Everything is covered in thick, heavy white mist. I inhale it in, and exhale a wispier, lighter version of it back out; my shivering lips parted in a small smile. I swirl the patterns of the mist in between my pale fingers, trying to beckon them into soft shapes in the air.
When I close my eyes lightly, the mist shows the little hidden stones in it to me. With my eyes closed, I can see the gently-colored ephemeral fragments rolling, tumbling gracefully along with the mist. I can capture one for three seconds with the fast nick of my fingers and read the secrets imprinted on their smooth surface, before they melt away from the little heat of my finger tips; because of this I do not steal the mists of its many secret stones. Some things are better left uncovered.
When I start dreaming away, the mist comes and whispers in my ear. I can hear all the little happenings it has seen as the years past by: stories of great loves, who loved with all of their hearts and souls; stories of children, who danced and smiled from the bottom of their beings; stories of kind hearts, always reaching out a helping hand; stories of bravery, and its many forms.
When my skin starts to go numb from the cold, the mist starts to circle my ankles and coil around my wrists. Little cold breaths of mist wriggle to the space in between my toes and fingers, tickling the soles of my feet and the palms of my hands. It envelopes my waist and runs its fingers through my hair, giving me Death-cold kisses on my white cheeks; and presses its back against mine as an old friend, sitting there, with wordless comfort.
When silence nestles all around, the mist rocks me to sleep, blocking my ears from any noise and from any nightmares to enter into my mind. It forms in thick layers underneath me, so that I can no longer feel the rough ground below me but a soft blanket of mist. It lifts me a bit higher so that I can float. So I float while I dream, and my dreams become serene, floating pictures.
When the ringing of silence grows to a quiet music, the mist curls into the palms of my hand, and the delicate wisps interweave loosely to form a hollow ball, with a parting in its surface the size of my lips. I lift my palms up and place my shaking lips on the oval hole and murmur a secret to the mist. I tell my secret wish; a wish that everybody has, that they hold on with dear lives; one that some follow recklessly, one that provides inspiration and strength, one that some, for the benefit of those they love, place away in a little jewelry box.
The hollow ball colors a pastel, pale blue. The delicate wisps tighten their hold to one another and shrink into a small pebble, sweeping off into the mist.
The mist forms another hollow ball inside my palms and I whisper a message, asking the mist to send it to a soul. I fill the hollow ball with words of beauty of the world’s nature around us and finding the secrets, stories and wishes they’re just waiting to tell you, if you’ll only listen.
The wind carries it off and it appears again: not as a ball of mist or fading rock.
But as a story, written down for you to read.
