Snow. [a short, romantic story for Dada.]

[Guest QueenJellybean]

Fingers close around a mug of hot chocolate as feet in boots that make it feel like you aren’t actually touching the ground clunk along, weaving in between the displays of lights and shrieking children. Once warmed, those very same painted nails will reach out to brush the trees, branches still heavy with snow, trying their best not to allow the chunks of white to fall to the ground, cursed to blend in with the winter floor. There are children laughing and screaming around her, but her world is blurred because of all the white. This is what she likes most about being up in the mountains during the winter season. 

 

All the white. 

 

It’s still. Quiet. Even the screaming, shrieking, and excited burbles of laughter around her doesn’t get through to her. She’s been coming here since she was a kid, and it still holds the same child-like wonder all these years later. She can close her eyes, inhale here, and be struck with the sharpness of how the world feels, how it tastes, and how the air changes with the seasons. On the top of a mountain, nothing has ever mattered. Not her responsibilities at home, not her stressful classes, not the relationships she’s afraid to fracture even if they kill her, nothing but the mountains, the snow, and her breathing. 

 

Santa’s Village started it all. She’d go as a child, with her father and cousins and uncles, once a year up into the mountains, staying at a cheap hotel for the weekend in the beginning of December so they could go drive up to Santa’s Village. She was always amazed at how the man who played Santa (she wasn’t that naive even as a child) always seemed to have a knowing twinkle in his eyes, and that he’d talk to her without ever opening his mouth, using his eyes alone. She always liked to believe that if anything was close to being real, it was the validity of this man as Santa Claus. It seemed like he never aged the more years she came, and they never changed who was dressing up in that big red suit. He just did that good of a job. She’d always leave after feeding the reindeer, writing her letter and sending it off in the big mailbox, and praying silently at the beautiful, life-size manger scene feeling like she had been restored. 

 

Next, it was the trip up to the top of Mount Washington by tram car when she was a little older. Blue eyes as wide as saucers, face pressed to the window of the car as they journeyed upwards, the snow sweeping down around them in late January, the whole world silent. She never wanted to exist outside of the moment when the car slowed to a stop at the top of the mountain, the exact moment the doors swung open to the crisp, white world at the top. It hadn’t been snowing at the bottom of the mountain, but the top was an entirely different place in space and time. It was probably forever Christmas here, she can remember deciding, not even making eye contact with the family member who handed her that steaming mug of cocoa as her weak knees helped her take a few tentative, wobbly steps. 

 

It has always been this way. Now, she has a new memory to add to the list of reasons why the mountains in winter are forever to be her favorite. 

 

Fingers digging into the sleeve of a jacket bigger than hers, sitting across from Him on a snow tube. She’s shivering in the February air, and even though her cheeks are chapped from being whipped with wind, she’s laughing so hard that they might split. It doesn’t seem to bother her though, because her eyes are locked on His deep brown ones, and they are smiling back at her, the crinkles and creases reaching far across His face. The man monitoring the top of the mountain’s tubing slopes asks if they’re ready, and she doesn’t need to look at him to answer a breathless “Yes”. 

 

Of course she’s ready. Look who she’s staring at.