White as Snow

Prologue

Once, there was a town where the people were warm and busy. They knew that seasons cycle through, keeping an established pattern. Snow fell white and wonderful, and the people cleared it away, making room for the spring grass and the summer sun.

The boy was different. He loved the snow more than the sun, and the quiet more than the stirring of life. He did not mind the moving of the seasons, but he wished the most perfect things could be kept forever.

One morning, a snowflake fell onto his mitten. It was not just beautiful; it was flawless—a tiny, perfect star of ice. The boy held his breath, seeing the most special thing he had ever seen. He wanted to keep it away from the world’s heat, away from the messy steam of life.

He brought it close, watching it, and sighed a small, silent wish that it would never leave.

But his wish was not silent enough. His breath was the warm breath of life. And the small, precious crystal could not stand against the heat of his living spirit. With a sudden shimmer, the perfect flake vanished into a single, clean drop of water.

The boy did not cry. He felt a sharp, cold logic bloom in his chest. He learned his first lesson: The beautiful and the pure cannot survive the warmth of the living.

And so, the boy made a quiet promise to the cold. He promised to protect the perfection of the snow from the heat of his own heart, and from the messy warmth of the world. He decided he would never let anything so special melt again.

Act I: The Custodian

The town followed the rules of its own survival. When the snow fell thick and heavy, the people brought out their shovels and plows. This was not hatred of the cold; it was function. It kept the roads open, the roof beams from collapsing, and the soil beneath ready for its turn. It was the pattern of the seasons, the established order of give and take.

But the boy did not see order. He saw only a threat.

He became a sentinel of the winter. He walked the paths the others had cleared, carrying only a small, soft brush. If a shadow fell, he moved the snow out of the sun's way. If a warm current stirred, he moved the snow to the deepest shade. He worked without rest, driven by the cold logic of his promise.

The adults spoke to him gently. "Son," they said, "we must clear the weight from the roof so it does not crack the foundation."

"The roof is a lie," the boy thought. "The roof is designed to keep out the perfect beauty. The beauty must be protected from the roof."

He refused to clear the paths, insisting that the pure, cold layer must remain undisturbed. He began to reject his own necessary warmth. He wore thin clothes and stopped eating the hot, steaming food the others offered. He was training himself to be as still and cold as the perfect crystals he guarded.

His breath, which had once melted the single, perfect flake, now became his enemy. He learned to keep it shallow and low, turning his face away from the snow, ensuring his own living warmth never touched the sacred cold.

The town soon noticed the shift. The paths he patrolled were closed. Where he walked, the snow was kept, and the established order began to shake.

Act II: The Price of Purity

The snow did not melt. The boy was tireless. Where the others had been practical, he was absolute. The snow that was meant to be temporary now lay heavy and permanent, kept from its natural cycle by his stubborn devotion.

First, the simple things died. The green things beneath the snow were starved of sun and pressed too hard into the frozen earth. They could not wait for the spring that the boy refused to allow.

Then, the living things that moved away. The small, hungry animals needed the grass to sprout and the soil to thaw. They realized the cold would not end, and they left the town for places where the seasons still kept their promise.

The adults tried reason. "The boy is protecting a thing that does not need protecting," they whispered. "He is sacrificing the living for perceived beauty."

They saw that the town was becoming a tundra—a cold, white plain where nothing grew and nothing moved. Their homes, built for the cycle of warmth and thaw, began to fail. The deep, packed snow held the dampness. The weight of the ideal pressed down on the beams, and the foundations cracked.

One by one, the families gathered their belongings and looked back at the boy, who stood motionless, guarding a drift on the main road. They shook their heads. They understood that the town could not survive if one person insisted that the functional order was a lie.

They left, following the cleared routes toward places where the sun was still allowed its strength. The boy did not watch them go. He had no warmth left for sorrow or farewells. He had only the duty of cold.

He was alone, the sole custodian of the frozen town, which was now nothing but a vast, silent repository for the perfection he had insisted upon.

Act III: The Final Harmony

The boy had won his battle against the sun and the warmth. The town was his, a vast, silent chapel built of ice. There was no sound but the high, dry wind that whipped the snow he had saved. There was nothing left to clear, nothing left to interrupt the perfect, unmelting white.

His body, starved of food and warmth, was a system running on fumes. Yet, his duty was complete. Every flake was in its proper place, and no warm breath had disturbed the scene since the last chimney smoke had vanished. He was the perfect guardian, victorious in the stillness.

He felt the cold, not as a pain, but as a completion. It crept through his thin clothes, past his skin, and into the very core of his bones. This was the purity he had longed for: the final stillness, the absolute rejection of the messy and difficult warmth of life.

He walked to the center of the main road, now indistinguishable from the rest of the snow. He lay down in the snowdrift he had spent months guarding. He did not shiver. He held his shallow, disciplined breath for the last time.

The snow, which he had protected from the slightest hint of warmth, now welcomed him. It covered him gently, a final, cold embrace. He had surrendered his last breath of life force—the warmth of his body—to the overwhelming ideal.

The boy was finally part of the snow—the snow that would never melt.

Epilogue

The snow stayed, flawless and permanent, but it fed nothing, sheltered nothing, and warmed nothing. It was not a landscape of peace, but a tundra of permanent consequence. The perfect white crystals danced in the wind, indifferent to the backdrop of the forsaken town. The wind blew once more, then the little snowflakes finally rested on top of the cold body that they had claimed.