The Silver Needle
The North Wind did not blow; it exhaled, a long, shivering breath that flattened the dead grass of the meadow. Then came the Quiet.
I arrived in the lungs of the night. I am the Frost, the silent architect, the silver needle that sews the world shut.
I began at the edge of the pond. I am not like the Snow, who is heavy and loud, smothering the earth under a white wool blanket. I am delicate. I moved across the surface of the water, knitting a skin of glass so thin that the fish below looked up and saw a sky made of diamonds.
I climbed the stalks of the sleeping hemlock. I turned the spider’s web—a discarded, messy thing—into a lace veil fit for a ghost. I moved with a mathematician’s precision, tracing the jagged rim of every fallen oak leaf, outlining their veins in crushed pearls.
I found a discarded iron spade leaning against a stone wall. To the humans, it was rust and cold metal. To me, it was a canvas. I grew a forest of ferns across its blade, silver fronds that would never see the sun, for the sun is my executioner.
Near the Haroldstown stones, I found a small wooden birdhouse, empty and forgotten. I did not enter. Instead, I feathered the roof with a thousand tiny daggers of ice, pointing toward the stars.
The world was now a museum of stillness. No twig snapped. No breath was drawn. I had turned the unruly, muddy earth into a kingdom of crystal geometry. I sat upon the world, cold and perfect, waiting for the first grey light of the dawn to turn my silver into gold, knowing that as soon as I was most beautiful, I would vanish.
I am the ghost of the water. I am the memory of the cold. And for one night, I held the earth perfectly still.
The Crazymad Writer Writes Again 