Snowfall (and a brief introduction to flash fiction)
It's very brief. So is flash fiction, so it works.
Flash fiction is short. It’s concise. It’s under 1000 words (or 1500, depending on which definition you use) and captures a single moment. There’s no room for extra words, which makes it difficult. But it’s vibrant. It punches. And it’s an incredible tool for developing longer fiction.
Detail creates belief. If you can paint a scene that your reader can see, they forget about the words. They forget that they have a book, or an e-reader, or whatever, and start living in the story. Everything become vivid: small hand gestures, intimate room descriptions, small flowers on the side of your traveler’s road. The more real you can make your world, the more believable it will be.
How does it work? Action words. Don’t just tell who said what, or where they were, or why. They were walking to the house and it was nice is grammatically correct, but it’s not terribly engaging.
Instead, talk about the smoke pouring out of the chimney, the crunch of gravel underneath their feet as they strolled up the walkway. Talk about the chirping birdsongs, or lack thereof. Talk about the cold kiss of snow on their boots, and the worn smiles they carried towards the door.
In those, you don’t just have sentences. You have a story.
The winter crunches beneath my feet as I walk, my hands brushing tree limbs out of my face with every step. The branches cloud my vision as I peer through the maze of sticks and bark, the snow blindingly white in the afternoon sun.
It's been hours since I saw the path. I only stepped off for a minute, and then it vanished.
I don't mean that it was buried under the snow, or that I didn't try to find it again. The first thought will be that I simply lost my way. No, I want to be absolutely clear: I went back to where the path was supposed to be. Only it was gone.
When I say that I didn't lose the path, trust me. I know how to live in the woods. I've been camping by myself for over fifteen years, received survival training every summer as a child and used it as an adult, and taught others what to do in this situation for the last six seasons.
I've been caught by blizzards, trapped in thunderstorms, created my own shelter during a tornado, lived when they said I should die, and kept going when they said I'd never walk again.
And I. Always. Find. The. Path.
I am a warrior of the woods. I breathe with the trees and live in harmony with their tenants. I respect the tumble of a stream, take what I need, thank the gods for their blessing, and leave the rest alone.
So. When I say the path wasn't there, I want to be really clear. I don't mean that I simply couldn't find it. I mean it was gone.
The girl in the village - the one with red hair - tried to warn me. She stopped at my shoulder as I readied my pack, her eyes staring up the mountain that I faced.
"You're going up there?"
"Looks like it."
She nodded. The wind whipped a few stray hairs around her face. "Be careful."
I expected her to walk away then, but she didn't. Instead she turned towards me.
Her emerald eyes reminded me of the leaves in late summer, just before they turn gold. The moss on old stone, left to age without interruption. The long grasses at the edge of a prairie before you enter the wood.
"They don't come back, you know. The others."
"Others?"
"The ones who came before." She indicated the mountain's snowy peak with a tip of her head. "They try to master it, but stone has no master. Be wary, else it will never let you come home."
I didn't know what to say, so I only nodded. Then she took my hand, and pressed a carved rock into it.
"If you get lost, find the place where the birds don't sing," she whispered, her eyes darting back and forth. "It lays buried with the bones of wolves and men. Lay this there, and the stone will send you home."
My fingers closed around it by themselves. When I looked up again, she was gone.
Just like the path, she had vanished into the snow. Now, as I fight my way through the woods, the snow piling up to my knees and my toes numb, I shiver. I should have heeded her dark words of wisdom. I shouldn't have come to face the mountain. I should have known I wouldn't walk alone.
I reach for the carved rock and clutch it tightly in my frozen fingers as I keep moving. Searching for the graveyard of wolves and men, for the place where the birds don't sing.
Maybe then I will find the path again.