A/N: Something that I wrote… and I kind of like how it turned out. ^^

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~*~Captives of Winter~*~

            She placed one foot gently in front of the other, numbed toes crunching softly on frosted ground. The ends of her gown where ragged with dirt and mud, torn from slumbering blackberry vines and leafless branches. The tips of her fingers and nose were blackened from the touch of the chilled air; her lips were massaged with purple and blue. Her hair was a tangled and ragged mess, caught with splinters and moulded leaves.

            Her eyes moved forward, onward, into her garden. Step by step she continued, her unfeeling hands brushing everything by her side. Her footprint left the slightest imprints on the fakery of ice, memories pressed to a time of winter. Her breath was as cold as the air around, barely forming the wisping cloud before her in the unbending air. Breathing was quietly ragged, lungs unsupported by the bracing winds from behind.

            Her knees quavered as her feet continued on, bracing their shattered joints against the smooth movements of their time. Her elbows cried in return, wailing for the use that her knees sobbed against, as they turned brittle ice-dry. A forgotten metal bracelet was frozen in place upon a thinned wrist, only the rusted charms wavering in the moving air, gentle noises in a silent land.

            Times of running were quickly and abruptly forgotten. Times of briskness and heavy air were passed by with the pulling and tugging winds. Heat was with her, in the rattling of her chest. Skin pale with shades of blue and purple, ranging suddenly to black.

            She had forgotten thought. She had long lost a will. She only knew step… by step… by step… by step… by step…

                Until she reached the garden, with its crafted statues, its stilled delights. Then she knew to dance, and the music that touch the air. That brushed the frozen leaves together as they chimed. That met her footfalls, light and heavy, brittle and sudden, jerky and graceful. A race of contradictory movements, sharp and breaking against the glass-like tears the rest on the ground in the footprints of the dance.

            And the final step, feet upon slushy ground, stopped the music, evaporated the brittle, graceful girl. And left alone the garden of flowers and ice.

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R/R?