Oddities, Part 1 - First Snow

She missed the heat.

She had thought she had known cold. Cold is what you get when you get soaked in the rain, and don't have access to a change of clothes for a while. Even if it's warm enough that most of the skin is bare, the soaked fabric sticking to skin sucks heat from quite deep within the body.

And then she'd gotten on the boat. She didn't have a problem with boats, but let's be honest. Two weeks on a boat is too long. Especially when the temperature had been steadily dropping the entire time. Now she was huddled in layers and layers of fabric, shivering on the deck and watching the city she was supposed to live in from now on grow from a dot into a smudge along the coast. All the clothes were making it hard to move. She was convinced the cold had permanently settled into her bones. She would never be warm again. And the crew of the boat told her it would get worse. It was very early in the winter. This part of the sea would freeze over.

She missed the heat.

And the cold wasn't even the only thing. There was also the dark. So dark. All the time. Well, not all the time. But the hours of sunlight were few and far between. She had started sleeping hours more each night than she used to, simply because the darkness kept her constantly tired. She tried to tell herself it was because she was bored on the boat, that once she got to her destination she would have things to do, and she wouldn't feel so tired all the time. But she hadn't managed to quite convince herself yet.

She sighed, her breath condensing into a small cloud in front of her. She stared at it for a moment. Surely breath was not supposed to do that.

Why was she even here? Why had she taken the job? You would be great at it, they had said. It would give you an excuse to travel, they had said. They were soooo jealous, they had said. It would be so much fun! Well, she definitely wasn't having fun.

"You should go, Alaia," her best friend (not a good friend, really, just better than any of the others) from work had told her. "I would go, but, well. I can't. Felipe would never move, and we're starting a family. I'm jealous of your freedom," she had continued, with a shine in her eyes that told Alaia she was excited about her husband and a family and not really at all jealous that she wasn't single and thus couldn't move to the part of the world that's frozen for half of the year. "And you speak the language a little, right?"

To be fair, it wasn't all the fault of her colleagues. (Ex-colleagues, she reminded herself.) Alaia had been the one to decide she would go. After the previous foreign correspondent in Embärfjell had retired without much warning, they needed a new one in quite a rush, but surely it could have been any other someone too. Well, maybe not any other, since management had asked around for a good while and everyone else had been sensible enough to decline straight away. But not Alaia, no. She hesitated. And management jumped on that hesitation with no mercy. Surely the hesitation, they said, means that you actually want to go!

The worst part was that they were right; she sort of really did want to go. For a while she'd felt like she needed something new in her life. Something outside her routine. Like she needed a break from her life. An adventure, even. She'd felt like she needed to get away.

So now she was getting away. An indefinite break from her normal life. Which logically speaking meant that the break would probably eventually become her new normal, but right now, shivering on the deck of the ship, it felt completely impossible. She would never, never, get used to this.

Mother of gods, she missed the heat.

Something cold landed on her cheek. Then another something. Oh, great. Rain was the only thing missing right now. She was about to turn to go back inside, where it was not-quite-so-cold, but something seemed off. She stopped herself and looked around. It wasn't rain.

It was snow.

Instantly, she forgot the cold. She forgot the dark. She forgot all of it. When she was a little girl, she had dreamed of seeing snow, but of course, it never snowed where she lived. Had lived. But now there she was, snow falling quietly all around her. She smiled without noticing.

She just stood there, smiling, looking at the snow fall around her. It didn't make any sound. It was a little eerie. Rain always made a sound, dripping onto any surface. The flakes were too light and wide and soft to make a sound. They just landed, in complete silence. More and more flakes followed the first ones, and soon the entire world was filled with white dots swirling in the air with the wind. It was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

Maybe this wasn't the worst choice she had ever made. Well, it definitely wasn't. But maybe this could be good. Yes, she decided. It might be dark and she might never be warm again, but this would be good. This would be an adventure. An opportunity.

A fresh start.
_____________________________________________________

It's December again!

A couple of things about this year's story, to those of you (I'm assuming basically everyone) who didn't read the previous post about what's next:
First, it's just the two of us writing this year. No dad.
Second, and more importantly: We're writing a bit ahead of schedule this year, to get these bits of story to you at a regular time. So this year you all will get a brand new bit of story every morning at eight (Finnish time), from today until the 24th.

I'm excited. I hope someone else is too.

The topic for tomorrow is House.

~matu