Eve

~

He kicks at empty husks and stones worn loose by a thousand boots. All around him is tinged a greyish pallor and the streets lie quiet save for the occasional scurrying of those hurrying home to warmth and light. His long grey wool coat hangs bedraggled from his limbs, sodden with the earlier rains, and as he paces towards the corner the first few flakes of the palest grey drift into view and melt into the wool as they land. At the corner amidst the deepening flurries he glimpses then a vision of red silk that flows bright against the grey. A group around her reach up as she bends down a little to place a wreath of evergreen firs upon her head and four lit candles amongst them turn the palest grey to brightest white. She straightens then and pushes back some stray strands of hair and looking down the street towards the corner smiles at him before she turns and whirls and twirls in tune with the skeltering flurries of snow. Her laughter chimes melodically as she skips along with her friends in flashes of red, green, gold and white shimmering so bright as to drain the grey of all its dullness. A swirl of colour and light and the sweetest laughter that softens the winter air.

Midnight strikes through the night with the sudden clammering of bells, and as if stirred by their motion so too does the wind howl icily down the street, knocking him backwards as his eyes clench tightly closed for protection. The once soft flurries of snow clump together for comfort, their embrace slickening their skins till they run wet and freeze. Onwards they fly in formation of twinkling stars of ice embedding and piercing his eyelids as he bites back the pain of their cutting. Behind the blindness of his vision they prick and pierce the blankness as radiating stars and the glint of rich diamonds sparkling into view. Even the cold has vanished into the vortex of his feelings as the diamonds twinkle and fracture into a multitude of rainbows and shatter at the twelfth distant fading toll. As the light engulfs his eyes he hesitatantly casts their shield away as the glassy film shatters and crumbles into a million grains of sand. The fury of their shattering rapidly dilapidates and they settle down to earth where they burn in the harsh light darkening to a deep ochre till all is still. His eyes still blinking from their anguish they adjust to spy a red linen sundress swinging back and forth from a clothesline in the limp and languid heat.