I locked the front door, fingers fumbling in the icy cold. I heard gleeful voices calling me, followed by shrieks of laughter, carried in the wind. I turned around, and the scenes as I knew them were disguised by a glittering white sheet. Snow covered the trees, smothered the cars, and kept dogs and cats and all sorts of things wrapped up in blankets safe from the outside. But it was beautiful. The morning had only just begun, and not many people had left their homes yet. The blanket of snow lay there, untouched. I followed some remade footsteps crunched into the surface. At the end of the front garden by the gate, I was greeted by a rose wet face, bearing a cheesy grin - my sister. We were stuck in London, due to the heavy snowfall overnight. My sister took off down the path, bounding and leaping like an arctic fox hunting my mother and auntie up ahead. Her body ballooned out unusually from the various layers of clothing cloaked over and around her in attempts to keep warm. I began to follow her, struggling to march in what seemed so delicate and fragile at first. Thanks to the unexpected blanket of tiny and powerful structures, we were forced out of our rabbit hole; out into the cold. We needed more milk. The four of us didn’t dare take the car. We hadn’t been able to free it, yet even if we did so, it wouldn’t have been wise to use it. In the few minutes we had ventured outside, there had been two or three cars helplessly skid, slide, and get stuck. One car took thirty- five minutes to get approximately ten metres down the road, and even after that, had still broken down. In the end, it had taken at least seven men to push it that far. Not many people passed us. A few elderly couples, small families passing by, the children frantically running around, like there wasn’t enough time in the world to play in all of the snow. And of course, there wasn’t.
Every snow angel had to be created, every snowman must have a carrot for a nose. They would stand tall and proud until they wouldn’t. They would have voices and faces and be friends until they melted away, and it would always happen too soon. Such was the beauty of the snow; the less it touches the earth around us, the more it fascinates us. The air bit my cheeks and stabbed my nose. I felt my forehead, the watery remnants of careless snowflakes dripped down. We reached a field, which was apparently a ‘shortcut’ according to my auntie who I loved, yet severely doubted. I stared at the snow. I was pulled in by the untamed spread that each tiny flake helped to create and released onto a once plain and ordinary landscape, and the vastness of it all, bounded only by a vault of powdery, off-white skies above. It made me feel small, and free as well.