sneak peek. (draft)
 

Snow swept across the vast landscape in a horizontal blur. There was neither sky nor earth, only the aching cold in the breaths of winter, and autumn's death in frozen blight. Trees were bared to its frozen touch, and the sun waned, eclipsed by fading glow. The snow was white and grey, soft and hard, frozen and melted, evanescent and perpetual.

My breaths become one with the ocean of white. Holding my shivering arms across my chest, I pushed my numb toes through the packed snow underneath. The familiar crunch was gone, replaced by the buffering of snow against my ears.
 

I stopped and held out a hand, catching a soft flake in the centre of my palm and watched it expire right there and then. A second, then a third, then a fourth came floating down, but would always melt into nothingness before I could close my grasp. A fragility akin to my own life.
 

Where am I headed?
 

My eyes have long turned to frost. I was without direction, without thought. Like my toes, my mind was numb. And maybe my heart would be too, next.
 

A faint sheen of sugar-like frost blanketed everything in sight. It was beginning to get hard to breathe. The air was thinning and my steps were faltering. The cold bit onto my skin and seeped