The snow is falling.

When it lands, the ground welcomes it with the white caress of outstretched fingers, guiding familiar flakes to open palms. The floor of the forest is thick with it, and further on from that the plains, and further still the sleeping form of the town, lulled into peaceful unconsciousness by fading fires and air laced with frostbite.

A small patch of snow clears when she settles in it. Her wings brush away a faint trace of her landing, sending soft marks out on either side. Her hooves make four indents in the densely packed ground—it croons softly with a muffled crunch under the weight of her body.

In an instant, the snow is upon her as well. Falling soft, but heavy, clinging to her wings and refusing to finish its descent.

She breathes out slowly as she walks forward. The heat of her breath becomes steam upon the air.

She’s always come here, when the world is too much. Other ponies always seem to see in dull greys—but to her, the whole of the world is a canvas, waiting for the trace of her hoof on the blank page. Bubbling to life as she breathes.

She holds a hoof to her mouth as she exhales. The steam causes some of the drops clinging to her to melt. She smiles and continues forward.

Even in the clouds of a winter storm, the sun finds a way. It marks her path through the snow, guiding her forward with the beacon of its brightness. Go west. She lets her hooves settle in the snow. The places where she has stepped have already been covered over.

She was young when she first learned about the winter, and how, on the best or worst of days, it could wash the world away. She found it in a teardrop tumble of crossed eyes and uneasy flapping of her wings. She faltered on the frozen rain’s uneasy footing, and slid forward into the unfamiliar welcome of a waiting drift. It wrapped over her like a blanket, washing away the tears on her cheeks with the damp touch of melting water. The hot feeling in her chest was consumed by the cold, and when she blinked and tried to tried to find the familiar shake of her sobbing, it was gone. The snow drew her to giggles. She splayed out under the falling sky and made an image of herself on the ground. When she felt better, she flew back up into the clouds. The snow was gone when she next came back, but she knew it would return.

That was the first snow, but it was far from the last.

It became a waiting game. Though the mark on her side spoke to her of a faraway sea, or at best the shimmers of summer playtime, in fields with wands and buckets of soapy water, she wondered from then on if it wasn’t a snowflake that belonged instead. Life was stern enough to teach her that, at every occasion, decisions were not made to be rescinded or forgiven. But that was alright. She only needed one day a year to forget.

The snow glows under the sun. Bright enough to blind the unsuspecting, sharp enough to block out everything but the steel-like shining of the ground. It glistens like a mirror waiting to be broken, and she is someone with no fear of bad luck.

It stole her breath the first morning, and in later years, her first kiss. The sweet nothingness of snow on her tongue was enough to pretend she was wanted. She pretended the cool caress of water as it melted beyond her lips was the gentleness of a lover, and she fell forward into the blanket that washed away her heat. She emerged in a pool, and left before the snow could be the first to leave.

With only once a year visits, she made due.

When it became something certain, instead of hopeful and unsure, she would come prepared. She’d bring with her enough sense to remember, and practice facing things in the snow. She would write her name, honing it over time into a readable cursive that matched her best. She scribbled out days and dates, letting them flash behind her closed eyes one last time before they became drawings on a white canvas, wasted away in mere minutes by the perpetual falling of the sky. She wrote names, numbers, moments and memories and all the things that she had kept inside until year’s end. And, when she had written the last one away, she fell into the snow and spread out like an empty easel, letting the white everywhere fill her vision until the world was empty again.

She walks. The sun is setting, and the plains lie forward. She can feel the ground here, solid beneath the snow. The open fields are pristine and bare in the silent downpour. Every inch of them is unmarred by touch. While the reach of the eye extends for miles in every direction, the light dusting knows it is sufficient because no one will touch it.

She lingers with a soft whispering breeze at her sides, still for a moment before she turns to leave. This it not where she belongs. The shelter of the forest has always felt safer. She flies, and dusts the ground in her wake.

When the trees greet her, they bow. Their boughs are heavy with white capes, and she takes pains to move underneath them, disrupting as little as possible in her intrusion. She knows, no matter the consequence, that the forest will find her no stranger—but this is all the more reason to be considerate.

After the steady sound of her hooves on the thick crystal carpet has gone on for many minutes, she breathes. Her breathe evaporates in the air and spirals in remnants upwards—her marking that she is at the forest’s center.

She leans against a nearby tree.

The sky will never run out of snow. Never for longer than a year. There are some places it will linger through that time, but it will not be enough to keep cold.

The melting river of white will not wash away everything.

She releases the tree from her standing. Breathes. A thick mist and dissipation.

She kneels low into the snow. Her leg will not bear the heat otherwise.

The ambling airborne shimmers in summer will always burst, but the snow will stay until it is no longer needed.

Steam. A patch bigger than her hoof begins to fade away. It will be replaced, as so the snow still falls.

Grey has always fit amongst white. The red seems almost like an insult. Her hoof shakes as she sets steel among frozen steel. She uses it to trace the sharp edges of a heart just beside her body. Though she fears the warmth, she rests her head next to the patch of growing colour.

She smiles. Cold. The chill that keeps her nerve-endings at bay. She’s never properly thanked it.

As she rests her head on the grove’s frozen pillow, she turns to it and mouths her thanks into the soft, malleable ice. Her lips taste the melting of water, tainted by metal and crimson.

Her body blooms as it grows cold. The only flower that blooms brighter in the winter.

She looks up as the sun leaves the sky, and with it, the light.

The snow is falling.

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