The winter day, as if to mourn the death of summer, was gray and sullen. The trees, once happy in their multicolored autumn coats, stood void against the pale sky, and the last flowers of summer hung their heads in resignation, the frost haven stole their wills to live. Brown, brittle grass, that cracked and crunched with every step, replaced the green carpets of grass that lead to every house. Everything was so dull, so lifeless; no souls ventured beyond the warm security of their homes; no creature stirred in the cold, vacant streets. Then quietly, almost unnoticeably, snowflakes, large and fluffy like, began falling, transforming the bleak and dreary landscape and the mood. As the snowfall intensified, the once brown landscape became covered in a thick blanket of pure white snow. Like a delicate smooth fabric, it draped the ugly angular limbs of the trees, converting them into a rather pretty sight. Only the stately pine tree had resisted the change in seasons. Standing tall and erect, its sturdy branches bristled with bundles of stiff needles, each covered in snowy white, until, at the peak a single green branch pointed upward, layered with a miniature snowdrift. .
As if pieces of the pale gray sky were breaking away and falling to earth, snowflakes, each crystal uniquely different from the other and each a complicated, geometric pattern, fell upon my cold face, clinging tenaciously to my eyelashes so that they felt like weights with every blink, and melting on my cheeks to form shiny droplets of water that tingled refreshingly. My hair and eyebrows became coated with accumulating snow, giving me the appearance of great age. I stepped forward; the crisp crunch of the snow being compressed beneath my feet seemed loud in the widespread silence. .
