(This is strange.  I can’t say I don’t know where it came from, but I’m amazed that it’s mutated into something so… strange.  O_o)

Sometimes, when I breathe in, I can taste the winter.  It’s cold and harsh and terribly cruel, but these sensations are not tastes, so why is it that the feeling of arctic breath on my tongue and down my throat reminds me of that dead time?

I think it is taste.  I am wrong.  But it hurts my head to try and argue against my subconscious, so I leave it be.  I taste the winter when it sends a calling card on the wind.

Today it felt like spring.  I’ve never seen grass greener.  Staring over the endless rolling hills, something inside me yearned for trees, but that isn’t to be.  There was rich dirt at my feet, where I stood on the lane.  The stone path had been taken apart shortly after the snow began to melt away- it was sinking into the earth.  We took the gray-white stones and built the base of our new house.  We piled stone upon flat stone, and they didn’t sink too far.  The shack we lived in through a week-long winter is already falling apart.

If there were trees, we’d cut them down to build our home.  I hope they never grow here.

There are huge, puffy clouds crowding the horizon.  They’re white, like doves, and not dark like carrion crows.  I have no appreciation for them either way.  When the sun beats down on the prairie, I come close to feeling like home.  I find no joy in snow or rain.

You can only walk so far here.  If you get out of sight of the shack, you wind up approaching it minutes later.  It’s like the world resets itself around you.  Paul wants to build a huge house, like a tower, so that we can get farther.  Jacob makes snide comments about Babylon, and I remain silent.  I’m waiting for the sun to shine again.  No matter how tall they build our home, we’re not going anywhere.

Don’t cry, little swallows, lost in the plain.  There’s nothing good outside, anyway.  They cut down trees to build dead homes and they dam the rivers to make strange ponds and they fill the sky with smoke.  You wouldn’t see the stars out there.  You wouldn’t be so bright under the sun.  Stay here, where you can be with those you love and where they can never leave.

I told them, a long time ago, that I felt like a princess kept sleeping in the bower.  I’ll never grow old, I’ll never die; I’ll always be beautiful and bright and I’ll never live again.  Jacob slapped me, and Paul grabbed his arm and dragged him outside.  They sat outside in autumn in the rain, and I waited so long for them to come back in.  I never said anything about it again.

Caught in a crystal, locked in time; whenever I hurt I feel the clouds moving.  They wait on the horizon for my eyes to ache with suppressed tears and rage.  I know Jacob blames me, but he wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t chosen to follow me!  How dare he hit me?  How dare he put his filthy hands on my face?

“Melanie!”

I turn from my tear-blurred stare at the empty path and there’s Paul, waving frantically, from over by the shack.  His blue eyes are wide and he’s much paler than his usual ivory-white.  The wind is screaming, and when I turn, fear rising to choke me, I see the lightning storm approaching.

“Melanie!”

White crackling and super-heated, the very air might be shivering apart.  Paul has grabbed my arm and is dragging me to the shack, away from the storm that has been called up so quickly.  Where the sky had been brittle-bright blue, it is now covered in boiling clouds that swallow the sun.  I try to scream.  We are inside.

Jacob sits in the far left corner of the empty shack.  His eyes are blank and gray.  We moved all our belongings to the skeleton house of stone on the next hill.  I cry out and huddle into Paul’s arms when the lightning sizzles outside the window, almost like it’s searching for us.

“Jacob,” Paul pleads, holding me more like he’s expected to than he wants to.  “Jacob!  Come here!”

His long blonde hair has fallen over his eyes, and I wonder if Paul can see how Jacob twitches, just slightly, when Paul calls his name.  But the black-haired boy in the corner doesn’t move, and I wonder if he’s a shadow, a stranger, something that isn’t really here anymore.  He looks pale and cold.  He looks dead.

Paul lets out a tiny, inarticulate cry and drops me to the floor, rushing over to Jacob.  I cry out in pain and fear and thunder crashes so loudly that the shack shakes, but neither boy has noticed.  Paul is holding Jacob so tightly, saying something over and over into his ear, and it’s like life is returning to the blank eyes and blank face.  Not a shadow-stranger, then.  Not gone.

The storm is passing, turning into something wet and cold and drizzling.  I sniff and wipe my own tears away, strangely jealous.  He might have pulled me out of the storm, but Paul wouldn’t hold me in the same way he holds Jacob.  Jacob wouldn’t respond if I were to cradle him in my arms and whisper words of hope and love into his ear.  And I know that’s what Paul is saying, I can hear him now:  “Don’t leave me here, please, Jacob.  Don’t leave me here, all alone.  I can bear it if you’re here.”

Perhaps the ground froze a few inches in, or maybe it’s too full of melting snow and ice-water, but the rain is not sinking into it.  We built the shack out of scattered planks and other garbage three weeks ago- was it three weeks?  I can’t seem to remember how long it’s been- and we built it near the bottom of the hills, hoping to avoid the worst of the wind.  The only problem with that is that we’re being flooded.  I cry out in horror and Paul’s jumping up, pulling Jacob up and yelling at me to stop it, to calm down right now.

The little swallows out on the plain might be dying.  I run outside and the clouds are swirling terribly.  Jacob is screaming something terrible to Paul.

“I won’t live like this!  I won’t bend my life around the whims of that monster pretending to be a girl!“

Thunder crashes.  Already the lightning is back.  For a moment, fear and anger rise up so fast that I’m held fast, grinning a terrible not-smile into the crystal cage-nightmare.  For a moment, I want him to die.

“Jacob, please,” Paul whispers, and his voice is like heartbreak.  My own heart cracks and all anger is gone.  I start to cry, whimpering and falling to my knees in the mud, feeling my hair drag in the wet mess and the sobs rise to screams of pain and loss.  I can hear Paul start to move toward me- it must be him, those squelching footsteps in the mud- and then Jacob speaks.

“Stop.”

I don’t know who he is talking to- I suspect Paul; Jacob hasn’t spoken to me in a while- but I look up through my tears.  He looks like a stern angel and Paul like a pleading saint.  Jacob turns his burning gray eyes to me.

“Are you sad, then?” he mocks.  “Is it time for autumn again?  The season of dying things?”

“What?” I croak, almost sobbing through the word.  Paul is standing as still as a statue.  He won’t rescue me this time.

“Is it time for more punishment?” he demands.  “What are you going to destroy this time?  What are you going to kill now?”

“Stop it,” I whisper, cold fear and dead silence in my soul.  I won’t hear this.  The temperature is dropping.  It’s not my fault!

“Let go,” he whispers harshly, and Paul makes a strange, frightening sound.  He’s crying.  Jacob’s voice rises to a scream.  “Let us go!”

“Why are you yelling at me?” I shriek, clawing at the quickly freezing mud I’m kneeling in.  “It’s not my fault!”

Paul looks up at me, his eyes so filled with pain that I want to die.  I love them both; I love them and I want them to be happy but I don’t want them to leave me, I’ll do anything to make them happy, I don’t want them to go!

He says softly, taking Jacob’s hand and holding it so tight, “Let us out of your nightmare, Melanie.  Before we can never care about you ever again.”

My heart breaks within my chest, and the blizzard is upon us.  It goes on and on, through all the days that we were stuck here, and it freezes my soul, but not before I see a phantom sun rise in their eyes when they turn to look at each other, and dismiss me entirely.

The world fades to white, fades to black.