give in. My goal becomes the house. If I can just focus on getting the next 100 meters, I know I will be in relative safety. I put all else out of my mind.

What is that path ahead. I visualize as best I can. The cliffwall is on the right which I follow around, hands on wall. Next is the line of gourse on the left, waiting to snare me; yet a firm mass which will guide me on the curving path. My stick serves as contact with the main mass of the brambles. Now and then, one stalk has surpassed the others and thrust out into the path; and waits there, waits ahead, to attack my face.

Now I have to use my other arm, as a sweep ahead, taking the brunt of the stabs. But now I am near the stone wall, and the gate to the courtyard of the ensemble of wings binding the house together at the angles between. They are separate from each other, yet attached at the ground level. The wall mirrors the line of the outer two wings, at matching angles. The gate guarded a courtyard that was an oasis of trees and plants. Open to the sky, connected to the life of the house.

The sound was now definitely closer. Ahead. Staying, ahead.

My stick hit stone, It was the wall. I then scraped my stick along to the right and caught the clang of it against the grating on the gate.

“Hello. Hello”. This time stronger, and hopeful of response.

The gates parted in front of me, showing me the way through to the front of the house. Now it became even colder and the wall of cloud parted in front of me, exposing me to fantastic shapes filling the courtyard. Each enveloped in flash. They surrounded me. Forms in stark white, crystals glistening off an unseen sun.

The shapes seemed to follow me as I moved along the graveled walk up to the main door. Yet they stood, attached to the frozen ground. The closer I came to the door, the colder it became. My hands now felt little better than stumps as I pushed against a large hanging bell next to the entrance. It was more of a clonk than a clear sound.

I stood back looking up at the frozen structure above and around me. The white coat of frost glowed, creating its own light.

The door opened. A woman in white opened the door, widely. “Welcome”.

“Excuse me. May I ask a favor? The fog on the path is so heavy I cannot see the path. May I possible stay here for a while?”

Without fear, she motioned me into a large room. In effect it was the entire ground floor of the main building. There were no others in the room. It seemed refrigerated, bone chillingly cold.

“I can help you.” The sound came in through my chest more than through my ears.

“Thank you so much. I do not want to impose.”

“Not at all. I was expecting someone, and it seems it is you. “

The cold now affects my brain, my thoughts slow, along with my strength.

I realize I am freezing, literally.

Somehow, I still have consciousness. The mist , which even pervades the inside of the house, now begins to freeze around me. I am encased, preserved. My heart rate slows, my body body stiffened. My mind, while not fully functioning, now becomes aware of itself, there, on half awareness.

With time, I begin to put more things together. I was frozen but not totally. My eyes are open to the ice from the inside. Lights of movement pass me by. I am out of the house, in the courtyard. As the ice begins to clear in the light, my eyes show me I am one of the shapes that fill the garden.

My eyes can see. I see others, inside the shapes in the courtyard. Others frozen, and aware, in suspended animation.

The door opens. The woman in white seems to glide out into the courtyard. My eyes follow as she approaches the end shape opposite me. At a touch the ice dissolves, exposing a young woman. The white woman lifts her seemingly with air, floating her toward the house.

As the wispy cloud of a woman passed, she looked in my direction. I feel the words through my chest.

“I like my meat fresh, not frozen. I also like it aged. Your day will come.”