Cold

She looked back, her hair blowing frantically in front of her face. Out behind her.

The icy chill of wind was catching in her breath, freezing in her lungs, and falling down in clouds in front of her numb, red face. It was cold.

Shivering, she crooked over her body to rip off her gloves with her teeth and wrapped her hands around her neck for warmth. It appeared like she was choking herself.

And perhaps she was, just being out here, just as good as choking herself, the chill was numbing everything about her. Why was she here?

She staggered forward, against the wind, against her better judgment, against expectations. Perhaps she was just stubborn.

She refused to leave, to give up, to admit defeat, to tread upon her footsteps backward, the ones the wind had covered. She knew they were there.

As it whistled past her ears the wind screamed her name, she swore it did, she swore. If she had gone with the others, it would have been easier.

But she stayed there. In the comfort. In the dangerous but blissful comfort they had warned her about. They had given up on her.

She knew that she needed to do this, to leave that life, to join everybody else, to go home, go back. The discomfort was death.

But at the same time, she had lived with death before, she welcomed him into her home every day where she lived, danced with him in her life so often- so no, death was gone too. She really was alone.

In the distance she could hear them, her people, her friends, her family, screaming along with the wind. They howled her name.

She would make it.