Of Snow and Ice by Paige Mongon

This questionable short story is a product of about three existential crises and an ungodly amount of green
tea… I also, rather unfortunately, appear to have lost any semblance of creativity lately, so you must excuse
whatever mess of words follows this (but please enjoy nonetheless).


  It was designed to withstand the tests of time. Harsh, barren; yet not unforgiving. Life teemed within the tundras sheathed in snow, the shrubbery clothed in white powder, the craggy mountains cloaked in the essence of stars. The land radiated a coldness which belied the life within, for sheltered in its rocky heart it cradled the tentative warmth of life. Naught but the wild, the untamed could thrive here, living by the unhindered glow of coruscating stars. 
It was a land of hushed beauty, a land of boundless hopes and wild dreams and untamed mystery. Hesitant hues of sparkling snow and glistening ice scattered across its frigid expanse, setting the land awash in shy tinges of blue to be chased by the fury of the wind. Snowflakes, gentle in nature, meandered their way down unto the barren land, mingling with the wintry familiarity of their brethren. A fortnight’s travel away lay the rock-strewn coast, along which heaved murky waves of ambiguity, their glacial grey frothing with repressed anger and restrained hostility. The haughty sea, too, held the essence of ethereal beauty, an extension of the glacial land whose shores it lapped at. Much like the land, it too hosted the flickering light of life, the barest whisper of movement and warmth and existence. Held captive by such power, buoyed by waves of stark foreboding, floated sheets of ice so stubborn that even the Sun, and her golden-hued warmth, could not persuade them to recede. Instead, they remained, a testament to the resilience of the land and its glacial obdurance. 
Those who inhabited this land were a reflection of it- a fleeting breath of furtive warmth, a hint of timid beauty enshrouded in secrecy. The creatures, too, were clothed in the essence of light, in the essence of purity and indescribable grace. It was they who braved the moaning winds and frenzied snow and tumultuous sea; it was they who called this inhospitable territory ‘home’. And so it was that the barren land became forgiving, sheltering those who mirrored its fierce resilience and quiet strength.  
Yet as the winds of time spun evermore, the terrain began to alter. What was once designed to withstand the tests of time began to fade, succumbing to the products of Man’s civilizations. The land became choked in smog, entangled in the impurity of a rapidly heating climate. The sheets of ice, once a testament of resilience, fractured, broken into cruel oblivion. It was then the animals of this land began to suffer. 
The once-proud polar bears, intimidating and hulking, began to starve. It was they who relied upon the ice as a means both to catch their food and travel from various hunting sites, they who depended upon the ice to live. As the ice receded, so did their stomachs- their ribs began to poke through motley fur, the bone sharply protruding through sickly skin thinned from a lack of sustenance. The seals, too, began to hurt, as they relied also upon the ice. It was where they dug their lairs and birthed their pups- without such ice and snow, they left their pups vulnerable to predators, predators which began to prey upon the weak and exposed. And so it was that gradually the insidious nature of man’s cities began to seep into even the most isolated of lands, laying waste to ethereal beauty and devastating the populations of creatures who were, after all, no more than a fleeting breath.