Winter Wonderland

By Tegan Elliott

When the sun takes its seat upon the horizon, you will see what I mean when I say snow is one of the greatest mediums of beauty. When dusk and dawn are closest and the stars shine longest, the winter drowns the world in its shimmering beauty. Frost sweeps across the window panes, reaching, with icy fingers, into swirls and shapeless lines. Cold to your touch, yes, but in the most refreshing way. It follows you the way a lover might, searching for the heat of your skin past the divide of the glass, the patterns you trace carved into the very soul of it until the cold comes again, a blank slate to be your canvas. When the snow rains down, it does so gently. It takes refuge from the sky in the soft safety of your hair and the cup of your hands, dotting your skin with kisses like freckles, so soft and sweet to the taste when they melt into your warmth. It coats the land in crystalline purity, fresh and forgiving. The dawn and the dusk reach for their reflected brightness and paint the world in the pure colour of gemstones and star shine. Blue topaz, rose quartz, fire opal, rough hematite, and uncut moonstone. They paint your hands, too. When you stand in the morning chill and breathe in the peace of the world waking to the snowfall. The ice looks back at you in the way you look at it. Beneath its surface, a world of its own flows. If you sit by it, you can see the way it lives, quiet currents following its course or green grass encased in a sparkling shell. The ice will tell you stories if you’d hear what it has to say or read what it has written in whatever cracks it fills. It wears its splintered flaws with pride and bears its cracks and fissures as if they are filled with gold. Even the most brittle is strong in its own right; when it breaks, it melts down and freezes again. It becomes itself in a new shape, its surface shining like moonlight, darkness like the beauty of the night sky in its core. Stand with me, when the sun has taken its throne and the winter comes to embrace us, and you will know what a wonderland is.