I feel rather sorry for whoever it is you're talking about in that author's note. Work this beautiful from a mind and heart as extraordinary as yours deserves a lot of good things, like snow. The image you've chosen is breathtaking, but your words are even better. It's hard to read those last two lines and not feel a little overwhelmed. It's powerful stuff.

This reminds me of the opening scene of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, where the main character is offered a piece of pure, white tofu and she is told to eat it, that she might become pure -might "live white." At the end of the film, she offers her daughter a cake, made to resemble that piece of tofu and tells her the same thing -"live white, live pure." In both scenes, snow is falling. There is a simplicity in this piece that belies the complex emotion underneath it -but between the simple and complex, is this desire to be cleansed, to be without mar or blemish, to walk away from the sullied and into the pure.

*deep breath* *exhale* Thank you so much for this.

Like some of the other comments, this piece is quite vivid and emotive...it reminded me of a coming-of-age short story I read where a young girl gradually each day climbed a massive tree until she was able to finally climb to the very top and lay across it's uppermost branches looking into the expansive sky, her future wide open before her...I wish you that same freedom...the snow imagery offers a downy comforting presence in the sullen words you conjure and in the image you took...great combo, well done...peace, jewels