Snowflake

I came into being as part of a cloud; a great big cloud that wrapped itself tight around the jagged peaks of the tallest mountains. The north wind sang a lullaby to us each evening that told us we were born from a mighty river that journeyed for miles and miles, all across the earth, and that through the ages had seen more cities than history could recall.

But we do not remember this life. We exist only as the cloud, none of us certain of what we will grow to be.

Most of us descend in the raindrops, some drizzling, others cascading down into the world below like a shimmering veil. But I do not fall with them.

One bitter night, where thunder rules the sky and great whips of lightning crack so hard that they rend the very darkness itself, a great storm carries away billions of us in a torrent, a flood. But I do not fall with them.

Only a precious few of us are left when the true cold comes, and the stars glitter like white, frozen crystals high above us, and the short-lived sunshine is not enough to lift the chill from the air. And it is on one such winter’s night, when it is darker, colder than it has ever been before, when the wind wails a lonely ballad that echoes in the crevices of the mountain below, I feel a change start to come over me, as, with a soft crackling, limbs and shapes begin to form, separating me from my sisters as they too find their bodies, no two of us the same. Minute bristles of frost protrude from six icicle arms, each connected to my centre, to my heart, and I realise that we, the last few, we are not destined to be raindrops, no, for we shall fall as snowflakes.

And as though the realisation opens the way, I feel myself tilt forward, my sisters following, as together, we descend. At first, I drift gently, and then a great gust catches me up in its arms sending me twirling under the stars, dancing to the music of midnight with all my sisters about me. I spin and flit and spiral, knowing this is it; the moment, where the night is my canvas to paint as I will, where I can ornament the dark as if I were a star myself, and adorn the shadows with flecks of glitter, and when I finally come to land on the mountain’s peak, it is in the soft, white arms of all my sisters who have gone before. I fit snugly into the great pattern that coats the whole mountain; a pattern so intricate that no creature alive has eyes sharp enough to see, nor to comprehend, not even the stars which I can see clearly above me once more through the gap where our cloud once lay.

And we lie there together in tranquillity, each proud of her place in design, like a dusting of icing on a cake. And we are content that we shall decorate the winter right here, for we remember now; we remember the summer, we remember the water, and we remember that when the sun burns hot once more, we shall bubble and gush all at once down the mountain in a joyous waterfall to join our cousins in the river and then travel on, on, to see the world!

But for now, just the peace of a silver winter’s night, and only us and the stars and the whispered wind song and the knowledge that between all earth and sky we belong.