Frozen Over

Peace is found in the dull pain in your chest that’s reflected in the dimmed horizon. A gentle cruelty lays in the silence and stillness of the world around you that offers nothing to soothe your fear or pain, but the promise that nothing in nature is happening. A tombstone in the bare branches of the occasional tree as both you and it wait for spring to come and grant you a chance to blossom again.

But you are not a tree, nor are you an animal left to hibernate in the desert of white. No, you are instead trapped in a heated car heading to your new prison, dressed as a winter getaway. What’s there to getaway from in a house tucked into the trees far from any whisper of civilization? What difference does he think the scenery will make other than to more accurately reflect your existence? Perhaps he hopes to bury himself in the snow, to drown out your tears and distance and shield his eyes in white and muffle his ears in quiet.

“How’s the scenery?” Your throat tightens as if it were about to gag. You hated speaking and you hated when he spoke to you in particular. “Is it nice?” How long can you go without responding today before he loses his patience?

You force your limbs and breath to freeze and your ears strain to hear even the slightest disturbance, the most subtle inkling that you shouldn’t test his patience any further, but all you see in his reflection is a mix of disappointment and aching.

You watch his chest heave in a sigh as he thankfully turned his attention back on the road. If you’re lucky, that will be the last time and nothing but the dull rumble of the engine, muffled crunches of snow beneath tires, and the rush of hot air through the AC system will be your company.

You don’t why he keeps trying to talk to you when you’ve ignored him for the past four hours. Ever since he woke you up with a gentle rattle of your arm, all you’ve done is look at him before immediately heading to your “assigned task”.

It’s unbearably boring, but you’d rather not risk moving to find a book or your headphones for him to inevitably see that as his time to move, to try and goad you into giving him your attention until he inevitably gets tired of your indifference and rips away whatever you’ve taken solace in.

It’s not worth the trouble.

So, ever since you’ve seated yourself in the car, you’ve resigned yourself to remain by the window, only ever staring out the blurred landscape and occasionally watching him through the reflection. He said he had the ability to see peoples truest desires, but if that were true, why are you here?

He must have either been lying to you, or he’s lying to himself. How long would it take before you found the truth to that? How much longer will your heart beat with a dull ache until he figures it out?

The momentum beneath your feet begins to slow into a gentle stop and your heart rate rockets, fingers curling into the heavy woolen fabric of your sweater as your spine tenses and straightens, jawbones clenching into place.

You hear him lean against your seat, feel his weight shift around you, leather squealing softly against fabric and he sighed, a heavy, mourned, sigh.

He’s hurting, you can feel the ache in his chest reverberate through his being into the atoms around you. You work to still yourself into a broken statue, cracks and fallen chips uncomfortably exposed at all times, and do not move an inch from the window.

You didn’t care if he was hurting now, he had hurt you so many times before. He hurt you so badly and so deeply that it hurt to feel any emotions at all. If he was mourning, he could mourn alone like you had until he too becomes a husk of a living thing and then one day you two can sit across each other in a room and not say a word, but still think the same thing.

Why did we let it get to this?

And then, maybe, he would let you go. Maybe then, he would give an apology too late to be anything but a string of sounds from a windpipe. But you knew better than to hope when you saw how he looked at you sometimes, like you were the one thing in the world of any value, like he would let himself get torn apart if it meant he could have a taste of your love. It hurt to hope.

You lean further into the window, daydreaming of running out into the snow fields and disappearing from the world altogether, any and every trace of you unfurling into snowflakes to melt with the spring. If only fairy-tales were real, not sweet ones with happy endings, but the more ancient ones. The ones meant to teach the importance of not taking something that doesn’t belong to you.

“Sweetie,” You can feel your face crinkle into disgust on instinct, you hate the word, you hate the way he says it, you hate what it means— “Please, look at me.” A cold finger timidly brushes your cheek and it freezes your skin, spreading throughout your body and pinching your nerves.

You flinch and he inhales a shuddering breath that almost sounds like fear.

The weight that always lurks closely to his figure relinquished you from it’s oppressiveness and a few strings of muscle relax, but not enough to fully rest. You wait for the inevitable tug of the vehicle moving forward and the subtle rustles of a leather jacket, but neither come.

Sylus is framed by the white landscape shining through the car window, matching his hair as his head rests on his arms, hands hanging over the edges of the wheel. Streaks of bluish white reflect off the creases of his jacket, the red and white thorns embroidered into the sleeves arch and point at his head.

Silence settles between you, piling on your shoulders and weighing you down. The freeze has now retreated further into you, crystallizing your lungs and throat as you sat and wait. Wait for the sound of an aggravated sigh and straining leather, wait for the ice to crack and shatter, wait to retreat into the false sanctuary hidden in your conscious.

Instead there’s a sniffle. Just one, before he sits up and you look out the window again, and the car jerks forward, and the snow keeps falling.