She sighed, looking out of the window. A blanket of snow had fallen over the forests surrounding, and it was only a pane of glass that blocked her from feeling that sharp cold in her lungs, the familiar shiver that ran down her spine. She didn’t do well in the cold. The glass had fogged on the inside of the windowpane. Drawing shapes in the condensation, a moth landed on the other side, right where her hand was on the glass. She was dull and brown, but beautiful.
She looked inwards through the window at the people gathered, doing something. The light, the buttery, sweet honey coloured light that bathed the white walls called to her like a siren calls a sailor. It danced in its glass and metal cage, it danced as all life should dance. It licked the glass walls it was trapped in, desperate to escape, desperate to consume everything surrounding it, to consume the whole forest, the whole world. I want that, I need that, she felt in her frail, dull body, clinging onto the slippery glass pane for as long as she could before fluttering away. There was a flame inside her, as there is a flame inside every being alive, fighting for existence, fighting to survive.
She soared through the brittle air, stopping on evergreen leaves and pine scented bark, not noticing colour or scent. It might as well have been a black and white world, she might as well have been the human girl trapped in her school, longingly gazing into the wilderness as though it was a flame to her. She flew higher and higher, and swooped low again, over a frozen lake, zigzagging through spruce and pine, past meadows dotted with little white flowers amidst the dull greens of winter. She landed on a flower, the nectar brought nourishment, brought fuel to the fire in her, kept her alive, kept her existing.
Flowers dotted amidst the dull greens winter brings with its unforgiving cold, its bleak lifeless quality that objectively suits it. Objectively winter is harsh, it is bad. It is not beautiful, no one pays the flowers any mind as they scrounge and scavenge for their next meal, for their next day, their next week of existence. And so a beautiful world lies just out of reach, just beyond the senses of the sensible, invisible to creatures big and small like our nose from our cone of vision.
Then comes summer, objectively happy, beautiful. The melodies of birds calling to each other, find me, love me, intertwine with the scent of pollen suspended in the clear air, the forgiving air, the soft breeze that tousles hair and rustles shrubs. Flowers of all colours amidst bright, vibrant greens of meadows, plaid picnic blankets lain atop the folds of the hilly countryside. A butterfly feeds from a daisy, a bird finds a mate, a trout swimming in a stream as clear as the sky above bites on a morsel of food just to be yanked out of the water. Suffocation, blood, I can’t breathe, I won’t ever breathe again. Her eyes grow dull and lifeless and her fire is extinguished, her limp body is tossed into a bucket of four, five, six others, more to come, just like her, extinguished like her. No one thinks of her in summer, no one thinks of where she might go after leaving herself lying in that bucket, the cold of the metal clashing so harshly with the warm summer winds, the warm colours painting the skies.
He tosses the fish into his bucket, the wet silver scales of her catching the fading light. He is satisfied with another catch. That’s enough for today. He lifts his metal bucket off of the ground, and makes his way back to his cottage on the hilltop. Looking around him he admires the pinks in the sky, the oranges reflected on the lake he was just at, the way the hues flickered and licked the ripples made in the lake, as though it were a flame trapped in the reflection. He keeps the fish fresh till tomorrow, by submerging the bucket in a cold stream that runs by his house. He often stopped and looked around, especially in the summers, and the beauty of the nature surrounding him. He lives a quiet, peaceful, albeit monotonous life, and enjoyed the smaller things, when they were painfully blunt and obvious to anyone who cast a glance that way. He enjoyed the sun when it was not too hot, the cold when it was not too cold, the birds when they were not crying for help, the fish when they were dead. He would catch the fish on Saturdays and sell them at the Sunday mart in town.
It was today, as tomorrow had come, and he was bellowing his prices as fair and cheap to anyone in the busy street who cared to listen. Some stopped, some bought, some passed unfazed. They all lived their own complex, multilayered lives oblivious to each others’. A mother walks up, dressed in a floral skirt and a headscarf, searching for trout, finding it as his stall and purchasing it with all of what was left in her worn out coin purse. This will do well. She thought to herself, and made her way back home.
She cooked with love, of which she had a lot. A simple, kind woman, she made her way through life never looking above her own eye level, only at the path she was set to take. She did not stop to admire the surroundings, but nonetheless lives a happy, fulfilled life with her family, in her small but cosy cottage on Waltham street. This fish was to be a special meal for her only daughter, her prized daughter, her dear, darling, lovely, beautiful daughter. She loved to cook and she loved to love and be loved by her kin. She made the meal, an excellent meal, and went about setting the table before calling her daughter down from her room in the attic, and presenting her her reward for good grades. Her daughter seemed pleased, so she was happy, and went about the rest of her day.
Her daughter forced a smile to her beaming mother and sat down at the table. She watched her mother walk out of the room to do her daily chores, and looked down at the beautifully cooked meal. She hated herself for feeling sick, there was so much love put into this, but she could barely bring herself to look at the trout. It’s eyes, her eyes stared blankly at her, blank as though all thought, all feeling and instinct had been stripped of it. She ate in silence, forcing herself to stop thinking about what she was eating. The lifeless being who once swam, who was once born and bathed in summer sunlight, who went through so many years and had so many left. The being not unlike herself, for it too had that fire of existence in it once, like every being had. Like the moth she saw through the window at school, clinging to the glass, desperately drawn to the lamps inside the warm classroom. It was eventually blown away by winter winds, and who knows what came of it. She ate, and as she ate she wondered if it had lived. If it had seen everything it needed to, experienced everything it needed to, before succumbing to the cold as so much life is wont to do. She wondered if it had lived, thoroughly enough to justify such a final thing like death, unwavering and unforgiving like the harsh winds of a blizzard may be to a small and delicate, dull and brown moth.
Warmth beyond the frost
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